Heavenly Bodies: Newtonianism,Natural Theology and the Plurality of Worlds Debate in the Eighteenth Century

Lalande J. , Astronomie (Paris, 1771–81), iii, 453.

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James Ferguson , An idea of the material universe, deduced from a survey of the solar system (London, 1754), 29.

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Stillingfleet , op. cit. (ref. 5), 466. Rossi C. , The dark abyss of time: The history of the Earth and the history of nations from Hooke to Vico (Chicago, 1984), 3–120. Brooke J. H. , “Why did the English mix their science and their religion?”, in Science and imagination in XVIIIth-century British culture , ed. by Rossi S. (Milan 1987), 57–78. Gascoigne J. , “From Bentley to the Victorians: The rise and fall of British Newtonian natural theology”, Science in context , ii (1988), 219–56.

de la Fontenelle B. , Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (Paris, 1686).

de la Fontenelle B. , A discovery of new worlds (London, 1688), 8 (from Aphra Benn's preface). Relevant literature includes: Mullan J. , “Gendered knowledge, gendered minds: Women and Newtonianism, 1690–1760”, in A question of identity: Women, science and literature , ed. by Benjamin M. (New Jersey, 1993), 41–56; Walters A. N. , “Conversation pieces: Science and politeness in eighteenth-century England”, History of science , xxxv (1997), 121–54; Fara P. , “Elizabeth Tollet: A new Newtonian woman”, History of science , xl (2002), 169–87.

Fara P. , Newton: The making of genius (London, 2002), 163–5.

Newton I. , The Principia: Mathematical principles of natural philosophy , transl. by Cohen I. B. Witman A. (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1999), 940. Cohen I. B. Westfall R. S. , Newton: Texts, backgrounds, commentaries (New York and London, 1995), 54.

Keill J. , An introduction to the true astronomy: Or, astronomical lectures read in the Astronomical School of the University of Oxford (London, 1748), 40–41.

Jacob M. C. , The Newtonians and the English Revolution 1689–1720 (Ithaca and New York, 1976), 152–3. Bentley R. , A confutation of atheism from the origin and frame of the world (London, 1693), 6.

Pope A. , An essay on man , ed. by Mack M. (London and New York, 1950), 15–16 (Epistle 1, lines 23–28).

Ilive J. , The oration spoke at Joyners-Hall in Thames Street (London, 1733), 1 (John xiv:2).

Sturmy D. , A theological theory of a plurality of worlds (London, 1711), sermon bound in at end (Hebrews xi:3). See also Nares E. , or, an attempt to shew how far the philosophical notion of a plurality of worlds, is consistent, or not so, with the language of the Holy Scriptures (London, 1801).

Young E. , The complaint: Or, night-thoughts on life, death & immortality (London, 1749), 270 (Book 9).

Derham W. , Astro-theology: A demonstration of the being and attributes of God, from a survey of the heavens (London, 1715), p. xliv.

Derham , op. cit. (ref. 17), 35.

Adams J. , Diary and autobiography , ed. by Butterfield L. H. (Cambridge, MA, 1961), i, 29 (27 May 1756).

Chambers R. , Cyclopædia (London, 1742–43), entry on Moon.

Wright T. , An original theory or new hypothesis of the universe, founded upon the laws of nature, and solving by mathematical principles the general phenomena of the visible creation: And particularly the Via Lactea (London, 1750), 79. Hoskin M. A. , “The cosmology of Thomas Wright of Durham”, Journal for the history of astronomy , i (1970), 44–52.

Wright , op. cit. (ref. 21), 79.

Wright , op. cit. (ref. 21), p. iv.

Lambert J. H. , Cosmologische Briefe über die Einrichtung des Weltbaues (Augsburg, 1761), transl. by Jaki S. L. as Cosmological letters on the arrangement of the world-edifice (Edinburgh, 1976). By 1801 this work had been translated, in whole or in part, into French, Russian and English.

Laplace P-S. , Exposition du système du monde (Paris, 1798–99), 341–51 (Book V, chap. vi); Laplace P-S. , The system of the world , transl. by Harte H. H. (Dublin, 1830), ii, 324–42. See Jaki S. L. , Planets and planetarians: A history of the theories of the origin of planetary systems (Edinburgh, 1978), 122–34.

Derham , op. cit. (ref. 17), 39.

The scientific papers of Herschel William Sir , ed. by Dreyer J. L. E. (London, 1912), i, 5. Schaffer S. , “‘The great laboratories of the universe’: William Herschel on matter theory and planetary life”, Journal for the history of astronomy , xi (1980), 81–111, and “Herschel in Bedlam: Natural history and stellar astronomy”, The British journal for the history of science , xiii (1980), 211–39.

Thomson J. , Poetical works (Dublin, 1751), 127 (from “Autumn”).

Keill , op. cit. (ref. 11), 40.

Wesley J. , Works (Grand Rapids, MI, 1958), xiii, 394–400 (1765 letter to the London magazine).

Wright , op. cit. (ref. 21), 33.

Cappe N. , Discourses chiefly on devotional subjects (York, 1805), 324, 351.

Baker H. , The universe (London, 1734), 5.

Quoted by Nicolson M. H. , Voyages to the Moon (New York, 1960), 187.

Baker T. , Reflections upon learning, wherein is shewn the insufficiency thereof, in its several particulars (London, 1700), 97–98.

Forbes D. , Reflexions on the sources of incredulity with regard to religion (Edinburgh, 1752), 1.

Paine T. , The age of reason , ed. by Cohen C. (London, 1937), 43.

Adams , op. cit. (ref. 19), i, 22 (24 April 1756).

Discussed with quotations translated into English in Crowe , op. cit. (ref. 4), 143–8.

Beattie J. , Evidences of the Christian religion; Briefly and plainly stated (Edinburgh, 1788), ii, 139–52, p. 149. See Crowe , op. cit. (ref. 4), 102–3.

Monthly magazine , vi (1798), 116.

Bentley , A confutation (ref. 12), 6.

Burnet T. , The sacred theory of the Earth (London, 1965), 367. See Lovejoy A. O. , The great chain of being: A study of the history of an idea (Cambridge, MA and London, 1964), especially pp. 99–182.

Buffon G. , Histoire naturelle: Suppplément (Paris, 1774–82), ii, 513.

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Jenyns S. , “Disquisition on the chain of universal being”, in Works (London, 1793), iii, 179–85, pp. 184–5.

Franklin B. , “Articles of belief and conducts of religion”, in Franklin B. , Papers , ed. by Labaree L. W. Willcox W. B. (New Haven, 1960–83), i, 101–9, p. 102.

Bolingbroke H. , Philosophical works (London, 1754), ii, 143–55, p. 146.

Kant I. , Universal natural history and theory of the heavens , transl. by Hastie W. (Ann Arbor, 1969), 156–67.

Jenkin R. , The reasonableness and certainty of the Christian religion (London, 1708), 209.

Genuth S. S. , “Devils' hells and astronomers' heavens: Religion, method, and popular culture in speculations about life on comets”, in The invention of physical science , ed. by Nye M. J. Richards J. Stuewer R. (Dordrecht, 1992), 3–26.

Ilive , op. cit. (ref. 14), 59.

The facsimile edition of Wright's An original theory or new hypothesis of the universe (London and New York, 1971) includes Hoskin's M. A. valuable introduction and his transcription of Wright's previously unpublished A theory of the universe of 1734); see also Hoskin , op. cit. (ref. 21).

Swinden T. , An enquiry into the nature and place of hell (London, 1714).

Whiston W. , Astronomical principles of religion, natural and reveal'd (London, 1717), 93–97, and The eternity of hell torments considered (London, 1740), 1–3. See: Almond P. C. , Heaven and hell in Enlightenment England (Cambridge, 1994); Genuth , op. cit. (ref. 51); and Walker D. P. , The decline of hell (London, 1964).

Knight G. , An attempt to demonstrate, that all the phænomena in nature may be explained by two simple active principles, attraction and repulsion: Wherein the attractions of cohesion, gravity, and magnetism, are shewn to be one and the same; and the phænomena of the latter are more particularly explained (London, 1748), 58.

Halley E. , “An account of the cause of the change of the variation of the magnetical needle; With an hypothesis of the structure of the internal parts of the Earth”, Philosophical transactions , xvi (1692), 563–78, p. 575. Crowe wrongly gives priority to Bentley. See Fara P. , Sympathetic attractions: Magnetic practices, beliefs, and symbolism (Princeton, 1996), 36–46, 152–6, and Schaffer S. , “Halley's atheism and the end of the world”, Notes and records of the Royal Society , xxxii (1977), 17–40.

Hume D. , Dialogues concerning natural religion , ed. by Smith N. K. (London, 1947), 148.

Wesley , op. cit. (ref. 30), xiii, 398 (from a 1765 letter to the London magazine).

Relevant literature includes: Gove P. B. , The imaginary voyage in prose fiction (New York, 1941); Nicolson , op. cit. (ref. 34); Roos A. M. E. , Luminaries in the natural world: The Sun and the Moon in England, 1400–1720 (New York, 2001); Claeys G. , Modern British Utopias 1700–1850 (London, 1997); idem, Utopias of the British Enlightenment , ed. by Claeys G. (Cambridge, 1994), pp. vii–xxviii; and Manuel F. E. Manuel F. P. , Utopian thought in the Western world (Oxford, 1979).

Baker H. , op. cit. (ref. 33), 39.

Brunt S. , A voyage to Cacklogallinia: With a description of the religion, policy, customs and manners, of that country (London, 1727). Thomson W. , The man in the Moon: Or, travels into the lunar regions, by the man of the people (London, 1783).

English translation by Purcell S. in Poems of science , ed. by Heath-Stubbs J. Salman P. (Harmondsworth, 1984), 146–8, p. 148. Gray T. , Correspondence , ed. by Toynbee P. Whibley L. (Oxford, 1935), i, 59, 61, and iii, 1198–9.

Holberg L. , A journey to the world under-ground. By Nicholas Klimius (London, 1742) (reproduced in facsimile in Gulliveriana IV (New York, 1973), 45–127). See: Jones J. F. , “Adventures in a strange paradise — Utopia in ‘Nicolai Klimii iter subterraneum’”, Orbis litterarum , xxxv (1980), 193–205; McNelis J. I. , “Introduction”, in Holberg L. , The journey of Neils Klim to the world underground (Lincoln, NE, 1960), pp. vii–xxxi; and Argetsinger G. S. , “Ludvig Holberg and the Anglo-American world”, in Ludvig Holberg: A European writer. A study in influence and reception , ed. by Rossel S. H. (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA, 1994), 139–61.

A voyage to the world in the centre of the Earth (London, 1755), 33, 95–115.

Herschel , op. cit. (ref. 27), i, 479. Schaffer , opera cit. (ref. 27).

Shelley P. B. , “Essay on the devil and devils”, in Shelley's prose or the trumpet of a prophecy , ed. by Clark D. L. (London, 1988), 264–75, p. 271.

Nares , op. cit. (ref. 15), 397.