ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

All the planets are similar to our Earth, and may well be inhabited. Plurality of worlds in 18th-century Italy

• In Event: A New Kind of Amusement for Cultivating the Mind: Science Popularisation in Britain and Italy in the Long Eighteenth Century

English Abstract

As the scientific revolution swept through Europe, a new cosmology gradually emerged, radically breaking with aristotelian-ptolemaic cosmology. Earth was recognised as a planet among others orbiting the Sun, which itself became one among countless "fixed stars". Extraterrestrial life emerged thus as a serious speculative problem: if Earth is just a planet among others, could other planets be the abode of living beings too? Furthermore, for what purpose could God have created such a multitude of celestial bodies? Such questions gave rise to what is known as the "plurality of worlds debate", which involved Italy as well. The country was generally slow to grasp the advancements in science and philosophy coming from Britain and France: it took decades for Newtonian experimental philosophy to become established in Italian scientific institutions.
In this context, works such as Derham's Astro-Theology (It. transl. 1728), Fontenelle's Entretiens (It. transl. 1748) and Chambers's Cyclopedia (It. transl. 1748) caught the attention of writers, intellectuals and polemicists, resulting in a lively public debate. Reconstructing this debate is a way to document the gradual consolidation of a "Newtonian common sense" in Italy. Evidence of the fact that "planeticoli" (i.e. extraterrestrials) were part of this new "common sense" may be found in manuals, compendia, fictional epistles, didactic poems, and other works of natural philosophy directed to the general public, which often state that "pluralism" was a commonly accepted view, or even standard consensus. This paper aims to present a selection of such documents, highlighting the role they played in the popularisation of Newtonianism in 18th-century Italy. I will also show how, through an analysis of said documents, one may observe the gradual emergence of vitalism as a cosmological concept, demonstrating how the plurality of worlds debate was a narrow point of contact between the emerging life sciences and Newtonian astronomy.

Author

• Lorenzo De Piccoli, University of Pisa, University of Florence