Plurality of Worlds: The Origins of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to Kant

By Steven J. Dick

Book Overview

This is a fascinating history of the debate over the question of extraterrestrial life from Classical Greece to the mid-eighteenth century. Using many primary and secondary sources, this book analyses why such great thinkers as Aristotle, Aquinas, Ockham, Galileo, Kepler, Huygens, and Kant thought the debate over the plurality of worlds a subject for serious discussion. The author shows how conflicting arguments from science, philosophy, and theology gradually converged to the same opinion - that intelligent life must fill the universe.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521319854
• ISBN13: 9780521319850
• Release Date: June 1984
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"