An example of an (historical) alternative conception:
"And the vapours that arise from the sun and the fixed stars and the tails of comets can fall by their gravity into the atmospheres of the planets and there be condensed and converted into water and humid spirits, and then – by a slow heat – be transformed gradually into salts, sulphurs, tinctures, slime, mud, clay, sand, stones, corals, and other earthly substances."
Isaac Newton (1999) Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (3rd edition, 1726): The authoritative translation (I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman), University of California Press.
