account for the observed motions of the bodies of the solar system with a tolerable degree of accuracy by means of the law of gravitation.
Newton's problem (§ 228) was therefore approximately solved, and the agreement between theory and observation was in most cases close enough for the practical purpose of predicting for a moderate time the places of the various celestial bodies. The outstanding discrepancies between theory and observation were for the most part so small as compared with those that had already been removed as to leave an almost universal conviction that they were capable of explanation as due to errors of observation, to want of exactness in calculation, or to some similar cause.
250. Outside the circle of professed astronomers and mathematicians Laplace is best known, not as the author of the Mécanique Céleste, but as the inventor of the Nebular Hypothesis.
This famous speculation was published (in 1796) in his popular book the Système du Monde already mentioned, and was almost certainly independent of a somewhat similar but less detailed theory which had been suggested by the philosopher Immanuel Kant in 1755.
Laplace was struck with certain remarkable characteristics of the solar system. The seven planets known to him when he wrote revolved round the sun in the same direction, the fourteen satellites revolved round their primaries still in the same direction,[1] and such motions of rotation of sun, planets, and satellites about their axes as were known followed the same law. There were thus some 30 or 40 motions all in the same direction. If these motions of the several bodies were regarded as the result of chance and were independent of one another, this uniformity would be a coincidence of a most extraordinary character, as unlikely as that a coin when tossed the like number of times should invariably come down with the same face uppermost.
These motions of rotation and revolution were moreover all in planes but slightly inclined to one another; and the
