54o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



liefs, can be properly substantiated only by an examination of all the 

 more important writings of Kant (in their approximate chronological 

 order) which bear upon the topic in question. Such an examination 

 will at the same time show that the misapprehensions of his position 

 which have arisen are by no means unnatural results of taking certain 

 of his expressions apart from their contexts and in disregard of the 

 meanings which he was accustomed to give to certain terms. 



1. The " Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens." 

 — That Kant in his earliest important writing, the " Allgemeine Natur- 

 geschichte und Theorie des Himmels," 1755, gave an outline sketch of 

 cosmic evolution which anticipated the nebular hypothesis of Laplace, 

 is one of the things that every schoolboy knows. Like most such things, 

 it is not exactly true. Kant's cosmological speculations were, as we 

 shall see, in scope and in method and in their most essential principles, 

 extremely dissimilar to the nebular hypothesis. Kant's enterprise was 

 far more ambitious than that of the French astronomer; he was con- 

 cerned with the evolution of a universe out of primeval chaos, not 

 merely with the formation of a planetary system out of a whirling 

 nebula. As a detail of his scheme, it is true, he sought also to explain 

 how planets are formed, and how their orbital revolution is to be ac- 

 counted for; but his version of their origin is such as to justify us in 

 classifying him with a school of cosmogonists of much later date than 

 Laplace, who are strongly opposed to Laplace's hypothesis. Kant's 

 treatise in its entirety will, I think, hardly be found to merit the ex- 

 travagant eulogies which it has won — at any rate, upon the score of 

 originality or of historic influence and importance. On these two 

 points, at least, we shall find it necessary to agree with a German writer 

 who has recently dealt with the book. Gerland says : 5 



An epoch-making or a foundation-laying piece of work it has not been, 

 either for the eighteenth century or the nineteenth. The assertion of Kuno 

 Fischer and others that Kant became by virtue of it " the founder of modern 

 cosmogony," is a false and unhistorical exaggeration. It would be justified only 

 if Kant's book had been the first in its field, and if our present cosmogony had 

 developed in direct dependence upon it; but nothing is farther from being the 

 case — in spite of a number of points of coincidence between Kant's conceptions 

 and contemporary ones. 



Gerland adds the opinion that Kant's book remained unknown in its 

 own time, " not because of the bankruptcy of the publisher [which for 

 many years interfered materially with its sale], nor through the fault 

 of the people or of the men of science of Kant's day; it remained un- 

 known through its own faults." 



Even at the risk of a somewhat lengthy digression from the ques- 

 tion of Kant's place in the history of biology — with which this paper is 

 primarily concerned — I think it worth while to try to make clear the 



e Kantstudien, 1905, 417 f. 



