and each of these might in turn condense into a planet with or without satellites; and gave on this hypothesis plausible reasons for many of the peculiarities of the solar system.
So little is, however, known of the behaviour of a body like Laplace's nebula when condensing and rotating that it is hardly worth while to consider the details of the scheme.
That Laplace himself, who has never been accused of underrating the importance of his own discoveries, did not take the details of his hypothesis nearly as seriously as many of its expounders, may be inferred both from the fact that he only published it in a popular book, and from his remarkable description of it as "these conjectures on the formation of the stars and of the solar system, conjectures which I present with all the distrust (défiance) which everything which is not a result of observation or of calculation ought to inspire."[1]
- ↑ Système du Monde, Book V., chapter vi.
