ON THE GENETIC VIEW OF NATURE. 



283 



The speculations of Wright had been purely geometrical. 

 He had drawn attention to the apparent unity of organ- 

 isation in the stellar system, as established by the 

 accumulation of stars in a certain belt, popularly called 

 " the milky way." He also suggested that the whole 

 system was moving in a certain direction. Kant pointed 

 out the analogy with the solar system, in which, viewed 

 from the centre, the planetary masses would likewise 

 appear situated in a narrow belt, moving all in the same 

 direction. From these data he proceeds to show how, 

 taking for granted an initial movement and the action of 

 gravitation, the formation of rings, like those of Saturn, 

 can be explained ; further, how these might be broken 

 up and concentrated in satellites. In fact, he recognised 

 how, under the influence of gravitation, the solar system 

 might have been gradually formed out of matter which 

 was previously scattered through the whole of that space 

 which the system still occupies. Kant also descended 

 somewhat further into detail, and proceeded to discuss 

 the possible retardation of the earth's rotation through 

 tidal friction. 1 



1 The tract in which Kant de- 

 velops his views on this subject was 

 occasioned by a prize offered by 

 the Berlin Academy in 1754 for an 

 answer to the question whether the 

 time of revolution of the earth had 

 suffered any retardation, and if so, 

 through what causes ? Kant did not 

 compete for the prize, deeming his 

 reflections not capable of being 

 sufficiently perfected to deserve to 

 be submitted. So he simply pub- 

 lished them in a local Konigsberg 

 paper, from which they were later 

 reprinted in the collected works, 

 forming one of the first of Kant's 



publications. At the end of this 

 tract he announces his ' Cosmo- 

 gonie ' which appeared the follow- 

 ing year with the title ' Natural 

 History of the Heavens,' &c. Kant 

 had the satisfaction of seeing many 

 of his speculations verified by the 

 subsequent discoveries of induc- 

 tive research, notably through Sir 

 William Herschel's observations of 

 nebulae ; and the German edition of 

 Herschel's great memoir ' On the 

 Construction of the Heavens' ('Phil. 

 Trans.,' 1784), which appeared in 

 Konigsberg in 1791, by Sommer, 

 contains an extract from Kant's 



