[1] Kant answered to the call of the Berlin Academy Prize in 1754[2] with the argument that the Moon's gravity would eventually cause its tidal locking to coincide with the Earth's rotation.

[3] Within the work Kant quotes Pierre Louis Maupertuis, who discusses six bright celestial objects listed by Edmond Halley, including Andromeda.

Halley points to light created before the birth of the Sun, while William Derham "compares them to openings through which shines another immeasurable region and perhaps the fire of heaven."

Kant proposes the nebular hypothesis, in which solar systems are the result of nebulae (interstellar clouds of dust) coalescing into accretion disks and then forming suns and their planets.

However, Stephen Palmquist argued that Jaki's criticisms are biased and "[a]ll he has shown ... is that the Allgemeine Naturgeschichte does not meet the rigorous standards of the twentieth-century historian of science.