Abstract
According to eighteenth-century astronomical theory, comets were opaque, spherical, solid bodies shining by reflected light and revolving in elliptical orbits around the sun. The perceived similarities between them and the planets raised the question of their fitness for habitation. At the heart of this question was a tension among natural theology, scientific reasoning, and popular culture. Theology played a role in suggesting how the existence of extraterrestrial life was to God’s credit, and its natural side sought to divine the Lord’s purposes in populating the heavenly bodies. Scientific reasoning played a role in posing what that life might be like, given the material and biological conditions assumed to inhere on the heavenly bodies by analogy with the earth. And popular culture shaped the way that rules of reasoning and natural theology were applied to the case of comets. Before turning our attention to speculations about cometarians, let us examine the doctrine of the plurality of worlds with its religious and methodological underpinnings.
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Notes
Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes, critical edition, ed. Alexandre Calame (Paris: Librairie Marcel Didier, 1966), p. 161, my translation.
Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 52.
Such arguments were made, for example, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 3 vols. (Edinburgh: 1771), 1: 444–445.
Isaac Newton, Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (London: 1687), Book 3
‘Hypotheses,’ which were renamed ‘Regulae philosophandi’ in subsequent editions.Translation taken from Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Motte - Cajori edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), pp. 398–399
Similar statements appeared in Book 1, Part 1, Prop. 6, and Query 31 of the Opticks; see Newton, Opticks, 4th ed. (London: 1730; reprint, New York: Dover, 1952), pp. 76, 397.
Christiaan Huygens, KO∑MOΘEΩPO∑ [Cosmotheoros], sive de terris coelestibus earumque ornatu conjecturae (The Hague: 1698) Idem, The Celestial Worlds Discover’d: or, Conjectures Concerning the Inhabitants, Plants and Productions of the Worlds in the Planets (London: 1698).
Newton, Mathematical Principles (ref. 4), General Scholium, p. 544; Conduitt Memorandum, March 1724/5, printed in Edmund Turnor, Collections for the History of the Town and Soke of Grantham (London: 1806), pp. 172–173.
John Ray, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (London: 1691), pp. 1–2, 49.
Richard Bentley’s seventh and eighth Boyle Lectures, printed in Bentley, A Confutation of Atheism from the Origin and Frame of the World (London: 1693), part 2, pp. 14–15, 37, part 3, pp. 4–6; reprinted in I. Bernard Cohen, ed., Isaac Newton’s Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 326–327, 349, 356–358.
For detailed discussion of these and other authors, see Lovejoy, Great Chain(ref. 2), chapter 4; Michael J. Crowe, The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750–1900:
The Idea of a Plurality of Worlds from Kant to Lowell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), esp. pp. 9–26; and Steven J. Dick, Plurality of Worlds: The Origins of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), esp. chapters 5 and 6.
William Derham, Astro-Theology: Or a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, from a Survey of the Heavens, 1st ed. (London: 1715), ‘ A Preliminary Discourse Concerning the Systemes of the Heavens, the Habitability of the Planets, and a Plurality of Worlds,’ pp. xl–lvi.
Ibid., pp. 52–53; William Derham, Astro-Theology, 2nd ed., corrected (London: 1715), pp. 54–55
Cf. William Whiston, Astronomical Principles of Religion, Natural and Reveal’d (London: 1717), pp. 22–23.
Derham, Astro-Theology, 1st ed. (ref. 6), pp. 53, 218–219; Derham, Astro-Theology, 2nd ed. (ref. 7), pp. 55, 228–229.
George Cheyne, Philosophical Principles of Natural Religion (London: 1705), pp. 119–120, see also p. 122.
Whiston, Astronomical Principles (ref. 7), p. 92. Whiston wrote of “external regions” because he remained open to the possibility that the “internal regions” - i.e. cavities within comets could be inhabited. See pp. 94–96.
Ibid., p. 23.
Cheyne, Philosophical Principles (ref. 9), p. 151.
Whiston, Astronomical Principles (ref. 7), pp. 155–156.
[Cotton Mather], A Voice from Heaven. An Account of a Late Uncommon Appearance in the Heavens (Boston: 1719), pp. 8–11, 13–16, quotation on p. 11.
[Cotton Mather], An Essay on Comets, their Nature, the Laws of their Motions, the Cause and Magnitude of their Atmosphere, and Tails; With a Conjecture of their Use and Design (Boston: 1744), p. 7.
William Wall, ‘Advertisement,’ appended to Tobias Swinden, An Enquiry into the Nature and Place of Hell (London: 1714), pp. 287–292, see p. 291 for quotation.
Ibid., pp. 289, 291–292. Final Judgement followed the millennium; the righteous would go to an even better place, while the damned would be imprisoned in the sun, which Swinden agreed was the site of hell.
William Whiston, The Eternity of Hell-Torments Considered [1740], 2nd ed. (London: 1752), p. 105
Whiston, Astronomical Principles (ref. 7), pp. 154–155;
D. P. Walker, The Decline of Hell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), pp. 100–101.
Mather Byles, The Comet: A Poem (Boston: 1744).
Whiston, Astronomical Principles (ref. 7), p. 23: “[Comets are] Worlds in Confusion, but capable of a change to Orbits nearer Circular, and then of settling into a State of Order, and of becoming fit for Habitation like the Planets.” See also William Whiston, A New Theory of the Earth (London: 1696), pp. 48, and 74–75: “A Planet is a Comet form’d into a regular and lasting constitution, and plac’d at a proper distance from the Sun in a Circular Orbit, or one very little Eccentrical; and a Comet is a Chaos, i.e. a Planet unform’d, or in its primaeval state, plac’d in a very Eccentrical one.”
Whiston, New Theory of the Earth (ref. 20) pp. 69, 378; Whiston, Astronomical Principles (ref. 7), pp. 153–154.
Cheyne, Philosophical Principles (ref. 9), p. 151.
René Descartes, Principia philosophiae (Amsterdam: 1644), part 3, sections 115, 119–120, 126–129, 133–139; recently published in translation as Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, trans. V. R. Miller and R. P. Miller (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1983), pp. 147, 150–151, 155–159, 163–168. Also see René Descartes, Le monde, ou le traité de la lumière [1st edition: 1664], French text of the 1677 edition, with translation by Michael S. Mahoney (New York: Abaris Books, 1979), pp. 44–45, 92–107.
See, for example, the remark made by John Flamsteed in a letter to Edmond Halley, 17 February 1680/1, that a “Comet ... may have beene some planet belonging formerly to another Vortex now ruined;” reprinted in The Correspondence of Isaac Newton
H. W. Turnbull et al., 1 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959–1977), 2: 338.
Fontenelle, Entretiens (ref. 1), pp. 145–149; translation taken from [Fontenelle], A Plurality of Worlds, trans
J. Glanvill (London: 1702), ‘Fifth Evening,’ pp. 144–148, quotation, p. 148.
James Ferguson, An Idea of the Material Universe, Deduced from a Survey of the Solar System (London: 1754), pp. 25–27.
Maupertuis, Lettre sur la comète ([Amsterdam?]: 1742), p. 38;
John Winthrop, Two Lectures on Comets (Boston: 1759), p. 40.
Bartholomew Burges, A Short Account of the Solar System, and of Comets in General (Boston: 1789), pp. 9, 15–16;
J. H. Lambert, Cosmologische Briefe über die Einrichtung des Weltbaues (Augsburg: 1761); trans. and reprinted in Idem, Cosmological Letters on the Arrangement of the World-Edifice, trans.
Stanley L. Jaki (New York: Science History Publications, 1976).
Ferguson, Idea of the Material Universe (ref. 26), pp. 9, 15–16, 23, 25–27, 29–30.
Lambert, Cosmological Letters (ref. 27), pp. 48–49, 55, 70–72, 87, 96, 103; quotation on p. 49. See also M. A. Hoskin, ‘Lambert’s Cosmology,’ and ‘Lambert and Herschel,’ Journal for the History of Astronomy 9 (1978), 134–139 and 140–142.
Lambert, Cosmological Letters (ref. 27), pp. 83–84, and quotation, p. 73.
Andrew Oliver, An Essay on Comets (Salem: 1772), p. 48.
Ibid., pp. 34–35.
Lambert, Cosmological Letters (ref. 27), p. 99.
Ibid., pp. 48–49, 64–65, 84.
Ibid., pp. 58–59, 62, 67–68, 99, 104–105, 129, quotation, p. 68.
Ibid., pp. 55, 62, 84, 94, 103–104, 148. Like Kant, Lambert argued that the world of comets bordered on and fused with the world of planets. Cf. Immanuel Kant, Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels [Leipzig: 1755].
Lambert, Cosmological Letters (ref. 27), pp. 83–84, 93, 100–101. 38 Ibid., pp. 93–94.
Hugh Williamson, ‘An Essay on the Use of Comets, and an Account of their Luminous Appearance; together with some Conjectures concerning the Origin of Heat,’ Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 1 (1771), appendix, pp. 27–36; and in the second edition of the Transactions 1 (1789), 133–143.
Oliver, Essay on Comets (ref. 31), pp. 51–87.
Ibid., pp. v-vi, 11–32.
Ibid., pp. 40–49, quotation p. 46.
Ibid., pp. 49–50.
Ibid., p. iii.
John Langdon Sibley and Clifford Kenyon Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 17 vols. (Cambridge and Boston: 1873–1975), 12: 457.
See Antoine Laurent Lavoisier and Pierre-Simon Laplace, Mémoire sur la chaleur lû à l’Académie Royale des Sciences, le 28 juin 1783 (Paris: 1783); facsimile reprinted with translation in Memoir on Heat Read to the Royal Academy of Sciences, 28 June 1783 by Messrs. Lavoisier & de la Place of the same Academy, trans. Henry Guerlac (New York: Neale Watson Academic Publications, 1982).
Pierre-Simon Laplace, Exposition du systême du monde, 1st ed., 2 vols. (Paris: 1796), 1: 222.
This discourse on latent heat appeared in only the third and fourth editions. Pierre-Simon Laplace, Exposition du système du monde, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (Paris: 1808), 1: 224–228
Laplace, Exposition du système du monde, 4th ed. (Paris: 1813), pp. 130–132.
Davis, Two Lectures (ref. 46), p. 187.
Laplace, Systême du monde, 1st ed. (ref. 48), 2: 304; translation taken from Laplace, The System of the World, trans. J. Pond [from the 2nd ed., 1799], 2 vols. (London: 1809), 2: 366.
Laplace, Systême du monde, 1st ed. (ref. 48), 2: 294–295; translation taken from Laplace, System of the World (ref. 51), 2: 355–356.
On the secularization of the study of comets, see Sara Schechner Genuth, ‘From Heaven’s Alarm to Public Appeal: Comets and the Rise of Astronomy at Harvard,’ in Clark A. Elliott and Margaret W. Rossiter, eds., Science at Harvard University: Historical Perspectives (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 1992), pp. 28–54.
See Sara Schechner Genuth, ‘Newton and the Ongoing Teleological Role of Comets,’ in Norman J. W. Thrower, ed.. Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: A Longer View of Newton and Halley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 299– 311.
Newton, Principia, 1st ed. (ref. 4), p. 506; Isaac Newton, Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: 1713), pp. 480–481; for both passages in the Motte-Cajori edition (ref. 4), see pp. 529–530, 541.
Sara Schechner Genuth, ‘Comets, Teleology, and the Relationship of Chemistry to Cosmology in Newton’s Thought,’ Annali dell’Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza di Firenze 10, fascicolo 2 (1985), 31–65.
The vestiges are better seen in theories about comets careening into planets than in those concerning comet habitability. See Genuth, ‘Newton and the Ongoing Teleological Role of Comets’ (ref. 55); and Sara Schechner Genuth, ‘From Monstrous Signs to Natural Causes: The Assimilation of Comet Lore into Natural Philosophy’ (Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1988).
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Genuth, S.S. (1992). Devils’ Hells and Astronomers’ Heavens: Religion, Method, and Popular Culture in Speculations About Life on Comets. In: Nye, M.J., Richards, J.L., Stuewer, R.H. (eds) The Invention of Physical Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 139. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2488-1_1
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