Perspectives on Plurality of Worlds

Philosophical and theological reflections on the possibility of multiple worlds and inhabitants beyond Earth, from ancient beliefs to medieval debates and beyond, offering diverse perspectives that challenge traditional notions of existence and creation.

• Philosophy
• Theology
• Ancient
• Medieval
• Worlds

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Uploaded on Feb 26, 2025 | 0 Views

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1. It is in the highest degree unlikely that this earth and sky are the only ones to have been created. For Lucretius the world resulted from the collision of accidental, random, and purposeless atoms, producing the earth, sea, sky, and the races of living creatures. Lucretius (99-55 B.C.E.) De rerum natura

2. Aristotelian idea of natural place implies one must reject plurality of worlds But God could have made many worlds Singularity of life here does not impugn God s omnipotence Thomas Aquinas Proposition 34 of the Condemnations of 1277 That the First Cause cannot make other worlds.

3. After 1277 Two possibilities emerge for Christian theology Earth the only world Plurality of worlds Condemnations of 1277 Before 1277 Epicurean plurality of worlds rejected by Christian theologians

4. Life, as it exists on earth in the form of men, animals and plants, is to be found, let us suppose, in a higher form in the solar and stellar regions. Rather than think that so many stars and parts of the heavens are uninhabited and that this earth of ours alone is peopled - and that with beings, perhaps of an inferior type - we will suppose that in every region there are inhabitants, differing in nature by rank and all owing their origin to God, who is the centre and circumference of all stellar regions. Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) + From On Learned Ignorance, 1440

5. If it be inquired whether men exist on that [other] world, and whether they have sinned as Adam sinned, I answer no, for they would not exist in sin and did not spring from Adam . . . . As to the question whether Christ by dying on this earth could redeem the inhabitants of another world, I answer that he is able to do this even if the worlds were infinite, but it would not be fitting for Him to go unto another world that he must die again. William Vorilong (1463d) +

6. If there are globes in the heaven similar to our earth, do we vie with them over who occupies a better portion of the universe? For if their globes are nobler, we are not the noblest of rational creatures. Then how can all things be made for man s sake? from Kepler s Conversation with Galileo s Sidereal Messenger,1610 The earth is home of the special creature and for his sake the universe and world have been made. from The Epitome of Copernican Astronomy, Bks IV-V, 1620-21 Johannes Kepler

7. I do not see at all that the mystery of the Incarnation, and all the other advantages that God has brought forth for man, obstruct him from having brought forth an infinity of other very great advantages for an infinity of other creatures. Was not automatically saying that this had occurred, only that it might have. Rene Descartes + Letter to Chanut, 1647

8. Fixed stars may be centers of other systems like ours. General Scholium, Opticks If all places to which we have access are filled with living creatures, why should all these immense spaces of the heavens above the clouds be incapable of inhabitants? +

9. Population Mercury Venus Mars Vesta Juno Ceres Pallas Jupiter Saturn Saturn's outer ring Inner ring Edges of the rings Uranus The Moon Jupiter's satellites Saturn's satellites Uranus's satellites Amount 6,967,5 20,000,000 5,488,000,000,000 8,960,000,000 53,500,000,000 15,500,000,000 64,000,000 1,786,000,000 2,3 19,962,400 4,000,000,000 8,141,963,826,080 1,077,568,800,000 4,200,000,000 26,673,000,000 55,417,824,000 47,500,992,000 21,891,974,404,480 Thomas Dick, Celestial Scenery