Curiosities of Science, Past and Present / A Book for Old and Young

by John Timbs

“MORE WORLDS THAN ONE.”

Although this opinion was maintained incidentally by various writers both on astronomy[16] and natural religion, yet M. Fontenelle was the first individual who wrote a treatise on the Plurality of Worlds, which appeared in 1685, the year before the publication of Newton’s Principia. Fontenelle’s work consists of five chapters: 1. The earth is a planet which turns round its axis, and also round the sun. 2. The moon is a habitable world. 3. Particulars concerning the world in the moon, and that the other planets are also inhabited. 4. Particulars of the worlds of Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. 5. The fixed stars are as many suns, each of which illuminates a world. In a future edition, 1719, Fontenelle added, 6. New thoughts which confirm those in the preceding conversations, and the latest discoveries which have been made in the heavens. The next work on the subject was the Theory of the Universe, or Conjectures concerning the Celestial Bodies and their Inhabitants, 1698, by Christian Huygens, the contemporary of Newton.

The doctrine is maintained by almost all the distinguished astronomers and writers who have flourished since the true figure of the earth was determined. Giordano Bruna of Nola, Kepler, and Tycho Brahe, believed in it; and Cardinal Cusa and Bruno, before the discovery of binary systems among the stars, believed also that the stars were inhabited. Sir Isaac Newton likewise adopted the belief; and Dr. Bentley, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, in his eighth sermon on the Confutation of Atheism from the origin and frame of the world, has ably maintained the same doctrine. In our own day we may number among its supporters the distinguished names of the Marquis de la Place, Sir William and Sir John Herschel, Dr. Chalmers, Isaac Taylor, and M. Arago. Dr. Chalmers maintains the doctrine in his Astronomical Discourses, which one Alexander Maxwell (who did not believe in the grand truths of astronomy) attempted to controvert, in 1820, in a chapter of a volume entitled Plurality of Worlds.

Next appeared Of a Plurality of Worlds, attributed to the Rev. Dr. Whewell, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge; urging the theological not less than the scientific reasons for believing in the old tradition of a single world, and maintaining that “the earth is really the largest planetary body in the solar system,—its domestic hearth, and the only world in the universe.” “I do not pretend,” says Dr. Whewell, “to disprove the plurality of worlds; but I ask in vain for any argument which makes the doctrine probable.” “It is too remote from knowledge to be either proved or disproved.” Sir David Brewster has replied to Dr. Whewell’s Essay, in More Worlds than One, the Creed of the Philosopher and the Hope of the Christian, emphatically maintaining that analogy strongly countenances the idea of all the solar planets, if not all worlds in the universe, being peopled with creatures not dissimilar in being and nature to the inhabitants of the earth. This view is supported in Scientific Certainties of Planetary Life, by T. C. Simon, who well treats one point of the argument—that mere distance of the planets from the central sun does not determine the condition as to light and heat, but that the density of the ethereal medium enters largely into the calculation. Mr. Simon’s general conclusion is, that “neither on account of deficient or excessive heat, nor with regard to the density of the materials, nor with regard to the force of gravity on the surface, is there the slightest pretext for supposing that all the planets of our system are not inhabited by intellectual creatures with animal bodies like ourselves,—moral beings, who know and love their great Maker, and who wait, like the rest of His creation, upon His providence and upon His care.” One of the leading points of Dr. Whewell’s Essay is, that we should not elevate the conjectures of analogy into the rank of scientific certainties; and that “the force of all the presumptions drawn from physical reasoning for the opinion of planets and stars being either inhabited or uninhabited is so small, that the belief of all thoughtful persons on this subject will be determined by moral, metaphysical, and theological considerations.”