32 Summary 



everything beforehand, and foresees possible crises 

 and anticipates them. Your words suggest a Creator 

 who thinks out the cosmic process which is his 

 imagining, and endows the raw materials with such 

 capacities that he can safely leave them to make them- 

 selves." This is a very anthropomorphic cosmology, 

 and little more than a sending out of tendrils of 

 ignorance. But the point is that these tendrils are 

 seeking not for supports which may be scientifically 

 provided, but for something beyond that altogether 

 — a transcendental interpretation. Cosmography be- 

 comes clearer every year; but what of a cosmology 

 which is philosophical or religious ? 



When we pass from the Lowest Common Denomi- 

 nators of scientific description to the Greatest Com- 

 mon Measure of philosophical or religious interpre- 

 tation, we must be very humble, seeking for Vision. 

 His ways are not as our ways, nor his thoughts as 

 our thoughts. They are, as was also said long ago, 

 like paths in a wood thick with trees through which 

 we see for only a little way. 



Summary. 



1. The philosopher Kant had a theory (1755) of 

 the genesis of the solar system. Independently of this 

 the mathematician and astronomer Laplace pub- 

 lished his famous Nebular Hypothesis in 1796. From 

 an immense, very hot, gaseous mass, rotating as a 

 whole like a solid body, rings or zones were separated 

 off, he supposed, which condensed into planets. 



2. Laplace's general idea was that the planets 



I 



