"It was only the third new set of planetary tables in European history. And whereas Copernicuss and Ptolemys tables were more or less equally accurate, Keplers were some 50 times more so. Within a few years, it was possible to pinpoint the time of transit of Mercury across the face of the sun so that it was possible to observe it in transit for the first time in human history. Of course, Keplers theories were more difficult, especially since he had incorporated logarithms, which had only been invented a few years earlier. Much of the book, therefore, was made up of explanatory text that told the reader how to use the tables. ...The printing ...was finished on time in September 1627 ...but he was not optimistic ...noting, "There will be few purchasers, as is always the case with mathematical works, especially in the present chaos."
Johannes Kepler was a German polymath who was an astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and music theorist. 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
"Either... the moving intelligences of the planets are weakest in those that are farthest from the sun, or... there is one moving intelligence in the sun, the common center, forcing them all round, but those most violently which are nearest, and that it languishes in some sort and grows weaker at the most distant, because of the remoteness and the attenuation of the virtue."
Johannes Kepler"I believe it was an act of Divine Providence that I arrived just at the time when Longomontanus [Tycho Brahes assistant before Kepler] was occupied with Mars. For Mars alone enables us to penetrate the secrets of astronomy which otherwise would remain forever hidden from us."
Johannes Kepler"In Terra inest virtus, quae Lunam del."
Johannes Kepler"I used to measure the heavens, now I measure the shadows of Earth. Although my mind was heaven-bound, the shadow of my body lies here."
Johannes Kepler"Geometry has two great treasures: one is the Theorem of Phythagoras, the other the division of a line in extreme and mean ratio. The first we can compare to a mass of gold; the other we may call a precious jewel."
Johannes Kepler"I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses."
Johannes Kepler"As long as you keep getting born, it’s okay to die sometimes."
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that theres free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."
"History is a strange experience. The world is quite small now; but history is large and deep. Sometimes you can go much farther by sitting in your own home and reading a book of history, than by getting onto a ship or an airplane and traveling a thousand miles. When you go to Mexico City through space, you find it a sort of cross between modern Madrid and modern Chicago, with additions of its own; but if you go to Mexico City through history, back only 500 years, you will find it as distant as though it were on another planet: inhabited by cultivated barbarians, sensitive and cruel, highly organized and still in the Copper Age, a collection of startling, of unbelievable contrasts."
"As soon as a thought or word becomes a tool, one can dispense with actually ‘thinking’ it, that is, with going through the logical acts involved in verbal formulation of it. As has been pointed out, often and correctly, the advantage of mathematics—the model of all neo-positivistic thinking—lies in just this ‘intellectual economy.’ Complicated logical operations are carried out without actual performance of the intellectual acts upon which the mathematical and logical symbols are based. … Reason … becomes a fetish, a magic entity that is accepted rather than intellectually experienced."
"Our feminist culture at the present moment is completely dependent on capitalism. My grandmother was still scrubbing clothes on the back porch on a washboard!"
"A word of the faith that never balks, Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely. It alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all, That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all. (23)"