The Possibility of Life on Other Planets

Huygens, Christiaan (1629-1695)

Kosmotheoros [Greek title] sive de Terris Coelestibus, earumque ornatu, Conjecturae. Ad Constantinum Hugenium, Fratrem: Gulielmo III. Magnae Britanniae Regi, a Secretis.

The Hague: Adrian Moetjens, 1698.

Price: $22,000.00

Quarto: 19.5 x 14.8 cm. 144 pp. Collation: *1, A-S4. Five folding plates.

FIRST EDITION.

Bound in contemporary speckled calfskin, spine tooled in gold, discreet repairs to hinges. A fine, crisp copy, complete with the five folding engravings: 1. the Copernican system; 2. Proportional rendering of the sizes of the planets relative to one another and the Sun; 3. Jupiter and Saturn (and their satellites); 4. Saturn and its rings; 5. a schematic diagram showing the behavior of satellites in orbit around the planets. Very light spotting to the first plate.

The astronomer and instrument-maker Christiaan Huygens is one of the giants of early observational astronomy. In the early 1650s, Huygens, together with his brother Constantijn, mastered the difficult craft of grinding telescopic lenses. In 1655, with an advanced refracting telescope of his own making, Huygens discovered Saturn’s moon, Titan. In 1657, he invented the pendulum clock, which he would later describe in his “Horologium Oscillatorium” of 1673, a classic of 17th c. mechanics. In 1659, he announced that Saturn was encircled by a thin, flat ring that did not touch the planet, providing a solution to the apparent mutability of the planet, a phenomenon that had puzzled astronomers since Galileo first observed Saturn with his telescope in 1610. In 1672, by observing spots on Mars’ surface, Huygens proved that Mars rotates and determined its rotational period. In the 1680s, Huygens again teamed up with his brother Contstantijn to produce even more advanced lenses and “tubeless” telescopes of immense size, described in his “Astroscopia Compendiaria” (1684). His other achievements in mathematics and the sciences are numerous.

"Kosmotheoros" (Spectator of the Heavens):

In his final work, “Kosmotheoros”, Huygens, explores the possibility of life on other planets, speculating that conditions elsewhere in the solar system might very well be like those on Earth. "Among the essentials he reckoned the existence of water but perhaps with different properties from our own. For instance, it must have a lower freezing point on the colder planets. If some kind of human life exists, he suggested, there must be others forms of life upon which the human beings would be dependent." (Bell)

The work is written in an intimate vein, taking the form of a letter to Huygens' brother Constantijn, who was then serving as secretary to William of Orange. In a letter dated January 9th, 1695, Huygens had informed his brother that he had finished the work. The author died on 8 July that same year. In his will, Christiaan requested that his brother see that the work be published. Constantijn, however, passed away in 1697 before the printing was completed. The final printing was overseen by the Leiden mathematician and physicist Burchard de Volder. It was published, at long last, in The Hague in 1698, by Adriaan Moetjens.

In the course of his thesis, Huygens discusses the sizes of the planets; their distances from each other, the Earth, and the Sun; and their motions (together with the motions of their orbiting satellites.) Huygens, the man who correctly identified Saturn as a ringed planet, shows how Saturn and its rings would appear when viewed from Jupiter. Huygens also explains his modified vortex theory, taking into account the gravitational ideas of Newton. The work also includes a refutation of the cosmology of the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher.

"In the Copernican world system the earth holds no privileged position among the other planets. It would therefore be unreasonable to suppose that life should be restricted to the earth alone. There must be life on the other planets and living beings endowed with reason who can contemplate the richness of the creation, since in their absence this creation would be senseless and the earth, again, would have an unreasonably privileged position. In further discussions of the different functions of living organisms and rational beings, Huygens came to the conclusion that, in all probability, the plant and animal worlds of other planets are very like those of the earth. He also surmised that the inhabitants of other planets would have a culture similar to that of humans and would cultivate the sciences, and discussed how the different movements of the heavenly bodies must appear to the inhabitants of the planets."(DSB).

"At the end of the work Huygens states his modified vortex theory. 'I am of the opinion that every sun is surrounded with a whirl-pool or vortex of matter in a very swift motion; though not in the least like Descartes' either in bulk or manner of motion.' Descartes' views, Huygens asserted, needed to be corrected in the light of Newton's work, in particular to take account of the gravity of the planets towards the sun and how 'from that cause proceeds the ellipticity of the orbits of the planets discovered by Kepler.'" (Arthur Bell, "Christian Huygens and the development of science in the seventeenth century", pp. 200-202).

Thorndike VII, 634 ff.; Honeyman 1731; Bierens de Haan, Bib. nérlandaise historique-scientifique, p. 135, no. 2226; Roller-G. I, 575; Lalande p. 334; Weidler p. 502; Winter, Compendium Utopiarum 67,1; Gibson No. 788, note: "Not a Utopia but a stimulator of celestial ones."