On the First Anthropic Argument in Astrobiology

We consider the little-known anthropic argument of Fontenelledealing with the nature of cometary orbits, given a year before the publication of Newton'sPrincipia. This is particularly interesting in view of the rapid development of therecently resurgent theories of cometary catastrophism and their role in the modern astrobiologicaldebates, for instance in the ``rare Earth' hypothesis of Ward and Brownlee.