{"id":10174,"date":"2008-05-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-27T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/thenewatlantis.com\/publications\/montesquieus-popular-science"},"modified":"2020-09-26T14:07:16","modified_gmt":"2020-09-26T18:07:16","slug":"montesquieus-popular-science","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/publications\/montesquieus-popular-science","title":{"rendered":"Montesquieu’s Popular Science"},"content":{"rendered":"

M<\/span>ontesquieu would make most everyone\u2019s top-ten list of political philosophers, but he is not prominent in the ranks of natural philosophers. Following the lead of the American Founders, who referred to him as \u201cthe celebrated Montesquieu,\u201d we associate his name with new discoveries and improvements in the science of politics rather than science proper. However, as a young man in his late twenties, decades before the publication of his masterwork, The Spirit of the Laws<\/em> (1748), Montesquieu seems to have been interested in a variety of scientific questions.<\/p>\n

The young nobleman was elected to the Academy of Bordeaux in 1716. In keeping with that body\u2019s preference for scientific endeavors, Montesquieu shifted away from literary and political explorations. Although his first presentation to the Academy was a \u201cDiscourse on the politics of the Romans in religion,\u201d his subsequent offerings owed more to Descartes than Machiavelli. Surviving papers include:<\/p>\n\n\n

\u201cDiscourse on the cause of the echo\u201d (1718),
\u201cDiscourse on the function of the renal glands\u201d (1718),
\u201cDiscourse on the cause of the weight of bodies\u201d (1720),
\u201cDiscourse on the cause of the transparency of bodies\u201d (1720), and
\u201cObservations on natural history\u201d (1721).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

Montesquieu\u2019s counter-\u201cSocratic turn\u201d did not last long, however. He reverted to the human sciences in dramatic fashion with the publication of his epistolary novel, The Persian Letters<\/em>, <\/em>in 1721. That work of sociological and psychological brilliance catapulted him into the limelight and lifted him from Bordeaux to Paris and beyond. Despite abandoning his vivisectionist experiments on frogs and sheep\u2019s tongues, Montesquieu wrote one more piece for the science-minded provincial academy. In 1725, he delivered his \u201cDiscourse on the motives that ought to encourage us to the sciences.\u201d The fascination of the address, and what makes it still worthy of examination, lies in how it interweaves the political, the literary, and the scientific.<\/p>\n\n

\r\n
\r\n \r\n \r\n <\/svg>\r\n <\/div>\r\n\t
\r\n\t\tScience and Empire\t<\/h5>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

M<\/span>ontesquieu begins with the claim that a nation\u2019s very existence depends on \u201cthe knowledge that the arts and sciences provide.\u201d Without such knowledge, human beings remain at the level of \u201csavage peoples,\u201d failing to attain \u201cgreat nation\u201d status. Montesquieu attributes the lack of political wherewithal among savage peoples to their neglect of the arts and sciences. One assumes that Montesquieu is alluding to the technological and military benefits of scientific advancement. Surprisingly though, what Montesquieu mentions is \u201cmores\u201d rather than know-how. He instances the Iroquois and their brutally successful campaign to conquer neighboring tribes. The example is odd, since the victory of the Iroquois is not attributed to their superior application to the arts and sciences. They are as savage as those they devour. It seems rather that savage mores leave savage peoples with only two foreign policy choices: eat or be eaten. Accordingly, Montesquieu predicts that \u201cif Europeans had the mores of the American savages, two or three European nations would soon devour all the others\u201d and then perhaps be devoured themselves by outsiders (as the dominant Iroquois were). Somehow, the knowledge provided by the arts and sciences makes possible more stable or self-sufficient forms of political life. The exact nature of the link between national sovereignty, civilized mores, and science remains sketchy, however.<\/p>\n

Still elaborating on moral and political effects, Montesquieu shifts his example from the warring northern tribes of the New World to the vast Aztec and Incan empires further south. He also shifts from generic \u201carts and sciences\u201d to the specific character of the modern scientific revolution, summed up by the talismanic name of Descartes. Montesquieu makes the striking claim that<\/p>\n\n\n

if a Descartes had come to Mexico or Peru one hundred years before Cortez and Pizarro,… then Cortez, with a handful of men, would never have destroyed the empire of Mexico, nor Pizarro that of Peru.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

Once again, Montesquieu\u2019s point is only secondarily about technology. It isn\u2019t that \u201ca Descartes\u201d would have triggered the development of Mesoamerican firearms. Montesquieu is emphatic that the native empires actually had significant military advantages (in weapons, tactics, warrior ethos, and terrain). They were destroyed by faulty metaphysics. It was their own superstitions \u2014 their belief in \u201cpower invisible\u201d \u2014 that sunk these empires, not the superiority of Western technology. Montesquieu\u2019s phrasing is reminiscent of the famous definition that Hobbes, in Leviathan<\/em>, gives of religion: \u201cFear of power invisible, feigned by the mind, or imagined from tales publicly allowed.\u201d What a Descartes or a Hobbes would have done for them is disenchant their world. Montesquieu gives the following pr\u00e9cis of the Cartesian teaching:<\/p>\n\n\n

that men, composed as they are, are not able to be immortal; that the springs of their machine, as those of all machines, wear out; that the effects of nature are only a consequence of the laws and communications of movement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

Had the Aztecs and Incans understood that the world, including man, is nothing but matter in motion, they would not have been overawed by the sight of a bearded, light-skinned man (Cortez manipulated ancient myths predicting such a supernatural visitation) or panicked by the use of horses and cannon in battle. There are clear self-defense benefits that follow upon the modern disenchantment of the world: \u201cwe [Europeans] have learned to see in all these effects only pure mechanism; and so, there is no technological improvement that we cannot counter by another improvement.\u201d An arms race is quite compatible with political stability; \u201ca bad principle of philosophy\u201d is not.<\/p>\n

What Montesquieu doesn\u2019t mention is that these empires, built on belief in the supernatural, would not have fallen to Pizarro and Cortez because they already would have been toppled by the native peoples themselves once they no longer regarded their rulers as godlike. An enlightened people of Mexico could have preserved themselves against the European conquest, but Montezuma would have been gone under either scenario.<\/p>\n

Although Montesquieu might be accused of \u201cblaming the victims,\u201d he does not exonerate the European victors. Throughout his writings, Montesquieu is critical of the conduct of conquerors, whether they be soldiers of fortune or soldiers of Christ. He emphatically asserts that the discovery of the New World led to the greatest destruction in history, carried out by some of those \u201cgreat nations\u201d who applied themselves to the arts and sciences. The invention of the compass \u201copened the universe\u201d and brought Europeans to Asia, Africa, and America. However, Spain and Portugal are not exactly exemplars of Enlightenment. The Persian Letters<\/em> contains a scathing satire on the regressive imperialism of the Iberians:<\/p>\n\n\n

Never in the seraglio of the greatest prince has there been a sultana so proud of her beauty as the oldest and ugliest rascal among them is proud of his pale olive complexion, as he sits, arms crossed, in his doorway in a Mexican town. A man of such consequence, a creature so perfect, would not work for all the wealth in the world, or persuade himself to compromise the honor and dignity of his skin by vile mechanical industry.<\/p>

For it must be appreciated that when a man gains a certain merit in Spain \u2014 as, for example, when he can add to the qualities already mentioned [along with being \u201cwhite-skinned,\u201d the other quality is being an \u201cOld Christian,\u201d which is to say, from a family whose faith pre-dates the forced conversions of the Inquisition] that of owning a long sword, or of having learned from his father the art of playing a discordant guitar \u2014 he no longer works. His honor consists in the repose of his limbs. He who sits down ten hours a day receives exactly twice the consideration given to another who rests only five, for nobility is acquired in chairs….<\/p>

They say that the sun rises and sets within their lands, but it must also be said that, in making its course, the sun encounters only a wasted and deserted countryside. [#78, Healy translation]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

The indigenous peoples of Mexico and Peru, lacking Cartesian principles, have haplessly exchanged home-grown despotism for foreign despotism. For Montesquieu, neither form of despotism is defensible. The alternative of which Montesquieu dreamt (\u201cif a Descartes had come\u201d) would have been an intellectual conquest, beneficent in its results since the sciences \u201ccure peoples of destructive prejudices.\u201d The native inhabitants of the New World could have protected themselves from European depredation only to the extent that they transformed their beliefs, practices, and government in the very same direction that Europe also was being progressively transformed (with industrious England, not Spain, as the model). Only by becoming at least as enlightened as the conquerors could they preserve themselves \u2014 that is to say, their lives, though not, of course, their way of life. Modernity relentlessly remakes the world in its own image. Nonetheless, there are clearly better and worse ways of being remade \u2014 better to be an Old Cartesian than one forcibly converted.<\/p>\n

Montesquieu\u2019s oration shows how science, with its accompanying skeptical attitude, can encourage political resistance to oppression. One is reminded of Thomas Jefferson\u2019s final words on the linkage between the Declaration of Independence\u2019s assertion of human equality and the advance of the scientific spirit:<\/p>\n\n\n

The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

Perhaps not surprisingly, Montesquieu\u2019s argument reappears in the struggle over American slavery. In 1852, the African-American abolitionist leader Martin Delany contended (in his book The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States<\/em>) that the reason for worldwide white hegemony is faulty theology \u2014 \u201ca misconception of the character and ways of Deity\u201d \u2014 on the part of the world\u2019s colored races. According to Delany, his people trust too much in God\u2019s special providence and fail to understand that \u201cGod\u2019s means are laws \u2014 fixed laws of nature.\u201d It is fine to pray for spiritual salvation, but deliverance here on earth depends on \u201cthe medium of the physical law.\u201d When the goal is political liberty and individual elevation, God helps those who help themselves. Echoing Montesquieu, Delany recommends religious enlightenment \u2014 the renunciation of fatalist and quietist systems of belief \u2014 as the first step toward black liberation.<\/p>\n\n

\r\n
\r\n \r\n \r\n <\/svg>\r\n <\/div>\r\n\t
\r\n\t\tThe Life of the Mind\t<\/h5>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

Having opened his address with a political point that turns out to be a theological point, Montesquieu turns away from distant lands (where the need is for a scientific revolution) toward the lands where science is already cultivated. For them Montesquieu lays out five additional motives for applying oneself to science. The first (which Montesquieu states in one sentence) is that the development of our intelligence is fundamental to human excellence and yields an \u201cinner satisfaction.\u201d It feels good and right to get smarter \u2014 good because it\u2019s your own being and right because it accords with the nature of man as \u201can intelligent being.\u201d*<\/a><\/p>\n

The next two motives are described at somewhat greater length (three sentences each). The second is curiosity \u2014 not a surprising statement since science has always been thought to be driven by the urge to know just how the world works. However, Montesquieu puts an unusual spin on curiosity. He doesn\u2019t describe the consuming curiosity about the details of some specific realm that gives rise to empirical inquiry, like, say, a fascination with the life of bugs that leads a child to become an entomologist. The curiosity he describes is about the human future: how far can science take us? Can the bounds of human knowledge be infinitely extended? Perhaps this is the curiosity experienced by the spectators of the scientific revolution rather than the participants (who tend to keep nose to grindstone). Montesquieu appropriates religious language when he summons these spectators with the rhetorical question: \u201cShould we take no part in this good news?\u201d All men, even non-scientists, can receive the \u201cgood news\u201d of the gospel of science. The motive that Montesquieu calls \u201ccuriosity\u201d is not old-fashioned wonder about the cosmos and its construction but rather an interest in the expansion of human power. We are curious about the paths that have been and, especially, those that will be traveled by the human mind. Even observers who are opposed in principle to pursuing particular paths (the cloning of human beings, for instance) might admit to curiosity about such dramatic possibilities: could we really do it? It is the force of curiosity that leads many contemporary observers to assert that if we can do it, we will do it. The juggernaut of science continues even if the good news turns out to be bad news.<\/p>\n

Montesquieu, however, does not hint at any cat-killing or Pandora-like downside to our curiosity. Quite the reverse, the third motive that encourages scientific aspiration is a \u201cwell-founded hope of succeeding.\u201d What makes the hope well-founded is not simply the record of recent discoveries, but what was responsible for that record, namely, the discovery of the methods<\/em> of discovery. The edifice of science is built from the stones of truth, but it is the scientific method that reliably unearths and assembles the stones. Montesquieu heightens the metaphor further when he shifts from talk of stones to gold. He contrasts the individual who has gold with the one who knows how to make gold, declaring the latter \u201ctruly rich.\u201d This might just be a version of \u201cgive a man a fish, he has food for a day; teach a man to fish, he can feed himself for a lifetime.\u201d However, it might also hint at a more radical, alchemical vision of the manipulability of matter. The transmutation of common metals into gold was the standard aim of alchemists throughout the ages, and an aim not abandoned by the founders of modern science. As Francis Bacon puts it in his fable \u201cNew Atlantis\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n

\u201cThe End of our Foundation is the knowledge of Causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of Human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

Once again, Montesquieu does not hint at any Croesus-like perils in being able to turn all one touches into all one wants. (In an economic context, though, Montesquieu was very aware of the phenomenon of death by riches. He explicitly compares gold-seeking Spain to Croesus and describes gold and silver as \u201ca wealth of fiction or of sign.\u201d He argues that \u201cthere was an internal and physical vice in the nature of this wealth, which made it hollow,\u201d and which sent the Spanish monarchy \u201cinto an uninterrupted decline\u201d as a result of its strip-mining of the Americas.)<\/p>\n

The final two motives are discussed most extensively (eleven and eight sentences respectively). Whereas the first three are framed in progressive terms \u2014 sounding rather like the current ad campaign for public television: be more intelligent, be more curious, be more empowered \u2014 the fourth motive has a solemn side. Although he defines this fourth motive as \u201cour own happiness,\u201d it turns out that happiness is hard to achieve because it depends on fleeting passions and correspondingly fleeting pleasures. There is a remedy, however:<\/p>\n\n\n

The love of study is almost the only eternal passion in us; all other passions leave us, as this pitiable machine that gives them to us approaches its ruin.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

So Montesquieu speaks of a life of study \u2014 note, not necessarily scientific study \u2014 as the best occupation for us, given our bad bodily constitutions. The \u201csoul\u201d and its unique pleasures make their appearance as the remedy for the pangs of aging. Interestingly, Montesquieu was thirty-six when he wrote this and, for many years both before and after, a figure in metropolitan high society, in both Court and intellectual circles. He knew the types well:<\/p>\n\n\n

If in this time of life [i.e., middle age] we do not give our soul suitable occupations, the soul \u2014 which is made to be occupied but is not \u2014 will fall into a terrible ennui that leads us toward annihilation; or if, revolting against nature, we stubbornly seek pleasures not made for us, they seem to retreat with our approach. Gay youth glories in its happiness, and insults us without ceasing. As youth feels all its advantages, it makes us feel them too; in the liveliest company all joy is theirs, the regrets are ours. Study cures us of these difficulties, and the pleasures it yields do not remind us that we are getting older.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

The alternative to study is either boredom or a ridiculous and aggravatingly fruitless quest for the pleasures of youth. Montesquieu might be right that study offers a respite from regrets felt most keenly when in society, but it\u2019s a rather grim argument, particularly since he doesn\u2019t actually describe the joys of study. Compare Montesquieu\u2019s faute de mieux<\/em> justification with Machiavelli\u2019s wonderful description, in his famous letter to Francesco Vettori, of his far-from-solitary pleasures:<\/p>\n\n\n

When evening has come, I return to my house and go into my study. At the door I take off my clothes of the day, covered with mud and mire, and I put on my regal and courtly garments; and decently reclothed, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them lovingly, I feed on the food that alone is mine and that I was born for. There I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their humanity reply to me. And for the space of four hours I feel no boredom, I forget every pain, I do not fear poverty, death does not frighten me. [Mansfield translation]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

Whereas Montesquieu clearly expects great things from science, he does not entertain the most radical possibilities of age-retardation and the conquest of death. He does not suggest that science could fix our \u201cpitiable machine.\u201d Descartes, by contrast, in speaking of our destiny as the \u201cmasters and possessors of nature\u201d looked forward to this knowledge being used not only for \u201cthe invention of an infinity of devices that would enable one to enjoy trouble-free the fruits of the earth\u201d but also to rid us of \u201cthe frailty of old age.\u201d Bacon likewise speaks repeatedly of the \u201cprolongation of life\u201d and even \u201cimmortality or continuance.\u201d Montesquieu instead acknowledges the limits of our nature, finding consolations within. On Montesquieu\u2019s reasoning, one would have to wonder whether men would still discover the love of study, if science succeeded in finding the elixir of youth. It seems that Montesquieu is not ready to abandon the traditional conception of philosophy as learning to die.<\/p>\n

Montesquieu\u2019s final motive for pursuing science is its utility to society. Because the future does not belong to us, we should be interested in gifts to posterity. As Montesquieu says, \u201cis it not a splendid aim to work to leave behind us men more fortunate than we have been?\u201d The point of the somewhat baffling passage about the rich merchant and the proud warrior is, I think, a plea for recognition and gratitude toward society\u2019s benefactors, as well as an explanation of the obstacles to such recognition. Shipping magnates don\u2019t always want to admit their dependence on the technical skill of their pilots, just as military men don\u2019t want to admit their dependence on the eggheads (from Archimedes on) who engineer the weapons of war. Montesquieu seems to be predicting a rivalry between the more traditional benefactors (who value risk and courage) and the new scientific elite (whose aim of rational control obviates the need for such virtues). All of them, of course, \u201cwant very much to be treated as if they were in charge.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

\r\n
\r\n \r\n \r\n <\/svg>\r\n <\/div>\r\n\t
\r\n\t\tThe Humanist’s Apology\t<\/h5>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

I<\/span>n the closing section of the address, Montesquieu considers one final candidate for benefactor status: belles-lettres<\/em>. His apology for poetry arises out of a concern for the fate of \u201cbooks of pure spirit\u201d in a scientific age. He asserts the \u201cgeneral utility\u201d of such works, contrasting them with the more particular benefits associated with the sciences. From liberal learning we acquire \u201cthe art of writing, the art of formulating our ideas, of expressing them nobly, in a lively manner, with force, grace, order, and a variety that refreshes the spirit.\u201d Being of universal value, these skills turn out to be indispensable to the sciences and mechanical arts. Montesquieu describes talented and assiduous individuals who fail to advance their line of work because they are ill-educated. His pitch for a liberal arts curriculum is remarkably reminiscent of what we hear today about the need for both \u201ccritical thinking\u201d and \u201ccommunication\u201d skills in the workplace and the claim of the humanities to hone such skills.<\/p>\n

Montesquieu next argues that \u201cthe body of the sciences in its entirety\u201d is bound up with belles-lettres<\/em>. The project of enlightenment depends on putting science \u201cwithin reach of all minds,\u201d a task that depends crucially on language. As Thomas Jefferson phrased it in his Notes on the State of Virginia<\/em>, when advocating the study of Greek and Latin: \u201cI do not pretend that language is science. It is only an instrument for the attainment of science.\u201d Either scientists must become men of letters or they must depend on literary popularizers. Montesquieu\u2019s examples are the French Cartesian, Nicolas Malebranche, whose philosophy was aided by being \u201can enchanting writer,\u201d and Bernard de Fontenelle, the Carl Sagan of the eighteenth century, renowned as a popularizer of Descartes. The work Montesquieu singles out is Fontenelle\u2019s huge bestseller Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds <\/em>(1686), in which a beautiful Marquise and a scholar have flirtatious evening discussions about the nature of the universe. Montesquieu admits the loss of rigor involved in such presentations, but insists that \u201cthis work is more useful than a stronger work because it is the most serious that most are able to read.\u201d<\/p>\n

Montesquieu follows Fontenelle in experimenting with literary genres for the transmission of ideas. One suspects that Montesquieu has his own immensely popular epistolary novel, The Persian Letters<\/em>, in mind when he admonishes: \u201cone must not judge the utility of a work by the style the author has chosen: often puerile things are said gravely, while very serious truths are said with bantering wit.\u201d Montesquieu put his mastery of French style on display also when he penned a series of erotic-philosophic tales, usually with an Oriental setting, for the delight (and surreptitious instruction) of salon society. Tocqueville, by the way, goes further and shows how an entire population could become Cartesians without cracking a book, whether the original or the knock-offs:<\/p>\n\n\n

America is therefore the one country in the world where the precepts of Descartes are least studied and best followed. That should not be surprising….<\/p>

Americans do not read Descartes\u2019s works because their social state turns them away from speculative studies, and they follow his maxims because this same social state naturally disposes their minds to adopt them. [Democracy in America<\/em>, Mansfield\/Winthrop translation]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

So far, Montesquieu\u2019s apology for poetry has been framed in terms of utility to the scientific endeavor. His final claim, though, is independent of science. \u201cBooks that refresh the spirit\u201d are better for \u201cmen of the world\u201d than the amusements they would otherwise pursue: \u201centertainments, debauchery, slanderous conversations, and the projects and maneuverings of ambition.\u201d Basically, the liberal arts offer relatively harmless entertainment. Montesquieu recommends that we preserve the humanities in their purest state in order to forestall the corruption of high society. This is rather like Rousseau\u2019s argument for the value of the theater in Paris \u2014 it keeps people off the streets and out of worse trouble.<\/p>\n

There is no claim here for the superior truth of the humanities. Why is Montesquieu\u2019s apology so lame? Was his message painfully tailored to this particular audience? We have become all too familiar with the phenomenon \u2014 witness the devoted classicists who argue for learning Latin as a vocabulary-builder to help students perform well on the SATs and who breathe not a word about the wisdom contained in classical authors. Witness the colleges and universities that routinely justify a liberal education in terms of future career opportunities and income potential, rather than the disciplined formation of a truly free soul. Defenders of the humanities have been rhetorically hobbled for a long time.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the constricted voice heard in the final paragraphs of this address does not do justice to Montesquieu\u2019s own subsequent writing (or, indeed, to his writing here), which is rich not only with style and artfulness and wit, but with insight. Montesquieu\u2019s insights about science are not themselves the product of science (not even social science). Montesquieu gave us his self-conception in these lines from the Preface to The Spirit of the Laws<\/em>: \u201c\u2018And I too am a painter,\u2019 have I said with Correggio.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

[*]<\/a> For Montesquieu\u2019s deeper thoughts on what it means to be \u201can intelligent being,\u201d see the first chapter of The Spirit of the Laws<\/em>, entitled \u201cOn laws in their relation with the various beings,\u201d and especially the final paragraph.<\/span><\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Montesquieu would make most everyone\u2019s top-ten list of political philosophers, but he is not prominent in the ranks of natural philosophers. Following the lead of the American Founders, who referred to him as \u201cthe celebrated Montesquieu,\u201d we associate his name with new discoveries and improvements in the science of politics rather than science proper. However, as a young man in his late twenties, decades before the publication of his masterwork, The Spirit of the Laws (1748), Montesquieu seems to have been interested in a variety of scientific questions. The young nobleman was elected to the Academy of Bordeaux in 1716….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17614,"template":"","article_type":[13],"noteworthy_people":[],"topics":[2267,2281],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/10174"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/10174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"article_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_type?post=10174"},{"taxonomy":"noteworthy_people","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/noteworthy_people?post=10174"},{"taxonomy":"topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topics?post=10174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}