Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8bljj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-16T08:23:33.441Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Robert Chambers and the Nebular Hypothesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie
Affiliation:
Department of Biology, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon 97207, U.S.A.

Extract

The role of Robert Chambers's anonymous Vestiges of the natural history of creation in popularizing evolutionary ideas establishes it as a significant work in the history of science even though its intrinsic scientific value is not great. Its fascinating subject, a universally applicable developmental hypothesis, piqued the curiosity of the nineteenth-century reading public. The clientele to whom the book especially appealed was not too concerned with errors in fact and unsupported generalizations, but instead was attracted by the smoothness of its literary style and the glibness of its pronouncements. These same characteristics caused it to be an anathema to both scientists and clergymen, who joined together to voice their disapproval; they agreed that the ideas in it were potentially harmful to those untrained in scientific procedures and unaware of the book's inherent religious heresies.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1975

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

1 Gavin de Beer, in his introduction to the 1969 reprint of the first edition of Vestiges, comments that ‘the general public lapped it up with enthusiasm’; see [Chambers, Robert], Vestiges of the natural history of creation, ed. de Beer, Gavin (London, 1969), p. [32].Google Scholar
M. J. S. Hodge has also discussed the appeal of Vestiges to the ‘ordinary people’, in ‘The universal gestation of nature: Chambers’ Vestiges and Explanations’, Journal of the history of biology, v (1972), 127–51 (132).Google Scholar
2 Although numerous nebular speculations abounded at this time, see ‘Cosmogony’, The penny cyclopaedia for the diffusion of useful knowledge (London, 1837), iii. 77–8;Google Scholar
Merz, John Theodore, A history of European thought in the nineteenth century (2nd edn., 4 vols., Edinburgh, 1912), ii. 280–92 and 357–62;Google Scholar
and the introduction to Immanuel Kant's Universal natural history and theory of the heavens, trans. Hastie, W. with an introduction by Munitz, Milton K. (Ann Arbor, 1969), pp. vii–xxii.Google Scholar
In this paper the term will be used to mean the fusion of the ideas of Laplace and William Herschel accepted by Chambers. The last English edition of Vestiges published during Chambers's lifetime was the eleventh (1860). A twelfth edition published in 1884, the first in which his authorship was acknowledged, and a 1969 reprint of the first edition complete the English editions.Google Scholar
Eight American editions, published from 1845 to 1858, were in essence reprints of their British counterparts with American- ization of spelling and other minor changes. Even though Vestiges did not become very influential on the Continent, three translations were published, two German and one Dutch. See Millhauser, Milton, Just before Darwin. Robert Chambers and Vestiges (Middletown, Conn., 1959), pp. 145–6.Google Scholar
3Hodge, , op. cit. (i), pp. 127–31, stresses the fallacy of considering Vestiges as only a way- station towards Darwinism. Objecting to the concept of ‘evolutionary ideas’, he argues that ‘there is simply nothing to be gained from deciding whether or not the “idea of evolution”, however defined, is truly in the Vestiges or was clearly in Chambers' mind when he wrote it’. Nevertheless, an effect of Vestiges, as the responses of the critics made clear, was to popularize the ‘idea of evolution’.Google Scholar
4Millhauser, , op. cit. (2), pp. 1121.Google Scholar
5Chambers, William, Memoir of William and Robert Chambers (Edinburgh and London, 1893), pp. 267–9, 139–62, 190219, 228–40.Google Scholar
6Millhauser, , op. cit. (2), pp. 26–9.Google Scholar
7Millhauser, , op. cit. (2), pp. 2932.Google Scholar
8 [Chambers, Robert], Vestiges of the natural history of creation (London, 1844), p. 387.Google Scholar
9 [Chambers, ], Explanations: a sequel to Vestiges of the natural history of creation (New York, 1846), p. 1.Google Scholar
10Millhauser, , op. cit. (2), pp. 165–72. See pp. 212–14 for a bibliography of the works of Chambers.Google Scholar
11 The term nebular hypothesis was first used by William Whewell in 1837. See ‘Nebular’, in the Oxford English dictionary, and Whewell, William, A history of the inductive sciences (2nd edn., 3 vols., London, 1847), ii. 320.Google Scholar
For a discussion of the cosmogonical ideas of Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, see Kirk, G. S. and Raven, J. E., The presocratic philosophers. A critical history with a selection of texts (Cambridge, 1964), p. 384.Google Scholar
12 The idea of solid bodies consolidating from a diffuse subtle substance is found in the highly mystical Principia rerum naturalium (1734)Google Scholar
of Emmanuel Swedenborg. See [Fernald, Woodbury M.], Emmanuel Swedenborg as a man of science; a mathematician, and Philosopher of nature; as a civilian, seer and theologian, and as a philosopher of spirit; with a brief review of all his works on science, philosophy and theology (Boston, 1860), pp. 1618,Google Scholar
and Grieve, Alexander James, ‘Swedenborg, Emmanuel’, Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th edn., Cambridge, 1910), xxvi. 222.Google Scholar
A useful discussion of the relationship between Lambert, Wright, and Kant is found in the introduction to Kant, 's Universal natural history, op. cit. (2), pp. v–xxii.Google Scholar
13 It was in the fourth edition that Laplace added the postulate that the observable nebular material might be the formative material of the cosmos as he stated that ‘dans l'état primitif où nous supposons le soleil, il ressemblait aux nébuleuses que le télescope nous montre composées d'un noyau plus ou moins brillant, entouré d'une nébulosité qui, en se condensant à la surface du noyau, le transforme en étoile’. See Laplace, Pierre Simon, Exposition du système du monde (4th edn., 2 vols., Paris, 1813), ii. 425–6.Google Scholar
14Laplace, , Exposition du systême du monde (Paris, 2 vols., an IV [1796]), ii. 301–3.Google Scholar
15 Laplace's hypothesis appeared to explain the following regularities: the planets' motion around the sun in nearly the same plane and in the same direction, the motion of the satellites of planets in the same direction as the planets to which they are attached, the rotational motion of the planets and sun in the same direction as the motion of the planets in their orbits, and the nearly circular orbits of planets and satellites and greatly eccentric orbits of comets. The speculative nature of the hypothesis was apparent to Laplace as he wrote: ‘quoiqu'il en soil de cette origine du système planétaire, que je présente avec la défiance que doit inspirer tour ce qui n'est point un résultat de l'observation ou du calcul; il est certain que ses élémens sont ordonnés de manière qu'il doit jouir de la plus grande stabilité, si des causes étrangeres ne viennent point la troubler’; Laplace, , ii. 303.Google Scholar
16 Describing stars with a milky atmosphere around them, Herschel noted two absurdities that would result if the theory that all nebulae consisted of remote stars was accepted. Either the central point would be absolutely enormous or if the central star was of normal size, how very small and compressed must be those other luminous points'. Herschel noted two possible explanations: either the central body is not a star, or it is a star that is involved in a shining fluid of a nature unknown to us. He chose the latter alternative. See Lubbock, Constance (ed.), The Herschel chronicle. The life-story of William Herschel and his sister Caroline Herschel (Cambridge, 1933). PP. 226–8.Google Scholar
17Herschel, William, ‘Astronomical observations relating to the construction of the heavens, arranged for the purpose of a critical examination, the result of which appears to throw some new light upon the organization of the celestial bodies’, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, ci (1811), 269345 (271). Although inferences that Herschel drew from his study of nebulous matter did not attract much attention at the time, Laplace, in the abstract of the history of astronomy in his 1796 edition of Exposition du système du monde, noted that Herschel's theory, arrived at from a different direction, agreed with his conclusions. As to whose theory the term nebular hypothesis could more correctly be applied, John Herschel, notoriously cautious about agreeing with his father too readily, wrote to Adam Sedgwick in 1845 that the nebular hypothesis ‘originated with my Father and was from him taken up by Laplace’; see Lubbock, loc. cit. (16).Google Scholar
18 [Chambers, ], op. cit. (9), pp. 45;Google Scholar
Nichol, J. P., Architecture of the heavens. In a series of letters to a lady (3rd edn., Edinburgh, 1839), p. 155.Google Scholar
Nichol's book was also in Tennyson's library. Tennyson's views, expressed in his In memmoriam, linking biological development to the nebular hypothesis, are reminiscent of those expressed in Vestiges. See Millhauser, , ‘Vestiges, and the dark side of science’, The Victorian newsletter, No. 35 (1969), pp. 22–5.Google Scholar
19Parsons, William, third Earl of Rosse, ‘On the construction of large reflecting telescopes’, Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1844 (London, 1845), p. 79.Google Scholar
20Rosse, , ‘Observations on some of the nebulae’, Philosophical transactions, cxxxiv (1844), 331–4 (324).Google Scholar
21Robison, T. R., ‘On Lord Rosse's telescope’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, iii (1845),Google Scholar
in The scientific papers of William Parsons, third Earl of Rosse, 1800–1867 (London, 1926), p. 29.Google Scholar
22Robison, T. R., iv (03 1848),Google Scholar
in The scientific papers of William Parsons, p. 35. This new scepticism made its way into the seventh edition of the Britannica, where Herschel's ideas are described as mere speculations and not of the slightest value to astronomy; see ‘Astronomy’, Encyclopaedia Britannica (7th edn., Edinburgh, 1842), iii. 48.Google Scholar
23 [Chambers, ], Vestiges (6th edn., London, 1847), pp. 1011; (8th edn., London, 1850), pp. 6–7; (10th edn., London, 1853), pp. 6–7.Google Scholar
24Allen, William Henry, Review of Vestiges and Explanations, in the Methodist quarterly review (1846), pp. 292327 (306–7).Google Scholar
25Powell, Baden, Essays on the spirit of the inductive philosophy, the unity of worlds, and the philosophy of creation (London, 1855), pp. 205–7. By a judicious use of examples, Baden Powell made it clear that he supported the nebular hypothesis (see pp. 187–208). He credited Vestiges with the current preoccupation with matters of creation and regretted the acrimonious tone taken by most of its reviewers, a method which was ‘little suited to eliciting the truth’ (see p. vii).Google Scholar
26Spencer, Herbert, ‘The nebular hypothesis’, in Essays scientific, political, and speculative (3 vols., New York, 1910), i. 108–55. This essay was first published in The Westminster review for July 1858.Google Scholar
27Herschel, John, ‘Presidential address’, Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1845 (London, 1846), pp. xxxvii–xxxviii.Google Scholar
28Whewell, , op. cit. (11), iii. 668–70.Google Scholar
Whewell himself did not accept the nebular hypothesis (see Whewell, , ii. 319–20). Chambers was critical of Whewell's treatment of the problem. In Explanations, op. cit. (9), pp. 89–93, he accused Whewell of inconsistency in assuming that the ‘palaetiological sciences’ might be distinct from other branches of science in calling upon a quite different class of causes, ‘reminding us much of the well known propensity of nations to fill up the first chapters of their history with mythic heroes and giants.’ Whewell had explained that, even granting the validity of the nebular hypothesis, it was still impossible to get back to truly ‘first causes’ without postulating a creator.Google Scholar
29Whewell, , op. cit. (11), iii. 670–3.Google Scholar
30 For the views of those supporting the nebular hypothesis see Powell, Baden, op. cit. (25), pp. 193235,Google Scholar
and Spencer, , op. cit. (26), pp. 110–74.Google Scholar
31 [Chambers, ], Vestiges (London, 1844), pp. 912; (3rd edn., London, 1845), pp. 9–12; (4th edn., London, 1845), pp. 9–12; (5th edn., London, 1846), pp. 8–12; (6th edn.), pp. 12–15; (8th edn.), pp. 7–9; (9th edn., London, 1851), pp. 7–9; (10th edn.), pp. 8–10.Google Scholar
32Wallis, John, Brief examination of the nebulous hypothesis with strictures on a work entitled Vestiges of the natural history of creation (London, 1845), p. 21;Google Scholar
Allen, , op. cit. (24), pp. 297–8;Google Scholar
Whewell, , Indications of The creator. Extracts bearing upon theology from the history and the philosophy of the inductive sciences (London, 1845), p. 11;Google Scholar
An expository outline of the ‘Vestiges of the natural history of creation’; with a comprehensive and critical analysis of the arguments by which the extraordinary hypotheses of the author are supported and have been impugned, with their bearing upon the religious and moral interests of the community. With a notice of the author's ‘Explanations: a sequel to the Vestiges’ (London, 1846), p. 17;Google Scholar
Brewster, David, Review of Vestiges, in the North British review, iii (1845), 470515 (480).Google Scholar
33Vestiges (1st edn.), p. 9; (3rd edn.), p. 9; (4th edn.), p. 9.Google Scholar
34Bosanquet, Samuel Richard, ‘Vestiges of the natural history of creation’: its argument examined and exposed (2nd edn., London, 1845), p. 15;Google Scholar
Expository outline, op. cit. (32), p. 17. Chambers himself does not explain what he means by a bouleversement. However, in the later editions he states: ‘I suggest, as the explanation of the apparent exception, that what we call the north pole of this planet is in reality the south, the axis having passed across the plane of the orbit, so that the planet may be said to be in that small measure upside down’; this is apparently a description of a bouleversement. See Vestiges (8th edn.), p. 295; (9th edn.), p. 293; (10th edn.), p. 8.Google Scholar
35Vestiges (1st edn.), p. 10; (3rd edn.), p. 10; (4th edn.), p. 10; (5th edn.), p. 10; (6th edn.), p. 13; (8th edn.), p. 8; (9th edn.), p. 8; (10th edn.), p. 8.Google Scholar
36Sedgwick, Adam, Review of Vestiges, in The Edinburgh review, lxxxii (1845), 185 (22).Google Scholar
37Vestiges (1st edn.), pp. 1213; (3rd edn.), pp. 12–13; (4th edn.), pp. 12–13; (5th edn.), pp. 12–13; (6th edn.), pp. 20–1; (8th edn.), pp. 12–13; (9th edn.), pp. 12–13; (10th edn.), pp. 12–13.Google Scholar
38Allen, , op. cit. (24), pp. 301–2.Google Scholar
39Brewster, , op. cit. (32), p. 481.Google Scholar
40Vestiges (1st edn.), pp. 1213; (3rd edn.), pp. 12–13; (4tn edn.), pp. 12–13; (5th edn.), pp. 12–13; (6th edn.), pp. 20–1; (8th edn.), pp. 12–13; (9th edn.), pp. 12–13; (10th edn.), pp. 12–13.Google Scholar
41Allen, , op. cit. (24), pp. 301–2.Google Scholar
42Brewster, , op. cit. (32), p. 479;Google Scholar
Expository outline, op. cit. (32), 14;Google Scholar
Wallis, , op. cit. (32), p. 14.Google Scholar
43Vestiges (5th edn.), pp. 1213; (6th edn.), pp. 20–1; (8th edn.), pp. 12–13; (9th edn ), pp. 12–13; (10th edn.), pp. 12–13.Google Scholar
44Vestiges (1st edn.), p. 13;Google Scholar
(3rd edn.), p. 13; (4h edn.), p. 13; (5th edn.), p. 13; Bosanquet, , op. cit. (34), p. 24;Google Scholar
Wallis, , op. cit. (32), p. 15;Google Scholar
Expository outline, op. cit. (32), p. 14.Google Scholar
45Vestiges (1st edn.), pp. 1314; (3rd edn.), pp. 13–14; (4th edn.), pp. 13–14; (5th edn.), pp. 13–14.Google Scholar
46Vestiges (1st edn.), p. 14;Google Scholar
(3rd edn.), p. 14; (4th edn.), p. 14; Bowen, Francis, ‘A theory of creation’, North American review, lx (1845), 426–78 (444).Google Scholar
47 [Chambers, ], Explanations, op. cit. (9), p. 13.Google Scholar
48Vestiges (1st edn.), p. 14;Google Scholar
(3rd edn.), p. 14; (4th edn.), p. 14; Bosanquet, , op. cit. (34), p. 16;Google Scholar
Brewster, , op. cit. (32), p. 479;Google Scholar
Allen, , op. cit. (24), pp. 304–5.Google Scholar
49Vestiges (1st edn.), pp. 1516;Google Scholar
(3rd edn.), pp. 15–16; (4th edn.), pp. 15–16; (5th edn.), p. 15; Allen, , op. cit. (24), pp. 304–5.Google Scholar
50Vestiges (1st edn.), p. 17; (3rd edn.), p. 17; (4th edn.), p. 17; Sedgwick, op. cit. (36), p. 22;Google Scholar
Brewster, , op. cit. (32), p. 476;Google Scholar
Vestiges (9th edn.), pp. 1314;Google Scholar
(10th edn.), pp. 13–14; Bowen, , op. cit. (46), pp. 444–5.Google Scholar
51Vestiges (1st edn.), pp. 1819; (3rd edn.), pp. 18–19; (4th edn.), pp. 18–19; (5th edn.), pp. 18–19 (6th edn.), pp. 22–3; (8th edn.), pp. 13–14; (9th edn.), pp. 14–15; (110th edn.), pp. 14–15.Google Scholar
52Plateau, J., ‘Experimental and theoretical researches on the figures of equilibrium of a liquid mass withdrawn from the action of gravity, &c.’, Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Brussels, in the Smithsonian annual report, 1863–1866 (Washington, 1864), p. 215.Google Scholar
53Vestiges (5th edn.), pp. 1721; (6th edn.), pp. 23–5; (8th edn.), pp. 14–16; (9th edn.), pp. 15–16; (10th edn.), pp. 15–17.Google Scholar
54Allen, , op. cit. (24), p. 306.Google Scholar
55Vestiges (1st edn.), pp. 19–20; (5th edn.), p. 22.Google Scholar
56Sedgwick, , op. cit. (36), p. 26.Google Scholar
57Vestiges (1st edn.), pp. 30–1; (3rd edn.), pp. 30–1; (4th edn.), pp. 30–1; (5th edn.), pp. 32–3; (6th edn.), p. 31; (8th edn.), pp. 18–19; (10th edn.), pp. 19–20.Google Scholar
58Sedgwick, , op. cit. (36), p. 25.Google Scholar
59Vestiges (1st edn.), pp. 32–3; (3rd edn.), pp. 32–3; (4th edn.), pp. 32–3; (5th edn.), p. 34; (6th edn.), p. 33; (8th edn.), p. 20; (9th edn.), p. 21; (10th edn.), p. 21.Google Scholar
60Vestiges (1st edn.), pp. 3940; (3rd edn.), pp. 39–40; (4th edn.), pp. 39–40; (5th edn.), pp. 41–2; (6th edn.), p. 40; (5th edn.), p. 24; (9th edn.), p. 25; (10 edn.), p. 25.Google Scholar
61 Review of Vestiges, in the British quarterly review, i (1845), 490513 (493).Google Scholar
62Sedgwick, , op. cit. (36), pp. 25–6.Google Scholar
63Brewster, , op. cit. (32), pp. 473–4.Google Scholar