[M-ZZ39] Studies of Geoscience : historical, philosophical and STS studies

[MZZ39-01] The Plurality of Worlds in the time of Newton

*Shigeyuki Aoki¹ (1.Faculty of Letters, Chuo University)

Keywords:history of science, history of earth and planetary science, exoplanet, plurality of worlds, Isaac Newton

Copernicus, whose 550th anniversary of the birth is widely discussed today, wrote his On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres in 1543 and this sparked off a series of debates over the plurality of the worlds. On the continent Fontenelle published his famous Conversations and the Plurality of Worlds in 1686, but in the following year Newton did not touch on an extraterrestrial life in his Principia. We may wonder why he refrained from touching on the topic in his published works. In this talk I would like to reconstruct what Newton thought of the plurality of the worlds from his correspondences to Bentley, and his recorded conversations with Conduitt.