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Updated: July 22, 2025
This majestic conception was first advanced, in modern times at least, by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. It was developed by the French astronomer Laplace, and is often known by his name.
But he gave to them no new sanction, except what arises from showing that they would account for the appearances, as they present themselves to our experience at this day. That was a negative confirmation; by which I mean, that, had their views failed in the hands of Laplace, then they were proved to be false; but, not failing, they were not therefore proved to be true.
While not denying that the process imagined by Laplace may have taken place in our system, he discovers no evidence of its occurrence among the double stars, and this leads him to the following statement, in which believers in the old theological doctrine that the earth is the sole center of mortal life and of divine care would have found much comfort: "It is very singular that no visible system yet discerned has any resemblance to the orderly and beautiful system in which we live; and one is thus led to think that probably our system is unique in its character.
The ordinary problem of perturbation is difficult enough: Given a disturbing planet in such and such a position, to find the perturbations it produces. This was the problem that Laplace worked out in the Mécanique Céleste.
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.
Here we come upon a crisis in human development which shows clearly how much the Life of Reason is a natural thing, a growth that a different course of events might well have excluded. Laplace is reported to have said on his death-bed that science was mere trifling and that nothing was real but love. Love, for such a man, doubtless involved objects and ideas: it was love of persons.
The researches of geometers on the theory of gravitation had shown that an effect of this kind must be produced by the disturbing action of the planets on the earth. Laplace determined the secular displacement of the plane of the earth's orbit due to each of the planets, and in this way ascertained the whole effect of perturbation upon the obliquity of the ecliptic.
The extreme perfection of the existing tables of the moon entitles Laplace to be ranked among the benefactors of humanity.
Now, Laplace has shown that the mean motion of the moon around the earth is connected with the form of the ellipse which the earth describes around the sun; that a diminution of the eccentricity of the ellipse inevitably induces an increase in the velocity of our satellite, and vice versâ; finally, that this cause suffices to explain the numerical value of the acceleration which the mean motion of the moon has experienced from the earliest ages down to the present time.
I speak feelingly and with a sense of irritation at the whirls and vortices it used to cause in my poor head when first I entered on this subject in my days of studentship. I know not a single case where its application does not create obscurity nay doubt. Nor can a case ever occur where any such principle is called for. Laplace, page 20, Méc.
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