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Footnote
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ssss1 Zeller, History of Greek Philosophy, translated by S.F. Alleyne, vol. i., p. 86.
ssss1 Quoted by R. Wolf, Handbuch der Astronomie, Bd. II., p. 593.
CHAPTER II
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THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS
Immanuel Kant was, in 1751, still in the plastic stage. His period of 'pure reason' was remote, and might have appeared improbable. Such as they were, his distinctions had been won in the field of concrete science, and the world of phenomena invited his speculations more seductively than the subtleties of logic. A seed was accordingly thrown into fertile soil by his reading of Thomas Wright's New Theory of the Universe, as summarized in a Hamburg journal. It set him thinking, and his thoughts proved to be of the dynamic order. Wright regarded the heavens under a merely statical aspect. He laid down the first definite plan of their construction, showing that the stars were not scattered at random, but aggregated by method; and this was much for one necessitous human being to have accomplished unaided.