Jardine. Kepler's Defense of Tycho

fHA, xxxvii (2006)
KEPLER AS CASTIGATOR AND HISTORIAN:

HIS PREPARATORY NOTES FOR CONTRA URSUM
NICHOLAS JARDINE, University of Cambridge
1. Introduction
In letters published by Tycho Brahe in Epistolae astronomicae (hereafter EA) of 1596,
Nicolaus Ursus (Baer), the Imperial Mathematician, found himself denounced as a
"dirty rascal" and plagiarist of Tycho Brahe's new geoheliocentrlc hypotheses. In the
following year Ursus hit back with a vengeance in his De astronomicis hypothesibus
(hereafter DAH). Peppered with insults and spiced with mockery, Ursus's satirical
counterattack has a core of prima facie effective philosophical and historical argu-
ment. Philosophically, Ursus presents Tycho as deluded in attaching such importance
to the issue of novelty in the formulation of hypotheses; for astronomical hypotheses
are, he maintains, properly proposed as devices for saving the celestial phenomena,
not as portrayals of the true form of the cosmos. Historically, moreover, Tycho's
priority claim is simply false. As a matter of fact, so Ursus insists in the preface, it
was Tycho who derived his hypotheses from Ursus, not the other way around. But
no matter, for, as Ursus sets out to show in the large part of the work devoted to
the history of astronomy, geoheliocentric hypotheses were known in Antiquity to
Apollonius of Perga and Martianus Capella, and are to be found in Copernicus's De
revolutionibus (hereafter DR).
As discussed in the series of articles "Tycho v. Ursus: The build-up to a trial"
in previous issues of this journal, I Tycho made elaborate plans to have Ursus con-
victed for defamation of character by a specially appointed Imperial Commission.
Ursus, who was evidently well aware of Tycho's legal moves, published (probably
in early 1600) an anonymous Demonstratio setting out in simple terms his case for
maintaining that "Apollonian" - that is, geoheliocentric - hypotheses are to be
found explicitly described in Martianus Capella and Copernicus. That Ursus was the
author and Tycho the target of the pamphlet is attested in the handwriting of Ursus's
physician, Johannes Wittich, in the only known copy,"
In 1595 Kepler had written an adulatory letter to Ursus, hailing him (on the strength
of his books) as his teacher in mathematics, and humbly seeking Ursus's opinion of
his embedding of the planetary circuits in the nested Platonic solids, the construction
he was to elaborate in his Mysterium cosmographicum (1596). The letter contained
the fatal words "I admire your hypotheses", that is, the geoheliocentric hypotheses
that Ursus had published in his Fundamentum astronomicum (1588), and which
Tycho claimed to have been filched from him. Without Kepler's permission, Ursus
included this letter in DAR. The details of the way in which the publication of the
letter led to Kepler's involvement in Tycho's dispute with Ursus have been related
elsewhere.' Here it suffices to cite Kepler's own account of the matter in his CU,
0021-8286/06/3703-0257/$15.00 © 2006 Science History Publications Ltd

258 Nicholas Jardine
composed in the months around Christmas 1600.

Given that he [Ursus] had seen to fit to drag me, who had written to him as a
disciple, against my will into the seat of judgement, it would be permissible
for me to cast off the modesty of a disciple, to assume the role of judge in the
scholarly dispute, leaving the legal action for defamation and civil damages to
Tycho, and publicly to deliver judgement on that part of the issue which evidently
pertained to mathematics."
In fact, the unfortunate Kepler felt compelled to offer a whole series of judge-
ments on Ursus's disparagement of Tycho's originality, an awkward task for him,
given that (at least initially) he supposed Tycho to be just one of several who had
derived geoheliocentric hypotheses by 'inversion', that is, exchange of the places
of the Earth and Sun, of the Copernican hypotheses.' The first of these judgements
is in a letter of 30 May 1599 to his patron, the Chancellor of Bavaria, Herwart von
Hohenburg.? Here Kepler evades the issue of Ursus's insults, declaring that as one
who went too far in praising Ursus, he has no right to object to Ursus's going too far
in defaming Tycho! Much of the judgement is taken up with a rebuttal of Ursus's
interpretation of the passages in DR on which he bases his claim that the Tychonic
hypotheses are to be found in Copernicus and Apollonius ofPerga. On the strength of
this, Kepler concludes that since Ursus could not in fact have derived his hypotheses
from Apollonius of Perga or Copernicus, he must have derived them from Tycho.
Kepler's next judgement, in his letter of 19 August 1599 to his former teacher Michael
Maestlin, is similarly concerned with Ursus's misreadings of Copernicus.' So too
is his formal judgement "Concerning the dispute about hypotheses between Lord
Tycho and Ursus", addressed in March 1600 to Tycho's familiar Franz Tengnagel von
Camp, in which Ursus's failure to show that the geoheliocentric hypotheses really
are extant in Copernicus and elsewhere is again cited as evidence that Ursus stole
his hypotheses from Tycho."
Then there is Contra Ursum (hereafter CU) itself, a substantial work composed
around Christmas 1600, and cast in the style of a legal oration defending Kepler's
client, astronomical hypotheses, against Ursus's calumnies. Of its four chapters, the
first counters point-by-point Ursus's claims in DAR about the fictional nature of all
astronomical hypotheses, offering in its place an ideal of astronomical hypotheses as
representations of the true form of the cosmos vouched for by predictive accuracy and
conformity with physical reasons. In the three further chapters Kepler elaborates his
own history of astronomical hypotheses, based on meticulous translation and interpre-
tation of ancient texts." In this history Ursus is refuted at two levels: as in the earlier
judgements, Kepler rebuts the specific grounds on which Ursus rests his claim that
geoheliocentric hypotheses were known in Antiquity; and, more generally, Ursus's
scepticism-inducing chronicle of convenient fictions is replaced by an optimistic story
in which the heliocentric insights of the Pythagoreans are progressively recovered
as astronomers discover ever more about the true dispositions and motions of the
heavenly bodies. CU is incomplete, closing with a rhetorical challenge to Ursus to
Kepler as Castigator and Historian 259
substantiate his claim that Tycho's hypotheses are to be found in DR.

Vol. xx/I of Kepler's Gesammelte Werke includes Volker Bialas's edition of the
sixteen sheets of Kepler's notes relating to Ursus's then-recent publications, placed
in the midst of miscellaneous chronological writings in vol. xx/i of the Kepler manu-
scripts of the Academy of Science, St Petersburg. Pp. 51Ov-513v of these notes,
which form a separate gathering, have been shown to be an ad literam refutation of
Ursus's Demonstratio:" Perhaps this first batch of notes was in preparation for a legal
document, to accompany Johannes MUller's affidavited rebuttal of Ursus's claims
in his Demonstratio about the presence of the geohe1iocentric system in Martianus
Capella's De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii;" or maybe Kepler originally intended
CU to address both of Ursus's anti-Tychonic publications.
The remaining notes all relate to Ursus's DAH. They fall into four fairly distinct
groups. From 514r to halfway through 518v is largely devoted to Ursus's reading of
geoheliocentric doctrine into passages from DR. In the preface to DAH, Ursus appeals
to Tycho's correspondence with Christoph Rothmann (Mathematician to Landgraf
Wilhelm IV of Hesse-Kassel), published in EA, to support his claim that Rothmann
and Tycho had stolen their geoheliocentric hypotheses from him. The next group of
notes, ending with 512r, counters this allegation, largely by direct quotation from
Tycho's exchanges with Rothmann on the subject of astronomical hypotheses. 521v
to 523v contains notes relating directly to the main text of DAH, and in particular
to Ursus's assertions about the nature of astronomical hypotheses. Finally, 524r to
525r offers miscellaneous and often cryptic observations, mainly on passages from
Proclus, Pliny, Vitruvius and Macrobius, all of them relevant directly or indirectly
to the history of astronomy.
A terminus a quo for these notes is set by Ursus's death in August 1600; for, as
we shall see, one of the notes alludes obliquely to Ursus as deceased. Further, many
of these notes are elaborated in CU, from which it is clear that they were written
before that work, not after it as has been suggested. 12 Two of the last group of notes
combine handwriting of Kepler with that of Johannes MUller, who served as Tycho's
assistant from March 1600 to May 1601 at Benatky Castle, near Prague. MUller had
earlier produced the fair copy of Kepler's" judgement concerning the dispute ..."
and, as noted above, a formal refutation of Ursus Demonstratio. It seems probable,
therefore, that Kepler, on entering Tycho's service in October 1600, and after a brief
period of collaboration with MUller, took on sole responsibility for defending Tycho's
claims to originality against Ursus's counterclaims.
Before discussing the wider significances of the four groups of notes, let us present
them. They are highly condensed. In the hope of rendering them comprehensible, we
have occasionally expanded the translation (in square brackets), as well as interpolat-
ing substantial commentaries (in smaller type). Kepler's marginal annotations of the
notes are given in angled brackets, thus < ... >.
2. On Ursus's Misinterpretations of Passages from Copernicus's De revolutionibus
[514r] Whether the form of the motions and disposition of the heavenly bodies,
defended by the noble Lord Tycho Brahe, is to be found in Copernicus.
Three passages in particular are offered by Ursus as testimony in this matter,
by not one of which is what he wants proved.
In DAR Ursus maintains that geoheliocentric "Apollonian" hypotheses (i.e., those of Apollonius
of Perga) equivalent to Tycho's hypotheses figure in three passages of Copernicus's DR: i,
10, 8v.13-27 (appealed to by Ursus at Ciii,r.8-12); iii, 25, 95v.32-96r.13 (quoted by Ursus at
Dii,r.19-32); and v, 35, 179r.15-l79v.14 (partly quoted by Ursus at Dii,v.7-l6). Kepler now
sets out to show that Ursus's claim rests on misinterpretations.
Book 1, Chapter 10
In this passage, Copernicus cautiously and with great care begins the exposition
of his view, and he is there so far from speaking about another's view that, in
that very passage, he is concerned to gain the favour of his reader for his own
remarkable opinion [paradoxo] .13 The meaning of the passage is this.
When certain of the Ancients, of whom Martianus Capella is closest to us,
saw that two planets, Venus and Mercury, constantly stay close to the Sun, and
that they travel through the zodiac with it, so that if the Sun is in Cancer, they
are to be seen nowhere else but in Cancer or Gemini or Leo and thus always go
around the Sun, by contrast to the other four, who wander through the zodiac
with no regard to the Sun, [514v] to the extent that at one time they are absolutely
diametrically opposed to the Sun: when, I say, Martianus considered this, he
said that the circles of Venus and Mercury are led around the body of the Sun,
and that [these two planets] do not have their own eccentrics going round the
Earth, as Ptolemy held.
This is a summary, with some embellishments, of DR, i, 10, 8v.13-23.
Therefore we should not, I think, in the least disdain what Martianus Capella, who wrote
an encyclopaedia, and certain other Latin writers well knew. For they suppose that Venus
and Mercury run around the Sun, presenting itself in the middle, and they think that for that
reason they do not diverge further from it than the curvature of their orbs allows, because
they do not go round the Earth like the rest, but have contrary apsides. So what do they
mean to declare, but that the centre of their orbs is near the Sun? Thus the Mercurial orb
will surely be enclosed within the Venerean, which is agreed to be at least twice as big,
and given that amplitude it will occupy a space adequate for it.
(Because the interpretation of this passage is disputed between Ursus and Kepler, a closely
literal rendering is given here.)
Diagram of the Ptolemaic hypothesis concerning Venus, Mercury and the Sun.
DEarth, AG the orb of Mercury, EG the epicycle of Mercury, A its centre. BH the
orb of Venus, FH the epicycle of Venus, B the centre of the epicycle. CI the orb of
the Sun.
Even if, then, A, B and C are separate orbs, nevertheless these three points
always remain in the same line and go round once a year (according to Ptolemy),
meanwhile Venus and Mercury run freely on the epicycles EG and FH.
[515r] Diagram of the hypothesis of Martianus Capella concerning Venus,

Mercury and the Sun
D the Earth, CGH the orb shared between the Sun, Venus and Mercury, EG the
epicycle or rather the orb of Mercury, FH the epicycle of Venus. C the Sun and
the centre of the epicycles of both.
Accordingly, after Copernicus has factually [historice] 14 recounted these things

concerning Martianus Capella, he adds these words: "When these are positioned
thus," if anyone should connect the centres of the three remaining planets to the
Sun, he will not be wrong."
This is a gloss rather than a quotation. Copernicus's words are: "If anyone, taking this cue,
also links Saturn, Jupiter and Mars to that same centre ... he will not be mistaken" (DR, i,
10, 8v.23-27).
[515v] Here Ursus thinks that Tycho's view is put forward, because he [Copernicus]
connects the centres of the five planets to the Sun.
But by these words ("if anyone ... ") Copernicus implies his very own self. For
he wants to show that he was inspired by the example of Capella, who had placed
the centres of Venus and Mercury together in the Sun, when he added the centres
of the other three planets to these two. <For Copernicus also connects the centres
of the five planets to the Sun.>
He does not here take over the entire opinion of Capella, both that the Sun is
moved, and that it is the centre of Venus and Mercury, but [he does take over]
at least a part, that it is the centre of Venus and Mercury, paying no attention to
whether the Sun is moved or not. For a few words further on, from this elegant
arrangement, fortified by Martianus's authority, he built up his own hypothesis, in
which, against Martianus's opinion, he makes that centre common to Venus and
Mercury, namely, the Sun, stay still. And two points readily prove that it never
occurred to Copernicus that this opinion of his could be presented in the Tychonian
manner: first, because shortly after the cited words, when he had put forward his
own opinion, he speaks about it in such a manner as to indicate that [516r] he would
not have assented to the movement of the Earth and that immensity [infinitatem]
of the sphere of the fixed stars, unless compelled and, so to speak, involuntarily,
because there is no middle ground between the virtually infinite variety of the orbs
of the Ancients (a very small part of which I have depicted on the first diagram
above) and this remarkable hypothesis of his. But why would he have said this, or
implied it, if in those very words he had already proposed that Tychonian middle
ground between the two? For Tycho's hypothesis avoids both the plurality of the
orbs and the immensity of the fixed stars - although I would not agree with him,
for I am not at all perturbed by that immensity.
Taken entirely out of context, Copernicus's conclusion to his account of the opinion of Mar-
tianus Capella could be read, with Ursus, as recommending a geoheliocentric arrangement.
So Kepler places it in context, adducing the passage later in the chapter in which Copernicus
explicitly introduces his own heliocentric arrangement (DR, i, 1O,9r.6-11).
Hence we are not ashamed to declare that this whole [region] that the Moon encircles,
and the centre of the Earth, go round that great orb among the rest of the planets in an
annual revolution about the Sun, and that the centre of the world is near to it; whence, as
the Sun remains motionless, whatever appears to be a matter of the motion of the Sun is
rather, to speak correctly, a matter of the mobility of the Earth.
Against any suggestion that Copernicus had mentioned the geoheliocentric system as a
half-way house between Ptolemaic orthodoxy and his own system, Kepler points out the sub-
sequent passage, in which Copernicus appears to treat the immensity [infinitas] of the sphere
of the fixed stars according to his own system as the lesser of two evils, the greater being the
plurality of orbs according to the Ptolemaic system (DR, i, 10, 9r.II-18).
That the size of the world is so great that, while the distance of the Earth from the Sun
in relation to any other orbs of the planets has a magnitude which is quite evident in
proportion to their sizes, compared with the sphere of the fixed stars it is imperceptible,
should, I think, be more readily granted than to have the mind perplexed by an almost
infinite number of orbs, as those who have kept the Earth in the centre of the world have
been forced to do.
According to Kepler, the Tychonic system avoids both the immensity of the sphere of the
fixed stars and the plurality of orbs. As Volker Bialas notes (KGW, xx/I, 568), Copernicus
nowhere attributes infinitas to the sphere of the fixed stars. However, since Kepler was com-
mitted to the finitude of the world, yet here declares himself unperturbed by the infinitas of
the fixed stars, it is evident that he is using the term in the sense, not uncommon in the period,
of "immensity".
The second point which proves the same thing, is that Copernicus had clung to the
reality ofthe orbs, and he who upholds that cannot uphold Tycho's hypothesis at
the same time. For because Mars cuts the orb of the Sun, Tycho necessarily has
to maintain against Copernicus that there is no solidity of the orbs; from which
it is plain that it never entered Copernicus's mind to maintain Tycho's hypothesis
in the passage or to offer it as a possibility.
In "Concerning the dispute about hypotheses" Kepler had similarly pointed out that Coper-
nicus, as a believer in real orbs, could not have entertained the Tychonic system (KGW, xx/I,
76.38---41). C/. also his attribution to Copernicus of belief in solid orbs in chap. 4 of Astrono-
mia nova (KGW, iii, 73.9-31).16 In De mundi aetherei recentioribus phaenomenis, Tycho had
indicated that in forthcoming work he would demonstrate from the motions of comets that
there are no real and solid planetary orbs, and hence that there is no absurdity in the intersec-
tion of the paths of Mars and the Sun (Tychonis Brahe Opera omnia, ed. by 1. L. E. Dreyer
(Copenhagen, 1913-29; hereafter TBOO), iv, 159). In his letter to Rothmann of 21 February
1589, published in EA, he claimed that it was his observations of parallax proving Mars, when
in opposition, to be closer to the Earth than the Sun, that had shown him that his hypotheses
provided the only valid way of saving the phenomena (TBOO, vi, 179).17
[516v] But here we must respond to two objections: first, let Ursus contend that
even if Copernicus did not mean what Ursus had argued before, the equipollence
[aequipollentia] of the hypotheses is nevertheless clear, and that those words
cited from Copernicus can be made to fit both the Tychonian and the Copernican
accounts. I answer that this was never part of the dispute. For it is self-evident
that it is a feature of the soundness of an hypothesis that from it the things which
happen daily in the heavens follow, and thus that there may be equipollence
between it and another [hypothesis] from which the phenomena follow likewise.
But beyond this, Tycho also attempted something else, namely, to satisfy physical
[considerations], and to avoid the absurd Copernican [hypotheses] (as indeed they
seem to those who do not philosophise carefully and deeply enough), and not
to be refuted by the authority of the Sacred Scriptures, which is indeed charged
against Copernicus.
As Kepler indicates, by aequipollentia of hypotheses he means yielding of exactly the same celestial
phenomena, that is, in modern parlance, observational equivalence. Presumably Kepler's point here is
that Ursus's case fails even if we concede that the passage from Copernicus in question is suggestive of
geoheliocentric hypotheses got by simply exchanging the Earth for the Sun in the Copernican hypotheses,
and hence obviously 'equipollent' with them. For there is more to Tycho's hypotheses than an inversion of
the Copernican hypotheses, since they are proposed not merely as calculating devices, but also as a portrayal
of the true form of the cosmos, consonant with Scriptural authority and physical principles. That this is
indeed Kepler's argument is confirmed by the fact that thus construed it echoes Tycho's own response to
Rothmann's account of his inverted Copernican hypotheses. There Tycho emphasizes the Scriptural objec-
tions and physical absurdities of the Copernican hypotheses, and insists that his own hypotheses were in
no way prompted by inversion of those of Copernicus (TBOO, vi, 17&-80).'8 Further confirmation comes
from the similarity with Kepler's remarks in CU concerning the difference in aims between Rothmann's
"mutation" of the Copernican system and Tycho's hypotheses (A defence ofTycho, 90; 141).
Secondly, Ursus usually argues part by part in this manner: this small piece of
the Tychonian hypothesis is in Capella (say, that the Sun is the centre of the two
inferior planets), a second piece is in Ptolemy, a third in Copernicus, a fourth in
Apollonius of Perga, a fifth follows [from these] of necessity, and so on. Therefore
Tycho cannot honestly claim this hypothesis as his own.
I reply, that Tycho always welcomes with a willing and entirely happy spirit and
admits what he has in common with others. For we naturally delight in fortifying
ourselves with precedents. Nevertheless, argument from part to whole is not valid
in astronomical matters, especially not in this case. For let Ursus go and gather
together the elements of hypotheses of this sort elsewhere, and from them let him
build up something different from the Tychonian system of the whole world. I
am sure that he could not do it. This is the task, this is the work [Hoe opus, hie
labor est], 19 to arrange all things into some hypothesis in such a manner that they
correspond to the phenomena and do not contravene physical principles. [517v]
Nor does it follow, if two people attain understanding of the same matter, that
one therefore takes it from the other. Often the same point is reached by different
ways." Nor, if a route from one hypothesis to another is easy, did the first inventor
of it therefore take it. Today it is just as easy to go to America as to Alexandria.
But it was not so easy for Columbus to journey there. Today everyone persuades
himself that he too could have" done it first, if he had set his mind to it.
The line of argument is far from clear. Neither in DAR nor in his Demonstratio does Ursus
in fact argue in the way Kepler suggests. On the contrary, he states that Tycho's hypotheses
as a whole are to be found in Apollonius of Perga, Martianus Capella and Copernicus. In the
sixth of his notes responding to Ursus's Demonstratio, Kepler indicates that Ursus could more
reasonably have argued that parts of Tycho's hypotheses are to be found elsewhere." Kepler
here sets out to show that this can be conceded without impugning Tycho's originality. As in
note 13 of his response to the DemonstratioP Kepler insists that the real work in astronomy
consists in putting the parts together into an entire observationally and physically adequate
system. This holistic view of originality is expanded in CU, where the author of astronomical
hypotheses is compared to an architect who puts together the products of his own and others'
work (A defence ofTycho, 119-20; 185-6).
In these disjointed observations about dependent and independent discovery the remark
about an "easy route" from one hypothesis to another provides a clue. One such "easy route"
is presumably the derivation of geoheliocentric hypotheses observationally equivalent to the
Copernican ones by exchange of places between the Earth and the Sun. In that case, Kepler may
well be endorsing Tycho's claim (TROO, vi, 176-80), explicitly cited below, that he had arrived
at his hypotheses not like Rothmannby inversion of the Copernican ones, but by elimination of
the Ptolemaic hypotheses on observational grounds and the Copernican on physical grounds.
The reference to Columbus's egg requires some explanation. Here is the story as told by
Ursus in DAH, at the beginning of the prefatory letter addressed to Landgraf Moritz, son of
Wilhelm IV of Hesse- Kassel."
Most illustrious and most nobly born Prince! Most benign Lord! You will not be unaware,
I believe, of that witty and humorous report, or fable, which writers about the New World
tell of Christopher Columbus of Genoa, through whose diligence and exertions, aided
and sustained by the support and knowledge of divine mathematics and the help of heav-
enly astronomy, the New World was first discovered and revealed about a hundred years
ago. Returning from there triumphant to Spain, he was unfairly maltreated by a certain
stupid, arrogant and envious Spaniard at a public banquet and in the midst of the guests,
as if in discovering the New World he had done nothing that could not equally well have
been done by others. To this he made no reply, but requested an egg. And when he had
received it, he asked all the persons sitting and standing around to place the egg on the
table on its more pointed end, where it ends in a curved cone, in such a way that it would
fall to neither side. When all declared themselves unable to do so, and indeed asserted
that it would be altogether impossible, he, on the contrary, declared that it would be pos-
sible, maintaining that they merely did not know how. Then, taking the egg and striking
it lightly at the pointed end against the table, beyond all expectation and contrary to their
stated denial, he placed the egg on the table just as he had required. With the egg standing
thus upright, he said, "Couldn't you now all do the same?" When they all replied "Why
not?", he added. "It's the same thing with the discovery of the New World: once it had
been found and discovered by me, afterwards it could be easily found and discovered by
anyone of you; but before me no one was able to do it."
Kepler's final sally is a retorquatio (turning of words against their author). Ursus, presenting
himself as Columbus, Tycho and Rothmann as the Spaniards, had remarked, "It is a most easy
matter to add to what has been invented" (DAH, Aiii,r.5).
And in general this whole manner of argument from part to whole is inimical to all
inventors of all things: for it deprives every one of his glory. Thus someone could
object to me that I have achieved nothing outstanding. For that hypothesis of the
Sun at rest belongs to Copernicus, and the five [regular] bodies are a matter fully
known to many ages. Further, even to compare the geometrical bodies to the parts
of the world is a Pythagorean invention. Thus it could be objected to Copernicus
that certain of the Ancients made the Earth [518r] movable in a diurnal motion,
that CapeIla made the Sun the centre of Venus and Mercury, that Ptolemy and
the Ancients related the principal inequality of the three superior planets to the
Sun. Thus it could, far more justly, be objected to Ursus himself that everything
he maintains is found elsewhere, so he should stop calling the hypotheses his
own. Absolutely all inventors of new things have had their guides among the
Ancients, for it is an easy thing to build on what has been invented.
The thrust of these remarks is, it seems, that while Ursus's argument "from part to whole"
would unfairly deprive Copernicus and Kepler of their credit, it can fairly be objected against
Ursus that he took his hypotheses from elsewhere (i.e., from Tycho). That Kepler sees this type
of objection to his own "cosmographical mystery" as ill-informed is confirmed in his letter to
Maestlin of 9 April 1597 (KGW, xiii, no. 64.148-54): "In this dark and gloomy barbarousness
[i.e., Graz] there is to be found one who, since he could not understand more, has dared to
denounce to the dignitaries just this, that most things were derived from Copernicus and said
by him many years ago. What am I to do? Neither the hypotheses nor the [regular] bodies are
mine. I only connected [them]. But, given this, who among those inexpert in such matters,
hearing this malicious charge from one who is said to be learned, could help being moved by
this denunciation? Let me remind you of that egg of Christopher Columbus."
Kepler's attribution of association of parts of the world with the regular solids to the
Pythagoreans requires some explanation. In the poetic greeting to the reader and the dedication
of Mysterium cosmographicum Kepler had presented his work as a re-birth of Pythagoras's
teaching concerning the five regular solids (KGW, i, 4; 6). In the second edition of Mysterium
cosmographicum Kepler explains that he did so "because the doctrine concerning the five geo-
metrical figures distributed among the bodies of the universe is ascribed to Pythagoras, from
whom Plato derived this philosophy. See Harmonice, Book I, fols. 3 and 4; also Book II, fols.
58 and 59. For they and I had in mind the same five figures and the same universe, but not in
each case the same parts of the universe, if you attend only to the letter, nor the same way of
linking them" (KGW, viii, 21.47-22.4). According to the literal sense of the relevant words,
Plato's Timaeus, 31-32, and Aristotle's De cae/o, III, link the regular solids to the elements.
But in Harmonice mundi Kepler suggests that this represents only the exoteric doctrine of
the Pythagoreans, intended for the uninitiated, their esoteric doctrine being deciphered by
substitution of planets for elements (KGW, vi, 17-18).
But to bring an end at last to [my discussion of] this first passage of Copernicus,
this is what should be reckoned: that before Tycho published his hypothesis,
no one could even have suspected that this form of hypothesis which Tycho
held could also be made out beneath those words quoted above; now, after that
hypothesis has been placed before our eyes, it is indeed very easy, if anyone
does not pay attention to Copernicus's aim, to construct this perverse view from
those [words], which is what Ursus did: it is next to certain, however, that [518v]
Copernicus meant something entirely different, namely, what I have said.
Kepler again insinuates Ursus's plagiarism, suggesting that only someone who was already
aware of Tycho's hypotheses could have misinterpreted the passage from Copernicus as
Ursus did.
Book 3, Chapter 25
Here Ursus betrays himself miserably, in that either he has not read Copernicus
or he has not understood him. Copernicus says that he is not unaware that, if one
assigns those particular motions, of which one is completed in 3,434 years and the
other only in 25,000, to the solar body and removes them from the Earth, so that
the Sun proceeds around the centre of the whole universe by that twin motion, but
very slowly, while the Earth "is revolved by a simple motion in a concentric circle
once each year", then with respect to the Sun's model those same phenomena
will follow as are particularly examined in the whole of that book.
The passage from DR, iii, 25, 95v.32-96r.13, as quoted by Ursus (DAH, Dii,r.19-32), is as
follows, Ursus's interpolations being given in square brackets:
Thus is found the reckoning of the Solar appearance through the mobility of the Earth,
in agreement with ancient and more recent records, from which we may further assume
that future ones have already been foreseen. Nevertheless, we are also not unaware that
if someone were to think that the centre of the annual revolution [of the Earth] was fixed
like the centre of the world, but that the Sun was movable with two motions similar to
those which we have set out for the centre of the eccentric, everything indeed will appear
just as before, the same numbers and the same demonstration, since nothing would be
changed in them except the placement, especially as it relates to the Sun. For then the
motion of the centre of the Earth around the centre of the world would be perfect and
simple, as the two remaining [motions] have been ascribed to the Sun. For this reason,
there will still remain a doubt about which of the two is the centre of the world, as I said
inconclusively at the beginning that the centre of the world is in the Sun or near it. But I
shall say more on this question in my account of the five planets.
Ursus adds "and these are the inverted hypotheses of Copernicus".
In DR, iii, 20, Copernicus sets out three equivalent Earth-based models (double epicycle,
eccentric epicycle, and double eccentric) to account for the cyclic variations in eccentricity
and rate of motion of the apsidalline which affect the apparent motions of the Sun. In iii, 25,
he describes an alternative model in which the double motion is transferred to the Sun. 25 In
his letter to Herwart von Hohenburg of 30 May 1599 and in "Concerning the dispute about
hypotheses" Kepler had given fuller accounts, providing diagrams of the double epicycle
Earth-based model and the Sun-based model (KGW, xiii, no. 123.188-219; xx/l , 67).
Ursus understands this as if Copernicus had said that if anyone transfers from the
Earth to the Sun "all the motions whatsoever" assigned to the Earth by Coper-
nicus, so that the Sun is also revolved through the zodiac in an annual motion
and the Earth stands completely unmoving, the same phenomena will follow
with respect not only to the model of the Sun but to all the planets. Look how
ridiculously the words of Copernicus may be twisted.
Kepler can call Ursus's reading "ridiculous", because (as he has emphasized in the previous
paragraph) in the very passage quoted by Ursus, Copernicus explicitly states that when the two
motions in question are transferred to the Sun, the Earth remains with a simple annual motion
around the Sun. As well as overlooking this, Ursus must, it seems, have taken "the centre of
the annual revolution is fixed like the centre of the world" to mean that the Earth's centre is
placed at the centre of the world. Only thus could he have supposed Copernicus's vacillation
over the placement of the Sun at or near the centre of the universe to be a wavering between
heliocentrism and geocentrism.
These things are continued elsewhere.

This may well refer to the final section of "Concerning the dispute about hypotheses ... ", which
deals in detail with Ursus's interpretation of Copernicus's account, in DR, v, 35, of Apollonius
of Perga's construction for the planetary stations and retrogressions (KGW, xx/I, 67-69).
3. Notes Mainly on Rothmann's Exchanges with Tycho about Astronomical

Hypotheses
The notes to the infamous book follow.
In the preface he cites the example of the Spaniard. He first seizes everything
that can be said against himself, and then redirects it skilfully against his enemy:
Surpassing all human credence by the scale of his impertinence, to those who, due
to their own goodness, cannot believe that anyone possesses so much impudence,
he appears to speak the truth.
As noted above, Ursus opens his prefatory letter to Moritz, Landgraf of Hesse-Kassel, with
the tale of Columbus's egg. He then relates how in 1585 he thought up his own hypotheses
and in 1586 presented them to Moritz's father, Wilhelm IV, who received them with great
enthusiasm (DAB, Aii,r.32-v.28).
I thought up and invented my new astronomical hypotheses about 12 years ago, in the year
1585 on the very Kalends of October, in the outer regions of Poland towards Pomerania,
and the following year, 1586, on the very Kalends of May, I humbly offered, presented
and dedicated [my hypotheses] to the Prince, the father (of most sacred memory) of your
Highness .... His Highness then received these hypotheses offered by me with a joyous
countenance and in a most thankful spirit, and he saw to it that they were constructed in
bronze by his most skilled artisan Jost BUrgi ... and once they had been constructed (in
their first general and still crude sketch), and were, at his behest, duly performing, when
his Highness examined the hypotheses, seized the greatest admiration, and struck and
moved with great joy, he applauded and burst out with these words: "Good God! How
many of the highest and most excellent wits have tried and sought to invent and think up
such things?" ... Neither the Ptolemaic hypotheses nor the Copernican, at that time the
only known ones, were either pleasing or satisfactory, the latter because of the plurality
of the multiple motion of the terrestrial globe and because of the too-vast reach of space
between the planets and the fixed stars ... the former because of the plurality and com-
plication as well as the disproportion and awkwardness of such a multiplicity of circles,
that is, of eccentrics and epicycles; and so these hypotheses presented by me, answering
to and satisfying the wish of his Highness, were most agreeable and well received and at
the same time most pleasing.
Ursus goes on to tell how, out of envy, Rothmann, the Landgraf's mathematician, whose skill
in astronomy and geometry he compares unfavourably to that of the artisan BUrgi,betrayed
his hypotheses to Tycho, whilst claiming that he himself had thought them up some years
earlier (DAB, Aii,v.3l-Aiii,r.7).
Since he had perhaps seen and heard of these words and deeds, a certain Christoph
Sniveller [Ursus writes "Rotzrnann" for "Rothmann", "Rotz" meaning "snot"], who in
astronomical work and the business of observing served both that most illustrious Prince
and his artisan Jost BUrgi, one superior and far more distinguished in astronomy and
geometry and a supreme mechanic - this man, most fiercely jealous both of myself and
of Jost BUrgi(because of his superiority to him) and the most intense enemy of our fame
and esteem, in order to deprive me of renown for invention of the hypotheses presented
by me and to snatch away the palm (for which he thought me unworthy, being unknown),
immediately, as a betrayer, another Iscariot, communicated my already presented and
viewed hypotheses ... in writing to Tycho Brahe, the astronomer and Danish nobleman ....
And lest the making of this disclosure and perpetration of a theft of a thing belonging
to another should become public, he pretends to have already invented a long time ago
these new hypotheses of mine' and, besides, I know not what other hypotheses of diverse
and varied forms (since, indeed, it is a most easy matter to add to what has been invented,
and to expand and augment an already invented thing), in the manner of that Spaniard of
whom I talked at the beginning.
According to Ursus, Tycho had, in turn, pretended that the hypotheses were his own invention
(DAH, Aiii,v.14-17).
For he [Tycho], in the meantime, seizing this welcome opportunity with ajoyful spirit and I
thinking that it would bring him much advantage and profit as well as great authority and
esteem, did not in the least blush at once to arrogate to himself these hypotheses of mine,
invented by me and presented and dedicated to your most glorious father....
Thus, as Kepler observes, Ursus cunningly takes the charges levelled against himself in
EA and redirects them at "the enemy", that is, Rothmann and Tycho. He was charged with
deriving much of the mathematics of his Fundamentum astronomicum from Rothmann and
others (TBOO, vi, 180.5-8); in the preface of DAH he retaliates by belittling Rothmann's
standing as a mathematician. Tycho and Rothmann also accused him of plagiarism (TBOO,
vi, 179.20-180.11; 183.13-15); he, in return, charges them with the very same plagiarism. As
for the "impudence" to which Kepler refers, he may well have in mind also Ursus's apparent
attribution to Wilhelm IV of Hesse-Kassel of one of Copernicus's reasons for rejecting the
Ptolemaic system (its almost infinite multiplicity of orbs) and of two of Tycho's reasons for
rejecting the Copernican system (the multiple motions of the Earth and the immensity of the
sphere of the fixed stars).
A.iii. Rothmann writes to Tycho that Ursus has passed off the Tychonian [hypoth-
eses] as his own at Kassel. Ursus claims it happened thus, that by that letter his
hypothesis was betrayed to Tycho by Rothmann.
In his preface (DAH, Aiii,r-v) Ursus cites passages from Tycho's exchanges with Rothmann
in EA to show how Rothmann had passed on his hypotheses to Tycho, whilst pretending that
he himself had obtained them by transformation of the Copernican hypotheses many years
before; and how Tycho had then claimed the hypotheses for himself. In this and the following
notes, Kepler goes painstakingly through these and related passages to set the record straight.
Here there is some ambiguity, so that it is not immediately clear which letter is at issue. As
evidence for Rothmann's betrayal of his hypotheses to Tycho, Ursus cites Rothmann's let-
ters of2l September 1587 and 19 September 1588, in both of which Rothmann writes of his
geocentric transformation of Copernicus's hypotheses, describing in the latter the automaton
representing them that had been made at the request of Wilhelm IV and mentioning how,
consequently, the Landgraf had found familiar Tycho's hypotheses as presented in De mundi
aetherei recentioribus phaenomenis (TBOO, vi, 118.29-32; 156-9). In neither letter is Ursus
mentioned. Tycho misunderstood the second letter, evidently taking the automaton described
by Rothmann to be the same as the one BUrgi had made representing the Ursine hypotheses,
as figured in Ursus's Fundamentum astronomicum (40V).26 In his letter of21 February 1589,
Tycho expressed amazement at his hypotheses having been known to the Landgraf, and charged
Ursus with plagiarism (TBOO, vi, 179-80). Rothmann's first mention of Ursus's plagiarism,
in his letter of 22 August 1589, merely echoes Tycho's charge (TBOO, vi, 183.13-15). So
the letter in question must be that of Rothmann to Tycho of 19 September 1588, and Kepler's
puzzling claim has to be glossed as "Rothmann writes to Tycho [a letter implying, so Tycho
imagined] that Ursus has passed off the Tychonian hypotheses as his own at Kassel". Further
confirmation of the identity of the letter here in question can be gleaned from Kepler's describ-
ing it, below, as marking "the origin of the dispute" between Tycho and Ursus.
He also snatches away from Rothmann what Tycho allows to him. See fols. 90.
127, 131, of the Letters, and how Tycho replies. <See over.> Tycho brings a suit
against nobody; he has reached the same point as him by a different route.
Kepler here refers to the passages in Rothmann's letters of21 September 1587 and 19 Septem-
ber 1588, in which he describes his inverted Copernican hypotheses, and to Tycho's response
of 21 February 1589, where he is at pains to emphasize that he arrived at his hypotheses on
observational and physical grounds, not like Rothmann, by modification of the Copernican
ones (TBOO, vi, 178.40-179.14). This exchange is dealt with in the following three pages:
hence the marginal note.
"It is not difficult", he reckons, "to grasp hypotheses. Hypotheses are nothing
but imaginary and fictitious things".
This is a gloss rather than a quotation of DAH, Aiii, r.18-19: "as if it were a matter of such
difficulty to light upon and grasp hypotheses, they being imaginary and fictitious things."
"The study of mathematics is not academic."
In his letter to Tycho of 19 September 1588 Rothmann had claimed that the Copernican
hypotheses are such that they cannot be grasped by students, parts of them being so difficult
as to be misunderstood even by such experts as Maestlin (TBOO, vi, 16.8-12). In mockery of
Rothmann, Ursus remarks "as if the study of mathematics were academic"; and he goes on
to defend Maestlin's competence (DAH, Aiii,r.18-26).
He does not understand Rothmann, thinking that he has put forward" various
hypotheses, but on fo1. 131 he implies otherwise.
Ursus appears to have taken Rothmann in his letter of 19 September 1588 to have laid claim to a
variety of hypotheses; and he suggests that they were all derived from his own (DAH, Aiii,r.2-6;
26-28). In fact, as Rothmann makes clear on the page cited by Kepler, he claimed only to have
inverted the Copernican hypotheses as a teaching device (TBOO, vi, 160.20-22).
"That the Copernican hypotheses are intelligible to artisans, are very well known
and most familiar": because he looks down on Rothmann, who had complained
of their difficulty.
In response to Rothmann's complaints about the difficulty of the Copernican hypotheses,
Ursus claims that they are "most well known and familiar even to workmen, clockmakers and
mechanics" (DAH, Aiii,r.29-31).
[5l9v] He most poorly interprets Tycho's words about Rothmann in the Let-
ters, fols. 206, 209, as being about those hypotheses, although in that passage
Tycho talks of how a new inequality of the planets must be preserved" against
the opinion of Copernicus.
In a postscript to his letter of 8 September 1591 to Wilhelm IV, Tycho mentions an inequality
in the motion of the superior planets, most noticeable in the case of Mars, claiming that it is
accounted for by his hypotheses but not by those of Ptolemy and Copernicus. He reports that
when told of this Rothmann expressed his admiration and admitted that "these things could
not have occurred to him before [ista sibi in mentem prius venire non potuisse]" (TBOO,
vi, 239.7-35). Ursus takes "ista" to refer to the inverted Copernican hypotheses (DAH,
Aiii,r.4l-v.1 ).
Also on fo1. 131 are the things that gave him [Ursus] the pretext for a response:
it is the beginning of the dispute. This is the sequence [of events]. Tycho had
invited Rothmann [to pay him a visit]." On 30 September in the year '87, Roth-
mann replies that he will try to find some suitable time. He has some books of
his own, which he is going to dedicate to the King of Denmark, and in one of
them he transposes Copernicus's hypothesis to the movement of the Sun (which,
he says, you are not unaware can be done). He asks for Tycho's numbers, to add
them to his own."
Kepler starts by identifying Rothmann's description of inverted Copernican hypotheses in his
letter to Tycho of 19 September 1588 as marking the beginning of the dispute between Tycho
and Ursus, this being the letter which, as he explains below, sparked off Tycho's suspicion
that Ursus had communicated the Tychonic hypotheses at Kassel. Kepler then embarks on a
meticulous account, largely in the form of direct quotation, of the exchanges in the Epistolae
between Rothmann and Tycho on the subject of Rothmann's inverted Copernican hypotheses,
Tycho's geoheliocentric system, and the differences between them.
Tycho writes back around the time of the summer solstice in the year '88, and
sends his book On the comet of the year '77, and advises him that he will find
there, around the beginning of Chapter 8, a new hypothesis about the heavenly
revolutions invented by him not long ago, which for many reasons he does not
doubt is truer than the old Ptolemaic and the more recent Copernican hypotheses,
and which he finds entirely consonant with the appearances. He tells him to give
his judgement on it and also to make this [hypothesis] known to the Landgraf."
[He says] that he has decided to found the correction of the celestial motions
upon it, page? 104.33
He writes again on 17 August ofthat year, fo1. 117, urging [Rothmann] to the
promised transposition of the hypotheses of Copernicus to the unmoving Earth,
but he tells him to use the Prutenic numbers. For he wants to be the one to adapt
his numbers to his hypothesis, not long ago invented." [52Or] He defends it on
the grounds that it removes the mathematical and physical absurdities of other
[hypotheses], and it satisfies the most particular appearances in every way."
To this Rothmann [replies] on 17 September" ofthat same year '88, page 127.
"Also, on the subject of your new hypotheses, of which you make mention in
Chapter 8, I do not entirely follow you. I for my part, when I was composing my
astronomical Elements, placed the Moon and then the Sun in the same manner
around the Earth, but on concentrics with two epicycles [Homocentrepicyclepi-
cyclis], then in the centre of the greater and first epicycle of the Sun [I] again
[placed] the concentrics with two epicycles of the remaining planets"," etc. "But
I did not do so by new reasoning, but merely following Copernicus; nor if I was
to transpose the Copernican hypotheses in all respects to the movement of the
Earth, could I have done otherwise; and I saw that both Rheticus and Reinhold
had understood that manner of proceeding. And it was also in accordance with
this method" that last year" (it was in ' 87)39 "our Magnificent Prince ordered the
building of an automaton, of wondrous small size but displaying the movements
of all the planets"," etc. "But I certainly cannot tell whether your hypotheses are
the same as and in agreement with these. For even though I see clearly enough
that the general hypothesis and the order of the spheres, and the very circles
of the planets, be they concentrics or eccentrics, are the same, since you call
these [hypotheses] of yours 'new', and write in your next letter that they satisfy
the particular appearances most exactly in every respect, something, however,
which neither of these others achieves in every way, they nevertheless appear to
be different from the inverted Copernican ones"," etc. [520v] "Next, you would
seem to move the centres of the concentrics of the remaining planets around, not
in a concentric, nor in the centre of a major epicycle, but in that same eccentric
of the Sun, since you also do the same thing in the case of the comet; but if that
were the case, they would assuredly be new and different, since on that account
the eccentricity of the Sun would mingle with all the planets and bring about
different appearances.??
He adds certain other considerations of this sort, very learnedly, and already
put forward in Copernicus." Finally, he raises objections based on physical
reasons to the whole arrangement, both his own and Tycho's."
Tycho replies on 21 February '89, page 147.
"On the matter of the constitution of the celestial hypotheses invented by me,
I do not, in the present circumstances, want to raise many points for the sake of
defence and confirmation, for that would be too time-consuming, and could not
adequately be carried out without multiple proofs sought from definite observa-
tions. I will, rather, see to it that on another occasion, when I have treated the
restoration of the heavenly motions publicly, if the Creator of heaven is will-
ing, it will be known with all certainty that these hypotheses of ours satisfy the
celestial appearances to a hair's breadth, and that they are far superior to both
the Ptolemaic and the Copernican hypotheses, and that they correspond more
closely to the truth itself,"? Then he answers Rothmann on physical and sacred
questions." Afterwards, on page 149:
"As regards what prompted the construction of these hypotheses, I did not
take them from the inverted Copernican ones, and if you ever thought any such
thing, it did not, as you know well, occur to me, nor could I ever have gathered
anything ofthe sort from Reinhold or Rheticus"," etc. < He does not say that they
were not similar to those of Copernicus, but that the cue for them was not drawn
from there.> Ursus reports it at the end [ofE48]and beginning ofF.49 [521r] The
point is that they were invented by considering not Copernicus but observations.
And when he in the meantime had received Ursus's book, he formed the suspi-
cion that not only the automaton, but also the inversion of Copernicus of which
Rothmann had boasted, stemmed from Ursus's betrayal, and that Rothmann was
slyly disguising it. But only if he changes Rothmann in respect of [his] explicit
words. It is evident, [although] very obscurely, in these words, "from where did
this way of ordering the spheres come to you?"
The passages from the Epistolae so far summarized or quoted by Kepler do indeed show that
Tycho's hypotheses were presented by him as a world system with observational advantages
over its competitors, whereas Rothmann offered his as a didactically useful modification of
the Copernican planetary models. In fact, in his letter of 21 February 1589, responding to
Rothmann's account of his transformed Copernican hypotheses and the automaton based on
them, Tycho had expressed his suspicion of Rothmann in terms that fell only just short of a
direct charge of theft: "From that man [Ursus] I saw well enough from where the ordering
of the heavenly revolutions came to you [Ex isto satis perspexi, unde haec ad vos pervenerit
Revolutionum caelestium ordinatio]" (TBOO, vi, 179.29-30 ), this being immediately pre-
ceded by the charge of plagiarism against Ursus. Kepler's inaccurate final quotation tones
this down, perhaps because he was reluctant to represent Tycho as a leveller of ill-founded
accusations!
Rothmann replies on 22 August '89, page 153. "On the question which of the
hypotheses of Ptolemy and Copernicus is true, we will pursue it on a future
occasion in a special treatise, and we will not carry on the discussion further
here. I would also write about that Ursus of Dithmarschen, and about that
world-system he stole from you, but the courier is in a hurry, so I will put it off
to another time.""
Tycho replies, 24 November '89, page 166.
"As to the question of which of these two you endorse, the Ptolemaic or the
Copernican hypotheses, I leave you in total freedom. But to persuade me that
they [correspond to] the heavens"," etc. "Therefore also permit me freely to
announce what the heavens have instructed me in these matters. I do not want
to add a word here about the thief of my system, for he is not worthy. In my last
letter I briefly responded to you upon those points which you brought against
this novelty of ours in hypotheses; a fuller explanation [is] for another place","
etc. "I also briefly communicated to you the promptings which urged me on to
that ordering of the celestial revolutions. For I was not led to this point rashly
or with little cause, but the heaven itself taught me to perceive it in that manner,
with no other teacher or books, or any mish-mash of tables directing me to it. I
have also consulted with certain other learned mathematicians in Germany on
this quite novel invention of ours"," etc.
These further passages from EA include materials helpful to Tycho's cause, showing that
Rothmann endorsed Tycho's charge of plagiarism against Ursus, and demonstrating Tycho's
insistence that his world system was based on observation of the heavens.
4. Notes on Points to be Challenged in Ursus's De astronomicis hypothesibus

[521v] A4 on the second side. On the reading of Copernicus, almost diametrically
opposed to him, he is so very presumptuous.
The relevant passage (DAH, Aiv,r.42-v.4) reads: "[Tycho] had not read or rather he had not well
understood Copernicus (for doubtless he had read him), the greatest and most distinguished
author and restorer of astronomy, or rather, being excessively impudent and frivolous, he per-
haps really thought that whether he had read Copernicus or not, whether he understood him
or not, on that account other men would perhaps not read or understand him" [sic: this portion
of Ursus's rant seems genuinely confused!]. Kepler's phrasing here is slightly ambiguous, but
the contrast seems to be between the true sense of Copernicus's DR and Ursus's readings of
it, shown by Kepler above to involve serious misinterpretations.
In the poem and on the title page, and elsewhere, he dares to place himself above
Tycho in astronomical matters, something" [everyone] knows to be entirely false:
the same must be concluded about the hypotheses.
On the title page of DAH, Ursus asserts that his work will "vanquish everyone, and in particular
his critics and detractors, on the question of the palm and mastership in mathematics". In the
poem that follows the prefatory letter, Ursus develops the theme of a contest in which he will
beat Tycho in mathematics and astronomy, and he sets Tycho a series of mathematical chal-
lenges, mainly concerning spherical triangulation (DAH, Bi,iv-Biv,r).
At the end of B. He speaks contemptuously about hypotheses, and does not
give the true origin. <An hypothesis is not only about circles, but also periods
of time.>
Kepler now turns to the main text of DAR. This does indeed open with a characterization of
astronomical hypotheses as fictions contrived to save the phenomena, not as portrayals of
the true form of the cosmos. In denying Ursus's account of the origin of hypotheses, Kepler
appears to be challenging Ursus's equation of 'hypothesis' with 'aitema', in the sense of
illegitimate or false assumption (DAH, Biv,r.28). At the beginning of chap. I of CU Kepler
likewise rejects this equation, offering an alternative account according to which the original
meaning of 'hypothesis' was "sure and certain foundation" (A defence ofTycho, 87-88; 136-8).
The marginal note may be directed at Ursus's characterization of an hypothesis as "a portrayal
contrived out of certain imaginary circles of an imaginary form of the world system" (DAH,
Biv,v.4-6); or perhaps it simply refers to the distinction between geometrical and astronomical
hypotheses, as drawn in the first chapter of CU (A defence ofTycho, 87-89; 137-9).
So far as they fulfil their functions, they are true, or if the matter turns out the same.
But that cannot happen generally. Insofar as they are false, they go astray.
The line of thought here is hard to make out. If we take "fulfil their function" and "the matter
turns out the same" to refer to the demonstration of the celestial phenomena, then we may
perhaps relate this to passages in Mysterium cosmographicum (KGW, i, 15-16) and in the
first chapter of CU (A defence ofTycho, 90-92; 140-3) where Kepler argues that even false
hypotheses yield correct accounts of the celestial phenomena only insofar as they give a true
account of the "separation of motions", that is - to risk an anachronism - of the relative
motions. In that case, the next two sentences can be related to Kepler's argument in the same
passage of CU that even when false hypotheses are adequate in the domain of observations
(which he there calls "the geometrical realm") they always betray their falsity by their false
consequences "in the physical realm".
He says that hypotheses are established for the sake of observations, which is a
novelty; they are rather [established] from observations.
Ursus declares: "An hypothesis or fictitious supposition is a portrayal contrived out of certain
imaginary circles of an imaginary form of the world-system, designed to follow the celestial-
motions [observandis motibus coelestibus] ... " (DAH, Biv,v.4-7). In the first chapter of CU
Kepler raises this as his second objection to Ursus's account of hypotheses (A defence of
Tycho,92; 144). Kepler is somewhat uncharitable here, for Ursus evidently uses 'observare'
in the sense not of "observe" but of "follow" or "keep track of" .
He thinks that it is just the same whether an hypothesis is true or whether it is
false. But, by Hercules, he who produces a true hypothesis has more praise. For
he saves not only the motions but also the physical matters.
Kepler here counters Ursus's account ofthe purpose of astronomy: "And so it is permitted and
granted to astronomers, as a thing required [aitema]5s in astronomy, that they should fabricate
hypotheses, whether true or false and feigned, of such a kind as may yield the phenomena and
appearances of the celestial motions and correctly produce a method for calculating them,
and thus achieve the intended purpose and goal of this art" (DAH, Biv,v.27-31). Kepler's
response appears in CU as part of his third objection to Ursus's account: "One who predicts
as accurately as possible the movements and positions of the stars performs the task of the
astronomer well. But one who, in addition to this, also employs true opinions about the form
of the universe performs it better and is held worthy of greater praise. The former, indeed,
draws conclusions that are true as far as what is observed is concerned; the latter not only
does justice in his conclusions to what is seen, but also ... in drawing conclusions embraces
the innermost form of nature (A defence ofTycho, 92; 145).
As a Pyrrhonian, he despairs of true [hypotheses]. But there are many truths in
all [hypotheses].
Cf Kepler's fifth objection, where he counters Ursus's Pyrrhonism (= dogmatic scepticism)
about astronomical hypotheses, arguing that "with the help of astronomy many things have
been established in the realm of physical knowledge, things which deserve our trust from
now on and which are truly so" (A defence ofTycho, 94; 147). In referring to the "truths in all
hypotheses", Kepler may also have in mind truths about "separation of motions" (i.e., relative
motions) that are responsible for accurate prediction of celestial phenomena: see above.
The invention of an hypothesis is for him a simple matter, since he says that
a great many of them can be concocted. That is surely so for ones such as he
describes, made up without need of truth. He states that to correspond to the
motions and to correspond to the calculation of the motions are different mat-
ters. What a perfect hypothesis, which corresponds suitably to the method of
calculation, although not to the motions! What then is a method of calculation,

Ursus? If good, it comes from a good hypothesis; if it does not answer to the
motions, it comes from a bad and false hypothesis. Thus any hypothesis at all
produces a method of calculation. Bravo Ursus, thus you are the author of many
hypotheses! Thus he speaks as if a method of calculation were an eternal matter
like motion, and hypotheses served only for explaining and demonstrating that
method of calculation to the unskilled.
Continuing his point-by-point response to Ursus's account of the nature of hypotheses, Kepler
now takes on Ursus's claim that "it is not in the least necessary, nor is it necessarily required
of the creators of hypotheses, that those hypotheses correspond altogether, that is to say in all
respects or in all ways, to the world-system itself ..., if only they agree with and correspond'
to a method of calculation of the celestial motions, even if not to the motions themselves,
and provided that the calculation of the celestial motions can be preserved and maintained by
or through them" (DAH, Biv,v.I4-21). The content and wording of Kepler's response to this
prefigure his seventh objection in the first chapter of CU (A defence ofTycho, 94-95;148).
He denies that there exists an hypothesis true and conforming to the world. Good
God! Then neither is the Earth moved nor does it stand still. For he holds both as
hypotheses. An hypothesis is called such not in virtue of truth or falsity, but in
virtue of demonstration to come. But the aim of one who assumes an hypothesis
is to assume something true.
Ursus characterizes an hypothesis as "a contrived portrayal of an imaginary form of the
world-system (not a true and genuine one, for that we cannot know), not the system itself, but
a form of it of the kind we think up by imagining and proclaim as a conception of the mind"
(DAH, Biv,v.9-12). Kepler's response prefigures his opening account in CU of hypotheses
as "whatever is set out as certain for the purpose of any demonstration whatsoever" and his
subsequent objection against Ursus's account, that it entails that the Earth is neither stationary
nor in motion (A defence of Tycho, 88; 138, and 92; 143-4).
[522r] He thinks that the Sacred Scriptures do not at all stand in the way of
hypotheses. Yet he proves his own from the Sacred Scriptures. But if it is the
mark of hypotheses to demonstrate from falsities, what he maintains as true by
the infallible authority of the Sacred Scriptures will be no hypothesis.
In DAH, Ursus insists at the outset that it does not matter whether astronomical hypotheses
conflict with the Holy Scriptures (Ci,r); but later he claims that his own hypotheses are demon-
strable from the Scriptures (Div,v). Kepler draws attention to this inconsistency in his eighth
objection in CU (A defence ofTycho against Ursus, 95; 148).
Finally, contradicting himself: it is permitted to astronomers to propose things
either true or false. That wording is the more true [Illa periodus verior].
In his opening remarks on hypotheses, Ursus does indeed first characterize them as imaginary
rather than true portrayals of the world-system, then, a few lines later, declares that it does
not matter whether they are true or false provided that they "yield the phenomena" (DAH,
Biv,v.29). In his eighth objection in CU Kepler notes this inconsistency, remarking that the
latter view is "more reasonable" [aequior] (A defence ofTycho, 95; 148). So with hindsight
periodus may be rendered "wording". However, a quite different reading is perhaps on the
cards. For in his fifth objection in CU Kepler counters Ursus's scepticism about hypotheses
by pointing out that, whilst there are some flaws in even the best of them, no-one doubts that
some astronomical hypotheses are truer than others. Accordingly, if periodus is taken to relate
to the circuit of a planet (as below in Kepler's comment on a passage from DAB, Diii) or to
the period of a planetary circuit (as below in Kepler's comment on a passage from Martianus
Capella), then the second sentence could be rendered "that [planetary] circuit is more true [than
another one]", or "that period [of a planetary circuit] is more true [than another one]".
He says that what happens in arithmetic in the cossic art and in [the rule] of the
false, happens in most sciences, that false things are set out in order to derive
true things.
In the cossic art we do not convey in accordance with the rules set out some-
thing false but something unknown, until it becomes known.
In [the rule] of the false, or of positings, we posit something false and we also
derive a false outcome, but one paired with the positing; and when this is done
twice, the outcomes are matched with the truth, in accordance with the method,
so that thus the false positings do indeed open the way to the truth.
Astronomical hypotheses have nothing in common with these [positings];
well perhaps something with [the rule] of the false, if we compare the opinions
of authors.
Kepler here addresses Ursus's claim that: "Just this [positing of falsehoods] is customarily done
in many other branches of learning, in which very often things that are not true, nor indeed
even plausible, are cleverly assumed and are, nevertheless, wisely proposed because things
that are of the greatest usefulness follow from them; as, for example, in those hypothetical
arithmetical rules of algebra, when a fictitious unity has been posited, and in the rule of the
false, when no matter what false and feigned number has been posited, we customarily find
the true number sought" (DAB, Biv,v.31-34). As Kepler explains in his full rebuttal ofthis in
the ninth of his objections in CU, Ursus's "fictitious unity" relates to the use of the symbol
"I" to designate the unknown in a "cossic" (that is, algebraic) equation. In the "rule of the
false", the solution of equations by successive approximation, the true answer is obtained
through substitution into the equation of "false" numbers." Kepler here indicates, and in CU
argues explicitly, that in the first case there is no actual false posit, because while "I" names the
unknown number, I is not equated with it; and in the second case there is no actual demonstra-
tion of true conclusions from false posits (A defence ofTycho, 95-96; 148-50). Some light is
cast on the obscure final remark about hypotheses and the rule of the false by the following
passage in CU: "Hypotheses are sought that will correspond to the motions of the heavens.
The Alphonsine hypotheses are found to err, likewise the Copernican. But the skilful artisan,
having made a comparison of the two and having removed the sources of error, establishes
some third thing which avoids all error in the prediction of the motions of the heavens and in
that way corrects both hypotheses. What is there here to support Ursus? In his example we
are offered one way, and that both indirect and artless [atechnos], in which astronomers are in
the habit of searching for hypotheses. But he wanted to show how what is true and fitting to
the motions of the heavens is demonstrated from an already established false hypothesis" (A
defence ofTycho, 96; 150). Here Kepler compares the use of "the rule of the false" with the
improvement of planetary models by successive modification of their parameters to yield ever
more accurate predictions. His description of this as "atechnos" is significant. The contrast of
atechnos (inartijicialis) with entechnos (artijicialis) derives ultimately from Aristotle, Rhetoric,
i, 2, where persuasion by appeal to evidence from outside sources - testimonies, contracts,
etc. - is distinguished from persuasion employing systematic argumentation. This distinction
is elaborated by Cicero and Quintilian, and it figures in early-modern rhetoric textbooks." So
the contrast Kepler has in mind is evidently that between, on the one hand, the routine obser-
vations and calculations of mathematical astronomers and, on the other, the deliberations of
philosopher-astronomers, who use the fruits of such "artless" endeavours to "artfully" build
up their ever-truer portrayals of the cosmos, validated by physical reasons.
That preface is A[ndreas] Osiander's." <Page C.> He saw the absurdity of the
new opinion in Copernicus. He feared that men might be led astray by it. When
he ruled at Nuremberg," he ordered the edition that was being made there to be
embellished in that manner. For he loved mathematicalleaming.
But Osiander (although you put forward saner things than Ursus does and
explain yourself more clearly), what drove you to such a point of despair that
you said that nothing certain about the true condition ofthe world can be gleaned
from astronomy? What do we hold for sure, except through sight? Or don't you
believe'" the proportion of the Sun to the Earth reported by astronomers?
In DAH (Ci,r.23-v.lO) Ursus backs up his view of hypotheses as fictions designed to save the
phenomena by quotation at length from Osiander's anonymous preface to Copernicus's DR,
which he attributes to "an author clearly extremely learned but unknown". Kepler's remarks
here are greatly expanded in CU in the tenth of his objections to Ursus's account of hypotheses
(A defence ofTycho, 96-98; 150-4).
On the other page he reproaches the dead Ramus. I do not object; on the contrary,
I shall follow his example.
In DAH (Ci,v.I4-25) Ursus, without naming Ramus, contests the claim in Ramus's Prooemium
mathematicum (Paris, 1567) that the most ancient astronomers possessed a perfect astronomy
without hypotheses. In CU, Kepler appeals to Ursus's attack on the late Ramus to justify his
own criticism of the late Ursus: "Nor is it an improper practice to pass judgement on what-
ever has come down to us ofthe opinions and public pronouncements ofthe dead (something
which Ursus himself endorses on f. Cii of his book by censuring the late Ramus)" (A defence
of Tycho, 86; 136). In the light of this, we may infer that the example to which Kepler here
refers is that of criticizing dead authors, and hence that at the time Kepler wrote these notes
Ursus was already deceased.
That the old astronomy is more powerful and handy than the new is clearly false.
Fernel denies that Thessalian medicine was more powerful than ours. On the
matter of music, I will speak against this particular point in my book.
This anticipates part of Kepler's eleventh objection in the first chapter of CU (A defence of
Tycho, lOG-I; 156-8). Ursus had claimed: "There was once before Galen a Thessalian medi-
cine more perfect than Galenic medicine, which was lost sight of owing to Galen; and the
more sensible of the modern medical writers suppose and conclude that Galen maintained,
propagated and left behind the shells in place ofthe kernels, the husks in place ofthe fruit and
grain and, in fine, the corpse instead of the living body" (DAH, Ci,v.27-31). By "Thessalian
medicine", Ursus means the medicine ofThessalus ofTralles, leader of the 'methodist' school
of medicine in the time of Nero, and said by Pliny, Historia naturalis, xxix, 9, to have pro-
claimed himself "victor over the physicians [iatronices]",61 Femel never mentions Thessalus's
medicine as such, but he does vaunt modern over ancient knowledge: "But indeed, whether
because the art itself has now shown forth more clearly or because there is a certain change
in all things, anyone who considers every point and weighs it up according to its importance
will adhere to a more reasonable and serious judgement, and settling for the more plausible
position will think that scarcely anything of the ancients can suffice for this age" (Universa
medicina, Paris, 1567, Ei,r; first published in De naturali parte medicinae (Paris, 1542».
Ursus goes on to declare: "Likewise it is agreed that there was once practised among the most
ancient Greeks a far sweeter and more delightful music than that customary with us today;
and it was so to such an extent that when there was a mere change in the mode of singing and
harmony, as from Dorian to Phrygian or Lydian, or vice versa, suddenly and immediately the
most diverse of men's affections would follow along with the diverse modes of singing" (DAH,
Ci,v.31-35). Kepler argues against this in CU, again referring to a forthcoming book." This
is his planned work on harmony, first mentioned in his letter of 19 August 1599 to Maestlin
(KGW, xiv, no.132.139-40) and again in a letter of 12 July 1600 to Herwart von Hohenburg
(KGW, xiv, no. 168.102-3). In Harmonice mundi, iii, chaps. 15 and 16, Kepler presents an
account of the way in which music moves the emotions, a theory that involves a rejection of
the traditional view, to which Ursus subscribes, that the various chords have specific emotive
effects. According to Kepler, only polyphonic music, unknown to the Ancients, has the full
range of affective powers.
[522v] As for oratory, I do not contest the matter. But the explanation of [the
power of] both music and oratory lies in the pliant nature of the people.
Ursus adds to his account of the power of ancient music "just as no present-day orator could
move men by an encomium of death, and so drive them to madness and coax them on that
they would kill themselves" (Ci,v.38-Cii,r.2).63 In CU Kepler again attributes the effects on
them of music and oratory to the character of the Greeks: "The main reason lies, however, in
the nature and habits of the [Greek] race, which, being most susceptible, yielded easily to any
emotion; and being most avid for glory, did not hesitate to do that which, whilst to them it
was praiseworthy, ought today to be detested by everyone, committing suicide, for example"
(A defence of Tycho, 101; 157).
<To be read. Aristotle in the book of Metaphysics and Book 2 of On the heaven.
And Diogenes Laertius. And Martianus Capella.>
Aristotle, Metaphysica, xii, 8, and De caelo, ii, 13, Diogenes Laertius, De clarorum philoso-
phorum vitis, i, and Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, viii, are all sources
for the notes that follow, and for the history of astronomy in Co.
He promises the restoration of the old astronomy. Presumption, if he thinks that
it is true and correct, stupidity, if it is erroneous and repugnant'" to heaven.
Ursus had indeed promised "with the help of almighty God, that antique astronomy of the
Ancients will be restored by us shortly; and we are about to attempt the foundation of this
art at the end of our little work and produce a sample of it" (DAH, Cii,r.2-7). In CU Kepler
is content to leave judgement of the value of Ursus's promise "to the thoughtful reader" (A
defence ofTycho, 101; 157).
C 2: There is no doubt that Thales derived from the Chaldeans the time of 19
years." For he could not by his own efforts discover the reason for the eclipses."
It is not a matter for one lifetime. But like the months, so too the eclipses are
from the Chaldeans. The civil calendar was what prompted them to consult"
the Chaldeans. I do not believe any author [who states that] Eudoxus handed
down concentrics alone. For Aristotle reckons 49 orbs from his [Eudoxus's]
opinion. By comparison of their doctrine with that of Eudoxus and with the
known explanations of Aristotle, the eccentrics of the Pythagoreans are clearly
the same as those of Copernicus. And Aristarchus was a Pythagorean, and there
is absolutely no doubt that he handed down the Pythagorean eccentrics, if you
consider the Earth. But it is not so easy to understand [this] from what Archimedes
left behind. And if Copernicus had not by his own efforts restored it into the
light, perhaps no one would have understood it.
These compressed notes cover much of the same ground as the second chapter of CU, in
which Kepler provides his own optimistic history of astronomy to counter the pretensions of
Ursus's sceptical history. In DAH Ursus suggests that, in order to predict an eclipse in 580
B.C., Thales must have possessed astronomical hypotheses, either thought up by himself or
derived from elsewhere (DAH, Cii,r.28-40). Here, as in CU, where he commends this part
of Ursus's history (A defence of Tycho, 101-2; 138-9), Kepler argues that Thales must have
derived his method of predicting eclipses from the Babylonians. Again as in CU, Kepler then
turns sharply critical. Where in DAR Ursus credits Eudoxus as the originator of concentric
planetary models (DAH, Cii,r.20-23), Kepler suggests here, and argues at considerable length
in CU (A defence ofTycho, 107-10; 168-72), on the basis of the account in Aristotle's Meta-
physics, that Eudoxus employed epicycles to account for the stations and retrogressions of the
planets. Even in the light of CU, however, the remarks on the Pythagoreans, eccentrics and
Copernicus are hard to follow. They appear to have been triggered by Ursus's claim that after
Eudoxus "the Pythagoreans, having spumed the inadequate concentrics, adopted eccentrics"
(DAH, Cii,r.23-24),68 and that Aristarchus of Samos was the originator of the hypotheses
revived by Copernicus (Cii,v.24-28). By "Pythagorean eccentrics" Kepler evidently means
the true paths of the planets from a heliocentric point of view (the epicycles being projections
of the Earth's annual circuit): cf his definition in Epitome astronomiae Copemicanae of the
"orbita" of a planet as "an eccentric ... using the ancient term" (KGW, vii, 382). As for "the
known explanations of Aristotle", this probably alludes to Aristotle's remarks in De caelo, ii,
13, on the Pythagorean cosmology. It is on the basis of these that in CU Kepler argues that
the secret doctrine of the later Pythagoreans (with the exception of Eudoxus) was heliocentric
(A defence ofTycho, 102-5; 160-3). In CU Kepler does not, as here, identify Aristarchus as
a Pythagorean, merely as an exponent of Pythagorean heliocentrism, this on the authority of
Archimedes, whose account (in De arenae numero) can, he maintains, be understood only in
the light of Copernicus's DR (A defence of Tycho, 102-3; 160).
C 3. The tale of the Pergaean inversion of the Aristarchan [hypotheses] is intro-
duced.
Ursus claims that Tycho Brahe passed off as his own the hypotheses of Apollonius of Perga
(DAH, Ciii, r.3-8, and passim). The third chapter of CU is devoted to the refutation of this.
Kepler may well have felt it unnecessary to pursue the matter here, because he had already dealt
with it in some detail in "Concerningthe dispute about hypotheses ... " (KGW, xx/I, 67-69).
At the end, against the conceptions of Roes1in, he talks about the parallax of
Mars as if about his own [discovery], impudent man, since it can only just be
discerned with the greatest instruments.
AgainstRoeslin's denial of the interpenetration of orbs, Ursus adduces the approachof Mars
in oppositioncloser to the Earth than is the Sun, citing as evidencethe observations ofTycho
as well as "other astronomers bothancientand modem" (DAR, Giv,v.5-16; 22-25). This does,
as Keplernotes,showa failureto takeaccountof the instruments neededfor suchobservations
of parallax. However, Ursus nowhereimplies that he has made such observations himself.
On the other side of the page he opposes the Sacred Scriptures" to the measur-
ing of the height of the heavens. Wrongly. If anyone should assert anything new
about the divine essence of the Trinity, about the person of Christ, or about the
way to heaven, Scripture will be opposed to him. But for the sake of establish-
ing something in natural matters, not at all; [523r] and specifically on this point
Syracides, chapter 1, sings [his praises] thus.
"God is the first author of all wisdom. For who before Him discovered what
the height of heaven should be, and taught God, so that He might make it so?"
On this point, Ursus, there is nothing in your favour, unless you would deny
that it can be known how many fingers there are on a hand. For who devised in
advance a reason for the number of fingers, so that he taught God how many
should be placed on a hand?
Chapter 18. "He sees the vast height of the heavens, but men are dirt." Man is
compared to the immortality of God with respect to the shortness of his life, to
the Sun with respect to the vileness of his body, to the vastness of heaven with
respect to the meanness (of his dust and ashes). These things are true, even if
some man should measure that vastness.
Thus in Chapter 43. "The majesty of God is perceived in the vast height of
the heaven." The majesty of God is no less to us, Ursus, if we suggest how great
this height might be. And 100 years after the Flood, at a time when men were not
yet pondering how great the height of heaven [might be], they were less aware
of the majesty of God, for they were trying to touch the summit of the heavens
by building a tower.
Thus Roeslin and Tycho misuse the Sacred Scriptures, but Ursus is the worst,
impertinently contradicting others and, in the manner of Lucian." asserting
himself through mockery.
In De opere Dei creationis (Frankfurt, 1597), 48-49, Roeslin published his own geohelio-
centric system in which the planetaryorbs form a plenum, with those of the superior planets
having thicknessesequal to the diameter of the solar orb, and the orb of Saturn reaching the
sphere of the fixed stars. These proportionsRoeslin infers from the fact that God wished the
height of heaven to be knowable; for only given such definiteratios of the sizes of the orbs
can the distanceof the fixedstars be established(51.12-21). Againstthis, Ursus (DAR, Ciii,v)
cites passages from the apocryphal Syracides (= Jesus ben Sirach = Ecclesiasticus). As for
Tycho, Kepler has in mind his use of Scriptural objections in De mundi aetherei recentioribus
phaenomenis and EA against the Copernican system (TROO, iv, 156; vi, 177-8 and 186-7).71
Kepler opens with the general (and surprisingly strong) assertion that natural philosophical
innovations, unlike moral and theological ones, cannot be at odds with the Sacred Scriptures.
Hence his conclusion that Ursus has misused the Scriptures, as have Roeslin and Tycho. Spe-
cifically against Ursus, Kepler argues that the passages he cites glorify the majesty of God in
ways entirely consistent with human measurement of the cosmos." (Of Kepler's quotations,
the first is, in fact, a gloss; the others diverge widely from the Latin of the Vulgate, but are
close to the German of Luther's 1534 translation of the Apocrypha.") Finally, Kepler implies
that Ursus is impious in invoking Scripture in the context of a satirical work.
C4. He forges a pleasing little story in his head alone and covers it with the cloak
of knowledge of histories. And he does that now more in the case of Pergaeus than
he did before in that of Aristarchus. For he describes a way in which someone
could slide from the Copernican to the Tychonic hypothesis, and attributes to
Pergaeus what is clearly from nothing.
This is Kepler's comment on Ursus's claim (DAR, Ciii,r.3-8) that Tycho obtained his hypotheses
by inverting those of Copernicus, just as Apollonius had derived his from Aristarchus.
[523v] In the business of mathematics he does not speak mathematically. That a
fixed star of the third magnitude exceeds the entire sphere of the Sun, this he says
is to be abominated and exposed as absurd, as a madness, something that proceeds
from a most impudent and shameless mouth. Well so it seems to you. But these
words of yours strike all astronomers as if peasants were reigning in your place,
and they were to hear that the Sun is 166 times bigger than the Earth.
In his letter to Tycho of 18 April 1590 Rothmann had asked: "What absurdity follows if a star
of the third magnitude equals the whole of the annual orb?" (TROO, vi, 216.26-27). Ursus
mocks this (DAH, Civ,r.1l-26), and Kepler in tum mocks Ursus's mockery. Indeed, since
Ursus's objection echoes Tycho's objection to the absurdity of so vast a sphere of the fixed
stars (TROO, vi, 197), Kepler, perhaps unwittingly, mocks Tycho as well!
At the end of the first side he has hardly understood the other substitution,
because on the following side he uses contradictory words. I do not know for
what reason, when he is apparently speaking of the Ptolemaic [hypotheses], he
brings into consideration a theorem for calculating distances in accordance with
Copernicus or Tycho, something that I would, nevertheless, have known without
him. And this does not suffice for examining my [hypotheses].
In DAH (Civ,r.25-26; 36-38) Ursus describes two "substitutions [immutationes]" by which
Apollonius of Perga derived his hypotheses from those of Aristarchus. The first is the substitu-
tion of the Earth for the Sun. The second he describes somewhat obscurely: "Besides, he set
the Earth immobile and, on the other hand, he made the Heaven to be moved again with one
proper motion, and the Sun with one proper motion and also one which happens and is brought
about by the impulsion of the Heaven". The next page opens by characterizing the concentrics
of Aristarchus and Apollonius as centred on the Sun. Kepler notes that this is at odds with
Ursus's earlier ascription to Apollonius of the centring of the Sun's concentric on the Earth
(somewhat uncharitably, since Ursus is evidently referring only to the concentrics of the five
planets). As Kepler observes, Ursus then discusses Ptolemy's works, only to switch abruptly
to a description of a method for calculating relative planetary distances in a heliocentric or
geoheliocentric cosmos; and he goes on to suggest that this method could be used to test the
sizes of the planetary orbs given in Kepler's Mysterium cosmographicum (Civ,v.2Q-.Di,r.5).
At the end of D, see whether or not he asserts truly that Ptolemy says that
Hipparchus had rejected the tenets of Eudoxus and Calippus about the eccen-
trics.
The passage in question is, "for he [Ptolemy 1indicated that Hipparchus ... rejected the tenets
ofEudoxus and Calippus and for the first time introduced eccentric circles" (DAH, Di,v.24-25}.
Kepler's suspicion is correct: Ptolemy never mentions Eudoxus or Calippus.
D2, nearly at the end. Tycho does not say that there is absolutely no fit between
his [hypotheses] and [those] of Copernicus; but he denies this, that he proceeded
to the setting up of his own hypotheses in this manner.
Citing Tycho's letterto Rothmann of21 February 1589, in which Tycho denied having derived
his hypotheses from the Copernican ones (TROD, vi, 178.40-42), Ursus writes of "that man
Tycho, stoutly denying, whether cunningly and mendaciously or ignorantly and carelessly,
that those hypotheses of his (for so it pleases him to call those of Apollonius) are the inverted
Aristarchan or (as he calls them) Copernican hypotheses (DAH, Dii,v.21-23).
He traces his invention back to the first of October 1585, and he appears to steal
the march on Tycho.
Cf. DAH, Aii,r.32-35 (quoted above), where Ursus recounts his discovery. This certainly
antedates Tycho's publication of his world system in 1588. If Ursus really was as dishonest
as Tycho maintained, it is perhaps surprising that he did not date the discovery of his hypoth-
eses from before his visit to Hven in September 1584, during which, so Tycho maintained
(see, for example, EA, TROD, vi, 179-80), Ursus had filched his hypotheses in the form of
a defective diagram.
D3. He makes an error in the table: it is not necessary for the circuits [periodos]
of the Sun and Mars to penetrate, but rather those of the Sun, Venus, Mercury,
or the Moon. See E 4. F ii.
The passages in DAH at issue are as follows. Diii,r lists the "penetratio periodorum" of Mars
and the Sun among the "absurdities" of the Ptolemaic system, though not of the Aristarchan
(= Copernican) and Apollonian (= Tychonic) systems. Eiv.v-Fi.v gives the portion ofTycho's
letter to Rothmann of 21 February 1589 in which he charges Ursus with plagiarism, suggest-
ing that the discrepancy between his hypotheses, in which the circuits of Mars and the Sun
intersect, and those published by Ursus in his Fundamentum astronomicum of 1588, in which
they do not, is to be explained by Ursus's having stolen a defective diagram while visiting
Hven in 1584. In Fii,v.2-14 Ursus responds to this as follows. "Nevertheless later, in the year
1588, dealing with my beliefs and presenting and expounding my hypotheses in a simple form
and in a general portrayal to my students and hearers, I portrayed the orb of Mars completely
surrounding the solar one. I did so not imitating that Tychonic depiction (as he says), which
I never saw; rather I did it deliberately, so that the minds of my students and hearers might
not be perturbed. Indeed, both from this false depiction of his, which Tycho thinks that I
copied, and from that subtle and accurate observation performed and carried out in the year
1582, from which he says that he first realized that in opposition Mars becomes nearer to
the Earth than the Sun, it is clearly evident and agreed that Tycho Brahe, that so great Prince
of Astronomers," was up to then unaware of that which he accuses and reprehends me for
having not at one time been aware. So isn't he more worthy, or at least just as worthy as me,
of reproach for his ignorance?"
One possible reading of Kepler's remark is as follows. Tycho and, following him, Kepler
may no longer have been convinced by Tycho's parallactic observations of Mars (which do not
figure in Tycho's Progymnasmata, completed in 1592, and are explicitly rejected in Kepler's
Astronomia nova of 1609).75 Hence the charge of error in Ursus's table of absurdities ofthe
world systems. Kepler's thought could be that, rather than wrongly counting penetration of the
orbs of Mars and the Sun as an absurdity of the Ptolemaic system, Ursus should rather have
counted as an absurdity of the Ptolemaic system the interpenetration of the orbs ofVenus and
Mercury (as reported by Maestlin in his notes on Rheticus's Narratio prima and mentioned
in passing by Kepler in Mysterium cosmographicumy.": and as an absurdity of the "Apollon-
ian" system the intersection of the orb of the Sun with those of Venus and Mercury. This still
leaves mysterious the mention of the Moon. None ofTycho's parallax measurements suggests
that its distance from the Earth could ever exceed that of Mercury. Now we have seen above
that Kepler took Copernicus to have believed in real orbs; so perhaps Kepler has it in mind
that Ursus should have counted the intersection of the orbs of the Earth and the Moon as an
absurdity of the "Aristarchan" system. Ursus presumably sees the "penetratio periodorum"
as a problem for the Ptolemaic hypotheses alone, because he attributes to Ptolemy, but not
to Aristarchus or Apollonius, "physical hypotheses", by which he means planetary models
composed of real orbs (see DAH, Cii,v.9-12; Civ,v).
5. Notes on Sources for the History ofAncient Astronomy

[524r] Like Eudoxus and Capella, Pliny too assigned a latitude to the Sun, but
Pliny 2°, Capella 30' <see Proclus f. 376, 377>, perhaps they are talking about
the refraction. because of the hint in the book [mentionem libri].
Here and below underlined words are in the hand of Johannes Muller. The references are to
Pliny, Historia naturalis (hereafter HN), ii, 67, and Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae
et Mercurii, viii, 867. The marginal note refers to Proclus, Hypotyposis, vii, 38 (in the version
of Giorgio Valla, as appended to Claudii Ptolemaei Pelusiensis Alexandrini omnia quae extant
opera, Basel, 1551), which attributes latitude to the Sun. The "mentionem libri" may perhaps
relate to Pliny, HN, ii, 65 (cross-referenced in ii, 67): "A third explanation of their altitudes
is discerned from the measure of the heaven, not that of a circle, the eye judging them to rise
or sink per profundum aeris". This might at a pinch be taken to concern refraction if the final
phrase is (mis )interpreted as "on account of the depth of the air" rather than "through the depth
of the aether". The reference to Eudoxus is illuminated by a passage in CU (A defence ofTycho,
106; 166) in which Kepler (expounding Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1073bl, 18-31) suggests that
the second of the spheres assigned by Eudoxus to the Sun gave it an imperceptibly variable
latitude in order to preserve its analogy with the Moon.
On the fiction of the hypotheses read the words of Proclus. in the commentary
of Ziegler. on folio 434.
This is again the handwriting of Johannes MUller. The reference is to Jacob Ziegler, In C.
Plinii de naturali historia librum secundum commentarius (Basel, 1531; Cologne, 1551),434:
"They call that part ofthe science of the heavens 'to do with hypotheses', because, as Proclus
says, many things are proclaimed to be in the heaven which either are not, or if they are it is
not evident that they really are" (cf Proclus, Hypotyposis, vii, 51).77
Pliny made mention of Sosigenes's not agreeing with Aristarchus. Below Venus
is Mercury, departing 23 degrees from the Sun, as Sosigenes taught. You cannot
tell whether to relate it to the "below" or to the "23". He wrote that there are
three commentaries of Sosigenes on the length of the year and on the Roman
calendar. Pliny, Book 18. Mercury reaches a radius of less than 23° [from the
Sun], Book 2. «Proclus on Sosigenes: that he was a Peripatetic, he wrote books
on the revolutions; he states there that the perigee of the Sun's eclipses occurs
with a shining circle.>
Again, the underlined part is in MUller'shand. The words of Pliny to which Kepler and MUller
refer are: "Nearest to Venus is the star of Mercury, by some called the star of Apollo.... It is
carried in a lower circle with a revolution nine days quicker, shining sometimes before the
rising of the Sun and sometimes after its setting, but never further than 23 degrees from it, as
Cidenas and Sosigenes teach us" (HN, ii, 39) (most sixteenth-century editions follow Her-
molao Barbaro's emendation of 22° to 23 Castigationes Plinianae, Rome, 1492). As Kepler
0
:
observes, it is unclear from this precisely which views are here attributed to Sosigenes. As
he also notes, Sosigenes figures in Pliny, HN, xviii, 211-12, as the author of three treatises.
Kepler's concluding remark, that the elongation of Mercury from the Sun is less than 23 is 0
,
in line with Tycho Brahe's estimate of 20 0 for the maximum egression of Mercury from the
mean Sun (TBOO, xxii, 162).
The marginal note refers to Proclus, Hypotyposis, iv, 98, in Valla's version: "What Sosi-
genes [Soligenes] the peripatetic related in the [books] he wrote about the revolutions is not
true, namely that in eclipses happening at perigee the Sun is seen to leave the circle of the
Moon behind and not in the least impeded to give light, not running ahead as a whole, but in
the outermost reaches of its circumference" (353, col. 1.5-12). Though this passage is toler-
ably faithful to the original, many others, including those cited below, are wildly inaccurate
as well as copiously embellished with unsignalled commentary and materials drawn from
later authors."
Anaximander of Miletus. Pliny claims. died in the second year of the 58th Olym-
piad. aged 64. He described the equinoxes. <Atlas [described] the sphere long
before, afterwards Cleostratus [described] the signs Aries and Sagittarius.>
In Pliny (HN, ii, 31) we find: "In the fifty-eighthOlympiad Anaximander of Miletus is said first
to have discerned the obliquity [of the zodiac].... Then Cleostratus of Tenedos dealt with the
signs [in the zodiac], starting with those of Aries and Sagittarius, the heavenly sphere having
been dealt with long before by Atlas." The date of Anaximander's death is taken not from
Pliny but from Diogenes Laertius, De clarorum philosophorum vitis, ii, 1,2.
Macrobius is to be looked at. Pliny in other books. Plutarch.
Kepler may well have in mind as sources of information relevant to the history of astronomy:
Macrobius, In Somnium Scipionis (passages from which are discussed in chap. 4 of CU);
books of Pliny's HN other than those already cited; and pseudo-Plutarch (Aetius), De placita
philosophorum (from which Copernicus, DR, iiii,r.3-9, quotes a passage on those who believe
the Earth to move).
Pliny derives the 46 degrees of Venus from Timaeus, I do not know which
[Timaeus]. 23 [degrees] of Mercury from the same and from Sosigenes.
See Pliny, HN, ii, 38-39.
Vitruvius (as well as Pliny) writes about the eightfold degrees of the signs in
such a way as to give the impression that the signs do not begin from the cardinal
points but from eight degrees before, perhaps from the constellations, or certainly
from the movement of the fixed stars through about 800 years.
See Vitruvius, De architectura, ix, 3, I; Pliny, HN, ii, 81.
The order of the writers about the fixed stars (in Pliny). They place the morning
setting of the Pleiades:
Hesiod on day 0 after the equinox
Thales on 25
Anaximander on 29
Euctemon on 48. 79
See Pliny, HN, xviii, 213. However, where sixteenth-century editions have "Eucternon xlviii",
modern editions have "Eucternon xliv, Eudoxos xlviii".
In Book 20, chapter 16, he also mentions Manlius, who in the time of Augustus
placed a globe on an obelisk.
In all sixteenth-century editions of Pliny's HN, "Manlius the mathematician" is credited with
putting a gilded globe on the obelisk placed by Augustus in the Campus Martius, to facilitate
its use as a gnomon: see, for example, Historiae mundi libri xxxvii, ed. by J. Dalecampius
(Leiden, 1587),60. 80 In modern editions Manlius is replaced by Novius Facundus (xxxvi, 72).
No reference to any Manlius is to be found in Book 20 in early-modern or recent editions.
[524v] Proclus also mentions Apollonius, f. 360.
Proclus, Hypotyposis, v, 79 (in Valla's version (Basel, 1551), 360, coLl.30-36), mentions
Apollonius of Perga in connection with his constructions to account for the planetary stations,
as reported by Ptolemy, Almagest, xii, I.
Proclus rejects solid orbs, f. 377. He also rejects the Latin [writers who maintain
that] with its own heat [the Sun] controls the planets.
This is based on the conclusion of Valla's elaborations on Proclus. The part dealing with solid
orbs (377, coI.2.36-38, col.l.3) relates loosely to Hypotyposis vii, 50-54:
Also, it does not seem right to overlook the fact that there are certain people, and espe-
cially Aristotelians led by their supposition against the opinion of the most distinguished
mathematicians, who, rather than proving what they proclaim with valid arguments,
maintain that the wandering stars are carried as if by unbounded and free motion, and
that they are not moved in accordance with the motion of the whole world, nor against it,
but rather that all are drawn by one and the same natural turning of the world, and these
same people introduce no eccentrics, no epicycles, for they claim that the true and solid
bodies of the stars cannot be carried by circles and lines pictured and lacking body, since
a body cannot be bound by an incorporeal thing, and indeed that epicycles are not to be
called bodies, lest [those bodies] should appear to be in the heaven in vain; but that there
are certain globes agreeing in size with the nature of the body, and they are turned with
varied and diverse motion and some of them are very great, some very small, certain
of them are moved from on high, certain lowered to the depths, and they are wanderers
[planetas = literally, "wanderers"], as the rest of the stars, not being wanderers, are fixed
in the heaven.
Insofar as any sense can be made of this, it appears critical of those who reject solid spheres. In
the passage on which this is based Proclus sits on the fence: against those who think epicycles
and eccentrics to be mere ideas he objects that an idea cannot bring about natural motions;
against astronomers who think them to be real he objects that they introduce discontinuities
and discordant motions into the heavens (Hypotyposis, vii, 50-51).
The part relating to the action of the Sun's heat (378, col. 1.3-<:01.2. 16) has no basis in
Proclus, being rather derived by conflation ofVitruvius, De architectura, ix, 1, 12-13, with
Pliny, HN, ii, 69-70:
And about the astronomical questions which were enumerated at the beginning of the
book, enough. Again, others who examine the motions of the planets more carefully, but
still not correctly, think that heat calls all things to itself, as crops rising from the Earth
are drawn up by heat, as waters and vapours [are drawn up] from sources and rivers and
the sea to the clouds; and that, for the same reason, the mighty strength of the Sun, so they
say, extending its rays in a triangular form, draws towards itself the planets following it,"
[and] as if by holding back and restraining those which run ahead, does not allow them
to proceed, but [makes them] return to it in the sign of another trigon. This [happens]
rather in this figure than in the others, because the rays of this kind of triangle of equal
size are also extended from the fifth sign from it. 82 They say this lest it come about that
everything should catch fire. As therefore they think that [they] are raised on high by fiery
force, because we do not immediately recognize [this] by sight - nor can we - they say
that a station appears to occur, and accordingly they believe that just as they are moved
less in the highest" reaches of their globes, conversely they speed up when a descent has
already occurred; moreover, that Venus and Mercury come into no form of aspect with
the Sun, because the greater or lesser parts of their orbs, which are called "apsides", are
opposed, and they are never found further away than when they are furthest from the
Sun, therefore when they have completed the boundary on one of the sides they then are
recognized to have reached their furthest separations, so they say.
This strange effusion is, as Kepler observes, critical of those who suppose the Sun's rays to
control the planets.
Macrobius together with Pliny reports that in Gemini two new moons occur.
Other things likewise the same as Pliny. It must be found out when he lived.
He reads Lucan, Servius, Verrius Flaccus, Festus, Fenestella, Ptolemy, finally
Capella too. They appear to be contemporaries, but Pliny is the more ancient,
for his time is found from his dedication. Macrobius mentions Domitian (and
Trajan), and adds, "the concern of subsequent Emperors ...". He was not a
Roman or an Italian by origin, as he himself admits. I think that he was a Gaul

or, from his name, a Greek.
These notes all appear to be concerned with Macrobius's dates, a matter of much interest to
Kepler, because, as is evident from the following note, he held Macrobius, like Martianus
Capella, to have preserved a geoheliocentric cosmology, ultimately derived from Plato, if not
the Egyptians: this being a theme elaborated in the final chapter of CU. The sources here are as
follows. On the new moons in Gemini: Macrobius, In Somnium Scipionis, i, 6, 51; Pliny, HN,
ii, 78. On Macrobius's reading: Servius, Verrius Flaccus, Festus and Fenestella are mentioned
in Macrobius's Saturnalia; Ptolemy in his In Somnium Scipionis; and Lucan in both works.
Capella, however, is never cited, having lived after Macrobius. Kepler, below, takes Macro-
bius's espousal of the opinion (which he attributes to Plato) that the Sun is sometimes above
and sometimes below Venus and Mercury to be an endorsement of Capella's view; but when
Kepler discusses this passage in chap. 4 of CU, his chronological researches have paid off,
and he dates Macrobius before Capella. On Macrobius in relation to the Emperors: Macro-
bius mentions Trajan in Saturnalia, i, 23, 14-16, and Domitian in i, 12,36-37. In relation to
Dornitian's renaming of the months, Macrobius notes: "The concern of subsequent Emperors
to avoid the unhappy consequences of an ill omen retained the ancient names of the months
from September to December." On Macrobius's birthplace, cf Saturnalia, i, praef. 11: "I,
born under a foreign sky".
Capella's opinion is found in Macrobius, f. 21. It is attributed to Plato. See
whether it accords with Plato's words. It is credited to the Egyptians, whose
disciple Plato was. An explanation is added. [Their] times of circuit [tempora
periodi] give the altitudes of the rest, the time [periodus] common to three of
them [giving] the same orb.
Macrobius's account of the ordering of the planetary spheres in In Somnium Scipionis, i, 19,
opens as follows.
Plato followed the Egyptians, parents of all branches of philosophy, who think the Sun to
be located between the Moon and Mercury; accordingly, they understood and made known
why the Sun was believed by some to be above Mercury and Venus. Nor do those who
think so stray far from a semblance of the truth. The following sort of reasoning induced
belief in this alteration. From the sphere of Saturn, which is the first of the seven, to the
sphere of Jupiter, the second highest, the distance between is so great that the higher one
completes the circuit of the zodiac in thirty years, and the lower one in twelve years. The
sphere of Mars in turn is so far from Jupiter that this planet runs the same course in two
years. As for Venus, it is so far below the region of Mars that one year is enough for it
to pass through the zodiac. Moreover, the star of Mercury is extremely close to Venus
and the Sun very near to Mercury, so that these three go round their heaven in the same
period of time, that is, approximately a year,"
Kepler examines Macrobius's account of the courses of Mercury and Venus in detail in chap.
4 of CU, relating it to Plato's account of the same in Timaeus (A defence of Tycho against
Ursus, 130-1; 200-1).
Macrobius [holds] this along with Capella, that musical sounds come from the
turning of the celestial spheres.
Macrobius's account of the music of the spheres is in In Somnium Scipionis, ii, 4, that of
Martianus Capella in De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, i, 27-28; ii, 169-81; ix, 922.
Porphyry, the interpreter of Plato, seems, along with Aristotle, to place Mercury
above the Sun and Venus, and he makes it four times higher. But the reasoning
is ignorant. Macrobius, fo1. 27.
The information about Porphyry comes from Macrobius, In Somnium Scipionis, ii, 3: "[The
Platonists] decided that this should be believed: that ... from the Earth to Venus is three times
the distance from the Earth to the Sun; from the Earth to Mercury is four times the distance
from the Earth to Venus.... Porphyry included this conviction of the Platonists in his books
... ." The relevant passage from Aristotle is De mundo, 392a 1,20-31, which gives an ordering,
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Moon. .
[525r] A defect [scrupulus] in Capella is to be censured.t"
As Bruce Eastwood has pointed out in his treatment in CU of Martianus Capella's account of
the planetary paths, Kepler omits all mention of a passage which tells against his interpretation:
"... but when they are above the Sun, Mercury is closer to it lei], and, when inside the Sun,
Venus, inasmuch as she is moved in a chaster and more diffuse orb." Eastwood also notes that
the problematic "ei" in this passage is absent from the critical editions of Vuicanius (Basel,
1577) and Grotius (Lyons, 1599); however, from the passages Kepler quotes in CU, it is evident
that he was using the editio princeps of 1499, or, more probably, one of its derivatives, in all
of which the "ei" is present." Maybe this is the "scrupulus",
Daniele Barbaro gives an explanation of the order of the planets in his com-
mentary on Vitruvius, fo1. 286.
See M. Vitruvii Pollionis de Architectura libri decem, cum commentariis (Venice, 1567),286
(commentary on De architectura, ix, 1):
So we regard it as settled that those planets are closest to the Sun that have larger epi-
cycles. Therefore Mars and Venus run through the reaches of heaven closer to the Sun.
But if pride of place is the issue, certainly Venus will be closest, for the centre of her
epicycle is always positioned in the north, which is the right-hand region of heaven. But
Mercury occupies the southerly regions, which we assign to the left. Also, Mercury is
more similar to the Moon, both in number of orbs and in variety of motions; so above
Mercury is Venus, next the Sun, and above the Sun is Mars, then Jupiter, and highest of
all is Saturn, which, since it has an epicycle smaller than does Jupiter and more similar
to the epicycle of the Moon, is surely to be placed above Jupiter, because those that are
furthest away have need of a smaller epicycle. But the epicycle of Jupiter is more similar
to the epicycle of Mercury, therefore Jupiter is to be placed above Mars. And this is the
order, and number, and position of the heavens.
6. Significances, Philological and Philosophical

It is always a temptation to regard manuscript material not intended for publication
as embodying what an author really meant to say, as opposed to what it was expedi-
ent to offer to the public. Often this is a temptation to be resisted. For manuscripts
have often, especially in the early-modern period, been far from private: they may be
communicated, copied, and circulated (as with Kepler's earlierjudgements of Ursus's

DAH);87 letters may be written and collected with an eye to subsequent publication (as
with EA);88 the most private of notes may be seen by others (as may well have been
the case with these ones). Further, it is often unwise to infer sincerity or accuracy
from privacy: authors may feel less rather than more compunction about fabrication,
playfulness, etc., in their personal jottings. 89 In this case, however, it does seem that
we have a record of certain views that Kepler was, for good reasons, reluctant to air
in his cu. Thus it is hardly surprising that Kepler's unveiling of Tycho's paranoid
suspicions about his friend Rothmann is absent from Cu. And we would hardly
expect Kepler, in a defence of Tycho, to have given vent to his view that Tycho had
misused the Scriptures in astronomical debate. Further, Kepler's announcement here
that Holy Writ cannot be used to oppose innovations in natural philosophy seems
startlingly strong; for it implies the outright irrelevance of Scripture to astronomy
and cosmology. This is surely at odds with Kepler's own appeals in Mysterium
cosmographicum to Trinitarian structure and symbolism in the cosmos. Kepler does
indeed argue, notably in his famous defence of Copernicanism against Scriptural
objections in the introduction to Astronomia nova, that many biblical texts, including
those cited against Copernicus, are adapted to common speech and address moral
and theological, not natural philosophical issues; and in Dioptrice he calls the use
of arguments from the Scriptures against the motion of the Earth "an abuse"." But
nowhere else does Kepler make remarks that could be taken to imply quite so sharp
a separation between the Scriptural and thecosmological domains.
Writing to Maestlin in February 1601, Kepler described CU as "philological rather
than mathematical";" and the work is indeed devoted to critical interpretation of
texts, rather than to mathematical interpretation of celestial phenomena. These notes,
diverse in their forms, contents and aims, provide a most valuable insight into Kepler's
philological/historical practice. Further, they cast valuable light on the sources on
which Kepler draws in CU and elsewhere, in building up and justifying his distinctive
conceptions of the nature, aims, methods and history of astronomy.
Let us consider in tum the four batches of notes we have distinguished. The first
batch is much the most finished. Kepler is here out to discredit Ursus's readings in
DAB of excerpts from DR. As he has to admit, taken out of context these passages are
open to Ursus's misconstruals. So Kepler carefully sets them in context, showing that
although parts of Tycho's hypotheses figure there, nowhere is the whole to be found.
Here, as in CU where Kepler identifies the true astronomer as an architect who puts
together parts devised by others, his insistence on harmonious systems of hypotheses
as the primary goal of astronomy plays a central role in the rebuttal of Ursus's case
against Tycho's originality. For it allows Kepler to concede to Ursus that aspects of
Tycho's hypotheses were indeed anticipated by others, without giving way on the
issue of the originality of the Tychonic system as a whole. Moreover, as is evident
from his defensive remarks here (and in his refutation of Ursus 's Demonstratio) about
his own originality, it plays a crucial role in justifying his own worthiness for having
elegantly combined the Copernican planetary circuits with the Platonic solids in his
Mysterium cosmographicum.
Chapter 4 of the uncompleted CU closes with a rhetorical question: "Where
then are [Tycho's hypotheses] explicitly described in Copernicus?" This first batch
of notes, taken together with the concluding section of "Concerning the dispute
about hypotheses", provides a comprehensive rebuttal of Ursus 's claim that Tycho's
hypotheses are to be found in Copernicus, and a clear indication of the way in which
Kepler would have concluded Cu.
The second batch of notes concerns the passages in EA on which, in the preface to
DAH, Ursus bases his charges that Rothmann betrayed his hypotheses to Tycho (con-
cealing that treachery by claiming to have thought them up himself some years earlier)
and that Tycho in turn passed them off as his own. To show, against Ursus, that EA
in fact substantiates the independence of Tycho' s formulation of hypotheses, Kepler
here excerpts or summarizes the relevant passages, emphasizing Tycho's concern
with the observational, physical and Scriptural grounds for his world system. None
ofthis figures in CU, which passes over Ursus's preface, being exclusively devoted
to Ursus's account in the body of the work of the nature and history of astronomical
hypotheses. As noted above, Kepler may have been reluctant to air certain issues
raised in these letters. However, his overriding reason for omission of this material
was surely his decision, as reported in CU, to leave to Tycho the pursuit of legal
action for defamation." As is known from the copy of DAH marked for use in Ursus's
trial," many of the points at issue were in Ursus's preface, which contains some of
the fruitiest insults, so it is no wonder that in CU Kepler steered clear of it.
Though in CU Kepler does not, as here, contest Ursus's reading of the EA, he
does there mention "the dispute between Tycho and Rothmann" as exemplifying
philosophical debate about the merits of astronomical hypotheses (A defence ofTycho
against Ursus, 93; 146). Given the paucity of other precedents for such debate, and
the centrality of appeal to natural philosophical considerations in Kepler's account of
the progress of astronomy, it is clear that EA is for Kepler a major resource; indeed,
CU may be regarded not merely as a rebuttal of Ursus's DAH, but also as a continu-
ation of the philosophical debate in EA.
The notes in the third batch are in the genre of castigationes, each responding
critically to a particular passage in DAH. They clearly prefigure CU, and especially
its first chapter, both in content and, on occasion, in phrasing. Indeed, some of them
(for example, the initially baffling remarks about Aristotle and the "Pythagorean
eccentrics", and the condensed observations on "the cossic art") become fully intel-
ligible only in the light of CU.
The first three batches of notes bear ample witness to Kepler's line-by-line scrutiny
of the text of Ursus 's DAH and of the documents adduced by Ursus in support of his
arguments. One particular rhetorical device - implicit in certain of the notes and
explicit in important passages of CU - deserves comment. This is concessio, in which
points are conceded so as to show that, even when they are granted, the adversary's
argument does not go through. On occasion, Kepler helpfully strengthens Ursus's
position, only to show that even thus bolstered it fails. For example, in the first batch
of notes Kepler provides Ursus with an argument "from part to whole" against Tycho's
originality, only to refute it. In the third batch, as in CU, Kepler indicates a respect
in which the quest for true astronomical hypotheses is, as Ursus suggests, analogous
to the use of the "regula falsi" in algebra, only to dismiss it in CU as unimportant.
And in the first chapter of CU Kepler addresses one of his central arguments, that
concerning the truth about relative motions contained in observationally sufficient
but inconsistent hypotheses, to those, like Ursus, "who confine their own thinking
within the bounds of geometry or astronomy" (A defence of Tycho against Ursus,
90-92; 141-3). These concessions are, indeed, persuasively effective, though poten-
tially confusing to the modem reader unused to the device. But their role is surely
more than rhetorical. For it is through them that Kepler is able to make the far from
consistent Ursus into a worthy opponent and spokesman for his primary target, the
view of astronomy as no more than a quest for planetary models adequate to save
the celestial phenomena.
The final batch of notes takes the form of bare reports of information to be gleaned
from authors, mostly Ancient. At first glance it is hard to see any unifying theme
apart from a recurrence of chronological information. (Doubtless it is this that led
Michael Gottlieb Hansch to place all these notes in the midst of chronological writ-
ings in vol. xxii of the Kepler papers.") However, from chapter 4 of CU it becomes
retrospectively evident that Kepler is here gathering evidence for the most elaborate
of his historical reconstructions, namely his attempt to establish an ancient pedigree
for geoheliocentric cosmology from Plato; via Pliny and Vitruvius, to Macrobius
and Capella.
In CU Kepler subjects his historical sources to close critical scrutiny. As recom-
mended in rhetoric and dialectic textbooks of the period, he attends to their cir-
cumstantiae (their dates, relations to other texts, etc.), going on to examine them in
accordance with the procedures of definitio, to clarify obscurity, divisio or distinctio, to
resolve ambiguity, and conjectura, to emend texts and to uncover hidden meanings."
In these notes we see in action the very first stage of Kepler's historical inquiry, the
compiling of a register of relevant sources and of indications of their dates.
Two "modem" authorities figure in these final notes, Jacob Ziegler, commenta-
tor on Pliny's Historia naturalis, and Daniele Barbaro, commentator on Vitruvius's
De architectura." These commentators are models for a particular kind of critical
engagement with ancient texts. Anthony Grafton has contrasted two modes of human-
ist interpretation: the historical/philological, concerned with minute decipherment
of original meanings, and the philosophical, concerned with texts as sources of
currently relevant style and content." Ziegler and Barbaro, like Kepler in CU, most
effectively combine these modes. Both are philologically skilled, minutely concerned
with sources, language, and interpretation. And both engage competently with math-
ematical technicalities. Thus Ziegler shows remarkable expertise in reconstructing the
ancient astronomical doctrines to which Pliny's text bears witness, a task rendered
difficult, as he complains, by the mathematical incompetence of earlier commen-
tators and by Pliny's informal language." Barbaro likewise shows mathematical
competence in his interpretations of Vitruvius's often dense and difficult allusions

to musical and astronomical matters. He also elaborates a Vitruvian vision of the
true artist as one who emulates nature, and of the arts as governed by a fundamental
rule of "eurhythmia" or apt and harmonious disposition of parts - themes that have
obvious parallels in Kepler's writings.
Despite Kepler's distinction between his mathematical and philological activities,
it would be a mistake to consider Kepler's exercises in interpretation of ancient texts
as divorced from his astronomical/cosmological endeavours. The two are connected
at many levels. Most obviously, for Kepler as for other early-modern astronomers,
meticulous interpretation of ancient texts is required for the establishment and dating
of ancient celestial phenomena. More specific to Kepler are the roles of critical evalu-
ation of ancient testimony in constructing the history of astronomy. Establishment
of a progressive development of astronomy is used by Kepler not merely to refute
Ursus's sceptical history, but also to vindicate his own view of the true astronomer
as an artifex who emulates the works of the Divine architect as he constructs the
true form of the cosmos. Further, Kepler's uncovering of the heliocentrism of the
Pythagoreans, hidden in obscure passages of Aristotle, serves not only to discredit
Ursus's attribution of its origin to Aristarchus, but also to legitimate his own cos-
mology as a recovery of the prisca astronomia. Finally, at the most general level
Kepler's philological procedures, seen at work in these humble preparatory notes,
are of a piece with his cosmological endeavours, for in both cases there is a passage
from evident signs and traces, vestigia, to hidden originals - to the most ancient
astronomy, to the Divine archetypes."
Acknowledgements
I am deeply indebted to Katherine Harloe for expert and imaginative help in translat-
ing Kepler's often condensed and enigmatic notes. Alain Segonds is responsible for
many of the emendations to the Gesammelte Werke edition of Kepler's notes. He,
Adam Mosley and Patrick Boner gave much useful advice on a draft of this article.
Thanks also to Owen Gingerich and Noel Swerdlow for helping me to understand
De revolutionibus, iii, 20 and 25, to Boris Jardine for preparing the figures, and to
Vicky Carroll and Marina Frasca-Spada for help and encouragement in the production
of this article. This work was facilitated by a British Academy grant for the project
"Conflict and priority in early-modern cosmology".
REFERENCES
1. Nicholas Jardine et al., "Tycho v. Ursus: The build-up to a trial", Journalfor the history ofastronomy,
xxxvi (2005), 81-106; 125-65.
2. On this pamphlet, see O. Kernstock, "Aus den Erlebnissen eines deutschen Arztes", Anzeiger fir
Kunde der deutschen Vorzeit, 1876, 330-3; D. Launert, Nicolaus Reimers (Raimarus Ursus).
Giinstling Rantzaus - Brahes Feind: Leben und Werk (Munich, 1999), 343-51; D. Launert, N.
Jardine, and A. Segonds, "Ursus's anonymous pamphlet on the ancient origins of geoheliocentric
hypotheses", Journalfor the history of astronomy, xxxvi (2005), 129-36.
3. See N. Jardine, The birth of history and philosophy ofscience: Kepler's A defence of Tycho against
Ursus with essays on its provenance and significance, rev. edn (Cambridge, 1988; hereafter A
defence ofTycho ), chap. I; E. Rosen, Three Imperial Mathematicians: Kepler trapped between
Tycho Brahe and Ursus (New York, 1986).
4. A defence of Tycho, 86; 135-6.
5. See, for example, Kepler's letter to Tycho of 19 February 1599: W. von Dyck, M. Caspar et al.
(eds), Johannes Kepler Gesammelte Werke (Munich, 1938-, hereafter cited as KGW), xiii, no.
112.129-32.
6. KGW, xiii, no. 123.102-358.
7. KGW, xiv, no. 132.35-77.
8. C. Frisch (ed.), Joannis Kepleri astronomi opera omnia (Frankfurt and Erlangen, 1858-71; hereafter
KOO), i, 281-4; also KGW, xx/I, 66-69.
9. On this aspect of CU, see B. S. Eastwood, "Kepler as historian of science: Precursors of Copernican
heliocentrism according to De revolutionibus, I, 10", Proceedings ofthe American Philosophical
Society, cxxvi (1982), 367-94; N. Jardine and A. Segonds, "Kepler as reader and translator of
Aristotle", in C. Blackwell and S. Kusukawa (eds), Philosophy in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries: Conversations with Aristotle (Aldershot, 1999),206-33.
10. N. Jardine and K. Harloe, "Kepler's refutation of Ursus's Demonstratio", Journal for the history of
astronomy, xxxvi (2005),151-65.
II. On MUller's refutation of Ursus's Demonstratio, see N. Jardine and A. Segonds, "The formal refutation
of Ursus's Demonstratio by Johannes MUller, briefed by Tycho Brahe", Journalfor the history
of astronomy, xxxvi (2005), 137-50.
12. KGW, xx/l , 459.
13. 'paradoxum' .Iike its Greek counterpart 'paradoxon', covers unusual, remarkable. peculiar or heterodox
opinion or doctrine, not just paradox in the modern sense.
14. Not "historically" in the modern sense: a narratio is said to be historica when it retails facts rather
than interpretations. conjectures or fictions.
15. Reading "sic" where KGW has "hic''.
16. On these attributions, see N. M. Swerdlow, "Pseudodoxia copernicana: or, enquiries into very
many received tenets and commonly presumed truths, mostly concerning spheres", Archives
internationales d'histoire des sciences, xxvi (1976), 108-58, pp. 130-2.
17. On Tycho's supposed observations of Martian parallax, see O. Gingerich and 1. R. Voelkel, "Tycho
Brahe's Copernican campaign",Journalforthe history of astronomy, xxix (1998), 1-34.
18. On Tycho's anti-Copernican arguments in EA, see A. Blair, "Tycho Brahe's critique of Copernicus
and the Copernican system", Journal of the history of ideas, Ii (1990), 355-77.
19. Virgil,Aeneid, vi, 129.
20. Cf. Note 12 of Kepler's response to Ursus's Demonstratio, KGW, xxII, 71; Jardine and Harloe,
"Kepler's refutation of Ursus's Demonstratio" (ref. II), 157.
21. Reading "potuisse" where KGW has "profuisse",
22. KGW, xxii, 70.8-12.
23. KGW, xxii, 71.4-24.
24. Ursus's version of the story is close to that in Theodor de Bry, Americae pars quarta (Frankfurt,
1594),25-26.
25. On these models, see N. M. Swerdlow and O. Neugebauer, Mathematical astronomy in Copernicus'
De revolutionibus (New York, 1975), 157-61; N. M. Swerdlow, "Long-period motions of the
Earth in De revolutionibus", Centaurus, xxiv (1980), 212-45.
26. Tycho's misunderstanding has been noted by A. Mosley, "Bearing the heavens: Astronomers,
instruments, and the communication of astronomy in early modern Europe". Ph.D. dissertation,
Cambridge, 2000, p. 311.
27. Reading "venditasse" where KGWhas "venditasque",
28. Reading "salvanda" where KGW has "salvandam",

29. Letter of 12 August 1587: TBOO, vi, 105-6.
30. The letter of Rothmann to which Kepler refers is that of21, not 30, September 1587. Kepler misread
"II Calend Octob." as "II Calend Octob." (TBOO, vi, 119.39).
31. In fact, Tycho asked Rothmann to seek the Landgraf's judgement and communicate it to him (TBOO,
vi, 133.6-8).
32. Reading "pag," where KGWhas "109".
33. TBOO, vi, 132.34-133.9.
34. TBOO, vi, 146-7.
35. TBOO, vi, 146.36-147.12.
36. Should be 19 September = "13 Calendas Octobris".
37. TBOO, vi, 156.38-157.2. The model adapted by Rothmann is that used by Copernicus for the Moon,
and is one of the alternatives proposed for the Sun in DR (iii, 20), though not Copernicus's
preferred one. My thanks to Professor Noel Swerdlow for explaining this matter.
38. Reading "rnodum" where KGW has "moturn".
39. Addition by Kepler.
40. TBOO, vi, 157.4-10.
41. TBOO, vi, 157.16-23.
42. TBOO, vi, 157.26-30.
43. TBOO, vi, 157.31-42.
44. TBOO, vi, 158.1-159.19, where Rothmann raises physical objections to the 'inverted-Copemicanism'.
that is geo-heliocentric, hypotheses (which he had proposed only as a teaching device).
45. TBOO, vi, 176.32-40.
46. TBOO, vi, 176-8.
47. TBOO, vi, 178.40-179.1.
48. Supposing Kepler to have intended "fine E" where he wrote only "fine".
49. DAH, Eiv.v-Fi.r, quotes the passage given here by Kepler and continues to TBOO, vi, 180.11.
50. TBOO, vi, 183.11-15.
5 I. This merely gestures at the following: "I would at least urge you to form your judgement concerning
the heaven from the heaven itself, not from charts and ingenious demonstrations, perhaps not
everywhere in agreement with the heaven itself" (TBOO, vi, 196.16-18).
52. TBOO, vi, 196.20-24.
53. TBOO, vi, 196.30-36.
54. Reading "quod" where Kepler has "quos".
55. Ursus here plays on the double sense of 'aiterna' as "thing required" and "postulate".
56. On the regula falsi, see A. J. E. M. Smeur, "The rule of the false applied to the quadratic equation
in three sixteenth century arithmetics", Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, xxviii
(1976),66-101.
57. For the history of this distinction, see R. Kennedy, A history of reasonableness: Testimony and
authority in the art of thinking (Rochester NY, 2004).
58. In CU Kepler notes that in his copy of DR Osiander's authorship is testified by Hieronymus Schreiber.
Schreiber did indeed write "ANDREAS OSIANDER" at the head of the anonymous preface:
see Nicolaus Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, facsimile reprint of Kepler's
copy of the first edition (New York, 1965); O. Gingerich, An annotated census of Copernicus'
De revolutionibus (Nuremberg, 1543 and Basel, 1566) (Leiden, 2002), 77.
59. As preacher at the church of St Lorenz, Osiander had effective control of the city council of Nuremberg.
On Osiander's role in the government of Nuremberg, see G. Seebass, "The Reformation of
Nuremberg", in L. P. Buck and J. W. Zophy (eds), The sacred history of the Reformation
(Columbus OH, 1972), 17-44.
60. Reading "credis" where KGWhas "redis".
61. See E. Rosen. "Kepler's early writings". Journal of the history of ideas. xlvi (1985), 449-54, p.
454.
62. Kepler had also argued against Ursus's claims about the excellence of the music of the Ancients in
his letter of 14 September 1599 to Herwart von Hohenburg (KGW, xiv, no. 134.405-12).
63. The reference is presumably to the oft-told tale (in Callimachus, Cicero, Augustine, and others)
of the young man moved by his reading of Plato's Phaedo to return his soul forthwith to its
homeland.
64. Reading "abhorrentem" where KGW has "adhorrentern".
65. I.e., the so-called Metonic cycle equating 19 solar years with 235 true lunar months.
66. The sources for Thales's prediction of the eclipse are Herodotus, Historiae, i, 74; Diogenes Laertius,
De clarorum philosophorum vitis, i, 23-24; and Pliny, NH, ii, 53.
67. Reading "sciscitandi" where KGWhas "suscitandi".
68. Like much else in his history of hypotheses, Ursus appears to derive this, without acknowledgement,
from the history of astronomy given in Ramus's Prooemium mathematicum (Paris, 1567),210-17
(also in a slightly emended version in his Scholae mathematicae (Paris, 1569)). On Ursus's use of
Ramus, see N. Jardine and A. Segonds, "A challenge to the reader: Ramus on astrologia without
hypotheses", in J. S. Freedman and W. Rother (eds), The influence of Petrus Ramus: Studies in
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century philosophy and sciences (Basel, 2000), 248-66, pp. 260-1.
69. Reading "S. literas" where KGW has "semidiametras".
70. I.e., in the satirical and fantastic manner of Lucian of Samosata, whose True story pokes fun at the
tales of distant lands told by poets, historians and philosophers.
71. On Tycho's appeals to the Bible, see Blair, "Tycho Brahe's critique of Copernicus" (ref. 18),362-4; K.
J. Howell, God's two books: Copernican cosmology and biblical interpretation in early modern
science (Notre Dame IN, 2002), chap. 3.
72. Cf. the passage in Kepler's introduction to Astronomia nova, where Syracides is said, like David, to
describe "the magnificence of God made manifest" (KGW, iii, 29.35-38).
73. The passage ascribed to Syracides, chap. 18, by Kepler, is in that chapter in the Luther version, but
in chap. 17 in the Vulgate.
74. Here, as elsewhere, Ursus calls Tycho "Prince of Astronomers" in mockery of the title of one of
the poetic encomia, with which EA opens: "to the most noble man, Tycho Brahe, Prince of the
Astronomers of our age" (TBOO, vi, 6.19-21).
75. See Gingerich and Voelkel, "Tycho Brahe's Copernican campaign" (ref. 17),26-27.
76. KGW, i, 16; 84.
77. Jardine and Segonds, "The formal refutation of Ursus's Demonstratio" (ref. 11), argue that MUller
had used Tycho's annotations in a copy of Ziegler's commentary in preparing his refutation of
Ursus's Demonstratio.
78. On Valla's translation/elaboration of Proclus's Hypotyposis, see C. Manitius, "Praefatio", Procli
Diadochi Hypotyposis astronomicarum positionum (Stuttgart 1909), pp. v-vi. Kepler can hardly
have been unaware of the unreliability of Valla's version, and in April 1607 he asked Herwart von
Hohenburg to obtain a copy of Proclus's Hypotyposis in Greek (KGW, xv, no. 424.530-3).
79. Reading "Euctemon" where KGW has "Eudemo".
80. My thanks to Boris Jardine for tracking down this "Manlius".
81. Reading, on the basis of Vitruvius, De architectura, ix, I, 12, "vaehernens radiis triangula figura
porrectis insequentes stellas ad se perducit" for "vaehemens radiis triangula figura porrectus in
sequentes stellas ad se perducit".
82. This is explained by F. Granger, Yitruvius on architecture (Cambridge MA, 1931), ii, 222.
83. Reading "altissimis" for "altissimi".
84. The translation here follows the wording of the passage as quoted by Kepler in CU. As Bruce Eastwood
has shown, this derives from some edition based on the editio princeps (Venice, 1472), and not
from one of the many editions critically revised by Camerarius, Rivius and others. However, the
folio numbers given here do not match any of the editions in this family as listed by Eastwood.
See Eastwood, "Kepler as historian of science" (ref. 9), 384-5.

85. Reading "damnandus" where KGWhas "demandus",
86. Eastwood, "Kepler as historian of science" (ref. 9), 372-3.
87. For example, Tycho asked Herwart von Hohenburg to send him Kepler's letter of 30 May 1599, or
at least an authenticated copy of the portion relevant to the dispute with Ursus (TBOO, viii,
352.16-30). Herwart duly did so (TBOO, viii, 354.24-35). Also, Johannes MUlier produced,
presumably for Tycho, a fair, if confusingly inaccurate, copy of Kepler's "On the dispute
concerning hypotheses" (KGW, xx/I, 69).
88. On the circulation and publication of the letters in EA see A. Mosley, "Tycho Brahe's Epistolae
astronomicae: A reappraisal", in J. Papy, T. van Houdt, G. Tournoy and C. Matheeussen (eds),
Self-presentation and social identification: The rhetoric and pragmatics of letter writing in
early-modern times (Leuven, 2002), 449-68; A. Mosley, N. Jardine and K. Tybjerg, "Epistolary
culture, editorial practices and the propriety of Tycho's Astronomical letters", Journal for the
history of astronomy, xxxiv (2003), 421-51.
89. For valuable remarks on the relations of manuscript to printed materials, see M. J. S. Rudwick,
"Charles Darwin in London: The integration of public and private science", Isis. Ixxiii (1982),
186-206.
90. KGW, iii, 28-34; iv,354. On Kepler's attitudes to the Scriptures, see J. Hiibner, Die Theologie Johannes
Keplers (Tiibingen, 1975), 158-65,210-29; Howell, God's two books (ref. 71), chap. 4.
91. KGW, xiv, no. 183.161-7.
92. A defence ofTycho, 86; 135-6.
93. See N. Jardine and K. Tybjerg, "Tycho v. Ursus, V: The lost copy of Ursus's De astronomicis
hypothesibus marked for use in his trial", Journal for the history of astronomy, xxxvi (2005),
97-106.
94. On the history of the Kepler manuscripts, see M. List, "Keplers NachlaB - Geschichte und
Auswertung", in V. Bialas, W. Gerlach, M. List and W. Treue, Johannes Kepler zur 400.
Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages (Munich, 1972), 16-24.
95. On Kepler's techniques of interpretation and their sources, see Jardine and Segonds, "Kepler as reader
and translator of Aristotle" (ref. 9).
96. On Ziegler and his commentary see C. G. Nauert, Jr, "Humanists, scientists, and Pliny: Changing
approaches to a classical author", American historical review, Ixxxiv (1979), 72-85; and
"Caius Plinius Secundus", in F. E. Cranz and P. O. Kristeller (eds), Catalogus translationum
et commentariorum (Washington DC, 1960- ), iv, 277-422, pp. 375-422. On Barbaro and his
commentary, see G. Alberigo, "Barbaro, Daniele Matteo Alvise", Dizionario biografico degli
italiani, vi (Rome, 1964),89-95; L. A. Ciapponi, "Vitruvius", in F. E. Cranz and P. O. Kristeller
(eds), Catalogus translationum et commentariorum, iii (Washington DC, 1976),399-409, pp.
406-9.
97. A. Grafton, "Renaissance readers and Ancient texts", in Grafton, Defenders ofthe text: The traditions
of scholarship in an age of science (Cambridge MA, 1991),23-46.
98. Jacob Ziegler, In C. Plinii de naturali historia librum secundum commentarius (Basel, 1531),
a3r-a4r.
99. Femand Hallyn has written of the "anagogical" movement of Kepler's cosmological discourse,
from visible signs to "the Creator's poetics": The poetic structure of the world: Copernicus
and Kepler, transl, by D. M. Leslie (New York, 1990), chaps. 7 and 8. See also T. J. Reiss, The
discourse ofmodernism (Ithaca NY), 1982, chap. 4, and Jardine and Segonds, "Kepler as reader
and translator of Aristotle" (ref. 9).

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fHA, xxxvii (2006)

KEPLER AS CASTIGATOR AND HISTORIAN:

NICHOLAS JARDINE, University of Cambridge

0021-8286/06/3703-0257/$15.00 © 2006 Science History Publications Ltd

composed in the months around Christmas 1600.

substantiate his claim that Tycho's hypotheses are to be found in DR.

2. On Ursus's Misinterpretations of Passages from Copernicus's De revolutionibus

[515r] Diagram of the hypothesis of Martianus Capella concerning Venus,

Accordingly, after Copernicus has factually [historice] 14 recounted these things

These things are continued elsewhere.

3. Notes Mainly on Rothmann's Exchanges with Tycho about Astronomical

4. Notes on Points to be Challenged in Ursus's De astronomicis hypothesibus

calculation, although not to the motions! What then is a method of calculation,

5. Notes on Sources for the History ofAncient Astronomy

Roman or an Italian by origin, as he himself admits. I think that he was a Gaul

6. Significances, Philological and Philosophical

communicated, copied, and circulated (as with Kepler's earlierjudgements of Ursus's

competence in his interpretations of Vitruvius's often dense and difficult allusions

28. Reading "salvanda" where KGW has "salvandam",

See Eastwood, "Kepler as historian of science" (ref. 9), 384-5.

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