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8 The Rise and Fall of the Nebular Hypothesis

• Published: August 2023
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The first to explain the origin of the planets and moons was Pierre-Simon Laplace in his 1796 book, Exposition for the System of the World . His theory would dominate science throughout the next century and come to be accepted as a given. He held that the solar system had begun as a hot, rotating gas cloud. As it spun, centrifugal force threw off blobs of gas that coagulated into planets. The planets then repeated the process to create their moons. By the last few decades of the eighteenth century, enough evidence had come to light to call the nebular hypothesis into question, if not to falsify it. This opened the way for three different theories for the origin of the Moon. The fission theory resembled the nebular hypothesis in holding that the gravity of the Sun had pulled off a bulge in the proto-Earth which became the Moon. The co-accretion theory held that the Moon and the Earth had formed near each other and thus were like sister planets. The capture theory imagined that the Moon had started out in some distant region of the solar system but drew near enough to be captured into orbit by the Earth’s gravity.

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Nebular Theory Might Explain How Our Solar System Formed

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Our solar system contains the sun, inner rocky planets, the gas giants , or the outer planets, and other celestial bodies, but how they all formed is something that scientists have debated over time.

The nebular theory , also known as nebular hypothesis , presents one explanation of how the solar system formed. Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace proposed the theory in 1796, stating that solar systems originate from vast clouds of gas and dust, known as solar nebula, within interstellar space.

Learn more about this solar system formation theory and some of the criticism it faced.

What Is the Nebular Theory?

Criticisms of the nebular theory, solar nebular disk model.

Laplace said the material from which the solar system and Earth derived was once a slowly rotating cloud, or nebula, of extremely hot gas. The gas cooled and the nebula began to shrink. As the nebula became smaller, it rotated more rapidly, becoming somewhat flattened at the poles.

A combination of centrifugal force, produced by the nebula's rotation, and gravitational force, from the mass of the nebula, left behind rings of gas as the nebula shrank. These rings condensed into planets and their satellites, while the remaining part of the nebula formed the sun.

The planet formation hypothesis, widely accepted for about a hundred years, has several serious flaws. The most serious concern is the speed of rotation of the sun.

When calculated mathematically on the basis of the known orbital momentum, of the planets, the nebular hypothesis predicts that the sun must rotate about 50 times more rapidly than it actually does. There is also some doubt that the rings pictured by Laplace would ever condense into planets.

In the early 20th century, scientists rejected the nebular hypothesis for the planetesimal hypothesis, which proposes that planets formed from material drawn out of the sun. This theory, too, proved unsatisfactory.

Later theories have revived the concept of a nebular origin for the planets. An educational NASA website states: "You might have heard before that a cloud of gas and dust in space is also called a 'nebula,' so the scientific theory for how stars and planets form from molecular clouds is also sometimes called the Nebular Theory. Nebular Theory tells us that a process known as 'gravitational contraction' occurred, causing parts of the cloud to clump together, which would allow for the Sun and planets to form from it."

Victor Safronov , a Russian astronomer, helped lay the groundwork for the modern understanding of the Solar Nebular Disk Model. His work, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, was instrumental in shaping our comprehension of how planets form from a protoplanetary disk.

At a time when others did not want to focus on the planetary formation process, Safronov used math to try to explain how the giant planets, inner planets and more came to be. A decade after his research, he published a book presenting his work.

George Wetherill's research also contributed to this area, specifically on the dynamics of planetesimal growth and planetary accretion.

This article was updated in conjunction with AI technology, then fact-checked and edited by a HowStuffWorks editor.

Please copy/paste the following text to properly cite this HowStuffWorks.com article:

Historical Geology

A free online textbook for Historical Geology courses

Nebular theory and the formation of the solar system

In the beginning….

How and when does the story of Earth begin? A logical place to start is with the formation of the planet, but as you’ll soon see, the formation of the planet is part of a larger story, and that story implies some backstory before the story, too. The purpose of this case study is to present our best scientific understanding of the formation of our solar system from a presolar nebula, and to put that nebula in context too.

Nebular theory

The prevailing scientific explanation for the origin of the Earth does a good job of not only explaining the Earth’s formation, but the Sun and all the other planets too. Really, it’s not “the Earth’s origin story” alone so much as it is the origin story of the whole solar system . Not only that, but our Sun is but one star among a hundred million in our galaxy, and our galaxy is one of perhaps a hundred million in the universe. So the lessons we learn by studying our own solar system can likely be applied more generally to the formation of other solar systems elsewhere, including those long ago, in galaxies far, far away. The vice versa is also true: Our understanding of our own solar system’s origin story is being refined as we learn more about exoplanets, some of which defy what we see in our own system; “ hot Jupiters ” and “ super-Earths ,” for instance, are features we see in other star systems but not our own.

When we use powerful telescopes to stare out into the galaxy, we observe plenty of other stars, but we observe other things too, including fuzzy looking features called nebulae. A nebula is a big cloud of gas and dust in space. It’s not as bright as a star because it’s not undergoing thermonuclear fusion, with the tremendous release of energy that accompanies that process. An example of a nebula that you are likely to be able to see is in the constellation Orion. Orion’s “belt,” three stars in a row, is a readily identifiable feature in the northern hemisphere’s night sky in winter. A smaller trio of light spots “dangle” from the belt; this is Orion’s sword scabbard. A cheap pair of binoculars will let you examine these objects for yourself; you will discover that the middle point of light in this smaller trio is not a star. It is a nebula called Messier 42.

Nebulae like Messier 42 are common features of the galaxy, but not as common as stars. Nebulae appear to be short-lived features, as matter is often attracted to other matter. All that stuff distributed in that tremendous volume of space is not as stable as it would be if it were all to be drawn together into a few big clumps. Particles pull together with their neighboring particles under the influence of various forces, including “static cling” or electrostatic attraction. This is the same force that makes tiny dust motes clump up into dust bunnies under your couch!

Now, electrostatic force is quite strong for pulling together small particles over small distances, but if you want to make big things like planets and stars out from a nebula, you’re going to need gravity to take over at some point. Gravity is a rather weak force. After all: every time you take a step, you’ve overcoming the gravitational pull of the entire Earth. But gravity can work very efficiently over distance, if the masses involved are large enough. So static cling was the initial organizer, until the “space dust bunnies” got large enough, then gravity was able to take over, attracting mass to mass. The net result is that the gajillions of tiny pieces of the nebula were drawn together, swirling into a denser and denser amalgamation. The nebula began to spin, flattening out from top to bottom, and flattening out into a spinning disk, something between a Frisbee and a fried egg in shape:

Once a star forms in the center, astronomers call the ring of debris around it a protoplanetary disk. Two important processes that helped organize the protoplanetary disk further were condensation and accretion.

Condensation is the process where gaseous matter sticks together to make liquid or solid matter. We have evidence of condensation in the form of small spherical objects with internal layering, kind of like “space hailstones.” These are chondrules, and they represent the earliest objects formed in our solar system. (Occasionally, we are lucky enough to find chondrules that have survived until the present day, entombed inside certain meteorites of the variety called chondrites.)

Chondrules glommed onto other chondrules, and stuck themselves together into primordial “rocks,” building up larger and larger objects. Eventually, these objects got to be big enough to pull their mass into an round shape, and we would be justified to dub them “planetesimals.” Planetesimals gobbled up nearby asteroids, and smashed into other planetesimals, merging and growing through time through the process of accretion. The kinetic force of these collisions heated the rocky and metallic material of the planetesimals, and their temperature also went up as radioactive decay heated them from within. Once warm, denser material could sink to their middles, and lighter-weight elements and compounds rose up to their surface. So not only were they maturing into spheroidal shapes, but they were also differentiating internally, separating into layers organized by density.

Meteorites that show metallic compositions represent “core” material from these planetesimals; core material that we would never get to glimpse had not their surrounding rocky material been blasted off. Iron meteorites such as the Canyon Diablo meteorite below (responsible for Arizona’s celebrated Meteor Crater) therefore are evidence of differentiation of planetesimals into layered bodies, followed by disaggregation: a polite way of saying they were later violently ripped apart by energetic collisions.

If you were to somehow weigh the nebula before condensation and accretion, and again 4.6 billion years later, we’d find the mass to be the same. Rather than being dispersed in a diffuse cloud of uncountable atoms, the condensation and accretion of the nebula resulted in exactly the same amount of stuff, but organized into a smaller and smaller number of bigger and bigger objects. The biggest of these was the Sun, comprising about 99.86% of all the mass in the solar system. Four-fifths of the remaining 0.14% makes up the planet Jupiter.  Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus are huge gas giants as well. The inner rocky planets (including Earth) make up a tiny, tiny fraction of the total mass of the whole solar system – but of course, just because they are relatively small, that doesn’t mean they are unimportant!

The process of accretion continues into the present day, though at a slower pace than the earliest days of the solar system. One place you can observe this is in the asteroid belt, where there are certain asteroids that are basically nothing more than a big 3D pile of space rocks, held together under their own gravity. Consider the asteroid called Itokawa 25143, for instance:

Only about half a kilometer long, and only a few hundred meters wide, Itokawa doesn’t even have enough gravity to pull itself into a sphere. If you were to land on the surface of Itokawa and kick a soccer-ball-sized boulder, it would readily fly off into space, as the force of your kick would be much higher than the force of gravity causing it to stay put.

Another example of accretion continuing to this day is meteorite impacts. Every time a chunk of rock in space intersects the Earth, its mass is added to that of the planet. In that instant, the solar system gets a little bit cleaner (fewer leftover bits rattling around) and the planet gets a little more massive. A spectacular example of this occurred in 1994 with Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, a  comet which had only been discovered the previous year. Jupiter’s immense gravity broke the comet into chunks, and then swallowed them up one after another. Astronomers on Earth watched with fascination as the comet chunks, some more than a kilometer across, slammed into Jupiter’s atmosphere at 60 km/second (~134,000 mph), creating a 23,700°C fireball and enormous impact scars that were as large as the entire Earth. These scars lasted for months.

This incredibly dramatic event perhaps raises the hair on our necks, seeing the violence and power of cosmic collisions. It’s a reminder that Earthlings are not safe from accretionary impacts even today – as the dinosaurs found out. For the purposes of our current discussion, though, bear in mind that the collision was really a merger between the masses of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 and the planet Jupiter, and after the dust settled, the solar system had one fewer object left off by itself, and Jupiter gained a bit more mass. This is the overall trend of the accretion of our solar system from the presolar nebula: under gravity’s influence, the available mass becomes more and more concentrated through time.

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A star is born

Because the Sun is so massive, it is able to achieve tremendous pressures in its interior. These pressures are so high, they can actually force two atoms into the same space , overcoming their immense repulsion for one another, and causing their two nuclei to merge. As two atoms combine to make one more massive atom, energy is released. This process is thermonuclear fusion. Once it begins, stars begin to give off light.

The ability of stars to make big atoms from small ones is key to understanding the history of our solar system and our planet. Planet Earth is made of a wide variety of chemical elements, both lightweight and heavy. All of these elements must have been present in the nebula, in order for them to be included in Earth’s “starting mixture.” Elements formed in the Sun today stay in the Sun, fusing low-weight atoms into heavier atoms. So all the elements on Earth today came from a pre-Sun star. We can go outside on a spring day and enjoy the Sun’s warmth, but the carbon that makes up the skin that basks in that warmth was forged in the heart of another star, a star that’s gone now, a star that blew up.

This exploding star was the source of the nebula where we began this case study: it’s the backstory that occurred before the opening scene. Our solar system is like a “haunted house,” where billions of years ago, there was a vibrant, healthy main-sequence star right here, in this part of the galaxy. Perhaps it had planets orbiting it. Perhaps some of those planets harbored life. We’ll never know: the explosion wiped the slate clean, and “reset” the solar system for the iteration in which we live. The ghostly remnants of this time before our own still linger, in the very stuff we’re made from. This long-dead star fused hydrogen to build the carbon in our bodies, the iron in our blood, the oxygen we breathe, and the silicon in the rocks of our planet.

This is an incredible realization to embrace: everything you know, everything you trust, everything you are , is stardust.

Age of the solar system

So just when did all this happen? An estimate for the age of the solar system can be made using isotopes of the element lead (Pb). There are several isotopes of lead, but for the purposes of figuring out the age of the solar system, consider these four: 208 Pb, 207 Pb, 206 Pb, and 204 Pb.

208 Pb, 207 Pb, 206 Pb are all radiogenic: that is to say, they stable “daughter” isotopes that are produced from the radioactive “parent” isotopes. Each is produced from a different parent, at a different rate:

204 Pb is, as far as we know, non-radiogenic. It’s relevant to this discussion because it can serve as a ‘standard’ that can allow us to compare the other lead isotopes to one another. Just as if we wanted to compare the currencies of Namibia, Indonesia, and Chile, we might reference all three to the U.S. dollar. The dollar would serve as a standard of comparison, allowing us to better see the value of the Namibian currency relative to the Indonesian currency and the Chilean currency. That’s what 204 Pb is doing for us here.

This is a plot showing the modeled evolution of our three radiogenic lead isotopes relative to 204 Pb. It is constrained by terrestrial lead samples at the young end, and projected back in time in accordance with our measurements of how quickly these three isotopes of lead are produced by their radioactive parents. Of course, if we go back far enough in time, we run out of samples to evaluate. The Earth’s rock cycle has destroyed all its earliest rocks. They’ve been metamorphosed, or weathered, or melted – perhaps many times over! What would be really nice is to find some rocks from the early end of these curves – some samples that could verify these projections back in time are accurate.

Such samples do exist! But they are not from the Earth so much as “from the Earth’s starting materials.” If the nebular theory is correct, then a few leftover scraps of the planet’s starting materials are found in the solar system’s asteroids. Every now and again, bits of these space rocks fall to earth, and if they survive their passage through the atmosphere, we may be lucky enough to collect them, and analyze them. We call these space rocks “meteors” as they streak through the atmosphere, heating through friction and oxidizing as they fall. Those that make it all the way to Earth’s surface are known as “meteorites.” They can be often be distinguished by their scalloped fusion crust, as with this sample:

Meteorites come in several varieties, including rocky and metallic versions. It is very satisfying that when measurements of these meteorites’ lead isotopes are added to the plot above, they all fall exactly where our understanding of lead isotope production would have them: at the start of each of these model evolution curves. Each lead isotope system tells the same answer for the age of the Earth, acting like three independent witnesses corroborating one another’s testimony. And the answer they all give is 4.6 billion years ago (4.6 Ga). That’s what 208 Pb says. That’s what 207 Pb says. And that’s what 206 Pb says. They all agree, and they agree with the predicted curves based on terrestrial (Earth rock) measurements. This agreement gives us great confidence in this number. The Earth, and meteorites (former asteroids), and the solar system of which they are all a part, began about 4.6 billion years ago…

…But what came before that?

The implications of meteorites

In 1969, a meteorite fell through Earth’s atmosphere and broke up over Mexico. A great many pieces of this meteorite were recovered and made available for scientific analysis. It turned out to be a carbonaceous chondrite, the largest of its kind ever documented. It was named the Allende ( “eye-YEN-day” ) meteorite, for the tiny Chihuahuan village closest to the center of the area over which its fragments were scattered.

One of the materials making up Allende’s chondrules was the calcium feldspar called anorthite. Anorthite is an extraordinarily common mineral in Earth’s crust, but the Allende anorthite was different. For some reason, it has a large amount of magnesium in it. When geochemists determined what kind of magnesium this was, they were surprised to find that it was mostly 26 Mg, an uncommon isotope. The abundances of 25 Mg and 24 Mg were found to be about the same level as Earth rocks, but 26 Mg was elevated by about 1.3%.  And after all, magnesium doesn’t even “belong” in a feldspar. The chemical formula of anorthite is CaAl 2 Si 2 O 8 – there’s no “Mg” spot in there. Why was this odd 26 Mg in this chondritic anorthite?

One way to make 26 Mg is the break-down of radioactive 26 Al. The problem with this idea is that there is no 26 Al around today . It’s an example of an extinct isotope: an atom of aluminum so unstable that it falls apart extremely rapidly. The half-life is only 717,000 years. But because these chondrules condensed in the earliest days of the solar system, there may well have been plenty of 26 Al around at that point for them to incorporate. And Al, of course, is a key part of anorthite’s Ca Al 2 Si 2 O 8 crystal structure.

So the idea is that weird extra 26 Mg in the chondrule’s anorthite could be explained by suggesting it wasn’t always 26 Mg: Instead, it started off as 26 Al ,and it belonged in that crystal’s structure. However, over a short amount of time, it all fell apart, and that left the 26 Mg behind to mark where it had once been. If this interpretation is true, it has shocking implications for the story of our solar system.

To understand why, we first need to ask, what came before the nebula? What was the ‘pre-nebula’ situation? Where did the nebula come from, anyhow?

It turns out that nebulae are generated when old stars of a certain size explode.

These explosions are called supernovae (the plural of supernova). The “nova” part of the name comes from the fact that they are very bright in the night sky – an indication of how energetic the explosion is. They look like “new” stars to the casual observer. Nova is Latin for “new.” Supernovae occur when a star has exhausted its supply of lightweight fuel, and it runs out of small atoms that can be fused together under normal conditions. The outward-directed force ceases, and gravitationally-driven inward-directed forces suddenly dominate, collapsing the star in upon itself. This jacks up the pressures to unbelievably high levels, and is responsible for the nuclear fusion of big atoms. Every atom heavier than iron is made instantaneously in the fires of the supernova.

That suite of freshly-minted atoms included a bunch of unstable isotopes, 26 Al among them.

And here’s the kicker: If the 26 Al was made in a supernova, started decaying immediately, and yet enough was still around that a significant portion of it could be woven into the Allende chondrules’ anorthite, that implies a very short amount of time between the obliteration of our Sun’s predecessor, and the first moments of our own solar system. Specifically, the 717,000 year half-life of 26 Al suggests that this “transition between solar systems” played out in less than 5 million years, conceivably in only 2 million years.

That is very, very quickly.

In summary, the planet Earth is part of a solar system centered on the Sun. This solar system, with its star, its classical planets, its dwarf planets, and its “leftover” comets and asteroids, formed from a nebula full of elements in the form of gas and dust. Over time, these many very small pieces stuck together to make bigger concentrations of mass, eventually culminating in a star and a bunch of planets that orbit it. Asteroids (and asteroids that fall to Earth, called meteorites), are leftovers from this process. The starting nebula itself formed from the destruction of a previous star that had exploded in a supernova. The transition from the pre-Sun star to our solar system took place shockingly rapidly.

Further reading

Marcia Bjornerud’s book Reading the Rocks . Basic Books, 2005: 226 pages.

Jennifer A. Johnson (2019), “ Populating the periodic table: Nucleosynthesis of the elements ,” Science. 01 Feb 2019 : 474-478.

Lee, T., D. A. Papanastassiou, and G. J. Wasserburg (1976), Demonstration of 26 Mg excess in Allende and evidence for 26 Al , Geophysical Research Letters , 3(1), 41-44.

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Chapter Contents

• 1 In the beginning…
• 2 Nebular theory
• 3 A star is born
• 4 Age of the solar system
• 5 The implications of meteorites
• 7 Further reading

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That actually explain what's on your next test, nebular hypothesis, from class:, planetary science.

The nebular hypothesis is a widely accepted model explaining the formation of the Solar System, proposing that it originated from a rotating cloud of gas and dust called the solar nebula. This hypothesis connects various processes including differentiation, planet formation, and the dynamics of celestial bodies, all of which contribute to our understanding of planetary evolution and the characteristics of the Solar System.

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5 Must Know Facts For Your Next Test

• The nebular hypothesis suggests that the Solar System formed around 4.6 billion years ago from a cloud of gas and dust collapsing due to gravitational forces.
• As the solar nebula collapsed, it spun faster and flattened into a disk shape, with most material accumulating at the center to form the Sun.
• Planets formed from smaller particles within the protoplanetary disk through the process of accretion, leading to larger bodies over time.
• Differentiation occurs as these early planets cool, causing heavier materials to sink towards the center while lighter materials rise to form crusts.
• Despite its acceptance, the nebular hypothesis still faces unresolved questions regarding specific details of planet formation and variations in different planetary systems.

Review Questions

• The nebular hypothesis explains planet formation through the process of accretion within a rotating protoplanetary disk created from a collapsing solar nebula. As particles collided and stuck together, they gradually formed larger bodies called planetesimals. These planetesimals continued to collide and merge, eventually forming planets. The model helps us understand not just how planets formed but also their initial compositions and structures based on their positions within the disk.
• Differentiation plays a crucial role in shaping the internal structure of planets formed from the solar nebula. As these bodies accumulated mass and heat from radioactive decay and impact events, their materials began to melt. This melting allowed denser materials like metals to sink toward the core, forming a layered structure with a metallic core and silicate mantle. This process not only influences a planet's geology but also its magnetic field and tectonic activity, reflecting the history of its formation.
• Ongoing debates surrounding the nebular hypothesis highlight unresolved questions in planetary science such as variations in planet formation across different star systems and anomalies in specific planetary characteristics. For instance, observations suggest that some exoplanets have unusual orbits or compositions that challenge traditional models based on our Solar System. Researchers are actively exploring modifications to the nebular hypothesis and developing new models to explain these discrepancies, demonstrating that our understanding of planetary formation is still evolving.

Related terms

Solar Nebula Theory : A theoretical framework that describes how the Solar System formed from a giant cloud of gas and dust that collapsed under its own gravity.

Accretion : The process by which particles clump together to form larger bodies, leading to the formation of planets and other celestial objects.

Protoplanetary Disk : A rotating disk of dense gas and dust surrounding a young star, where planets form through processes like accretion and differentiation.

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• Astrochemistry
• Earth Science
• Intro to Astronomy
• Introduction to Geophysics
• Myth and Literature

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• DOI: 10.1177/007327538702500302
• Corpus ID: 143102219

The Nebular Hypothesis and the Evolutionary Worldview

• Published 1 September 1987
• Philosophy, Biology
• History of Science

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24 Citations

Theories of the origin of the solar system 1956- 1985, the correspondence of charles darwin, the source of solar energy, ca. 1840–1910: from meteoric hypothesis to radioactive speculations, worlds more or less: nineteenth-century ethno-astronomy and cosmologies of reference, "the murders in the rue morgue": edgar allan poe's evolutionary reverie, the intuitions of analogy in erasmus darwin’s poetics, commercial and sublime: popular astronomy lectures in nineteenth century britain, irish catholicism and science: from "godless colleges" to the celtic tiger, a history of the systems approach in geomorphology une histoire de l'approche systémique en géomorphologie, 88 references, darwinism and the argument from design: suggestions for a reevaluation, the universal gestation of nature: chambers'vestiges andexplanations, science and intellectual authority in mid-nineteenth century britain: robert chambers and vestiges of the natural history of creation, heaven and earth-the relation of the nebular hypothesis to geology, herschel in bedlam: natural history and stellar astronomy, a history of european thought in the nineteenth century, the origin of the origin revisited., the age of the earth controversy: beginnings to hutton, william herschel's early investigations of nebulae: a reassessment, xvi. astronomical observations relating to the construction of the heavens, arranged for the purpose of a critical examination, the result of which appears to throw some new light upon the organization of the celestial bodies, related papers.

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• > Robert Chambers and the Nebular Hypothesis

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Robert chambers and the nebular hypothesis.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

The role of Robert Chambers's anonymous Vestiges of the natural history of creation in popularizing evolutionary ideas establishes it as a significant work in the history of science even though its intrinsic scientific value is not great. Its fascinating subject, a universally applicable developmental hypothesis, piqued the curiosity of the nineteenth-century reading public. The clientele to whom the book especially appealed was not too concerned with errors in fact and unsupported generalizations, but instead was attracted by the smoothness of its literary style and the glibness of its pronouncements. These same characteristics caused it to be an anathema to both scientists and clergymen, who joined together to voice their disapproval; they agreed that the ideas in it were potentially harmful to those untrained in scientific procedures and unaware of the book's inherent religious heresies.

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• Volume 8, Issue 3
• Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie (a1)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087400014230

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Cosmogenesis (8) : The Nebular Hypothesis

Sequel of the preceding post Cosmogenesis (7) : The Date of the Creation

The Nebular Hypothesis

The ancient Babylonians had a different idea of how the world began. They believed that it had evolved rather than being created instantaneously. Assyrian inscriptions have been found which suggest that the cosmos evolved after the Great Flood and that the animal kingdom originated from earth and water. This idea was at least partially incorporated into a monotheist doctrine and found its way into the sacred texts of the Jews, neighbors and disciples of the Babylonians. It was also taken up by the early Ionian philosophers, including Anaximander and Anaximenes, and by the Stoics and atomists.

Democritus developed a theory that the world had originated from the void, a vast region in which atoms were swirling in a whirlpool or vortex. The heaviest matter was sucked into the center of the vortex and condensed to form the earth. The lightest matter was thrown to the outside where it revolved so rapidly that it eventually ignited to form the stars and planets. These celestial bodies, as well as the earth itself, were kept in position by centrifugal force. This concept admitted the possibility that the universe contained an infinite number of objects. It also anticipated the 19th century theory of the origin of the solar system, known as the nebular hypothesis, according to which a “primitive nebula” condensed to form the sun and planets.

The idea of universal evolution had a strong influence on classical thought and developed in various directions during Greek and Roman times. In the first century BC Lucretius extended the theories of atomism and evolution to cover every natural phenomenon [i] and argued that all living things originated from earth. Two centuries later, in his medical treatise On the Use of the Parts of the Body [ii] , the Greek physician Galen (Claudius Galenus) expressed the essentially Stoic view that matter is eternal and that even God is subject to the laws of nature: contrary to the literal interpretation of the Genesis story, he could not have “formed man from the dust of the ground”; he could only have shaped the dust according to the laws governing the behaviour of matter. The Church Fathers, who insisted that the Creation was instantaneous, rejected any sort of evolutionary theory; to them the ideas of the Stoics and atomists were heretical.

In the second half of the 16th century the idea of universal evolution began to be incorporated into the new system of scientific thought resulting from the work of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes and Newton. According to Descartes, for example, space consisted of “whirlpools” of matter whose motion was governed by the laws of physics. Newton, with his theory of universal attraction, was accused of having substituted gravitation for providence, for having replaced God’s spiritual influence on the cosmos by a material mechanism [iii] . A new view of the world had nevertheless been established, whereby the workings of the universe were subject not to the whim of the Almighty but to the laws of physics – it was an irreversible step.

The Descartes system of whirlpools.

In the 18th century Newtonian theory came to dominate astronomical theory. The scriptures could no longer account for the origin of the world but Newton’s “uncreated” universe was no more satisfactory from a philosophical point of view. Moreover, since the earth no longer had a privileged position in relation to other celestial bodies (as it had in a geocentric universe), why should it have been created first? Science had established a new order of creation: first the stars, then the sun and finally the earth.

In the mid-18th century it began to be assumed that the early universe had been filled with some elementary fluid, a primeval substance from which the various celestial bodies had progressively emerged – an idea deriving largely from the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. In his Prodromus Principiorum Rerum Naturalium (On the Principles of Natural Things), published in Germany in 1734, Swedenborg made the hypothesis that the planets, including the earth, had once been part of the sun and had separated themselves from it long ago; the solar system as a whole had originally been a nebula – like those we can now see in space – and the sun and the planets had only emerged as separate entities after a long period of evolution. It was therefore Swedenborg who first postulated what we now call the “nebular hypothesis”, although it is often attributed to Buffon.

In 1745, independently of Swedenborg, the French scientist had suggested ways in which celestial objects might have been formed and attempted to explain why all the planets orbited the sun in the same direction. According to Buffon the force that had created the solar system was the impact of a comet; this had thrown lumps of matter, which had been in the process of fusing with the sun, far enough from it not to be drawn back by its gravitational pull (this idea would be taken up again in the early 20th century by the English physicist James Jeans, but unsuccessfully). It is interesting to note that Buffon’s concept of opposing forces – centrifugal and gravitational – supports a myth which dates back to Heraclitus and parts of which are to be found in the Vedas: that of a great “pulsation”, a constant alternation in the balance between attraction and repulsion. Today’s astrophysicists reckon that these two forces coexist, in permanent opposition, in the solar system as well as in every galaxy.

The English scientist Thomas Wright published his major work, An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe, in 1750 and five years later completed his Universal Architecture (not published in his lifetime). His aim was nothing less than to reveal the Creator’s plan. Astronomy shows us what the universe looks like and determines our position within it but only religion, Wright argued, can give us a true picture of the Creation itself. He wanted to unify what we see through a telescope and what we know of the divine world of the Holy Trinity. The universe must therefore comprise a central region (the kingdom of God and the angels), a sphere surrounding that central kingdom (housing the sun and all the stars with their entourages of planets and living things) and a nebulous outer zone (the realm of the damned).

Despite its intention to reconcile science and religion, Wright’s work influenced rationalists like Herschel, Laplace and the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, whose Theory of the Heavens expressed a number of original ideas on cosmology. Kant applied the principles of Newtonian physics to the nebular hypothesis, giving it a consistency it had previously lacked. As far as the formation of the solar system (and of all other star systems) was concerned Kant had a grandiose vision of a primordial age when the infinite reaches of space were filled with matter, from which the planets and stars were formed. Dark and silent this veil of matter contained the seeds of the universe as we know it. Diderot’s Lettre sur les aveugles à l’usage de ceux qui voient (Note on the Blind for Those who See) of 1749 is a literary presentiment of this primeval state: “How many disfigured, misshapen worlds must have disintegrated and were perhaps being reformed and disintegrating again every second far away in space… where matter swirls and will continue to swirl in great masses until it has achieved a form in which it may survive.”

The French mathematician and astronomer, Pierre Simon, marquis de Laplace, defended the nebular hypothesis even more strongly than Kant, supporting it with mathematical reasoning as well as with reference to celestial mechanics. He proved that our solar system and other planetary and lunar systems were the result of nebulous masses acting in accordance with natural laws, as were the movements of those planets and moons and their relative sizes and distances from each other. Laplace derived his concept of a “primitive nebula” from the observations of astronomers such as Charles Messier and William Herschel, who had used the latest telescopes to catalogue hundreds of nebulous bodies. Some of these appeared to consist not of masses of stars but of clouds of opaque matter, which Laplace concluded must condense into stars. A man who constantly proclaimed, “I do not make hypotheses”, Laplace went on to make the most sensational hypothesis of the century: that the solar system had originated from a primitive nebulosity, a flat disc of slowly rotating matter, which had coalesced into lumps as it contracted and cooled. First its core had formed into a fireball (the infant sun) from which “wisps” of gas had escaped and quickly formed into rings surrounding the core; these rings, initially revolving in ellipses, then broke up into lumps, which condensed into young planets, emerging shining from their misty cocoon.

To believers in the Creation Laplace’s hypothesis was just another form of atheism, since it displaced God from His position as Creator of the stars, and opponents of the theory were delighted when telescopes revealed that some nebulosities were in fact clusters of stars: surely the same was true of all nebulae and it was only a matter of time before more powerful telescopes would prove the fact. The nebular hypothesis therefore remained unsubstantiated until the advent of spectroscopy, which allowed the light emitted by stars to be analyzed. In 1814 the German physicist Joseph von Fraunhofer discovered that the spectrum of a hot gas was broken up by dark lines (now known as Fraunhofer’s lines), caused by chemical elements in the gas. During the 1860s astronomers like Angelo Secchi in Italy and William Huggins in England undertook a systematic study of star spectra, thereby founding the discipline of astrochemistry. Like for the spectra of terrestrial objects, those of celestial objects reveal not only the presence of chemical elements, but also whether the object is solid or gaseous.

Many nebulae were thus proven to be enormous clouds of gas: no telescope, however powerful, would ever show them to consist of stars. Some of them even had a bright central point, indicating that a star was in the process of formation. The publication in the late 19th century of observations by the Irish astronomer William Parsons and by the Dane Heinrich Louis d’Arrest, accompanied by detailed drawings of nebulae, finally confirmed Laplace’s theory and established the nebular hypothesis as part of accepted cosmogony. It also proved to be a major contribution to physics, since it explained a number of the processes of star formation in terms of thermodynamics.

Scientists in various other fields of research dealt further blows to the traditional Creation myth: Darwin, of course, with his theory of evolution, but also archaeologists and philologists, who were studying ancient monuments and hieroglyphs. Historians such as Oppert, Rawlinson and Smith [iv] had succeeded in deciphering the inscriptions found in the great library of Assurbanipal (Sardanapalus) at Nineveh and an account of a deluge in the Epic of Gilgamesh appeared to be the source not only of the Babylonian myths but also of the story of the Great Flood in the bible. Genesis could therefore no longer be considered a reliable account of the Creation, as revealed to Moses by God Himself; it had become just one of many stories about the origin of the world, all of which had been influenced by various cultures and reflected the scientific knowledge of the people who had first conceived and recounted them.

[i] De Natura Rerum, book V.

[ii] De UsuPartium Corporis Humani, 11.14.

[iii] On this controversy see for example McCosh, The Religious Aspect of Evolution, New York, 1890, pp. 103-04.

[iv] George Smith, Chaldean Account of Genesis, New York, 1876, pp. 74-75.

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I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon — the unimaginable universe. Jorge luis Borges, The Aleph (1949)

Auguste Comte and the Nebular Hypothesis

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• Silvan S. Schweber  

Part of the book series: Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idées / International Archives of the History of Ideas ((ARCH,volume 118))

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Although acknowledged as influential and seminal, Auguste Comte, except for the usual mention of the law of three stages, has not received the attention he merits during the present century. 1 He tends to be considered a social scientist by historians and he is usually studied because of his influence on J. S. Mill, Spencer, Marx and the development of the social sciences. 2 Many of his most interesting and original methodological insights have remained unexplored because they fall between the usual fields of investigation. Few historians of science have accepted Tannery’s evaluation that

The synthetic exposition of the mathematical, physical and natural sciences, given by A. Comte in his Cours de Philosophie Positive , constitutes a historical document of invaluable importance on the state of the sciences and of scientific ideas at the beginning of the XIXth century. 3

Since Comte is an “outsider”, and in the shadow of Cabanis, Bichat, Cuvier, de Blainville, Larmarck, G. St. Hilaire, most investigations of the internal history of the biological sciences of that period have neglected him. There exists no modern study which assesses Comte’s contribution to evolutionary scientific thought. 4 Yet as I shall show his influence was considerable. 5

The article is dedicated to Frank with great respect and much affection. It was written in 1980 and owes much to his writings and to his encouragement.

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Spencer, Herbert

Jean Gayon, History and Philosophy of Biology: A New Synthesis

Complicating the Story of Popular Science: John Maynard Smith’s “Little Penguin” on The Theory of Evolution

See for example the bibliography on August Comte for Chapter VI in F. Manuel: The Prophets of Paris , Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962 and that given by

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L. Laudan: August Comte , in C. C. Gillispie (ed.), Dictionary of Scientific Biography , 9 Vol. New York: Scribner 1970–75 and

P. Arbousse-Bastide: La doctrine de l’éducation universelle dans la philosophie d’Auguste Comte 2 Vol. Paris, 1957.

See for example R. Aron, Main Currents in Sociological Thought , Vol. I NY: Doubleday Anchor Book 1968. See also the introduction to

G. Lenzer (ed.), Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings , NY: Harper Torchbooks 1975 and P. Arnaud, Sociologie de Comte , Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1969.

P. Arnaud, La Pensée d’Auguste Comte , Paris: Bordas 1969.

J. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests , Boston: Beacon Press 1971.

Paul Tannery: Comte et l’histoire des sciences : Revue générale des sciences XVI (1905), pp. 410–417.

George Sarton: “Auguste Comte, Historian of Science” Osiris X, (1952) pp. 328–357.

R. Mourge, La Philosophie Biologique d’Auguste Comte , Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelles et de Médicine Légale — Winter 1909 is the most complete statement to date!

For example, for the impact of Comte on Darwin in 1838, see

S. S. Schweber, “The Origin of the Origin Revisited” J. Hist. Biology 10, No. 2, (1977) pp. 219–316.

The Procès-Verbaux des Séances de l’Académie des Sciences, Institut de France , Tome X, Années 1832–1835 records on p. 650 that at the Séance of Monday, Jan. 26, 1835 M. Aug. Comte read a Mémoire entitled: Cosmogonie primitive ou vérification de l’hypothèse de Herschell et de Laplace sur la formation de notre système planétaire ; on p. 653 the Procès-Verbaux records that at the Séance of Monday, Feb. 2, 1835 M. Aug. Comte finished the reading of his Mémoire and that M. Arago, Savari and Libri would examine this Mémoire. L’Institut , Vol. 90, Jan. 28, 1835 carried on pp. 31–33 an abstract of the Mémoire. The full text of the Mémoire is reprinted in Auguste Comte: Écrits de Jeunesse 1816–1828 Suivis du Mémoire sur la Cosmogonie de Laplace 135. Textes établis et presentés par Paulo E. de Berrêdo Carneiro et Pierre Arnaud, Paris: Archives Positivistes 1970.

C. C. Person: Précis Analytique des Travaux de l’Académie Royale des Sciences , Belles-Lettres et Arts de Rouen 1835, pp. 51–2.

August Comte: Cours de Philosophie Positive

Tome Premier: Les préliminaires généraux et la philosophie mathematique Paris: Bachelier, 1830.

Tome Deuxieme: La philosophie astronomiqe et la philosophie de la physique Paris: Bachelier, 1835.

An “anastaltic” reimpression of all of Comte’s writing was reissued in Paris in 1971. This is the edition we shall refer to. Oeuvres d’August Comte : Paris: Editions 12 Vols. Anthropos 1969–1971.

David Brewster’s review of the Cours de Philosophie Positive par M. Auguste Comte, 2 Tome, 8 Vol. Paris 1830–35, appeared as the unsigned Art 1 in the July 1838 issue of the Edinburgh Review Vol. LXVII, No. CXXXVI, pp. 271–308.

Robert Chambers: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation , London: Churchill, 1844. Reprinted with an introduction by Sir Gavin de Beer. Leicester: University Press 1969, New York: Humanities Press 1969.

J. Babinet: Comptes Rendus Acad. Sci. (Paris) 52, 481. See also his Etudes et lectures sur les sciences d’observation et leurs application pratiques , Paris: Mallet-Bechelier 1865 Vol. VII, pp. 105–107.

Larry Laudan: Towards a reassessment of Comte’s “Methode Positive” Philosophy of Science 37 (1970), pp. 35–53. This valuable investigation of Comte’s methodology is “ahistorical” and “does not consider what … is probably a profound debt on Comte’s part to his predecessors in these matters”. It is successful in making “clear that Comte’s theory of scientific method deserves to be analysed rather more carefully than historians of philosophy of science have hitherto recognized”.

For an extensive bibliography on this subject see Robert Young: The Historiographie and Ideological Contexts of the Nineteenth-Century Debate on Man’s Place in Nature in Changing Perspectives in the History of Science: Essays in Honour of Joseph Needham , M. Teich and R. Young (eds.), London: Heineman, 1973.

Henri Gouhier: La Vie d’Auguste Comte 1e edition Paris: Gallimard 1931.

Henri Gouhier: La Vie d’Auguste Comte 2e edition Paris: Librairie Philosophie J. Vrin 1965 is the only modern biography of A. Comte. For Comte’s early life and his intellectual development

Henri Gouhier: La jeunesse d’Auguste Comte et la formation du Positivisme , 3 volumes, I: Sous le Signe de la Liberté , Paris: 1933.

Henri Gouhier: La jeunesse d’Auguste Comte et la formation du Positivisme , 3 volumes, II: Saint-Simon Jusqu’à la Restauration 1e edition Paris: 1936

Henri Gouhier: La jeunesse d’Auguste Comte et la formation du Positivisme , 3 volumes, II: Saint-Simon Jusqu’à la Restauration 2e edition Paris: 1964

Henri Gouhier: La jeunesse d’Auguste Comte et la formation du Positivisme , 3 volumes, III: August Comte et Saint-Simon , Paris: 1941

are important and valuable. All three volumes were published by the Librarie Philosophique J. Vrin. See also Pierre Ducassé: Essai sur l’origine Intuitive du Positivisme , Paris: 1940. Older, and biased, biographies are those of E. Littré: Auguste Comte et la Philosophie Positive , Paris 1877

G. Audiffrent: Auguste Comte: Notice sur sa vie et sa doctrine , Paris: Ritti 1894. See also George Dumas: Psychologie de deux messies positivistes: Saint Simon et Auguste Comte , Paris: 1900.

There has been a renewed interest in Comte and the French Utopians, through F. Manuel’s important writings. See in particular F. Manuel: The Prophets of Paris , Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. Press 1962.

A useful overview is also given in F. A. Hayek: The Counter-Revolution of Science — Studies on the Abuse of Reason , Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press 1952.

Henri Gouhier: La jeunesse d’Auguste Comte et la formation du Positivisme , 1933, Vol. I, Chapter 1, pp. 31–61

Henri Gouhier: La jeunesse d’Auguste Comte et la formation du Positivisme , 1933, Vol. I, pp. 78–92, see also in Tome XII of Oeuvres d’Auguste Comte — Anastaltic Reimpression in 1971 of the 1856 edition of the Synthese Subjective , pp. LV–LXVI, the Dedicace.

Lettres d’Auguste Comte à M. Valat, Paris: Dunod 1870, pp. 1–21

Henri Gouhier: La jeunesse d’Auguste Comte et la formation du Positivisme , 1933, Vol. I, pp. 117–120.

His attachment to the Polytechnique is already in evidence in 1816 in the note which Comte presented to Lefebvre asking for his resignation: Sir: Though it is painful for us to take such a step toward an old pupil of the Ecole, we enjoin you not to set foot in it again

Recall the famous introduction to Volume VI of the Cours . His letters are replete with examples; e.g. see Comte’s letters to John Stuart Mill during 1845 in which he vents his wrath against Herschel, Sedgwick, and Arago among others. Lettres Inedites de John Stuart Mill à Auguste Comte publiés avec les réponses de Comte et une introduction , par L. Levy-Bruhl, Paris: Felix Alcan 1894, pp. 468–474. See also his letters to various officials of the Polytechnique in Vol. 4 of Correspondence Inédites d’Auguste Comte , Paris: 1903. All of Comte’s correspondence is being issued in a three volume edition. The correspondence to March 1845 has appeared Auguste Comte: Correspondence Générale et Confessions Tome I — 1814–1840 Paris (1973).Tome II — avril 1841 – mars 1845 Paris (1975). Textes établis et présentes par Paulo E. de Berredo Carniero et Pierre Arnaud, Paris: Archives Positivistes.

Henri Gouhier: La jeunesse d’Auguste Comte et la formation du Positivisme , 1941, Vol. III, pp. 234–235. Comte’s source for much of his history of astronomy was J. B. Delambre: Histoire de l’Astronomie Moderne , 2 Vols. Paris 1821. A facsimile of this 1821 edition with a new introduction and table of contents by I. Bernard Cohen was issued by Johnson Reprint Corp. N.Y. 1969 as Vol. 25 in their “The Sources of Sciences”.

Henri Gouhier: La jeunesse d’Auguste Comte et la formation du Positivisme , 3 volumes, I: Sous le Signe de la Liberté , Paris: 1933, p. 109. See also Vol. 4, p. 143 of Correspondance Inédite d’August Comte , Paris: Au Siege de la Société Positiviste 1904, 4 volumes, for the letter Comte wrote in 1830 to Cuvier when he sent him the first lecture of the Cours de philosophie positive that he was delivering at the Athénee. “L’acceuil bienveillant que vous avec daigné faire, il a cinq ans, à la première partie de mon Système de politique positive m’en hardit a vous soumettre ce nouveau travail”

See the letters he wrote on that occasion to Dulong, Coriolis, Flourens, and Poinsot requesting their support Correspondance Inédite d’August Comte , Vol. 4, pp. 162–175 and that to the President of the Academie formally applying for the position on pp. 175–181 of the same volume.

See e.g. the letter Comte wrote to the President of the Académie. Correspondance Inédite d’August Comte , Vol. 4, pp. 198–206. The theme is repeated often thereafter see Correspondance Générale , v. I, p. 267, letter to General Bernard, Sept. 1836. Correspondance Générale , v. I, p. 345, letter to the President of the Académie.

The history of Comte’s attempts at obtaining a position at the Polytechnique is reviewed in Gouhier: La Vie Chapter X, pp. 149–164. Chapter XI, pp. 165–175. Audiffrent: A. Comte , Chapter IV, pp. 39–55. Littré: A. Comte , Chapters IV and VIII. For the 1844–45 episode see also Comte’s account in his letters to Mill during 1945 and 1846. Levy-Bruhl (ed.), Lettres Inédites .

Henri Gouhier: La jeunesse d’Auguste Comte et la formation du Positivisme , 1933, Vol. I, p. 68.

Paul Arbousse-Bastide: La doctrine de l’éducation universelle dans la philosophie d’Auguste Comte , 2 Vols., Paris: 1957.

Auguste Comte: Ecrits de Jeunesse 1816–1828. Texte etablis et presentés par Paulo E. de Berredo Cameiro et Pierre Arnaud, Paris: 1970. Its third edition appeared as the Appendice général to Comte’s Système de politique positive of 1854 .

Auguste Comte: Ecrits de Jeunesse 1816, p. 268.

Auguste Comte: Ecrits de Jeunesse 1816, p. 269.

Larry Laudan: Towards a reassessment of Comte’s “Methode Positive” Philosophy of Science 37 (1970),, p. 37.

Comte: Cours .

Traité refers to A Comte: Traité Philosophique d’Astronomie Populaire , Paris: Carilian-Goeury et Dalmont, 1844. The first part of the Traité, pp. 1–108, was entitled Discours Préliminaire sur l’Esprit Positif . This material was published separately by Comte in 1845 as the Discours sur l’Esprit Positif.

J. S. Mill: Auguste Comte and Positivism , 2nd ed., London 1866, pp. 14–15.

In 1828 Comte has reviewed Broussais’s Sur l’Irritation in the Nouveau Journal de Paris , 4–11 August 1828. The review is reprinted in the Ecrits de Jeunesse, p. 399.

Comte: Cours III, pp. 261–263. See also the discussion of Broussais’s hypothesis in the eighth edition of Mill’s A System of Logic , Chapter XIV: Of the limits to the Explanation of Laws of Nature. Mill’s attention was drawn to Broussais by his reading of Comte. The material is reprinted in John Stuart Mill’s Philosophy of Scientific Method edited with an Introduction by E. Nagel, NY: Hagner, 1950, p. 266.

Herbert Spencer: The Nebular Hypothesis , The Westminster Review, July 1858 reprinted, with an Addenda in Herbert Spencer: Essays: Scientific, Political and Speculative New York: Appleton and Co. 1891.

Fourier, Joseph: Éloge Historique de Sir William Herschel Histoire de l’Academie Royale des Sciences de l’Institut de France, Vol. 6, 1823, p. lxi.

Pierre Simon Marquis de Laplace: Exposition Du Système Du Monde , 5e edition, revue et augmentée par l’auteur, Paris: Librairie Bachelier Janvier 1824. Unless otherwise stated, our quotations are from the English translation of this edition made by Henry Harte. M. le Marquis de Laplace, The System of the World , translated from the French by the Rev. Henry H. Harte, F.T.C.D. M.R.I.A., 2 Vol., Dublin: Longman, Reves, Orme, Brown and Green 1830.

Laplace was at work revising the fifth edition at the time of his death. Some of his notes and changes were found but were not incorporated into the sixth edition issued in 1827 and 1835, which in addition to the text of the 5th contained the eulogies delivered at Laplace’s funeral and a “Notice sur la vie et l’ouvrage de l’auteur” in the Oeuvres de Laplace , Paris: Imprimerie Royale 1843–1847. The Exposition is that of the sixth edition as issued by Bachelier in 1835 and is reprinted in Vol. VI.

Pierre-Simon Laplace: Exposition du Système du Monde Paris: Bachelier, Janvier 1824 5th ed., Harte translation, Vol. 2, p. 354.

An accurate and valuable account of the nebular hypothesis in the first third of the nineteenth century is given in P. J. Lawrence: The Central Heat of the Earth , The Relation of the Nebular Hypothesis to Geology 1811–1840 Ph.D. dissertation Harvard University, 1973. Chapter I: Background, pp. 1–13 reviews the various editions of the Exposition . I thank Prof. S. Gould for making available to me a copy of this work. A detailed comparison of the various editions of the Exposition is given in S. L. Jaki: “The Five Forms of Laplace’s Cosmogony”, Am. J. Physics 44 (1976), pp. 4–11. After the completion of my manuscript two other works dealing with the history of the nebular hypothesis in the first half of the nineteenth century have come to my attention: Ronald C. Numbers: Creation by Natural Law: Laplace’s Nebular Hypothesis in American Thought , Seattle: University of Washington Press 1977 and the stimulating article by Merleau-Ponty: Hypothèse Cosmogonique chez Laplace , Rev. Hist. Sci. XXIX (1976), pp. 21–49.

Pierre-Simon Laplace: Exposition du Système du Monde , Paris: Bachelier, Janvier 1824, 5th edition, Harte translation, Vol. 2, p. 327.

Pierre-Simon Laplace: Exposition du Système du Monde , Paris: L’an IV de Republique Française (1796), 5th edition, Harte translation, Vol. 2, pp. 327–328.

Recall that Buffon in his Histoire Naturelle , (Paris, 1749), had already computed the probability (or rather the improbability) that the observed uniformities of the planets’ motion were due to chance.

Pierre-Simon Laplace: Exposition du Système du Monde , 5e edition, Paris: Bachelier, Janvier 1824., pp. 296–297.

Pierre-Simon Laplace: Exposition du Système du Monde , revue et augmentée par l’auteur, 2e edition, Paris: Imprimerie de Crapelet, 1799. M. Laplace: Exposition du Système du Monde , Troisieme Edition, Paris: Courcier, 1808.

Pierre-Simon Laplace: Exposition du Système du Monde , 4e edition, Paris: Courcier, 1813. Pierre-Simon Laplace: Exposition du Système du Monde , 5e edition, Paris: Bachelier, Janvier 1824.

William Herschel: Observations Relating to the Constructions of the Heavens , Philosophical Transactions CI (1811), pp. 269–336. This paper is reprinted in The Scientific Papers of Sir William Herschel, J. L. E. (ed.), (London: 1912). An abbreviated version can be found in M. A. Hoskin: William Herschel and the Construction of the Heavens, London: Oldbourne, 1963, pp. 133–150.

Buffon: Histoire Naturelle , tome premier, pp. 127–167.

Kant: Universal Natural History and the Theory of the Heavens , see W. Hastle, translator, Kant’s Cosmogony, revised and edited with an introduction and appendix by Willy Ley, NY: Greenwood Publ. Corp., N.Y. 1968.

See Dreyer: The Scientific Papers of William Herschel , where these papers are reprinted.

Lalande had visited Herschel in 1788 and must have become acquainted with his observations on the nebulae and his speculations about them. The events of the French Revolution — and Laplace’s difficulty with English — made access to the Philosophical Transactions and other British scientific journals difficult. For some time after 1789 however, the Journal des Savans until 1791, and the Connaissance du Terns from 1792 on carried Lalande’s articles on l’Histoire de l’Astronomie , for the various years during which scientific contact with foreign countries was interrupted. The Connaissance also carried resumes of the content of the Philosophical Transactions for the years these were not available in France. Thus the Connaissance des Tems for 1795 reported the discoveries by Herschel of the sixth and seventh satellites of Neptune, his observations on the rings of Saturn and “on nebulous stars properly so called”. Moreover Bode’s Jahrbuch carried summaries of all of Herschel’s papers. However, Herschel’s important 1791 paper was only reported in Bode’s Jahrbuch for 1801.

The letter is quoted in C. Lubbock: The Herschel Chronicle: The Life Story of William Herschel and his Sister Caroline Herschel , Cambridge UK, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1933, p. 199.

W. Herschel: On the Proper Motion of the Sun and Solar System , Philosophical Transactions, 1783, p. 247. See also Bode’s Jahrbuch, 1787, p. 194, p. 224.

Laplace: Exposition , 1st edition, p. 297. The English translation of the Exposition which appeared in 1809 P. S. Laplace: The System of the World translated from the French by J. Pond, 2 Vol., London: Phillips, 1809 has the following statement: Many observations are sufficiently well explained by supposing the solar system carried towards the constellation Hercules, Vol. 2, p. 371.

See H. Andoyer: L’Oeuvre Scientifique de Laplace , Paris: Payot, 1922, pp. 70–71. See also Laplace: Traité de Mechanique Céleste , Livre VIII.

Quoted in Maurice Crosland: The Society of Arcueil — A View of French Science at the Time of Napoleon , Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. Press, p. 274.

J. P. Sidgwick: William Herschel Explorer of the Heavens , London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1954, pp. 165–166. Sidgwick quotes Herschel’s comments that Laplace’s “lady received company abed, which to those who are not used to it appears very remarkable”.

C. Lubbock: The Herschel Chronicle: The Life Story of William Herschel and his Sister Caroline Herschel , Cambridge UK, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1933, p. 310 indicates that cosmogony was discussed during Herschel’s visit with Laplace and Rumford to Napoleon’s country estate. In fact Herschel comments in his diary that Napoleon was more pleased with his views than Laplace’s — because the Emperor wanted greater indications of the role of the Deity in the operation of Nature than Laplace’s “chain of natural causes” which “would account for the construction and preservation of the wonderful system”.

Pierre-Simon Laplace: Exposition du Système du Monde , Paris: Courcier, 1813, 4th edition, pp. 431–2.

Quoted in Hoskins, p. 115.

Pierre-Simon Laplace: Exposition du Système du Monde , Paris: Courcier, 1813, 431–2 Harte translation, Vol. 2.

Pierre-Simon Laplace: Exposition du Système du Monde , Paris: Courcier, 1813, 1st edition, p. 297. The System of the World translated from the French by J. Pond, 2 Vol., London 1809, Vol. 2, p. 365. Pond translates the passage as Which I offer with that distrust which everything ought to inspire that is not the result of observation or calculation.

Pierre-Simon Laplace: Exposition du Système du Monde , Paris: Courcier, 1813, Harte translation, Vol. 2, p. 328.

P. S. le Marquis Laplace: Theorie Analytique des Probabilités , Revue et Augmentée par l’auteur: Paris Courcier, 3e ed., 1820. The quoted statement actually already appears in the 1814 edition, the 2nd edition. For a stimulating and insightful discussion of the relation of Laplace’s cosmogonic work to his researches in the theory probability and to his philosophy of science see J. Merleau-Ponty: Hypothèses Cosmogoniques Chez Laplace , Revue Hist. Science XXIX (1976), pp. 21–49.

P. S. Laplace: A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities , translated from the Sixth French Edition by F. W. Truscott and F. L. Emory with an introductory note by E. T. Bell, NY: Dover Publications 1951, p. 102. The sixth edition is identical to the fifth in this passage.

Pierre-Simon Laplace: Exposition du Système du Monde , Paris: Courcier, 1813, Vol. II, p. 365.

The relation of the Nebular Hypothesis to Geology from 1811 to 1840 has been carefully researched by P. J. Lawrence: The Central Heat of the Earth Ph.D. dissertation (Harvard, 1973).

C. Fourier: Sur le Refroidissement Seculaire du Globe Terreste . Bulletin des Sciences par la Societé Philomatique de Paris, 1820, p. 58.

P. J. Lawrence: The Central Heat of the Earth Ph.D. dissertation 1973.

Constance A. Lubbock: The Herschel Chronicle , Cambridge 1933, p. 197.

Constance A. Lubbock: The Herschel Chronicle , p. 197.

Laplace: Exposition , Harte translation, Vol. 2, pp. 332–333.

See for example Henry Lord Brougham FRS: Dissertations on Subjects of Science connected with Natural Theology, London: Knight, 1839.The sceptical, or free-thinking, philosophers always lowered human nature as much as possible. They regarded it as something gained to their arguments against belief, if they could show the difference to be slighter than is supposed between men and brutes; and that there is a chain of being from the plant, nay almost from inorganic matter, up to man. They seem to have had a confused idea that this helped them even to account for the constitution of the universe, “without the hypothesis of a Deity” as Laplace is said to have termed it when Napoleon questioned him on the remarkable omission in the ‘Mécanique Celeste’.

Note the conflation! See also Augustus de Morgan: A Budget of Paradoxes , 2 Vol., Chicago: The Open Court Pub, 1915, Vol. II, pp. 1–2. For another association of Laplace with atheism see p. 17 of Vol. I of Thomas Chalmers: The Bridgewater Treatises on the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God, as Manifested in the Creation , Treatise I: The Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man, 2 Vol.

J. Herschel: Address to the Royal Astronomical Society, Feb. 13, 1829 reprinted in J. F. Herschel: Essays from the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews with Addresses and Other Pieces , London: Longman 1857, pp. 513–14.

Quoted in J. P. Nichol: State of Discovery and Speculation Concerning The Nebulae, Westminster Review 25 (1836), pp. 390–409. See p. 405.

Herschel: Essays , pp. 469–470.

G. Airy: “The History and Present Knowledge of Nebulae”, Monthly Notices Roy. Astr. Soc. III (1836), pp. 167–174 or Memoirs Roy. Astr. Soc. IX (1836), pp. 303–312. It is interesting to note that Airy attributes the evolutionary metaphor to Laplace rather than to William Herschel, its proper source.

That story has often and ably been told in recent years. See Charles C. Gillispie: Genesis and Geology , A Study in the Relations of Scientific Thought, Natural Theology, and Social Opinion in Great Britain 1790–1850, Cambridge Mass: 1951, reprinted NY: Harper Torchbooks, 1959. John C. Greene: The Death of Adam , Evolution and Its Impact on Western Thought, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1959. Francis C. Haber: The Age of the World , Moses to Darwin, Baltimore: John Hopkins Univ. Press, 1959. R. Hooykaas: The Principle of Uniformity in Geology, Biology, and Theology , Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1963. M. J. S. Rudwick: The Meaning of Fossils , Episodes in the History of Paleontology, London: MacDonald or NY: American Elsevier, 1972. Peter J. Bowler: Paleontology and the Idea of Progressive Evolution in the Nineteenth Century , New York: Science History Publications, 1976.

W. Whewell: Astronomy and General Physics considered with reference to Natural Theology, London: Pickering 1833, p. 185.

J. P. Nichol: State of Discovery and Speculation Concerning the Nebulae , Westminster Review 25 (1836), pp. 390–409.

Walter Cannon: The Problem of Miracles in the 1830’s , Victorian Studies, IV (1960), pp. 5–32.

Walter F. Cannon: “The Impact of Uniformitariarism”: Two letters from John Herschel to Charles Lyell, 1836–1837, Proc. Am. Phil. Soc. , 105 (1961), pp. 301–314. Part of the 1836 letter was made public in the Proc. Geological Society of 1837 and in Charles Babbage’s: Ninth Bridgewater Treatise 1837.

John Pringle Nichol was a prolific and successful writer popularizing science. His principal works were Views of the Architecture of the Heavens in a Series of Letters to a Lady — Edinburgh, 1838. Phenomena and Order of the Solar System , Edinburgh: Tait, 1838, 1844, 1847., Thoughts on Some Important Points Relating to the System of the World , Edinburgh: W. Tait, 1846. First American edition: enlarged and revised, Boston and Cambridge: Munroe, 1848. Contemplation on the Solar System , Edinburgh: Johnstone, 1844. Other titles of books by Nichol were The Planetary System, The Stellar Universe, The Planet Neptune . Another popular work by Nichol was his Illustrations of the History and Structure of the Earth , Edinburgh: Tait, 1839. The American edition of Views of the Architecture of the Heavens appeared in 1840 and was published by Chapin in New York. To this edition were added notes and glossary, etc. by the American publishers. The publications of all his books in American editions and his visit to the United States in 1848–9 undoubtedly were important factors in the popularity of the Nebular Hypothesis there. See Numbers’ Creation by Natural Law .

The relation between religious beliefs and attitudes toward certain scientific tenets has come under ever greater scrutiny in recent years. See in particular Walter Cannon: The Problem of Miracles in the 1830’s , Victorian Studies R. Hooykaas: The Principle of Uniformity in Geology , Biology and Theology. An important recent study is that of J. H. Brooke: “Natural Theology and the Plurality of Worlds: Observations on the Brewster-Whewell Debate”, Annals of Science 34 (1977), pp. 221–286. An interesting study with a somewhat narrower focus and of relevance to the present study is P. Baxter: Natural Law vs. Divine Miracle , The Scottish Evangelical Response to the “Vestiges” (to be published). I thank Mr. Baxter for a copy of his paper.

For example the retrograde motion of two of the satellites of Uranus See J. Herschel: “On the Satellites of Uranus”, Roy. Ast. Society III , No. 5 (1834), pp. 35–37. These are already noted in the first edition of Nichol’s “Views of the Architecture of the Heavens” in 1838.

M. Millhausen: Just Before Darwin, Robert Chambers and Vestiges , Middletown Conn: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1959. R. Hooykaas: “The Parallel Between the History of the Earth and the History of the Animal World”, Arch. Int. His. Sci. 10 (1957), pp. 3–18. R. Hooykaas: The Principle of Uniformity . R. Young: The Historiographic and Ideological Contexts of the Nineteenth Century Debate on Man’s Place in Nature . M. J. S. Hodge: “The Universal Gestation of Nature: Chambers’ Vestiges and Explanations”, J. Hist. Bio. V (1972), pp. 127–152. F. N. Egerton: “Refutations and Conjecture: Darwin’s Response to Sedgwick’s Attack on Chambers”, Studies in History and Phil, of Science , (1970), pp. 176–183.

Charles Darwin: The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859) 6th edition, with additions and corrections, London: Murray 1895, p. xvii.

W. Whewell: The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences founded upon their History, 2 Vol., London: Parker 1840.

W. Whewell: The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences founded upon their History, London: Parker 1840, Vol. II, p. 95. See also W. Whewell: The History of the Inductive Sciences , 3 Vol., London: Parker 1837, Vol. 3, p. 481.

W. Whewell: The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences founded upon their History, London: Parker 1840, Vol. 2, pp. 133–134.

W. Whewell: The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences founded upon their History, London: Parker 1840, Vol. 1, p. 135.

See Comte’s Preface to his Traité d’Astronomie Populaire , p. v. See also Comte’s letter to the President de l’Association Polytechnique dated Dec 1830 in Correspondence Inedites d’Auguste Comte , Paris 1904, Vol. 4, pp. 144–145. For a more detailed history of Comte’s lectures on Cours d’Astronomie Populaire and its role in Comte’s fight with the “pedantocracy” see Paul Arbousse – Bastide: La Doctrine de l’Education Universelle dans la Philosophie d’Auguste Comte , Tome 1, p. 164ff.

A. Comte: Traité Philosophique d’Astronomie Populaire , Paris: Carillian-Goeury et Dalmont, 1844.

Lévy-Bruhl: Lettres Inedites de J. S. Mill et A. Comte avec les Responses de Comte , Paris 1899. Letter from Comte to Mill dated August 8, 1845 see p. 469.

B. de Fontenelle: Entretients pur la Pluralités des Mondes (1686) . See also L. M. Marsak: B. de Fontenelle: The Idea of Science in the French Enlightenment. Trans. Am. Phil. Soc. 49 (1959), Part 7.

Upon receiving a copy of the Traité, Mill wrote Comte that he thought that he had succeeded admirably in this task. In the same letter Mill points out that Herschel had written a popular treatise on Astronomy: “but in this treatise one does even try to make use of such memorable conquests of the human intelligence to investigate the manner in which it should proceed in order to make new ones”. Complete works of J. S. Mill , Vol. XIII, Mill to Comte, 25 Nov. 1844, pp. 646–647.

Fourier: Eloge, Laplace. Memoire de l’Institut de France.

Comte: Ecrits de Jeunesse , p. 585–608, hereafter abbreviated as PMCP.

The Procès-Verbaux des Seances de l’Academie des Sciences, Institut de France, Vol. X, 1835, p. 650, detailing the Session of the 19th of January, contains the following note: M. Aug. Comte lit un Mémoire entitulé: Cosmogonie primitive ou verification de l’hypothèse d’Herschell et de Laplace sur la formation de notre system planétaire. Page 653, the record of the session of the 26th of Jan. records: M. Aug. Comte termine la lecture de son Mémoire entitulé Cosmogonie primitive ou verification de l’hypothèse d’Herschell … M. M. Arago, Savary et Libri examineront ce Mémoire. The actual text of the Memoire as reprinted in Ecrits de Jeunesse contains a closing date of October 10, 1834. The P.S. was thus added at a later date.

L’Institut 90 (1835), pp. 31–33.

Paulo E. de Berrêdo Canneiro made a copy of the ms in 1929 and it is reprinted in: Auguste Comte Ecrits de Jeunesse 1816–1828, Paris: Archives Positivistes 1970. The ms is no longer extant in the archives of the Académie des Sciences de Paris, possibly lost during the disruption caused by the Second World War. I thank Mme. Hautecoeur of the Académie for her assistance in trying to locate the manuscript.

I have not been able to find very much information on C. C. Person. He became professor of physics at the Université de Rouen in 1835 and thereafter worked primarily on the thermal properties of matter. The date when Person delivered his paper on Comte’s cosmogony is not specified. The Precis records that on the 20th of February 1935 Person gave his inaugural speech at a public session.

See the letter Comte wrote Guizot on March 30, 1833 in Correspondence Inédite d’A. Comte , Vol. 4, pp. 154–60.

E. Littré: Auguste Comte et La Philosophie Positive , (Paris, 1877), pp. 214–216.

Correspondence Inédite d’August Comte , V. 4, p. 183, letter to General Bernard.

E. Littré: Auguste Comte et la Philosophie Positive , p. 244.

Arago was of course right. Comte’s T raité Elementaire de Géométrie Analytique à Deux et à Trois Dimensions only appeared in 1843.

Alexander Bain: John Stuart Mill , A Criticism, With Personal Recollection, Longmans, Green & Co. (London: 1882).

John Herschel: A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (London: 1830).

William Whewell: History of the Inductive Sciences , 3 Vol., London: Parker, 1837.

W. Whewell: The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences Founded Upon Their History , (London: 1840).

David B. Wilson: “Herschell and Whewell’s Version of Newtonianism”, J ournal of the History of Ideas 35 (1974), pp. 79–97. Walter B. Cannon: “Scientists and Broad Churchmen: An Early Intellectual Network”, Journal of British Studies 4 (1964), pp. 65–88.

Thomas Reid: Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man , (Edinburgh: 1785), see Chapter 3. L. L. Laudan: “Thomas Reid and the Newtonian Turn of British Methodological Thought”, in The Methodological Heritage of Newton , R. E. Butts and J. W. Davis (eds.), (Oxford: 1970), pp. 103–131.

See for example G. Cantor: “Henry Brougham and the Scottish Methodological Tradition”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 2 (1971), pp. 69–89. and G. Cantor: The Reception of the Wave Theory of Light in Britain: A Case Study Illustrating the Role of Methodology in Scientific Debate Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, Vol. 6, Russell McCormack (ed.), Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton 1975.

J. S. Mill: A System of Logic , Ratiocinative and Inductive Being a connected view of the principles of evidence and the methods of scientific investigation. Two volumes. London: John W. Parker, West Strand 1843. See the introduction in John Stuart Mill’s Philosophy of Scientific Method , edited with an introduction by Ernest Nagel, NY: Hafter Publishing Co., 1950.

For an overview see for example: L. L. Laudan: “Theories of Scientific Method from Plato to Mach”, History of Science 1 (1968), pp. 1–63.

R. Olson: Scottish Philosophy and British Physics , 1750–1880, Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press 1975.

D. Brewster: unsigned review of A. Comte’s “Cours de Philosophie Positive”, Vol. 1 and 2, Edinburgh Review 67 (1838), pp. 271–308.

See for example W. M. Simon: European Positivism in the Nineteenth Century, An Essay in Intellectual History , Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1963. Particularly Chapter VII: England: The Ambiance of John Stewart Mill.

The earlier letters of J. S. Mill 1812–1848. Volume XII of the Collected Works of J. S. Mill , F. E. Mineka (eds.), Univ. of Toronto Press and Routledge Keegan Paul. See letters of J. S. Mill to d’Eichtal dated May 15, 1829 and Oct. 8, 1829 in Vol. XII of Collected Works of J. S. Mill. The Oct. 8, 1829 letter contains the detailed reaction to Mill’s reading of the Traité by Comte.

Collected Works of J. S. Mill , Vol. XII, p. 363.

Autobiography of John Stuart Mill , published from the original ms in the Columbia Univ. Library with a preface by John Jacob Coss, NY: Columbia Univ. Press, 1924, p. 147.

Collected Works of J. S. Mill , Vol. XIII, p. 487.

The following are some of the characterizations of Comte’s work in Mill’s A System of Logic (1843), Vol. I, p. 540, “admirably characterized in the third volume of M. Comte’s truly encyclopedical work”. Vol. II, p. 8: “by so great a thinker as M. Comte”. Vol. II, p. 17: “Mr. Comte (who of all philosophers seems to me to have approached the nearest to a sound view of this important subject [hypotheses])”.

Mill: System of Logic (1843), Vol. II, p. 27.

Mill: System of Logic (1843), Vol. II, p. 28. On p. 29 Mill refers the reader to

Nichol. His footnote there reads: See, for an interesting exposition of this theory of Laplace, the Architecture of the Heavens by Prof. Nichol of Glasgow; a book profoundly popular rather than scientific; but the production of a thinker who, both in this and other departments, is capable of much more than merely expounding the speculations of his predecessors.

It is of interest to compare the discussion of Laplace’s work in the first edition with that of the famous eighth edition, the last one to be revised by Mill for publication. See also Mill’s discussion “of the limits to the Explanation of laws of Nature, and of hypothesis” (pp. 257–269 in Nagel’s edition of Mill’s Philosophy of Scientific Method ) wherein Mr. Darwin’s remarkable speculation on the origin of species is discussed as ‘another unimpeackable example of a legitimate hypothesis”.” This attributation by Mill gave Darwin much pleasure.

J. P. Nichol: A View of the Architecture of the Heavens .

The spelling of Comte’s name as Compte is to be noted.

J. P. Nichol: A View of the Architecture of the Heavens , NY: H. A. Chapin, 1840.

R. Chambers: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation , (London: 1844). Reprinted with an introduction by Sir Gavin de Beer Leicester: University Press 1969, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation , 4th edition, London 1845.

M. Millhauser: Just Before Darwin, Robert Chambers and Vestiges , Middletown Conn: Wesleyan Univ. Press 1959. M. S. J. Hodge: “The Universal Gestation of Nature, Chamber’s Vestiges and Explanations”, J. Hist. Biology V (1972), pp. 127–152. R. M. Young: The Histeriographic and Ideological Context of the Nineteenth Century Debate on Man s Place in Nature .

Chambers: Vestiges 1844, p. 17.

That the Vestiges incurred, almost without exception, the wrath of the scientific elite has been repeatedly noted. Although the scientific content and standards of the Vestiges justified such a critical reception, this is not the full story. That the scientific elite were members of the upper social and economic classes, and were affiliated with Church or Kirk is surely another dimension. See Cannon: Scientists and Broad Churchmen .

A. Sedgwick: unsigned review of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation , Edinburgh Review CLXV (19845), pp. 1–85.

Agassiz, Lyell, Owen and Clark were others to whom Segwick wrote; see J. W. Clark and T. M. Hughes: The Life and Letters of the Rev. Adam Sedgwick , 2 Vol. Cambridge 1890, p. 87. The letter that Sedgwick wrote to Herschel is dated April 11, 1845 and is in the Herschel correspondence at the Library of the Royal Society. Unfortunately only part of the letter is extant. After telling Herschel that he had been reading the Vestiges which he characterizes as “a scrap of rank materialism — foul and fetid” and having “done some mischief” Sedgwick indicates that he is thinking of reviewing it. Sedgwick incidentally believed that the Vestiges “from its charm of manner & good dressing” to be “from a woman’s pen … clever but very shallow”.

Herschel’s letter is dated April 15, 1845 and is at the Library of the Royal Society of London. I thank Mr. N. H. Robinson for permission to quote from it.

For an appreciation of the stature of J. Herschel see Walter F. Cannon: “John Herschel and the Idea of Science”, J. History of Ideas 22, (1961), pp. 215–239. Incidentally Sedgwick in his letter of inquiry to Herschel concerning the nebular hypothesis dated April 1845 addressed him as: “You who know everything and read everything”. For another interesting appreciation of J. W. Herschel see the essay on Sir John Herschel as a Theorist in Astronomy in R. A. Proctor: Essays on Astronomy London: Longmans, 1872. Perhaps the best way to obtain an appreciation and insight into the esteem, respect, and adulation that Herschel commanded is to read the four page report in the Athenaeum of 1838, pp. 423–427 of the Herschel dinner held on June 15, 1838. Over 400 persons attended; the list published in the Athenaeum includes all the scientific elite, as well as high representatives from Church and Crown and an impressive sample of the upper class. Herschel was presented a vase upon his return from the Cape.

J. W. F. Herschel: “The Logic of Scientific Endeavor”, British Ass. Report 15 (1845), pp. XVII–XLIV. See also Athenaeum, June 21, 1845, pp. 612–617. It is also reprinted in Herschel’s: Essays .

Collected Works of J. S. Mill . Vol. XIII – letter of Mill to J. W. W. Herschel dated May 1, 1843, pp. 583–4.

D. Brewster: unsigned review of the “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation”, North British Review 3, (1845), p. 474.

David Brewster also reviewed Chambers’ Explanations: A Sequel to Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation by the author of that work. London 1845, in the February 1846 issue of the North British Review 4 (1846), pp. 487–497. Although considerable space is devoted in that review to Plateau’s beautiful experiments, and further observational data as they relate to the nebular hypothesis no further comments are made on Comte’s work which had in the meantime been discredited by Herschel.

M. B. Ogilvie: “Robert Chambers and the Nebular Hypothesis”, Brit. J. Hist, of Science 8 (1975), pp. 213–232. This paper contains a detailed analysis of eight reviews of Chambers’ Vestiges and its treatment of the Nebular Hypothesis. It also chronicles Chambers’ use of it in the later editions after his initial treatment and the hypothesis itself came under attack.

Alexander von Humboldt: Kosmos: Entwurf einer physischen Weltbeschreibung , Erster Band, Stuttgart, 1845. Cosmos: Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe , Vol. 1, Translated under the superintendence of Lt. Col. Sabine, London: Longman, 1846.

Herschel’s review of Humboldt’s Cosmos appeared in the Edinburgh Review for Jan. 1848 and is reprinted in his Essays , pp. 257–364. D. Brewster’s review was published in the North British Review 4, (1845), pp. 202–254. J. D. Forbes’ review of Humboldt’s Cosmos is in the Quarterly Review 11 (1846), pp. 154–191.

Lettres Inedites de John Stuart Mill à Auguste Comte publiées avec les responses de Comte et une introduction par L. Levy-Bruhl, Paris: Felix Alcan, Editeur 1899. Hereafter referred to as Mill et Comte: Lettres Inédites, Levy-Bruhl. The letters from Mill to Comte are also to be found in the Collected Works of John Stuart Mill , Vol. XIII.

One of their differences was on the issue of individualism versus collectivism. Mill, in a characteristically British approach defended the individual’s rights against the increasingly authoritarian and reactionary nature of Comte’s positive politics and the power of the state in that scheme of things. Another of their differences was over the role and place of women in society. See Collected Works J. S. Mill , Vol. XIII, Mill to Comte letters dated July 13, 1843, p. 588; August 30, 1843, p. 592; October 30, 1843, p. 604.

Collected Works J. S. Mill , Vol. XIII: J. S. Mill to Sir John F. W. Herschel, dated May 1, 1843, p. 584.

In 1842 Whewell had at his own expense printed and privately circulated a reply to Herschel’s review of his History and his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences . This reply was subsequently included in the second edition of the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences , (London: 1847), II, pp. 667–79.

Herschel’s review appeared in the Quarterly Review, Vol. 135, June 1841. It is reprinted in J. F. W. Herschel’s Essays from the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews with addresses and other Pieces, London: Longman, 1857, pp. 142–256.

Collected Works J. S. Mill , Vol. XIII, Mill to Comte, Oct. 5, 1844, pp. 636–639.

Mill et Comte : Lettres Indites, p. 367.

Collected Works of J. S. Mill , Vol. XIII, p. 648.

Athenaeum, June 21, 1845, pp. 612–617. See also Bain: J. S. Mill , pp. 80–81.

Collected Works J. S. Mill , Vol. XIII, pp. 673–675.

J. S. Mill: Logic , (London: 1843). The reference is to Mill’s presentation of the Laplacian Nebular Hypothesis and the reference therin to Comte’s treatment of it in the Cours , Vol. II.

Collected Works, J. S. M. , Vol. XIII, pp. 675–676.

Herschel’s review of the Kosmos is reprinted in Herschel: Essays (London: 1857), pp. 257–364. The quotation is on p. 295. For this reprinting of the review, Herschel added a footnote wherein he claimed that this objection…offers no real difficulty to the advocates of that hypothesis. In their view the sun must be regarded as the centre of subsidence of all matter whose elastic movements have contradicted and terminated in collision Precisely the same calculation as Herschel’s was presented to the Academie des Sciences by Babinet in 1861 in a famous Memoir in which he concluded that if the entire Sun had [at one stage] been dilated to the orbits of the planet, it had a rotational motion much too slow for the centrifugal force to balance gravitation and thus for the (separation/abandonment) from the total mass of an equatorial ring. Apparently Herschel never became aware of Babinet’s results. Although the two corresponded in 1862 and thereafter — (letters are in the Herschel Archives at the Royal Society) the exchanges between them deal with technical questions on how to suspend mirrors from thin wires in order to measure small torques — no mention is made of nebular hypothesis nor of Babinet’s 1861, Compte’s Rendus article. J. Babinet: Comptes Rendus, Acad. Sci. (Paris) 52, 481 (1861). see also his Etudes et lectures sur les sciences d’observation et leurs applications pratiques (Mallet-Vechelier, Paris: 1865), Vol. VII, pp. 105–106.

Collected Works J. S. Mill , Vol. XIII, p. 677.

See in particular Comte’s letters dated July 14, 1845. Mill et Comte: Lettres Inedites , p. 460 and the ones dated August 8, 1845 and Sept. 24, 1845 on pp. 468 and 476 respectively.

Collected Works, J. S. Mill , Vol. XIII, pp. 716–719.

The first review of Comte’s Cours in France is 1844 in articles in the National by Littré. See Gouhier: Vie , p. 217 also E. Littré: De La Philosophie Positive (1845). Comte’s letters to Val at in 1840 and to Mill in 1845 clearly indicate how pleased he was with Brewster’s review in 1838.

Comte: Correspondence générale , Vol. 2, p. 470, Levy-Bruhl: Lettres Inedites , p. 473.

A. Comte: Plans des travaux scientifiques necessaires pour reorganiser al societé (1822) (which is the Système de politique positive of 1825) reprinted in Ecrits de Jeunesse, pp. 241–322.

Appendice general du Systeme de politique positive , p. 17 also quoted in L. Levy-Bruhl: The Philosophy of Auguste Comte translated by F. Harrison, London: Sonnenschein, 1903, p. 91. The book has been reprinted in 1973. Clifton: Augustus Kelley, 1973.

Comte: Cours II, pp. 26–27.

Cours III, p. 366.

Cours III, pp. 363–364. See also Cours IV, P. 274.

Comte: Premier Mémoire sur la Cosmogonie Positive in Ecrits de Jeunesse , p. 585.

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Schweber, S.S. (1991). Auguste Comte and the Nebular Hypothesis. In: Bienvenu, R.T., Feingold, M. (eds) In the Presence of the Past. Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idées / International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 118. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3764-5_8

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15 Intriguing Facts About Nebular Hypothesis

Written by Vivyanne Lussier

Modified & Updated: 23 Sep 2024

Reviewed by Sherman Smith

• Physical Sciences
• Stellar Evolution Facts

The Nebular Hypothesis is a fascinating concept that attempts to explain the formation of our solar system. Proposed in the 18th century by Immanuel Kant and further developed by Pierre-Simon Laplace, this theory suggests that our solar system originated from a massive rotating cloud of gas and dust known as a nebula.

In this article, we will delve into the intricacies of the Nebular Hypothesis and uncover 15 intriguing facts that shed light on our understanding of how our solar system came into existence. From the creation of the sun and planets to the formation of asteroids and comets , each fact presents a unique perspective on the inner workings of the nebular theory.

So, buckle up and prepare to embark on a cosmic journey as we explore the mysteries of the universe and unravel the secrets hidden within the Nebular Hypothesis.

Key Takeaways:

• The Nebular Hypothesis explains how our solar system formed from a spinning cloud of gas and dust, giving rise to the planets and the sun. It also helps us understand planet formation in other star systems.
• This fascinating theory has shaped our understanding of the universe and continues to inspire scientists to explore the origins of solar systems, pushing the boundaries of our knowledge.

The Nebular Hypothesis is a widely accepted explanation for the formation of the solar system.

The Nebular Hypothesis suggests that the solar system originated from a cloud of gas and dust, known as the solar nebula.

It was first proposed by philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 18th century.

Kant hypothesized that a rotating, flattened disk of gas and dust gradually formed the planets and the sun .

The Nebular Hypothesis was further developed by French mathematician and astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace in the late 18th century.

Laplace expanded on Kant’s idea, suggesting that the solar nebula contracted due to gravitational forces, causing it to spin faster and flatten into a disk.

According to the Nebular Hypothesis, the sun and planets formed from the collapse of a rotating cloud of gas and dust.

As the solar nebula contracted, it began to spin faster, and the majority of the material collected at the center, forming the sun.

The remaining material in the disk gradually accumulated to form protoplanetary bodies, known as planetesimals.

These planetesimals collided and merged over time, eventually forming the planets we see today.

The Nebular Hypothesis explains why the planets in our solar system orbit the sun in the same direction and roughly in the same plane.

The rotation of the original cloud of gas and dust determined the direction and orientation of the planetary orbits.

It also accounts for the fact that the inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) are rocky, while the outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) are composed mostly of gas.

As the solar nebula cooled, volatile compounds accumulated further from the sun, allowing the gas giants to form in the outer regions.

The Nebular Hypothesis suggests that the moon formed from the debris left over after a giant impact between Earth and another celestial body.

This collision ejected material into space , which eventually coalesced to form the moon.

The concept of the Nebular Hypothesis is not restricted to our solar system.

Astronomers have observed similar disk formations around other stars, providing evidence that the process of planet formation is common in the universe.

The Nebular Hypothesis has evolved over time and is continually refined as new observations and data become available.

Advancements in technology and space missions have allowed scientists to gather more information about the formation of planets and the evolution of solar systems.

This hypothesis has gained support from various scientific disciplines, including astronomy, astrophysics, and planetary science.

The wealth of evidence collected from telescopic observations, meteorite analysis, and computer simulations have bolstered the credibility of the Nebular Hypothesis.

The Nebular Hypothesis provides insights into the early stages of planet formation, helping scientists understand the conditions necessary for life to exist.

By studying how planets form within a solar nebula, researchers can better grasp the potential habitability of exoplanets in other star systems.

It can also explain the presence of asteroids and comets in our solar system.

These celestial objects are remnants from the early stages of planetary formation and have been preserved in their original forms.

The Nebular Hypothesis has been instrumental in shaping our understanding of the universe and our place within it.

By providing a framework for how solar systems form, it has laid the foundation for further investigations into planetary science and exoplanet research.

The Nebular Hypothesis continues to spark curiosity and drive scientific inquiry, pushing the boundaries of our knowledge about the origins of the universe.

As technology advances and our understanding deepens, we can expect further advancements and refinements to this intriguing theory.

In conclusion, the Nebular Hypothesis has revolutionized our understanding of the formation and evolution of our universe. Through extensive research and observation, scientists have unraveled the mysteries of planetary systems, including our own solar system . The Nebular Hypothesis proposes that the solar system originated from a giant rotating cloud of gas and dust called the nebula. Over time, gravity caused this nebula to collapse, giving birth to the Sun and forming a rotating disk of material around it. Within this disk, planets, moons, and other celestial objects formed.The study of the Nebular Hypothesis has provided us with intriguing facts about the origins of our solar system and beyond. From the formation of planetary rings to the presence of exoplanets, the Nebular Hypothesis continues to shape our understanding of the vast universe we inhabit.As we delve deeper into the mysteries of the universe, the Nebular Hypothesis serves as a guiding principle, shedding light on the intricate mechanisms that govern the formation and evolution of galaxies , stars, and celestial bodies. Through ongoing research and exploration, we continue to uncover new insights and expand our knowledge of the mesmerizing cosmos .

Q: What is the Nebular Hypothesis?

A: The Nebular Hypothesis is a scientific theory that proposes the formation of our solar system from a giant rotating cloud of gas and dust called the nebula.

Q: Who proposed the Nebular Hypothesis?

A: The Nebular Hypothesis was first proposed by the French mathematician and astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace in the late 18th century.

Q: How does the Nebular Hypothesis explain the formation of planets ?

A: According to the Nebular Hypothesis, as the nebula collapses under gravity, it forms a rotating disk of material around a central protostar, known as the Sun. Within this disk, planetesimals, small rocky bodies, gradually merge and accrete to form planets.

Q: Does the Nebular Hypothesis apply to other planetary systems?

A: Yes , the Nebular Hypothesis is a widely accepted explanation for the formation of planetary systems beyond our own solar system, known as exoplanetary systems.

Q: What evidence supports the Nebular Hypothesis?

A: There is substantial evidence supporting the Nebular Hypothesis, including the observations of protoplanetary disks around young stars, the presence of exoplanetary systems with similar characteristics to our own, and the isotopic composition of meteorites that aligns with predictions made by the hypothesis.

Q: Can the Nebular Hypothesis explain the formation of other celestial objects?

A: Yes, in addition to planets, the Nebular Hypothesis can also explain the formation of moons, asteroids, comets, and other celestial bodies within our solar system and beyond.

The Nebular Hypothesis is just one of many fascinating topics in the realm of space science. Dive deeper into the mysteries of our universe by exploring captivating facts about planetary science , unraveling the wonders of astronomy , and delving into the mind-blowing discoveries in astrophysics . Each field offers a unique perspective on the cosmos, from the formation and evolution of planets to the intricate workings of stars and galaxies. Embark on a journey of discovery and let your curiosity guide you through the awe-inspiring world of space exploration.

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