TRANSLATORS INTRODUCTION Cl 



Objections to Kanfs Cosmogony. It would be out of 

 place in an Introduction, which aims only at making what 

 follows intelligible in its historical relations, to deal in detail 

 with the Objections to Kant's theory, referred to. Such a 

 discussion would have to assume a knowledge of the con- 

 tents of the work which we are merely introducing, or such 

 an anticipative statement of the disputed positions as would 

 carry us into too great detail. A brief indication of the 

 chief objections may however be given, and must here 

 suffice. M. Wolf puts them most succinctly when he alleges 

 that 'the conceptions of Kant are too often in formal con- 

 tradiction with the principles of mechanics.' 1 (i) 'Kant,' 

 he says, ' supposes the universal primitive chaos dividing 

 itself by the effect of attraction, into a large number of 

 isolated masses, germs of the future stars, which remain 

 in repose by the equilibrium of their mutual actions. Now 

 such a system of masses devoid of initial velocity would 

 gather, perforce, into a single mass.' This, however, is 

 simply to ignore Kant's attempt to explain the tangential, 

 or centrifugal motions, against which the following formid- 

 able objection is urged. (2) It is maintained, and very 

 generally, that Kant has failed to account for the movements 

 of rotation and revolution, which Laplace assumes as in- 

 herent in the nebular mass as a whole from the first. Kant 

 conceives these motions as arising from the minute mutual 

 repulsion of the particles, which make up the nebular mass, 

 and their collisions as they fall through space, whereby 

 they are deflected from the perpendicular, and gradually 

 assume a revolving motion in orbits, at points where the 

 falling matter becomes aggregated according to mechanical 

 conditions. But this, as Mr. Becker puts it, is an attempt 

 ' to create a moment of momentum ' in a finite system, or to 

 evolve a new force out of the existing forces which would 



1 Hypotheses, p. 19. 



