XVIII

PREDICTING, PROPHECYING, DIVINING AND FORETELLING

FROM NOSTRADAMUS TO HUME*

In the two hundred years between the writings of Nostradamus and

Hume a radical transformation took place in claims about what knowl-
edge of the future human beings could obtain. At the beginning (and
end of the period) the terms "to predict", "to foretell", "to prophe-
cise", "to divine", were interchangeable. According to the Oxford
English Dictionary in the late sixteenth century "to predict" meant
"to foretell" or "to prophecise"; "to divine" meant "to prophecy",
"to foretell" or "to predict"; "to foretell" meant "to predict" or "to
prophecy". Only "to prophecise" had an additional meaning involv-
ing employing the function or faculty of a prophet making divinely
inspired utterances or discourses. In Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of
1756, 'Ho prophecy" is "to predict"; "to foretell", "to foreshow" is "to
prophecy or to utter predictions", and "to predict" is "to foretell and
to foreshow".
These terms were synonymous except that "prophecise" also had
a meaning connected with its religious usage. By now, as we all
know, scientists predict, as do television weathermen; rather dubious
people prophecise, divine or foretell. The history of the change of
meaning involved here is, I believe, rather instructive. We will see
that up until Hume all these terms could be used interchangeably.
However, Hume's critique of prophecy as a form of miracle, and his
denial that people could know the future, involved rejecting a whole
framework in which knowledge of the future was a guiding light for
human beings in terms of their destiny in a religious drama. I shall
trace this development and examine Hume's views in the light of
the theories of prophetic and scientific knowledge of the future being
advanced at his time.
I have chosen to begin the story with Nostradamus because he
has played an extraordinary role in people's attempts to know the
future, unequalled by anyone outside of the Biblical prophets. The
Oxford English Dictionary indicates that the first English usage of the

* I should like to thank James E. Force for his helpful discussions and comments
on this paper.
286 PROGNOSTICS FROM NOSTRADAMUS TO HUME

word "predict" is from 1561 in a statement about Nostradamus. His

prophetic verses have been printed and reprinted, interpreted and
reinterpreted over and over again. If one looks at the number of
French editions that have appeared, it becomes apparent that with
each major new historical event a new edition is put out showing that
Nostradamus had predicted it. 1 A new edition, using computer analy-
ses, appeared in France in December 1980. It contained the news that
a quatrain of Nostradamus predicted that there would be an attempt
to assassinate the Pope. Another quatrain said next year would be the
year of the rose. The rose is the symbol of the French Socialist Party.
When John Paul II was shot, and when Mitterand and his party won
the French elections, this new edition of Nostradamus became a best-
seller, selling well over one hundred thousand copies.2 When I was
in Paris in the summer of 1981, learned articles in the newspapers
were discussing whether it was possible that Nostradamus, who died
in 1566, could have actually predicted events taking place over four
centuries later.
So Nostradamus, unlike a host of long forgotten political forecast-
ers, is still of current interest in some circles. He is also of interest
because he made two public efforts to explain how he was able to
know the future, one in a letter to his son, and another in a letter to
King Henri II. His explanation contains some of the features we will
find in Sir Isaac Newton's theory of prophecy, as well as some that
are offered by other theorists of future knowledge.
Michael Nostradamus was born in 1503 in southern France. He
was the grandson of two prominent rabbis, who raised him. They had
quietly converted to Christianity shortly before his birth, when the
local ruler offered them a choice of banishment, or becoming Christian
noblemen. 3 Their grandson was sent to the University of Montpel-
lier to study medicine, then went to Toulouse and Bordeaux. Next
he studied astrology, and became a court doctor, astrologer and ad-
viser. He predicted in detail the strange accidental deaths of Kings
Henri II and François II, who died in quick succession, in the exact
1
See the large number of editions listed in the Catalogue of the Bibliothèque
Nationale.
This new edition was done by Jean Charles de Fontbrune, who worked on his
interpretation for seventeen years. He claimed to find many predictions about
recent and near future events, including the fall of the Shah of Iran, the wars in
the Middle East, etc.
3
See the biographical account in M. -C. Touchard, Nostradamus, (Paris, 1972),
pp. 31-34; "Biography of Nostradamus" in E. Leoni Nostradamus: Life and Lit-
erature (New York, 1965), pp. 15fF; and the article, "Nostredame, Michel de", in
Michaud, Biographie Universeile.