Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 22, 2025
Laplace alleged as one among other evidences of a common genetic cause, that the planets rotate in a direction the same as that in which they go round the Sun, and on axes approximately perpendicular to their orbits.
The Nebular Hypothesis, which was first, as it were, tentatively put forward by Laplace as a note in his Systeme du Monde, supposes the solar system to have been a flat, disk-shaped nebula at a high temperature in rapid rotation. In cooling it condensed, leaving revolving rings at different distances from the centre.
But I shall be asked at once, Do you mean to say that there is no difference between the habit of mind of a mathematician and that of a naturalist? Do you imagine that Laplace might have been put into the Jardin des Plantes, and Cuvier into the Observatory, with equal advantage to the progress of the sciences they professed? To which I would reply, that nothing could be further from my thoughts.
The idea of rewarding merit in a civilian, as well as among the military caste which had hitherto almost entirely absorbed such honours, was certainly enlightened; and the names of the famous savants Laplace, Monge, Berthollet, Lagrange, Chaptal, and of jurists such as Treilhard and Tronchet, imparted lustre to what would otherwise have been a very commonplace institution.
The hemisphere of the moon which is actually invisible, will remain invisible for ever. Laplace, in fact, has shown that the attraction of the earth introduces into the rotatory motion of the lunar spheroid the secular inequalities which exist in the movement of revolution. Researches of this nature exhibit in full relief the power of mathematical analysis.
But the reader is to consider, that the ruins made by Lord Rosse, are in sidereal astronomy, which is almost wholly a growth of modern times; and the particular part of it demolished by the new telescope, is almost exclusively the creation of the two Herschels, father and son. Laplace, it is true, adopted their views; and he transferred them to the particular service of our own planetary system.
The planets farthest from the sun would naturally not be so much affected by it. The same principle would explain the retrograde movement of the outer satellites of Saturn and Jupiter. Sir R. Ball further works out the principles on which the particles of the condensing nebula would tend to form a disk rotating on its central axis. The ring-theory of Laplace is practically abandoned.
"If Lagrange should think," Laplace might say, "that his discoveries had been unduly appropriated, the proper course would be for him to do exactly what I have done. Let him also write a "Mecanique Celeste," let him employ those consummate talents which he possesses in developing his noble subject to the utmost.
"Chaldæi ... diuturnâ observatione siderum scientiam putantur effecisse, ut prædeci posset quid cuique eventurum et quo quisque fato natus esset." CICERO, De Divinatione, i. 1, 2. It would now, perhaps, be possible, thanks to recent discoveries, to give more precise and circumstantial details than those of Laplace.
Quite as chivalrous, though in a very different field of action, was the conduct of Laplace to the young philosopher Biot, when the latter had read to the French Academy his paper, "SUR LES EQUATIONS AUX DIFFERENCE MELEES." The assembled SAVANS, at its close, felicitated the reader of the paper on his originality. Monge was delighted at his success.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking