This book traces the development of Kepler’s ideas along with his unsteady wanderings in a world dominated by religious turmoil. Johannes Kepler, like Galileo, was a supporter of the Copernican heliocentric world model. From an early stage, his principal objective was to discover “the world behind the world”, i.e. to identify the underlying order and the secrets that make the world function as it does: the hidden world harmony. Kepler was driven both by his religious belief and Greek mysticism, which he found in ancient mathematics.
His urge to find a construct encompassing the harmony of every possible aspect of the world – including astronomy, geometry and music – is seen as a manifestation of a deep human desire to bring order to the apparent chaos surrounding our existence. This desire continues to this day as we search for a theory that will finally unify and harmonise the forces of nature.
Spis treści
Introduction: Scope.- The Order of Things: the quest for world harmony.- Time and Space: historic context and political and economic situation in Middle Europe.- Childhood and Youth (1571-1594): studies and exams in southern Germany; first encounters with Greek mysticism and the work of Copernicus.- Graz –professorship, “Mysterium cosmographicum”, correspondence with Galileo.- Prague – cooperation and discord with Tycho Brahe, Mars data, Tabulae Rudolphinae, “Astronomia Nova”, first and second law of planetary movements, various publications, the telescope.- Linz – torn between Lutheranism, Calvinism and Catholicism, “Harmonices Mundi”, third law of planetary movements, logarithms.- Between Ulm and Prague – completion of the Tabulae Rudolphinae, encounter with Wallenstein, prognostica.- Sagan – court astrologer; death in Regensburg.- The Order of Things Revisited – the dismantling of world harmony, deconstruction and back to the unification attempts of modern physics.
O autorze
Wolfgang Osterhage, born in 1948, holds Ph.D.s in Physics and Information Science. He is a consultant to international organisations and corporations, and a lecturer and visiting professor at various institutions in Germany. After many years of professional activity in other countries, he now lives and works as an independent author in the Rhineland.
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