REVIEWS 1253

Natacha Fabbri. De l’utilite de l’harmonie: Filosofia, scienza e musica in

Mersenne, Descartes e Galileo.
Studi 12. Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2008. xvi + 314 pp. index. bibl. €25. ISBN:
978–88–7642–321–5.
Through the work of Mersenne, Descartes, and Galileo, Nataccha Fabbri
explores ‘‘the rich fabric of relations between philosophy, science, and music that
characterizes the early seventeenth century’’ (x). Her title, taken from the final book
of Mersenne’s Harmonie universelle (1636), suggests the significance of the study of
harmony as the center of a virtual ‘‘pentagram’’ whose vertices correspond to the
pure and applied sciences, moral and political philosophy, and theology (x). At each
point the study of harmony plays a pivotal role, though Fabbri focuses in the final
chapter on Mersenne’s conception of civil and religious concord in the light of the
ideas of his two contemporaries. Essentially, Mersenne suggested ‘‘an authoritarian
and disinterested imposition’’ as a required means of realizing peace and religious
unity in ‘‘the Christian Republic’’ ravaged by religious fragmentation (287).
Mersenne saw the political realization of harmonic proportion, ‘‘proper to
monarchy’’ (299), as superior to the alternatives of arithmetical proportion
(aristocracy) and geometrical proportion (democracy). Despite differences with
Descartes, Mersenne similarly deployed the principle of discordia concors, a form of
‘‘reciprocal respect’’ that he accepted as a temporary solution until ‘‘the conversion of
all peoples’’ (288). In consideration of Galileo’s condemnation, Mersenne questioned
the category of ‘‘heretical science’’ and argued that mathematical conclusions did not
concern ‘‘the revealed truth and end of Holy Scripture’’ (271). Mersenne’s vision of
universal harmony was only partial, however, since he anticipated ‘‘the perfect
consonance amongst men, angels, and God only in heaven’’ (78).
A key strength of Fabbri’s study is her cohesive manner of presenting
methodological, practical, and theoretical aspects of harmonic theory. Fabbri
shows that Mersenne’s methodology in the Harmonie universelle pursued ‘‘detailed
descriptions of experiments’’ as a way of ‘‘creating general consensus’’ and inviting
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readers to repeat experiments (21). This, in turn, reflected a distinction between

sensible perception, fundamentally flawed, and knowledge acquired by ‘‘the
reiteration of experience’’ (173), a difference that Galileo also adopted in The
Assayer (1623). Fabbri maintains that many of Mersenne’s similarities to Galileo
stem from their shared adherence to the ideas of Vincenzo, Galileo’s father, who
argued that music was, in a sense, no less natural than nature. (As a form of art,
music was just as much an efficient cause as nature.) Galileo’s acceptance of a similar
significance for astronomy suggested that the results of ‘‘the astronomer
philosopher’’ fell under the category of nature’s secondary works (207). As
Galileo’s self-assigned task of ‘‘fabricating’’ took up various forms of
‘‘compositions,’’ ‘‘structures,’’ and instruments, Fabbri suggests that Galileo saw
fabrication as a way of ‘‘ordering and conferring a form,’’ a process that recalled the
role of Plato’s fabricator mundi (21314). That such a role relied on ‘‘the
indissoluble bond between mathematics and philosophy’’ was received critically
by Mersenne, who argued that Galileo attributed ‘‘excessive importance to the
abstract work of the mathematization of nature’’ (231). For Mersenne, natural
philosophy concerned ‘‘the human capacity to reproduce natural movements’’
(231), and no measure of mathematical innovation could change the fact that man’s
knowledge of nature was approximate. Convinced of the impossibility of verifying
astronomical theories empirically, Mersenne regarded ‘‘the various astronomical
systems as hypothetical models’’ whose purpose was ‘‘to provide a coherent
explanation of the appearances’’ (232).
As evidence of the profound importance of harmonic theory in the period,
Fabbri often refers to the work of Kepler, whose sweeping notion of harmony serves
as a counterpart to Mersenne’s comprehensive study. In the Harmonice mundi
(1619), Kepler explained that ‘‘dissonances’’ such as ‘‘eclipses in the heavens’’ were
actually ‘‘examples of divine wrath and retribution in the works of providence,’’
which were directed towards ‘‘the absolute concord of all things’’ (Gesammelte
Werke 6 [1940], 205). Fabbri breaks new ground by showing how such harmonic
conceptions of the cosmos were closely connected with the practical and theoretical
aspects of harmonic theory. Though he did not fully accept natural philosophy as
‘‘providence made visible,’’ Mersenne saw unison in acoustical physics as perfectly
symbolic of man’s participation in universal harmony.
PATRICK J. BONER
The Johns Hopkins University