Dick S.J. Plurality of Worlds: The Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to Kant

Cambridge University Press, 1982. - 246 pp.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.One World or an Infinity of Worlds? The Greek Tradition.
Aristotelian Natural Law versus Divine Omnipotence: the Medieval Tradition.
Worlds Revisited: the Revival of Atomism.
The Heliocentric Theory, Scripture, and the Plurality of Earths.
Cartesian Vortices, the Infinite Universe, and the Plurality of Solar Systems.
Newton, Natural Theology, and the Triumph of the Concept of Other Worlds.
Conclusion: Science and the Plurality of Worlds.