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Johannes Kepler - Wikipedia

Johannes Kepler

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Johannes Kepler1 (27 December 1571 – 15 November 1630) was a German polymath who was an astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and music theorist.2 He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best known for his laws of planetary motion, and his books Astronomia nova, Harmonice Mundi, and Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae. The variety and impact of his work made Kepler one of the founders and fathers of modern astronomy, the scientific method, natural science, and modern science.345 He has been described as the “father of science fiction” for his novel Somnium.67

Kepler was a mathematics teacher at a seminary school in Graz, where he became an associate of Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg. Later he became an assistant to the astronomer Tycho Brahe in Prague, and eventually the imperial mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II and his two successors Matthias and Ferdinand II. He also taught mathematics in Linz, and was an adviser to General Wallenstein.

Kepler lived in an era when there was no clear distinction between astronomy and astrology,8 but there was a strong division between astronomy (a branch of mathematics within the liberal arts) and physics (a branch of natural philosophy).9 Kepler also incorporated religious arguments and reasoning into his work, motivated by the religious conviction and belief that God had created the world according to an intelligible plan that is accessible through the natural light of reason.10 Kepler described his new astronomy as “celestial physics”,11 as “an excursion into Aristotle’s Metaphysics”,12 and as “a supplement to Aristotle’s On the Heavens”,13 transforming the ancient tradition of physical cosmology by treating astronomy as part of a universal mathematical physics.14 Additionally, he did fundamental work in the field of optics, being named the father of modern optics,15 in particular for his Astronomiae pars optica. He also invented an improved version of the refracting telescope, the Keplerian telescope, which became the foundation of the modern refracting telescope,16 while also improving on the telescope design by Galileo Galilei,17 who mentioned Kepler’s discoveries in his work. He postulated the Kepler conjecture. Kepler influenced among others Isaac Newton, providing one of the foundations for his theory of universal gravitation.18

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Footnotes

  1. English:/ˈkɛplər/KEP-lər; German: [joˈhanəs ˈkɛplɐ].^{[3]}$$^{[4]} ↩

  2. Jeans, Susi (2013) [2001]. “Kepler[Keppler], Johannes”. Grove Music Online. Revised by H. Floris Cohen. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.14903. ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0. Retrieved 26 September 2021. (subscription, Wikilibrary access, or UK public library membership required) ↩

  3. “DPMA | Johannes Kepler”. ↩

  4. “Johannes Kepler: His Life, His Laws and Times”. NASA. Archived from the original on 24 June 2021. Retrieved 1 September 2023. ↩

  5. “Molecular Expressions: Science, Optics and You – Timeline – Johannes Kepler”. Florida State University. ↩

  6. “Kepler, the Father of Science Fiction”. bbvaopenmind.com. 16 November 2015. ↩

  7. Popova, Maria (27 December 2019). “How Kepler Invented Science Fiction and Defended His Mother in a Witchcraft Trial While Revolutionizing Our Understanding of the Universe”. themarginalian.org. ↩

  8. Dooley, Brendan (June 2021). “From astrology to astronomy: renaissance and early modern perspectives”. Berliner Theologische Zeitschrift. 38 (1). Walter de Gruyter GmbH: 156–175. doi:10.1515/bthz-2021-0010. From ancient times through the seventeenth century European astronomy and astrology remained two sides of the same coin ↩

  9. Omodeo, Pietro Daniel (August 2015). “The ‘Impiety’ of Kepler’s shift from mathematical astronomy to celestial physics”. Annalen der Physik. 527 (7–8). Wiley. Bibcode:2015AnP…527A..71O. doi:10.1002/andp.201500238. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-002A-8F0F-E. ↩

  10. Barker and Goldstein. “Theological Foundations of Kepler’s Astronomy”, Osiris, 16, 2001, pp. 112–113. ↩

  11. Kepler. New Astronomy, title page, tr. Donohue, pp. 26–27 ↩

  12. Kepler. New Astronomy, p. 48 ↩

  13. Epitome of Copernican Astronomy in Great Books of the Western World, Vol. 15, p. 845 ↩

  14. Stephenson. Kepler’s Physical Astronomy, pp. 1–2; Dear, Revolutionizing the Sciences, pp. 74–78 ↩

  15. Coullet, Pierre; San Martin, Jaime; Tirapegui, Enrique (2022). “Kepler in search of the ‘Anaclastic’”. Chaos, Solitons & Fractals. 164 112695. Bibcode:2022CSF…16412695C. doi:10.1016/j.chaos.2022.112695. S2CID 252834988. ↩

  16. “Keplerian telescope | Optical Design, Refracting, Astronomy”. Encyclopaedia Britannica. ↩

  17. Tunnacliffe, AH; Hirst JG (1996). Optics. Kent, England. pp. 233–237. ISBN 978-0-900099-15-1. ↩

  18. Voelkel, James R. (2001). “Commentary on Ernan McMullin,“The Impact of Newton’s Principia on the Philosophy of Science"". Philosophy of Science. 68 (3): 319–326. doi:10.1086/392885. ISSN 0031-8248. JSTOR 3080920. S2CID 144781947. ↩

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