TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION xxvii 



Pre- Organic Evolution?- and other theological writers 

 on the vexed question of Evolution and Teleology, 

 likewise recognise the merit of Kant's early physical 

 speculation. Professor Oliver Lodge, in his Pioneers 

 of Science, 1893, refers to Kant as the real originator 

 of the ' Nebular Hypothesis,' but his interest is mainly 

 confined to Laplace. And above all, Mr. Gore, in 

 his attractive work on the Visible Universe, of the 

 same year, 2 draws a good account of Kant from 

 M. Wolf, and gives him at last his due place in 

 English, as M. Wolf had done in French, in the 

 very front of the modern scientific cosmogonists. The 

 most recent historians of astronomy among us, 

 such as Miss Agnes M. Clerke (1885), and Mr. 

 Arthur Berry (1893), have introduced Kant's work, 

 with correct recognition of its detail and importance, 

 into their historical surveys. In America, where the 

 progress of German science has of late been carefully 

 followed and studied, Kant's work is now well known. 

 It may be enough to refer here to Professor New- 

 comb's summary of the ' Ideas of Kant,' in his 

 Popular Astronomy, 1878, and to the able article, 

 with competent criticism, on ' Kant as a Natural 



had read Wright's work, the Theory of the Universe, which had been 

 reprinted in a Hamburg journal of the year 1751,' I.e. p. 178. Had 

 Mr. Proctor known Kant better he would have taken a firmer attitude 

 towards Laplace, and even found abundant support in him for some 

 of his own speculations. 



1 T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1891. 



2 The Visible Universe, chapters on the Origin and Construction of 

 the Heavens. By L. Ellard Gore, F.R.A.S., 1893. 



