Introduction

The notion that celestial bodies have not always been the way we now see them can probably be traced to the results of Newtonian celestial mechanics in the 18th century. LaPlace showed that the numerous gravitational pushes and pulls that the planets are subject to will surely cause orbits to change in time. Immanual Kant, by 1755, had already developed his idea that all matter in the solar system had originally existed as an extended, nebulous mass which by its own gravitational collapse evolved into a flat, rotating disk. This disk further collapsed to form the planets. Newton, himself, was loath to consider that the universe could have originated in a purely mechanical way without divine intervention.

Yet Kant's idea was entirely consistent with Newtonian mechanics and seemed to suggest that at least some portion of the Biblical creation event could have been treated as a purely mechanical process. William Herschel's telescopic studies had, by 1785, uncovered many flat nebulous systems that he described as Milky Way-like star clouds. Herschel, like Kant, eventually began to think in terms of an evolving universe which in some respects was still in the making. Some of those flat nebulous clouds might be the young proto-solar systems that Kant had proposed as the beginnings of our own solar system. Herschel's grand daughter Constance Lubbok wrote in The Herschel Chronicles that:

...Herschel was the first to introduce a disturbing factor into the view of creation by his suggestion that it was a long process, not a sudden and completed act...

Using this as a barometer of how far people could stray from the main biblical story of creation, we see that even by the start of the 20th century, biblical views of a "completed" creation were still firmly in place and tolerated no competitors. Herschel's evolutionary ideas were by and large ignored as being too extreme and in conflict with established norms of thinking.

Related EoC Articles

• Universe
• Universe: Chinese Genesis
• Universe: Cold Big Bang
• Universe: Creation
• Universe: Cyclical
• Universe: Einstein-DeSitter
• Universe: Expansion
• Universe: Friedman
• Universe: Higher Dimensions
• Universe: Hot Big Bang
• Universe: Infinity
• Universe: Many-Worlds
• Universe: Maori
• Universe: Mixmaster
• Universe: Multiverse
• Universe: Mythology
• Universe: Oscillating
• Universe: Platonic
• Universe: Pre-relativistic
• Universe: Scandinavian
• Universe: Static
• Universe: Steady State
• Universe: Watery Abyss
• Universe: Zuni Indian

External Links

• William Herschel - Wikipedia.
• William Herschel Society

Preview Image

Michelangelo's painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel shows the creation of the stars and planets as described in the first chapter of Genesis. - WikiMedia Commons.