The Sun's Place in Nature¹

Abstract

III. THE next question that we have now to consider has to do with the connection between nebulæ and stars, and I shall show that the more the facts are studied the closer does this connection prove to be. You remember that that was the idea which lay at the bottom of the hypotheses both of Kant and of Laplace. In the last lecture I referred to some of the earliest observations which had been made of the nebulæ by means of the spectroscope, and it so happened that Dr. Huggins, to whom we owe this work, came to the conclusion that the result of his inquiries was rather to show that this connection, which had been asserted both by Kant and Laplace, and which had been accepted by everybody up to then, really did not exist. In a paper which detailed these spectroscopic observations, published in 1865, Dr. Huggins stated his conclusion that the nebulæ, instead of having anything whatever to do with any evolutionary line along which both nebulæ and stars might be traced, possessed a structure and a purpose in relation to the universe altogether distinct and of another order. So that you see the first apparent teaching which we got from the spectroscope practically put us in a very considerable difficulty; if it had to be accepted, of course the views of Kant and Laplace would have to be rejected.