Overview

In Exposition du système du monde (Exposition of the System of the World) (1796), the French astronomer Marquis Pierre Simon de Laplace (1749-1827) briefly stated his "nebular hypothesis" that the Sun, planets, and their moons began as a whirling cloud of gas. This hypothesis sparked controversy among theologians and politicians as well as astronomers and physicists.

Background

After the pioneer astronomers Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), and Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) put forth their respective heliocentric (sun-centered) theories of the relationships among celestial bodies, Christianity was hard pressed to defend its traditional geocentric (earth-centered) cosmology. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the church suppressed heliocentric astronomy. Many scientists became disenchanted with religion. By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, astronomers were arguing publicly among...