8vo (250x164 mm), xi-280 pages and 2 plates. binding : Contemporary full cloth, flat spine.
First edition. Émile Belot (1857-1944), graduate of the École Normale Supérieure, agrégé de philosophie, and chief engineer of the State Manufactures. Passionate about astronomy, he was a member of the Société astronomique de France from 1904. In this work, Belot proposes a theory of the formation of the solar system in which he hypothesizes a nebulous proto-sun entering into violent contact with a larger nebula and explains that such an encounter is at the origin of planetary systems and their organization according to a logarithmic spiral on the diagram in which the planets of this system are distributed by vortical absorption and concretion of the dust of the jostled nebula.