Gaseous hypothesis of kant kant full explanation for your examination.
Imanuel Kant, the German philosopher, pre sented his treatise entitled 'The General Natural History and Theory of the Heaven or the Essay on the Working and Mechanical Origin of the Entire Universe on the Basis of Newtonian Laws' in 1755. Kant claimed that his 'gaseous hypothesis' of the origin of the earth was based on the sound principles of Newton's laws of gravitation and rotatory mo tion. In the beginning his hypothesis acclaimed world-wide appreciation but later on it was dis proved as it was based on erroneous concepts and wrong application of Newtonian laws of gravita tion. Inspite of severe criticism the hypothesis was considered a great step forward in the field of cosmogony and he almost reverberated the mid 18th century with his words...Give me matter and I will build a world out of it.
Kant postulated his gaseous hypothesis of the origin of the earth on the basis of a few assumptions. He assumed that supernaturally created primordial hard matter was scattered in the universe. In fact, according to Kant there was a primeval, slowly rotat ing cloud of gas (now called a nebula) and matter comprised of very cold, solid and motionless parti cles. In terms of modern scientific language it can be said (but not described by Kant) that the temperature of primordial matter was near about 273° C or abso lute zero or 0°k. This was the reason that cold matter was initially motionless (according to the molecular theory of matter). He further assumed that the parti cles began to collide against each other under their mutual gravitational attractions.
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The residual central mass of the nebula remained as the sun. The irregularity of the rings caused the development of the cores (knots) for the formation of the correspond ing planets. In other words, all the matters of each ring were aggregated at a point to form a core or a knot which ultimately grew as a planet in due course of time. Thus, it is apparent that according to Kant the earth was formed due to aggregation of all the matter of the ring which was separated from the nebula due to centrifugal force. By the repetition of same process rings were separated from the newly formed planets and the materials of each ring were condensed to form satellites of the concerned planets. Thus, the whole solar system comprised of the sun (residual part of the rotating nebula), nine planets and their satellites were formed.
Evolution of gaseous hypothesis of kant :
Though Immanuel Kant based his gaseous hypothesis on scientific principles (Newton's law of gravitation to solve the problem of the origin of the solar system and the earth but his hypothesis has been rendered baseless because it is based on several erroneous facts of science. In fact, Kant's hypoth esis was declared dynamically unsound.
(1) It was one of the basic assumptions of Kant's hypothesis that there was primordial matter in the universe but he never explained the source of the origin of the primordial matter.
(2) Kant did not explain the source of energy to cause random motion of the particles of the primordial matter which were cold and motionless in the initial stage. According to Newton's first law of motion a body remains at rest, or if in motion it remains in uniform motion with constant speed. unless or until an external force is applied on it. The particles of the primordial matter, as assumed by Kant, were at rest and no external force was applied on them, then what was the cause for the random motion among the particles of primordial matter?
(3) The collision among the particles of the primordial matter can never generate rotatory mo tion in it. It is an erroneous statement of mechanism.
(4) Kant's assumption that the rotatory speed of the nebula increased with the increase of its size was against the law of conservation of angular momentum. According to the law of conservation of angular momentum, the total angular momentum of an isolated system remains constant.' It means that if any body is rotating, the total amount of its angular momentum will always remain constant unless an external force is applied on the rotating body. Let us undestand angular momentum. Angular momentum is the product of the mass, angular velocity and the square of the radius of the rotating body.