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  1. Home
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  3. Of the Plurality of Worlds
  • Cited by 5
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
October 2010
Print publication year:
2009
First published in:
1853
Online ISBN:
9780511692734
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511692734
Series:
Cambridge Library Collection - Religion
Subjects:
History, Religion: General Interest, History of Ideas and Intellectual History
Information

Book description

This controversial essay, first published in 1853, addresses the question of the existence of intelligent life on other planets. It was first published anonymously, owing to the ferocity of the ongoing debates between the religious and scientific scholarly communities. Its author, William Whewell (1794-1866) was a leading intellectual of the Victorian period, and a notable polymath. A contemporary and adviser of Herschel, Darwin and Faraday, he wrote extensively on subjects ranging from astronomy and mineralogy to moral philosophy, educational reform and architecture, and engaged with John Stuart Mill in a lively debate about inductive reasoning. In Of The Plurality of Worlds, Whewell denied the probability of life elsewhere in the universe, afraid that the concept of extraterrestrial life would encourage the theory of evolution and put at risk mankind's connection to God.

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