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Quiz about The Plurality of Worlds
Quiz about The Plurality of Worlds

The Plurality of Worlds Trivia Quiz


The debate on whether intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe has gone on for a long time. Centuries ago, the idea was called 'the plurality of worlds' - and the arguments over it form the very earliest works of science fiction.

A multiple-choice quiz by CellarDoor. Estimated time: 7 mins.
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Author
CellarDoor
Time
7 mins
Type
Multiple Choice
Quiz #
44,335
Updated
Dec 03 21
# Qns
10
Difficulty
Difficult
Avg Score
5 / 10
Plays
594
- -
Question 1 of 10
1. Our story begins on a note of persecution. In 1600, what author of 'On the Infinite Universe and Worlds' was burned at the stake? Hint


Question 2 of 10
2. What astronomer, famed for his laws of orbital motion, weighed into the plurality debate with 'Somnium' ('Dream') and 'Conversation with Galileo's Sidereal Messenger'? Hint


Question 3 of 10
3. When Galileo Galilei was put on trial by the Catholic Church for believing that the earth orbited the sun, Cardinal Boniface Caetani asked what Dominican monk to write Galileo's defense? Hint


Question 4 of 10
4. After these inauspicious beginnings, however, astronomical speculation began to take off. What English clergyman penned the 1638 treatise 'The Discovery of a World in the Moone', in which he set out to prove, in thirteen logical propositions, the existence of aliens on the moon? Hint


Question 5 of 10
5. Which other English clergyman wrote 'The Man in the Moone' (1638), arguably the first true work of science fiction, in which the Spanish sailor Gonzalez voyages to the moon and meets with its inhabitants? Hint


Question 6 of 10
6. A more famous story, 'Voyages to the Moon and the Sun', was written by what acerbic Frenchman, celebrated for the breadth of his wit and the length of his nose? Hint


Question 7 of 10
7. 'The Celestial Worlds Discover'd', Christiaan Huygens' 1698 attempt to reconcile extra-terrestrial life with theology, admits that perhaps humans are not superior to all other life forms -- but founders when, in an effort to prove that all other life forms must of course be essentially human, Huygens humorously imagines an intelligent alien ...? Hint


Question 8 of 10
8. Jonathan Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels' deals with the voyages of Lemuel Gulliver on Earth, but one 'island' he visits actually floats in the air, miles above the surface of the planet. Its inhabitants, quite alien by human standards, rule the continent below with an iron fist. What is the name of this island, home of the first alien race to threaten humanity? Hint


Question 9 of 10
9. Voltaire is most famous for his story 'Candide,' but in 1751 he published what short story, in which a colossal traveler from a planet orbiting the star Sirius visits Earth with his Saturnian companion? Hint


Question 10 of 10
10. Finally, Percival Lowell, self-appointed 'Roosevelt of Astronomy', published two works on a single planet in 1896 and 1908. In them, he claimed that the 'canals' he saw were conclusive proof of an intelligent alien species doomed by drought, and a sensation was born. What planet was he describing? Hint



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Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. Our story begins on a note of persecution. In 1600, what author of 'On the Infinite Universe and Worlds' was burned at the stake?

Answer: Giordano Bruno

Bruno had, you see, argued that not only were there other inhabited worlds besides Earth -- but also that God didn't necessarily love us best.
2. What astronomer, famed for his laws of orbital motion, weighed into the plurality debate with 'Somnium' ('Dream') and 'Conversation with Galileo's Sidereal Messenger'?

Answer: Johannes Kepler

Kepler's 'Somnium' was a description of what life might be like on the moon - it turns out that the inhabitants thereof are miserable wormlike creatures whose only joy is their view of the Earth. And in his 'Conversation', he makes the argument that humanity is the apple of God's eye, as we are in the center of the planets orbiting the sun -- and that the Galilean moons were created for the inhabitants of Jupiter as a compensation for their inferior position.
3. When Galileo Galilei was put on trial by the Catholic Church for believing that the earth orbited the sun, Cardinal Boniface Caetani asked what Dominican monk to write Galileo's defense?

Answer: Tommaso Campanella

Campanella's 'Apologia pro Galileo' was a spirited defense of reasoning and the scientific method, but it ran afoul of the Church's traditional reliance on Aristotelian logic (not that Campanella's reputation as a rebel helped). The same year the 'Apologia' was written, the Church issued an edict declaring heliocentrism (the belief that the sun is at the center of the solar system) a heresy.
4. After these inauspicious beginnings, however, astronomical speculation began to take off. What English clergyman penned the 1638 treatise 'The Discovery of a World in the Moone', in which he set out to prove, in thirteen logical propositions, the existence of aliens on the moon?

Answer: John Wilkins

Anxious of his reputation and the approval of the Anglican Church, Wilkins took care to distance himself from his own logic, repeatedly crediting previous philosophers (like Campanella, Kepler, and Bruno) with his own lines of reasoning.
5. Which other English clergyman wrote 'The Man in the Moone' (1638), arguably the first true work of science fiction, in which the Spanish sailor Gonzalez voyages to the moon and meets with its inhabitants?

Answer: Francis Godwin

Godwin had his story published posthumously, so he didn't need to worry about ecclesiastical retribution. The tale, written in the first person, describes how Gonzalez harnesses himself to a flock of spacefaring geese who transport him to the moon - how his food supplies are cursed by demons on the way up - and how the people of the moon are thirty-foot-tall Anglicans who venerate Queen Elizabeth I, whose heights vary according to their virtues, and who exile their shortest children to Earth where they pose as human.
6. A more famous story, 'Voyages to the Moon and the Sun', was written by what acerbic Frenchman, celebrated for the breadth of his wit and the length of his nose?

Answer: Cyrano de Bergerac

De Bergerac uses the format of a space odyssey to cleverly skewer human society. A high point occurs when the birds who inhabit the moon put the protagonist, Dyrcona, on trial for humanity's habit of killing and eating their kind.
7. 'The Celestial Worlds Discover'd', Christiaan Huygens' 1698 attempt to reconcile extra-terrestrial life with theology, admits that perhaps humans are not superior to all other life forms -- but founders when, in an effort to prove that all other life forms must of course be essentially human, Huygens humorously imagines an intelligent alien ...?

Answer: lobster

Many find it surprising that Huygens, who invented the pendulum clock, could have such a failure of imagination that he literally could not conceive of any way to put together an intelligent entity that was not basically human.
8. Jonathan Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels' deals with the voyages of Lemuel Gulliver on Earth, but one 'island' he visits actually floats in the air, miles above the surface of the planet. Its inhabitants, quite alien by human standards, rule the continent below with an iron fist. What is the name of this island, home of the first alien race to threaten humanity?

Answer: Laputa

Laputa, as much like a spaceship as it is like a planet, is kept above the Earth by an oddity in the local magnetic field. Brobdingnag is the land of the giants Gulliver encounters after the Lilliputians, Balnibarbi is the land ruled by the Laputans, and the Houynhnhnms are the intelligent, virtuous horses whom Gulliver meets last of all.
9. Voltaire is most famous for his story 'Candide,' but in 1751 he published what short story, in which a colossal traveler from a planet orbiting the star Sirius visits Earth with his Saturnian companion?

Answer: 'Micromegas'

Micromegas is the name of the Sirian, who encounters a shipful of human philosophers. The ensuing debate is a clever rail against the egoism of human thinkers - one such man, standing in Micromegas' massive palm, has the gall to insist that the alien, his home star, and all in the universe was created for humanity's benefit.
10. Finally, Percival Lowell, self-appointed 'Roosevelt of Astronomy', published two works on a single planet in 1896 and 1908. In them, he claimed that the 'canals' he saw were conclusive proof of an intelligent alien species doomed by drought, and a sensation was born. What planet was he describing?

Answer: Mars

Lowell seriously believed in what he thought he saw, but his observations were so tenuous, and his claims so wild, that his books 'Mars' and 'Mars as the Abode of Life' must be regarded as early science fiction. He had a lively (and hair-trigger) imagination.
Source: Author CellarDoor

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