One philosopher asserted that he knew the whole secret. He surveyed the two celestial strangers from top to toe, and maintained to their faces that their persons, their worlds, their suns, and their stars, were created solely for the use of man. At this assertion our two travelers let themselves fall against each other, seized with a fit of inextinguishable laughter.” That’s from Voltaire’s Micromegas in 1752. In the seventeenth century there was still some hope that, even if the Earth was not the centre of the Universe, it might be the only world. But Galileo’s telescope revealed thatthe Moon certainly does not possess a smooth and polished surface and that other worlds might look just like…
Hujaboy – The River of Time
