The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, Antiquity to 1915

by Crowe, Michael J.

• ISBN13: 9780268023683
• ISBN10: 0268023689
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780268076795
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-10-15
• Publisher: Univ of Notre Dame Pr
• More Book Details

Summary

This book presents key documents from the pre-1915 history of the extraterrestrial life debate. Introductions and commentaries accompany each source document, some of which are published here for the first time or in a new translation. Authors included are Aristotle, Lucretius, Aquinas, Galileo, Kepler, Pascal, Fontenelle, Huygens, Newton, Pope, Voltaire, Kant, Herschel, Paine, Chalmers, Whewell, Darwin, Wallace, Dostoevsky, Lowell, and Antoniadi, among others. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Michael J. Crowe is the Rev. John J. Cavanaugh Professor Emeritus in Humanities in the Program of Liberal Studies and Graduate Program in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Notre Dame

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. xi
List of Tables	p. xiii
Preface	p. xv
Antiquity to Newton
The Debate in Antiquity	p. 3
From Augustine to the Fifteenth Century	p. 14
From Copernicus to Bruno	p. 35
Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, and Pascal	p. 51
Fontenelle and Huygens	p. 72
Newton, Bentley, and Derham	p. 109
The Eighteenth Century
Astronomers and Extraterrestrials	p. 129
Extraterrestrials and the Enlightenment	p. 182
From 1800 to 1860
Intensification of the Debate after 1800	p. 233
Before the Whewell Debate	p. 297
Whewell's Of the Plurality of Worlds and Responses	p. 333
From 1860 to 1915
New Approaches to an Ancient Question	p. 369
The Late Nineteeth Century	p. 438
The Controversy over the Canals of Mars	p. 470
Conclusion	p. 518
The History of Ideas of Extraterrestrial Life Research Program	p. 522
Selected Bibliography	p. 526
Permissions	p. 542
Index	p. 544
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