Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler
Johannes Keplerwas a German mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer. A key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution, he is best known for his laws of planetary motion, based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican Astronomy. These works also provided one of the foundations for Isaac Newton's theory of universal gravitation...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth27 December 1571
CountryGermany
math matter geometry
Where there is matter, there is geometry.
moon heaven honor
Great is God our Lord, great is His power and there is no end to His wisdom. Praise Him you heavens, glorify Him, sun and moon and you planets. For out of Him and through Him, and in Him are all things..... We know, oh, so little. To Him be the praise, the honor and the glory from eternity to eternity.
dream wall ignorance
If my false figures came near to the facts, this happened merely by chance ... These comments are not worth printing. Yet it gives me pleasure to remember how many detours I had to make, along how many walls I had to grope in the darkness of my ignorance until I found the door which lets in the light of the truth ... In such manner did I dream of the truth.
fundamentals categories features
[Quantity is the fundamental feature of things,] the 'primarium accidens substantiae,' ...prior to the other categories.
astrology nonsense hard
I am a Lutheran astrologer, I throw away the nonsense and keep the hard kernel.
kind creator
[God] is the kind Creator who brought forth nature out of nothing.
vectors equal radius
The radius vector describes equal areas in equal times.
distance mean squares
The squares of the periodic times are to each other as the cubes of the mean distances.
distance fall moon
If the moon and earth were not retained in their orbits by their animal force or some other equivalent, the earth would mount to the moon by a fifty-fourth part of their distance, and the moon fall towards the earth through the other fifty-three parts, and they would there meet, assuming, however, that the substance of both is of the same density.
sky mind shadow
I measured the skies, now the shadows I measure, Sky-bound was the mind, earth-bound the body rests. [Kepler's epitaph]
experiments
Without proper experiments I conclude nothing.
circles dwelling together
On how the motion of a planet defines its sphere: ... and thus it comes about gradually by the linking and accumulation of a great many revolutions that a kind of concave sphere is displayed, having the same center as the Sun, just as by a great many circles of silken thread, linked with each other and wound together, the dwelling of a silkworm is made.
distance would-be earth
But although the attractive virtue of the earth extends upwards, as has been said, so very far, yet if any stone should be at a distance great enough to become sensible compared with the earth's diameter, it is true that on the motion of the earth such a stone would not follow altogether; its own force of resistance would be combined with the attractive force of the earth, and thus it would extricate itself in some degree from the motion of the earth.
simplicity unity consciousness
Nature loves simplicity and unity.