Authors:
Historic Era:
Historic Theme:
Subject:
February/March 1984 | Volume 35, Issue 2
Authors:
Historic Era:
Historic Theme:
Subject:
February/March 1984 | Volume 35, Issue 2
Lowell’s theory, to be sure, was not altogether original when it appeared. The belief in life on other worlds had a respectable American tradition, derived from a much older European one. During the Enlightenment the habitation of other planets was taken for granted. God, the master craftsman, would not have wasted matter building other worlds if He had not intended to populate them. On the same grounds Hugh Williamson, a scientist and signer of the Constitution, argued that comets, too, might carry intelligent life. In 1824 Eliphalet Nott, president of Union College, painted for his students a picture of extraterrestrial beings, “whose acuter vision or more powerful glasses enable them to look down on us, regardful of our progress … and impatiently waiting for the time when our improved instruments shall enable us to recognize their signals.” After the 1850s the belief began to wane, in part due to the influence of the English theologian and scientist William Whewell, who argued that man was clearly “uniquely favored among all God’s creatures.”
The seeds for a revival were sown in 1877, a year that brought Mars exceptionally near to Earth. Mars is best observed from Earth when it is in opposition—that is, when it and the Sun are on opposite sides of our planet. This occurs at intervals of slightly more than two years; the most favorable oppositions, when Mars is closest to Earth, occur approximately every fifteen years. The year 1877 brought one of the latter kind. In the United States, Asaph Hall took advantage of it to discover the two tiny moons of Mars, to which he gave the names Phobos and Deimos. In Italy the astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli turned his attention to the surface of the red planet. Earlier observers had seen and mapped Martian features but none had seen what Schiaparelli now saw: a network of fine, often straight lines patterned across the surface. As they seemed to connect the dark areas (assumed at the time to be seas), Schiaparelli called them canali , Italian for “channels,” and gave them names from classical antiquity.
At the