hypothesis as one who believes that matter came into existence
at a specified epoch. In other words, the nebular hypothesis and
the creation hypothesis, up to this point, neither confirm nor
oppose one another.

Next, we read in the revisers' version, in which I suppose the
ultimate results of critical scholarship to be embodied: "And
the earth was waste ['without form,' in the Authorised Version]
and void." Most people seem to think that this phraseology
intends to imply that the matter out of which the world was to
be formed was a veritable "chaos," devoid of law and order.
If this interpretation is correct, the nebular hypothesis can
have nothing to say to it. The scientific thinker cannot admit
the absence of law and order; anywhere or anywhen, in nature.
Sometimes law and order are patent and visible to our limited
vision; sometimes they are hidden. But every particle of the
matter of the most fantastic-looking nebula in the heavens is a
realm of law and order in itself; and, that it is so, is the
essential condition of the possibility of solar and planetary
evolution from the apparent chaos.<7>

"Waste" is too vague a term to be worth consideration. "Without
form," intelligible enough as a metaphor, if taken literally is
absurd; for a material thing existing in space must have a
superficies, and if it has a superficies it has a form.
The wildest streaks of marestail clouds in the sky, or the most
irregular heavenly nebulae, have surely just as much form as a
geometrical tetrahedron; and as for "void," how can that be void
which is full of matter? As poetry, these lines are vivid and
admirable; as a scientific statement, which they must be taken