religious beliefs had previously considered nebular ideas as tending to atheism, and quoted him as saying that "the growth of new systems out of old ones, without the mediation of a Divine power, seemed to him apparently absurd".

The perceived deficiencies of the Laplacian model stimulated scientists to find a replacement for it. During the 20th century many theories addressed the issue, including the planetesimal theory of Thomas Chamberlin and Forest Moulton