| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Steven J. Dick. Life on Other Worlds: The Twentieth-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1998. Pp. xiii, 290. $24.95.

Nearly half of all Americans, according to a recent Gallup poll, believe that UFOs in some form have visited the earth. Most scientists believe that life exists on other planets, and a substantial number are engaged in efforts to locate it. 1

The evidence supporting both points of view is wholly circumstantial. In spite of tantalizing discoveries, no direct evidence yet exists to support the proposition that life processes have begun on spheres other than our own. Nonetheless, the belief in extraterrestrial life has achieved a level of cultural acceptance accorded few unsubstantiated beliefs. It is to the twentieth century what belief in angels and demon visitations was to the thirteenth. 2

Steven J. Dick has established himself as the leading chronicler of what is known respectfully as the "plurality of worlds" thesis. An astronomer and historian, Dick distinguished himself with the publication of Plurality of Worlds: The Origins of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to Kant (1982). In 1996, he published the 578-page Biological Universe: The Twentieth-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits of Science. His current book is a shorter and updated version of the latter. . . .

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