Kepler"s Philosophy and the New Astronomy (ebook)

Argumento de Kepler"s Philosophy and the New Astronomy (ebook)

Johannes Kepler contributed importantly to every field he addressed. He changed the face of astronomy by abandoning principles that had been in place for two millennia, made important discoveries in optics and mathematics, and was an uncommonly good philosopher. Generally, however, Kepler's philosophical ideas have been dismissed as irrelevant and even detrimental to his legacy of scientific accomplishment. Here, Rhonda Martens offers the first extended study of Kepler's philosophical views and shows how those views helped him construct and justify the new astronomy.

Martens notes that since Kepler became a Copernican before any empirical evidence supported Copernicus over the entrenched Ptolemaic system, his initial reasons for preferring Copernicanism were not telescope observations but rather methodological and metaphysical commitments. Further, she shows that Kepler's metaphysics supported the strikingly modern view of astronomical method that led him to discover the three laws of planetary motion and to wed physics and astronomy--a key development in the scientific revolution.

By tracing the evolution of Kepler's thought in his astronomical, metaphysical, and epistemological works, Martens explores the complex interplay between changes in his philosophical views and the status of his astronomical discoveries. She shows how Kepler's philosophy paved the way for the discovery of elliptical orbits and provided a defense of physical astronomy's methodological soundness. In doing so, Martens demonstrates how an empirical discipline was inspired and profoundly shaped by philosophical assumptions.

"This little book makes a big contribution not only to Kepler studies but to our understanding of early modern philosophy in general. . . . Martens has effectively shown that to understand Kepler, to understand how he influenced his times, and to understand how his times grappled with the issues he and other innovators were dealing with, it is necessary to look closely at his philosophy."--Sheila J. Rabin, Isis

"Rhonda Martens shows in this historically informed tome that Kepler grappled constantly, and advantageously with philosophical problems throughout his career. . . . The truly original contribution of [this book] is the tracing of Kepler's philosophical ideas as they weave through and strengthen his science."--Bruce Stephenson, Astronomy0Figures and Tables ix
Acknowledgments xi
Abbreviations of Works Frequently Cited xiii
Introduction 3
1. Kepler's Life and Times 10
Select Biography 10
Kepler's Astronomical Inheritance 18
Kepler's Philosopbical Inheritance 32
2. The Mysterium cosmographicum and Kepler's Early Approach to Natural Philosophy 39
The Content of the Mysterium cosmographicum 39
Kepler's Cosmology 48
Kepler's Approach to Natural Philosophy 49
3. Kepler's Apologia: An Early Modern Treatise on Realism 57
Extra-Astronomical Considerations 58
The Nature of Astronomical Hypotheses 60
The Testing of Astronomucal Hypotheses 63
Kepler's Improved Notion of Testability 64
Concluding Remarks: The Archetypes 67
4. Kepler's Archetypes and the Astronomia nova 69
The Status of Hypotheses in Physical Astronomy 70
The Replacement of the Mean by the True Sun 71
The Vicarious Hypothesis 76
The New Physics 79
Kepler's Second Law 84
Oval Orbits 87
Physical and Geometrical Models of Liberation 91
The Ellipse of Chapter 59 95
Concluding Remarks: Archetypes in the Astronomia 97
5. The Aristotelian Kepler 99
The Aristotelian Challenge 9O
Physical Astronomy as a Mixed Discipline 103
The Mathematical and the Physical 106
Concluding Remarks 111
6. The Harmonice mundi 112
Kepler and Ptolemy 112
The Essence of Archetypal Mathematics 118
Synopsis of Book V 120
The Influence of Kepler's Haramonies on His Cosmology 136
7. The Epitome astronomiae Copernicanae: Kepler's Mature Physical Astronomy 142
The Nature of Astronomy and Observation 144
Archetypes as a Prerequisite for Physics 146
Book IV and the Archetypes 147
Book V 163
Concluding Remarks 167
Conclusion: The Fate of Kepler's Philosophical Thought 169
The Threat to the Perfectibility of Astronomy 169
Kepler's Philosophical Legacy 172
Notes 177
Bibliography 191
Index 199