Sir David Brewster's changing ideas on the plurality of worlds

Details Sir David Brewster's changing ideas on the plurality of worlds Sir David Brewster's changing ideas on the plurality of worlds

Jun 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006jahh....9...83d&link_type=abstract

Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage (ISSN 1440-2807), Vol. 9, No. 1, p. 83 - 92 (2006).

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

David Brewster, William Whewell, Plurality Of Worlds, Extraterrestrial Life

Scientific paper

In the course of his long life the Scottish physicist David Brewster wrote copiously about the plurality of worlds. More Worlds than One (1854), perhaps his strongest statement on the question, was written as an answer to William Whewell's On the Plurality of Worlds (1853), which argued that life was a privilege of the Earth. Brewster's ideas changed drastically along the years in many crucial issues such as the habitability of the Sun and the Moon, the possibility that extraterrestrials could be different from humans, and the occupation of the Earth by intelligent races in the distant past. This paper succinctly surveys Brewster's main lines of thought about the plurality of worlds underlining the significance of his first two articles devoted exclusively to this topic. They were published in 1838 in The Monthly Chronicle, and affirm the habitability of the planets while denying that of the Moon. As is the case with many Victorian scientists, belief in pluralism was for Brewster part and parcel of a complex of ideas and attitudes in which it is hard to distinguish science from religion. I shall argue that a fair number of the shifting opinions and inconsistencies detectable in Brewster's ideas on the plurality of worlds can be attributed to the fact that these were used as pliable apologetic instruments in his scientific writings, many of which are permeated by strong religious concerns.

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