In the Beginning. The Reception of the Nebular Hypothesis in Britain, 1796-1859.

The reception of a new idea in a community other than the one it originated from is not a straightforward process. Classical descriptions in the history of science and the history of ideas assumed that such a new idea was transplanted in its entirety from one setting to the next, where it could only be accepted or rejected as a whole. By now, however, we have come to understand that the process of reception is far more complex and dynamical than these classical descriptions ever allowed.

In this presentation, I shall take the British treatment of the nebular hypothesis as an example of such a dynamical reception. The nebular hypothesis, put forward by the French mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace in his Exposition du systeme du monde (1796), provided an evolutionary theory for the formation of the Solar System. I hope to show that the introduction of this nebular hypothesis into British thought was not a straightforward process, but that along the way it took on a different shape, more fitting for the British environment into which this French theory came.