Research Catalog

Title

The extraterrestrial life debate, antiquity to 1915 : a source book / edited with commentary by Michael J. Crowe.

Author

Crowe, Michael J.

Publication

Notre Dame, Ind. : University of Notre Dame, c2008.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xxi, 554 p.: ill.; 26 cm.

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.

Uniform Title

Project Muse UPCC books

Subjects

• Geschichte 500 v. Ch. - 1915
• Plurality of worlds
• Life on other planets

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 526-541) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Preface -- Part one : Antiquity to Newton -- The debate in antiquity -- From Augustine to the fifteenth century -- From Copernicus to Bruno -- Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, and Pascal -- Fontenelle and Huygens -- Newton, Bentley, and Derham -- Part two : the eighteenth century -- Astronomers and extraterrestrials -- Extraterrestrials and the enlightenment -- Part three : from 1800 to 1860 -- Intensification of the debate after 1800 -- Before the Whewell debate -- Whewell's Of the plurality of worlds and responses -- Part four : From 1860 to 1915 -- New approaches to an ancient question -- The late nineteenth century -- The controversy over the canals of Mars -- Conclusion -- Apendix : the history of ideas of extraterrestrial life research program.

ISBN

• 9780268023683 (pbk. : alk. paper)
• 0268023689 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2008026865

OCLC

227031653

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library