We regret to announce that we've discontinued GORP's trivia section. Check out our Trivia archives for questions and answers about the world's people, places, and things.

How Many Worlds Are There?
Question by Ethan Gelber

The Question:

For years, political scientists, news pundits, travelers, and others have been referring to the Third World. Much of this is in the context of development, or in contrast to the United States and the industrialized nations of Europe and elsewhere.

What is the origin of the term "third world" and to what did/does it refer? Is there a "first world" and a "second world"? Just how many worlds are out there?

The Answers:

Whew. We got a lot of answers to this, many of which came very close to providing the answers for which we were looking but asserting things that, while politically much more correct than the chilled facts, we could not credit. Similarly, there were a good dozen responses pushing for a "one world is enough" approach that we hope one day to honor but today still consider utopian.

And so to the facts. There were basically four questions: What is the origin of the term "third world," what does it refer to, what are the "first world" and "second world," and how many more worlds are there.

The term "third world" was first used in 1952 by the French demographer Alfred Sauvy (tiers monde in French). He was drawing a parallel between the historical concept of the "third estate" — the powerless commoners of Revolutionary France in which the priests and nobles were the empowered first and second estates, respectively — and the exploited nations of Cold War times that were part of neither the "first world" of industrialized capitalist countries (the United States and its allies) nor the "second world" of industrialized Communist bloc countries (the Soviet Union and its allies). Despite the end of the Cold War, the term has continued to refer to the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. These countries are today more commonly known as those of the "developing world" or the "global south."

Today, there are any number of ways of defining the world (many now see only two: the developing and developed worlds), but the classic three-world breakdown adheres. There are others who see a fourth world of native peoples, and even a fifth world of particularly underprivileged populations (women, physically handicapped) living in developing nations.

The Winners:

The first five responses we received that came closest to answering all four questions were from Steve Yates, Matthew Bolz-Weber, Morris Woodruff, S. K. Sifritt, and Steve Schuler. Very honorable mentions go out to Trina Burke, Paul S, Lindsey Latteman, David Sleipness, Ed Berkowitz, Carole Deschamps, Tim Vander Haar, Bob Hadley, Nicolas Baltazar, and Michael Lesniak, who also submitted excellent answers.

THANKS for your contributions!