There are other theories of the formation of the solar system from meteorites and meteors, giving us the idea of its being made out of manufactured articles instead of originally created raw material, which does not in any way simplify the process. In some of them, the inrush of meteor swarms is invoked as the cause of gyratory motion, which places them in much the same category as impact theories. We know that broadcloth is made out of woollen yarn, but we also know how the yarn is made out of wool, and how it is woven into the cloth, whereas we are not told by what process, or even out of what the meteors and meteorites are made, although some of them are said to have thumb-marks upon them.
All these theories and cosmogonies may be very appropriately classified as variations of the nebula hypothesis, and like variations in another science, may be very brilliant, scientific, imaginative, grand, but after all the flights of fancy exhibited by them are set before us, we feel in a measure relieved when a return is made to the original air. They all assume original motion, varied, accidental, opportune, more dependent upon the will of the cosmogonist than on the laws of nature, which tend to confound rather than enlighten any one who tries to understand and bring them, mentally, into actual operation. Laplace assumed rotary motion for the whole of his nebula, and was thus able to account at once for the relation which exists among the planets in respect of distance from, and period of revolution around the sun--arising from the original rotation of the whole mass in one piece--a result which, in any impact theory, has to be accounted for separately, and, in plain truth, empirically in each case, and at each step.
Seeing, then, that we have not been able to find any cosmogony, or speculation, that gives us a more plausible idea of how the solar system has been formed, we shall try whether from the original nebula as imagined by Laplace, it is possible to separate the various members, and form the system in the manner described in his celebrated hypothesis. In other words, we shall endeavour to analyse the hypothesis.
PAGE 72 Preliminaries to analysis of the Nebular hypothesis. 73 Definition of the hypothesis. 75 Elements of solar system. Tables of dimensions and masses. 78 Explanation of tables and density of Saturn. 79 Volume, density and mass of Saturn's rings, general remarks about them, and satellites to be made from them. 79 Future of Saturn's rings. 80 Notions about Saturn's satellites and their masses. 81 Nature of rings seemingly not well understood. 81 Masses given to the satellites of Uranus and Neptune, Explanations of. 82 Volumes of the members of the solar system at density of water.