Britannica Sources used in this answer

Why is Kant’s theory of solar-system formation called the Kant-Laplace hypothesis?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Immanuel Kant German philosopher Immanuel Kant surrounded by Ouroboros, an emblematic serpent of ancient Egypt and Greece, engraving by John Chapman, published in London, 1812.

The term Kant-Laplace nebular hypothesis is used because the model combines the distinct but related theories of Immanuel Kant and Pierre-Simon Laplace regarding the origin of the solar system.1

In 1755, Kant proposed that the solar system emerged from a cloud of dispersed particles that were pulled together by gravity, eventually coalescing into the Sun and planets. Decades later, Laplace independently developed a model suggesting that the Sun and planets formed from a cooling, contracting nebula that shed rings of material, which then condensed into planets.123

Because both thinkers shared the fundamental concept that planets formed from the condensation of dispersed material within a rotating cloud, their approaches were synthesized into a single model. This combined theory, known as the Kant-Laplace nebular hypothesis, served as a widely accepted explanation for the formation of the solar system for approximately 100 years.1