Description

Kepler's Witch: An Astronomer's Discovery of Cosmic Order Amid Religious War, Political Intrigue, and the Heresy Trial of His Mother
By James A. Connor


* Publisher: HarperOne
* Number Of Pages: 416
* Publication Date: 2005-05-10
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0060750499
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780060750497
* Binding: Paperback



Product Description:

Set against the backdrop of the witchcraft trial of his mother, this lively biography of Johannes Kepler – 'the Protestant Galileo' and 16th century mathematician and astronomer – reveals the surprisingly spiritual nature of the quest of early modern science.

In the style of Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter, Connor's book brings to life the tidal forces of Reformation, Counter–Reformation, and social upheaval. Johannes Kepler, who discovered the three basic laws of planetary motion, was persecuted for his support of the Copernican system. After a neighbour accused his mother of witchcraft, Kepler quit his post as the Imperial mathematician to defend her.

James Connor tells Kepler's story as a pilgrimage, a spiritual journey into the modern world through war and disease and terrible injustice, a journey reflected in the evolution of Kepler's geometrical model of the cosmos into a musical model, harmony into greater harmony. The leitmotif of the witch trial adds a third dimension to Kepler's biography by setting his personal life within his own times. The acts of this trial, including Kepler's letters and the accounts of the witnesses, although published in their original German dialects, had never before been translated into English. Echoing some of Dava Sobel's work for Galileo's Daughter, Connor has translated the witch trial documents into English. With a great respect for the history of these times and the life of this man, Connor's accessible story illuminates the life of Kepler, the man of science, but also Kepler, a man of uncommon faith and vision.



Summary: Kepler's Witch
Rating: 4

The last biography of Kepler I read was Koestler's _The Watershed_ and while it was fascinating it did not give me the background in the theology and the history of the period that Connor's book did. The strongest point of _Kepler's Witch_ is the insight into the religious motives behind Kepler's work and the difficulty Kepler had with the Lutheran religious authorities. Connor believes it was, in part, his refusal to take sides on the increasingly polarized religious positions of the Lutherans and Roman Catholics leading up to the Thirty Years War that led to the prosecution of his mother for witchcraft.

Kepler lived in difficult times. Connor evokes this setting well. Amidst political and theological intrigue, diseases that killed half his children before adulthood, open warfare that forced him to move from city to city, and perpetual financial hardship he still believed in the harmony of the cosmos and that led him to his scientific discoveries.

The other reviewers are correct though that the structure of the book is sometimes annoying. Each chapter opens with a long translation of a letter by Kepler. This is good. However in the chapter that follows we get the history leading up to and including events in the letter, so Connor often quotes parts of the letter back as if it was the first time the reader has heard of the events. Likewise the chapters cover chronologically overlapping material, so Connor sometime repeats verbatim descriptions of the events recounted in an earlier chapter though the context is different. The effect is jarring -- like watching a movie and you realize you are hearing the same dialogue twice. These were not major flaws, but one wonders if an editor ought to intervened and smoothed this out.

Overall, the book does work despite some minor repetitiveness. It gave me a much better understanding of the times Kepler lived in and that alone makes the book essential reading.


Summary: Holy Geometry
Rating: 4