The plurality of worlds, regarded as other inhabited worlds in the universe, is a debated question since Antiquity. The Greek philosopher Anaximander considered that countless worlds succeeding one another could be born from an infinite universe. The atomist Democritus, as well as Epicurus and later Lucretius, maintained that worlds in infinite number have emerged from atoms and infinite void, a materialistic view of the universe. Following the heliocentric Copernican theory, new speculations were formulated. Inquisition rejected the infinity of worlds proposed by the dissident Dominican friar Giordano Bruno. However, famous personalities expounded this idea (Kepler, Huygens, Fontenelle) which finally became a scientific topic during the nineteenth century (Flammarion, Proctor). Astrobiology revisits today this concept through space exploration and the continuous discoveries of exoplanets.
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© 2015 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Raulin-Cerceau, F. (2015). Plurality of Worlds. In: Gargaud, M., et al. Encyclopedia of Astrobiology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44185-5_5274
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