UTOPIA AND
EXTRA-TERRESTRIALS

Proposed: that the period of spatial utopias in Europe coincided with belief in a plurality of worlds.
The doctrine of plurality of worlds, in simple terms the belief that there are many inhabited planets, was orthodox belief in Europe until about 1850. This orthodoxy was derived from Christian doctrine. Almost as soon as the belief had been intellectually discredited, however, it re-appeared in popular culture and imagination.

The standard idea of utopias in Europe is that the classic spatial utopia (for instance a remote island) was replaced during the Enlightenment by texts about the future. However, if science fiction is included, the idea of a spatially remote, different world has re-emerged since about 1880. The great difference with previous belief in the plurality of worlds is, that remote worlds are no longer considered as essentially similar to European societies. They are often considered both advanced and hostile.

The apparent historical pattern is this:

  • from the Middle Ages belief in many worlds was orthodoxy, though never total
  • earthly paradises, ideal kingdoms, and later utopias, were located on this planet at remote locations
  • from about 1770 visions of future societies replaced visions of spatially remote societies: utopia became temporal, not spatial

Those are the standard historians views on utopias. However:

  • around 1850, orthodox belief in the plurality of worlds collapsed
  • after that, there was a return to visions of remote locations: a return to spatial utopias, but now on other planets
  • these utopias were generally dystopias, negatively valued
  • they took over from temporal utopias the idea of technological advance as the main distinction between societies
  • the concept of the fundamentally different hostile alien appeared
There are therefore three shifts, at different times:
  • from plurality to singularity of worlds
  • from spatial to temporal utopias and back
  • from utopia to dystopia
The image which has come to dominate science fiction in the twentieth century is apparently historically specific. That image is basically: technology in the service of evil hostile aliens.

This is a general trend, and there other aspects which complicate the picture:

  • the re-emergence of the territorial utopia at the end of the 19th century
  • the eutopian tradition of ideal cities in Europe, and its expansion at the end of the 19th century
  • sub-genres of "good aliens"
  • the use of the conventions of science fiction for classic ideal-society utopias
However two aspects do seem to be definitive:
  • fictional visions of better future societies are in long term decline in Europe, and in the West - "better" meaning better as seen by the author
  • technology has become the defining element of negative visions, negative worlds
There are some projects which present a vision of certain nations or societies in the short term or medium term future. However, they are essentially projections of current trends. They do not claim to be a specifically different future, in the manner of 19th century utopias influenced by a faith in progress. If there is a fundamentally different vision of the future, it is likely to be negative. Despite this, there is a widespread contradictory belief that contact with aliens would be positive. There is also an apparent widespread wish to travel into the future, if that became possible, again contradicting fears of technology.

The version of the table below is a first version, and the literature list is incomplete, and includes no links. There are several index pages for the theme utopia: most are located in the US or Canada. They usually include only English language material, with a bias to liberal and libertarian utopias.

Utopia and cosmology

Utopia
date
Cosmology
Platonic ideal citiesantiqutiydifferences on the plurality of worlds in Greek philosophy
monasterium [Manuel]pre-1000...
1165 Presbyter Johannes / Paape Jansland [Hes 6, Bloch C.39]1000-12001170 Aristotle's De Caelo available in translation Gerard of Cremona [Dick 24]
[no utopias in Middle Ages, Gilissen 23]1200-14001277 condemnation of anti-plurality by Bishop of Paris [Dick 28]
1498 Columbus: Orinoco as Garden of Eden [Hes 6]1400-1500...
1516 Thomas More "Utopia"1500 -1600...
1623 Campanella "Civitas Solis", [see Bloch]1600-1700Kepler: lunar inhabitants
1647 Christina of Sweden asks Descartes about planets with intelligent and better creatures [Dick 112]
1698 Huygens "Cosmotheoros"
1771 Mercier "L'an 2000"1700-1800Cartesian cosmology: infinity of worlds
1815 Robert Owen
Fourierist and other utopian communities, USA and Europe
Mormons: messianic religious state
from 1880, extraterrestrial eutopias (Guthke, V.3) 1888 Bellamy "Looking Backward"
1890 Hertzka "Freiland"
1897 "War of the Worlds"
Zionism		1800-19001853 Whewell's anti-pluralism
1880's Schiaperelli
The major literary dystopias:
Orwell, Huxley, Zamyatin
"ideal city" planning		after 1900general scientific consensus on the singularity of life on earth: popular pluralism
some extreme anthropocentrism
alien invasion as genre

LITERATURE

Bejczy, István 1994 Pape Jansland en Utopia: de verbeelding van de beschaving van Middeleeuwen en Renaissance. Nijmegen: Universitair Publikatiebureau.
Bloch, Ernst 1959 Das Prinzip Hoffnung. Frankfurt am Main.
Crowe, Michael J. 1986 The extra-terrestrial life debate 1750-1900: the idea of a plurality of worlds from Kant to Lowell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dick, Steven J. 1982 Plurality of Worlds: the origins of the extraterrestrial life debate from Democritus to Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gillissen, J. 1988 Spelen met de werkelijkheid: utopie en hedendaagse sociale bewegingen. Tilburg: Tilburg University Press.
Guthke, Karl 1983 Der Mythos der Neuzeit: Das Thema der Mehrheit der Welten in der Literature- und Geistesgeschichte von der Kopernikanischen Wende bis zur Science Fiction. Bern
Hes, Jan 1989 Utopia in opspraak: utopisme, chiliasme, science fiction en de film. Assen: Van Gorcum.
Manuel, Frank and Manuel, Fritzie 1979 Utopian thought in the western world. Oxford: Blackwell.
Index