Extraterrestrial Life Debate, Antiquity to 1915: A Source Book

by Michael J. Crowe (Editor)

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, Nicholas of Cusa, Galileo, Kepler, Pascal, Fontenelle, Huygens, Newton, Pope, Voltaire, Kant, Paine, Chalmers, Darwin, Wallace, Dostoevski, Lowell, and Antoniadi, among others. Michael J. Crowe has compiled an extensive bibliography not available in other sources. These materials reveal that the extraterrestrial life debate, rather than being a relatively modern phenomenon, has extended throughout nearly all Western history and has involved many of its leading intellectuals. The readings also demonstrate that belief in extraterrestrial life has had major effects on science and society, and that metaphysical and religious views have permeated the debate throughout much of its history.

Genres: History Of Science, Science, History

554 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2008

Reviews

[Lindsay]

Read for a course on extraterrestrial life.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got too busy to finish this, and only read the first section covering the ideas about the possibility of extraterrestrial worlds and life from antiquity to the Medieval period. What I read was incredible, fascinating, and thought-provoking. Reading through selections from the original source material worked my brain as much as anything I've read in the past couple years, and was quite new to me.

I had no idea, for instance, that there were ancient Greeks (followers of Democritus, mainly) who not only considered other worlds and even civilizations possible, but thought them to be likely or even inevitable based on their understanding of how the world was organized. Pretty surprising.

I have no idea if I'll ever get the chance to look at this again to read about -- oh, I don't know, the entry into the popular imagination of "the ether," or canals on Mars -- but if you have time and the interest, there's probably nothing out there more thorough and even-handed on the long history of this particularly interesting theoretical debate.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actually this is a College textbook and covers what man, science and astronomy believed from antiquity to 1915 about the existence of extraterrestrials and why. Well researched, but really had to read.