More Worlds Than One The Creed of the Philosopher and the Hope of the Christian

Sir David Brewster (1781–1868) was a distinguished scientist and inventor who frequently turned the results of his research to practical ends; his work on the diffraction of light, for example, led to his developing improved reflectors for lighthouses and inventing two popular Victorian toys, the stereoscope and the kaleidoscope. He was also active as the editor of the Edinburgh Magazine and the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia (1808–1830) and contributed to the seventh and eighth editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, as well as writing many articles for a variety of philosophical and scientific journals. He was deeply religious, and in More Worlds Than One (1854) he set out to counter the arguments against extra-terrestrial life of William Whewell's recently published Of the Plurality of Worlds (also reissued in this series), urging that Whewell's 'extraordinary doctrine' was wrong on scientific grounds.

Preface; Introduction; 1. Religious aspect of the question; 2. Description of the solar system; 3. The geological condition of the earth; 4. Analogy between the earth and the other planets; 5. The sun, moon, satellites, and asteroids; 6. The motion of the solar system round a distant centre; 7. Religious difficulties; 8. Single stars and binary systems; 9. Clusters of stars and nebulæ; 10. General summary; 11. Reply to objections drawn from geology; 12. Objections from the nature of nebulæ; 13. Objections from the nature of the fixed stars and binary systems; 14. Objections from the nature of the planets; 15. The future of the universe.

Sir David Brewster (1781-1868) was a distinguished scientist and inventor, and a regular contributor to scientific and philosophical journals. More Worlds Than One (1854) responded to Whewell's Of the Plurality of Worlds, arguing that Whewell's 'extraordinary doctrine' that extra-terrestrial life was impossible was wrong on scientific grounds.