ILLUSTRATIONS

1.1    The Ptolemaic universe

1.2    The Copernican universe

3.1    The Dantean universe

3.2    The symmetry between the Ptolemaic and Copernican models of the universe

3.3    Thomas Digges’s illustration of the Copernican universe

4.1    The “vortex” theory of René Descartes

4.2    The “finite view of infinity” of Thomas Wright of Durham

5.1    The Hubble Deep Field

5.2    The nine-year microwave sky

5.3    The Level I, or quilted, multiverse

5.4    The inflationary universe of Andrei Linde

5.5    The inflationary multiverse

5.6    Universes on the string theory landscape

5.7    The cyclic universe of Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok

6.1    The birth of universes from the landscape multiverse