ABSTRACT
Central to Newton’s cosmology was the idea of an absolute ruler of the universe whose presence and activity pervaded infinite space and imposed a rational order on the cosmos. This theological cast to Newton’s cosmology dominated much of astronomical speculation and science through the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth. Eventually spectroscopic studies would provide an empirical foundation for one of the basic premises of cosmology: the approximate chemical homogeneity of the universe and of the uniformity of the physical processes in different stars and galaxies. With Huggins occurred both the beginning of astronomical spectroscopy and, near the end of his pioneering research, a loss of British leadership in cosmological studies. Developments in the spectroscopy of galaxies took place about half a century after corresponding work on stars, largely because distant galaxies are far fainter and thus far more difficult to study than are nearby stars.
