8.3.

Kepler's Astrology: The Direction

of a Reform
GI~RARDSIMON
Universitg de Lille, France

THE subject of this communication may seem surprising, particularly in this place
dedicated to positive science; but we believe that one cannot fully appreciate the
audacity, honesty and depth of Kepler's thought without at the same time taking
account of its extraordinary archaicism. This is why we shall here return to the
essential points of a communication made this summer to the Leningrad Kepler
Symposium, and develop their epistemological consequences.
Kepler's attitude to astrology may seem to contain contradictions: he often de-
plores the credulity of his times 1 and ruthlessly criticizes the arbitrary nature of the
predictions made by his contemporaries, predictions he believes to be based on
irrational fervour and superstition rather than on solid foundations; 2 he complains
that because of his duties as Imperial Mathematician or the harsh necessities of
his extreme poverty he has to spend time drawing up horoscopes and ephemerides.
But it would be wrong to believe, as hindsight may perhaps persuade such as judge
the past in the light of the rational demands of the present, that his astrological writing
should be seen as no more than a financial obligation which he assumed with
cynicism or at least carried out with disgust or bitterness. For, apart from numerous
letters, it was completely of his own accord that he wrote entire works on the

1 Johannes Kepler, "De Stella Nova", Gesammelte Werke, Vol. I, p. 355, Beck, Miinchen.
"De Stella Nova", Chap. XXX, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 1, p. 354, and "De Fundamentis
Astrologiae Certioribus", Thesis III, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 4, p. 12.

439
Girard Simon
question, and even in books like the Astronomia Nova which do not directly treat of
the subject one finds passages which unequivocally affirm his belief that heavenly
bodies influence what happens to things and to people. 3
In fact, the contradiction is only apparent: his interest in astrology was that of a
theoretician and he wanted to reform it in the same way as astronomy. He thus
writes to M~istlin on 15 March 1598: "I am a Lutheran astrologer, throwing out the
chaff and keeping the grain. ''~ His reform is at once simple and surprising. He wants
to make astrology a natural science like the rest, or rather a practical or applied branch
of the sciences of Nature. 5 He mentions his project very early in his correspondence
and spent years bringing it to completion. The theses elaborated as early as 1602
do not take their definitive form until they appear in the Harmonice Mundi, by
which time they have, moreover, been subject to modifications as a result of work
Kepler had carried out in other fields. ~ This is an additional proof, if one were needed,
of the unity of Kepler's thought: for the underlying idea is perfectly comparable
with that of his research in the new astronomy. Just as the new astronomy simul-
taneously develops a celestial physics and a mathematical cosmology, attempting to
explain the movements of the planets by dynamical causes and their disposition about
the Sun by harmonic ratios derived from musical theory, reformed astrology tries
to be the physics of the causes of the relations between the celestial and the terrestrial,
as well as a harmonic theory of the efficiency of "planetary aspects" on what happens
on Earth. It thus treats of the links which exist between two worlds that have so far
been kept apart--the sublunary and the supralunary--whose profound unity Kepler's
genius tries to bring out.
The clearest and most succinct--though not definitive--summary of his ideas is
to be found in his short treatise of 1601 De Fundamentis Astrologiae Certioribus
("Improved Foundations of Astrology"). 7 In this he distinguishes between three
types of reasoning that can underlie astrological predictions: the theory of physical
causes, the theory of causes he calls psychological or metaphysical, and finally that
of signs. While he decides that the first two are valid, he, on the other hand, exercises
all his critical rigour against the third.
3 He comments several times on his own horoscope: In "De Stella Nova", Chap. X, Gesammelte
Werke, Vol. 1, p. 196, and in the "Harmonice Mundi", IV, 7, ibid., Vol. 6, pp. 278-9. See also a very
characteristic passage in "Astronomia Nova", ibid., Vol. 3, pp. 261-2.
4 Letter to M~istlin on 15 March 1598, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 13, No. 89. "Ago itaque ut
Jesuitae: qui multa emendant ut homines catholicos faciant. Imo non ita, ago, nam qui nugas
defendunt sunt Jesuitis similes, Ego sum Lutheranus astrologus qui nugis abjectis retineo nucleum."
5 See the divisions of astronomy given in the preamble of "Astronomiae Pars Optica", Gesam-
melte Werke, Vol. 2, p. 14.
e The most important are: On the role attributed to light, the recognition, after the discovery of
the phases of Venus in 1611, that the planets have no intrinsic luminosity. See note 8 and "Epitome
Astronomiae Copernicanae," Book 1, Part 2; Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 7, p. 52 and Book VII, Part 5,
p. 2. On the list of aspects, Kepler's ordering of the regular polygons according to their "scibilitas"
and their "congruentia" see "Harmonice Mundi", Book IV, Chap. V, Propositions IX-XIV.
7 The only Ephemeris written in Latin and thus designed for the learned public.

440
 Kepler's Astrology: The Direction of a ReJbrm
In this work Kepler means by "physical" that which concerns only matter, not
soul. It is of interest that he adopts many of the beliefs of traditional astrology,
particularly those about the properties associated with particular planets: his attempts
to make them rational shed light on the idea he had of rationality. Although he closely
follows Ptolemy and his Tetrabiblos, he nevertheless makes two innovations. First,
he corrects his Alexandrian predecessor every time the Copernican system is in-
volved. Thus, the closeness of the Earth and its exhalations is not used to explain
the humidifying quality attributed to the Moon and to Venus. Nor is the closeness
of the Sun given as an explanation of the torrid character of Mars ;8 in a heliocentric
system there is no reason why Venus rather than Mars should receive the Earth's
humidity, since Venus is now nearer than Mars is to the Sun; in addition, the dis-
covery of atmospheric refraction and thus of a limit to the rising of vapours makes it
impossible to accept Ptolemy's explanation.
Moreover, Kepler tries to give a causal explanation not only of the properties, but
also of the efficiencyof heavenly bodies. This is why he gives an essential role to light,
the only corporeal reality linking them to the Earth. He seems to deduce a general rule
from the roles traditionally assigned to the Sun and to the Moon: direct light causes
dryness, reflected light makes humours swell. 9 At this time, and up to 1611, when the
phases of Venus were revealed by the telescope, Kepler believed that the planets shone
by their own light, and he even gives this as one of his reasons for believing in the rule
mentioned above. 1° Thus, from whether they themselves give out a more or less strong
light or whether they reflect sunlight well or badly, he can deduce their astrological
characteristics, ranging from the ice of Saturn and the heat of Mars to the temperate
beneficence of Jupiter and the fecund humidity of Venus2 ~ If they stay a long time
above a particular region, the wandering stars thus have an effect on its climate, on
the exhalations and humours that form there, and hence on the health of men22
These texts (as indeed the De Stella Nova) show the same epistemological
attitude as the one found in the Astronomia Nova; an end has been made of the dis-
tinction between the sublunary and the supralunary. Kepler explicitly lays claim to
the right to treat of celestial matter as of terrestrial; and by a characteristic argument
of analogy tries to infer the natures of the surfaces and the internal compositions of
the planets by comparing their light to that reflected by a steel mirror or that pro-
duced by a glowing piece of coal. TM Physical astrology with its study of the effects of
the light of heavenly bodies on the Earth with its atmosphere, its vegetation and its

s Ptolemy, TetrabiblosI. 4. Manetho-Ptolemy(p. 37), Heinemann,London, 1956.

"De FundamentisAstrologiaeCertioribus",GesammelteWerke,Vol. 4, Theses XV and XXVI.
i0 "De FundamentisAstrologiaeCertioribus", Thesis XXI, and particularly"AstronomiaePars
Optiea", Chap VI, 12; GesammelteWerke,Vol. 2, pp. 227-8.
11"De FundamentisAstrologiaeCertioribus", Thesis XXIV.
12"De FundamentisAstrologiaeCertioribus", Thesis XXIII.
13"De FundamentisAstrologiaeCertioribus", Theses XXX and XXVIII.

441
Girard Simon
living bodies is seen to be the natural continuation of the Physica Coelestis at work
in the new astronomy.
We are still within the field of physical astrology when we come to the theory of
psychological or metaphysical causes, although we may find it much more surprising,
because it presupposes that the Earth has a soul sensitive to the harmonies of the stars.
However, let there be no mistake: they are but natural causes of another kind,
although they are much higher in dignity and in power. We know that astrologers
believe that at the time when they are seen from the Earth at certain angles, called
"aspects" (aspectus), such as Conjunction, Opposition (180°), Trigon (120°),
Quadrature (90°), or Sextile (60°), heavenly bodies or characteristic points such as the
Ascendant (horoscopus), or the centre of the sky (Medium Coeli), enter into signifi-
cant relations with each other and their respective influences increase, counteract
one another, or turn maleficent. This is the only point which Kepler decides to
retain from judicial astrology. 14 But here again, instead of appealing to the Hermetic
tradition to justify his choice, he tries to explain the existence and efficiency of these
aspects, the list of which he repeatedly improves in the light of experience and
reasoning. 15
The theory is very complicated and takes its definitive form only in the
Harmonice Mundi (1619). Like all his thought, it is both Pythagorean and neo-
Platonic in its inspiration, and is characterized by the eminent ontological dignity
accorded to the circle and to the sphere, spacial manifestations of the divine archetype
of the Trinity. a+ The regular polygons are ranged in order of dignity according to
whether their characteristic lines and areas are more or less commensurable with the
diameter of the circumscribing circle (scibilitas), or whether when placed side by side
they can fill a space without leaving gaps (congruentia). 17 Now aspects are no more
than the angles subtended at the centre by the apices of the regular polygons of highest
dignity. TM Here we again find the preoccupations with harmony, which as Koyr6 has
shown, animate Kepler's astronomical research from the Mysterium Cosmographicum
to the Epitome and guide him in obtaining his Third Law. TM The astrology of aspects
is thus the counterpart seen from the Earth of the heavenly harmony, which seen

14 "Et quid aliud est totus libellus, quam solennis dtr~OXUl.tr~dvtertq totius fere Astrologiae
judiciariae, solis Aspectibus in naturae partes traductis." "What is the whole of my book (De Stella
Nova) if not a millstone round the neck of almost all of judicial astrology, except for Aspects, which
are transferred to the natural domain of Nature"; letter to Herwart von Hohenburg, April 1607.
Gesammelte Werke, Mfinchen, Vol. 15, letter No. 424, p. 453. See also De Stella Nova, Chap. II,
Gesammelte Werke, Vol. I, pp. 166-7.
15 See HarmoniceMundi, Book IV, Chapter VI, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 6, pp. 257-8.
16 Characteristic texts in Astronomae Pars Optica, Chap. I, p. 19; Epitome, Book I, 2nd Part,
Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 7, pp. 47-51 ; HarmoniceMundi, Book IV, Chap. I, pp. 223-5.
17Harmonice Mundi, Books I and II.
is Harmonice Mundi, Book IV, Chap. V.
19A. Koyr6, La R~volution Astronomique, I1--Kepler, Part 3 : "De la physique cdeste h l'harmonie
cosmique". Hermarm, Paris, 1961.

442
 Kepler's Astrology: The Direction of a Reform
from the Sun results from the differences in the velocities of the planets at perihelion
and aphelion due to the eccentricities of their orbits~°; and, more generally, it com-
pletes the Divine Harmony presiding over the structure of the Universe. It is in no
way beyond the scope of Kepler's scientific thought.
Nevertheless he here runs into a theoretical difficulty arising from his attachment
to the principle of causality. For an aspect is not a physical reality like light, but only
a relationship--the angle between two characteristic points in the sky seen from
Earth; this relationship exists only by being perceived. ~1 Kepler now has recourse to
an explanation which is revealing of his mental structures and thus of what he
considers plausible: in order to account for the clear meteorological effects of aspects
he postulates that the Earth has a soul capable of perceiving these aspects, at least in
the way that peasants, without knowing the mathematical relations of harmonies,
are guided by such harmonies when they dance. ~ In the same way (and this provides
the justification for casting a Nativity horoscope) the soul of the newly-born baby is
marked for life by the pattern of the stars at the moment it comes into the world,
unconsciously remembers it, and remains sensitive to the return of configurations
of a similar kind. ~s
This idea that the Earth has a soul, which he also calls sublunary Nature, and the
Panpsychism which is its corollary may surprise us; it is, however, not in the least an
isolated and exceptional element in Kepler's thought. In the Astronomia Nova he
hesitates for a long time in deciding what may guide the planets on their elliptic orbits,
and only abandons the idea of giving them a directing soul (an idea Tycho Brahe did
not reject) when he decided that such a soul would lack reference points and
mathematical means for calculating the trajectory. 24 By way of Epilogue to the
Harmonice Mundi he declares his belief in the existence of a world-soul situated in
the Sun, accounting for its rotation and rejoicing in the harmonies of the stars. 25
There is no doubt that the long litany of analogies by which he frequently tries to
give a direct proof that the Earth has a soul may seem to the eyes of a modern reader
to be out of place and unworthy of Kepler's genius. Parallels are drawn between the
internal heat evidenced by volcanos and animal heat, vegetation and hair, the forma-
tion of metals and the generation of animals, sulphur springs and excretion, spon-
taneous generation of insects and spontaneous generation of lice and parasites. 2s
2oHarmonice Mundi, Book V.
21 "Et enim in conjunctione duarum planetarum, non jam lucam, sed ipsa haec relatio, ipse
situs, quem conjunctionem appeUamus, objecti vicem gerit. O~ale itaque objectum, talis in natura
sublunari est et sensus. Objectum ex relationum classe est, itaque et naturam sublunarem vi perci-
piendi relationes istas praeditam esse necesse est" ("De Stella Nova", Chap. VIII, Gesammelte Werke,
Vol. 1, p. 185).
22 "De Fundamentis Astrologiae Certioribus", Thesis XLIII.
~3 "Harmonice Mundi", Book IV, Chap. VII, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 6, p. 284.
24Astronomia Nova, Book III, Chap. XXXIX.
~s Harmonice Mundi, Book V, Chap. X.
~6 "Harmonice Mundi", Book IV, Chap. VII, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 6, pp. 268-9.

443
Ggrard Simon
But it is not a matter of chance that he is so fond of analogies2v and if those he pro-
poses seem so unconvincing to us the reason is that his categories, unlike modern ones,
do not begin with the division between the animate and the inanimate. His
Panpsychism simply reveals how far the concept and even the effective apprehension
of Nature were different in his time from what they are in ours.
It does not follow that he neglects to distinguish what is natural from what is not.
On the contrary, his purpose is to draw very precise boundaries between the one and
the other. And it is here that he discusses the third type of astrological reasoning:
that of considering signs and their interpretation. It is in De Stella Nova that he
gives the most complete description and criticism of this method. He has only
derision for the astrologers who because the grand conjunction--that of Jupiter and
Saturn--reappeared after eight centuries in a sign of fire (Sagittarius, where Mars was
also to be found), announced that this return of the fiery trigon would be accompanied
by catastrophic droughts, terrifying fires or conflagrations of war: 28 he refuses to
relate the words to the things. In doing this, he is rigorous in distinguishing the
natural from what we might call the cultural: the names, even the configurations of
the constellations, have a purely human origin, and are the results of the practical
interests, the imagination and the beliefs of the peoples who imposed their names
and fixed their forms. 29 Furthermore, the division of the Zodiac into twelve signs does
not correspond to any physical necessity but is only a mathematical convenience.3°
One thus has no reason to expect natural effects from divisions, nomenclatures and
classifications which are themselves matters of convention.
So Kepler denies that the signs of the Zodiac have any specific properties. He
thus abolishes the important doctrine of planetary domification by which each sign
was believed to be the principal "house" of a planet or of a luminary, and the
secondary "house" of another; when one of them is to be found in a sign where it
has its house, or is in aspect with it, its influence is thereby increased. Kepler rejects
this tradition, which he even believes to smell of paganism if not satanism: in his
eyes it made gods of the heavenly bodies by causing them to rule over a part of the
sky.~l He makes a point of establishing that the divisions of the Zodiac are the results
of human convention so that he can destroy any idea that there is a natural link
between signs and wandering heavenly bodies. An analogous reason makes him reject
the equally important doctrine of astrological houses (not to be confused with the
previous one by which the twelve signs of the Zodiac enable one to describe the

37 "I am very fond of analogies, my very sure guides through all the hidden ways of Nature"
("Plurimum namque amo analogias, fidelicissimos meos magistros, omnium naturae arcanorum
conscios..."), "Astronomiae Pars Optica," IV, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 2, p. 92.
58 "De Stella Nova", Chap. XXIX, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 1, p. 325.
33De Stella Nova, Chap. V and VI.
30De Stella Nova, Chap. IV.
31 "De Fundamentis Astrologiae Certioribus", Thesis XLIX. "De Stella Nova", Chap. XXX,
Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 1, p. 336. "De Cometis Libelli Tres", ibid., Vol. 8, p. 232.

444
 Kepler's Astrology: The Direction of a Reform
position of the planets in their proper motion in longitude along the ecliptic). The
twelve astrological houses serve to describe the positions of the planets in relation to
diurnal movement and to a particular point on the Earth. The sky at the moment of
birth is divided into twelve equal parts, starting from the point of the ecliptic on the
Eastern horizon at the precise instant of Nativity, which is called the Ascendant or
horoscope. Each of these houses, numbered I to XII, is supposed to correspond to an
element of the individual destiny, according to a list which Kepler himself quotes in
the Epitome:
Vita, lucrum, fratres, genitor, nati atque valetudo,
Uxor, mors, iter et regnum, benefactaque, carcer.
Life, money, brothers, father, children and health,
Wife, death, journeys and career, good deeds, prison.32
The human origin of the preoccupations reflected by these relationships clearly
robs them of all validity in Nature, and Kepler abandons them. 33 Thus in the name
of the demand for natural causes he denies that there is any validity in the network
of symbolic links handed down by tradition, by means of which a true language of the
stars had been established. We shall turn later to the epistemoiogical implications
of this rejection.
It is as ever his concern over the exact scope of a science of Nature which induces
him in the last chapters of De Stella Nova to make a detailed distinction between the
natural and the supernatural. Not that he considers the latter impossible: he believes
too strongly in the literal interpretation of the Bible to dismiss the idea that God
can send signs to Man, and he does not systematically reject the idea that this could
account for exceptional events, such as the appearance of comets or the formation
of a new star. He even tries to show, in an argument where he makes a not very
fortunate attempt at calculating probabilities, that, far from being attributable to
chance, the appearance of the Nova in 1604 at the position and at the time of the
"Grand Conjunction" can only be due to Divine Providence; 34 and he does not
hesitate to compare it with the appearance of the star of the Three Magi--which was
to lead him on into a series of works on chronology. 35 But he does deny that it is
possible to give a well-founded interpretation of such an event, which would be
rational although not subject to the laws of causality. For, in this case, one would
oneself have to be a prophet, or at least be seized by prophetic fervour, in order to
be able to grasp the meaning of the Divine message. Only inspiration can make up
for the absence of interpretative rules drawn from the laws of Nature. 36 Thus he
mentions the predictions excited by the Nova only to criticize them or to insist how

as "Epitome", Book II, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 7, p. 133.

a3 Wallenstein's Horoscope, Opera Omnia (edited by Frisch), Francofurti et Erlangae, 1858,
Vol. I, p. 387.
34De Stella Nova, Chaps. XXVI-XXVII.
as This is in particular the subject of the "Sylva Chronologica", Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 1.
~eDe Stella Nova, Chap. XXX.

445
G&ard Simon
fragile they were. One is always too ready to believe that God submits the interpre-
tation of his message to the imagination of Man (see footnote 2, p. 439).
We clearly see here what, with Kepler, was changing in western culture, although
he was not yet in a position to state it explicitly: the possibility of describing a
causal process has become the criterion of rationality, and outside it there is no
intellectual salvation. When he undertook to make astrology healthy he thus imposed
the modern demand for causal determinism on the archaic concepts which had grown
out of the demands of a quite different kind of reasoning. The remedy was clearly
one of those which in the end kill the patient.
Indeed, traditional astrology follows neither a logic of concepts nor a logic of
causes, but a logic of signs. It is, as L6vi-Strauss has written about primitive
thought, the logic of a Universe where beings and things are simultaneously en-
dowed with physical and semantic properties 37 and which thus naturally supplies the
key to its own interpretation. Let us take, for example, the signs of the Zodiac: each
is clearly defined geometrically as a part of the celestial sphere referred to the vernal
equinox; it is thus physically situated in space, because its position is calculable, and
in time, because it can always be found in the night sky at the same time of the year.
But, equally, it is situated quite as accurately within an a priori system of classifi-
cation: it is opposed to its neighbours as are male to female, day to night; with the
signs of its trigon its relations are those of fire to water, earth to air, and so on. The
sign is thus a completely defined unique element both in physical reality and in its
semantic functions is thus part of a system of transformations which enables one to
draw a complex network of systematic relations between Heaven and Earth.
In such a world an event is indissolubly cause and sign of what happens at its
occurrence. When Venus, a humid female planet, enters its celestial house--the
Scales--all humours are thereby swollen, those of the Earth with its rain, of plants
with their sap, of animals with their seminal fluid, of sufferers from dropsy with the
liquid in their tissues. The event is the cause, since without it this growth does not
occur; it is a sign because it announces what will happen. No doubt it is sign because
it is a cause--since what it signifies results from the influence attributed to Venus.
But one could just as well say that it is a cause because it is a sign--because without a
previously established system of coding there would have been no correspondence
set up between Venus, its "house", the Scales, and humidifying faculties. Astro-
logical knowledge (and it is not the only such system of knowledge in the sixteenth
century) thus rests on a circular relation of cause and sign, assured by the intangible
nature of a system of interpretation. It is this circularity that Kepler breaks by
making his sharp distinction between sign and cause; and he succeeds in doing so by
showing that the origin of the system of interpretation is cultural rather than natural.
37 "Primitive thought is logical in the same sense and in the same way as ours, but only as ours
is when applied to understanding a Universe in which it simultaneously recognizes physical and
semantic properties" (Claude L6vi-Strauss, La PensdeSauvage, p. 355, Plon, Paris, 1962).

446
 Kepler's Astrology: The Direction of a Reform
This is not to say that he abandons the concrete categories used in this system,
probably because he could not find any other method of classification for objects. This
despite the modernity of his causal demands, gives a preclassical character to his
style of thought.
Thus, in Kepler, the reformer of astrology is not separable from the renovator
of astronomy. On the contrary, the two enterprises mirror one another. Kepler
indeed is far from tender towards "the stupid daughter who thanks to her incanta-
tions clothes and feeds a mother as wise as she is poor"; 3s but we must grasp the
sense of his harshness. He deplores a real inversion of values on the part of his con-
temporaries. They give all their attention and all their money to astrology; and that
to start with is a superstition, because it accepts as natural names, shapes, divisions
of the sky and of its constellations which are of cultural origin, so it believes that
Creation speaks the language of Man; furthermore, it is an impiety, because it tries
to compel God to take responsibility for the most profane and often the most dis-
honest of Man's projects. Instead, men ought to dedicate their work and their
resources to promote astronomy, which alone is capable of making us hear the true
language of Creation, because Creation speaks a language whose essence is divine
but nevertheless accessible to Man, that of mathematics, as is stated in Harmonice
Mundi: "Since geometry was co-eternal with the Divine Spirit before the birth of
things, it was God himself who served as His own model in creating the world (for
what is there in God which is not God?) and He with His own image reached
down to Mankind. ''39 If one listens to this language at once sacred and natural, one
realizes that the heavens do not speak to men of their earthly affairs, but address all
their harmonies to the Creator, and like the psalmist sing of His Glory: "Great is
our Lord, great is His virtue, and His wisdom is limitless: praise Him, Heavens,
praise Him, Sun, Moon and Planets, whatever sensibility you are endowed with to
perceive your Creator, and whatever the language you use to speak to Him; praise
Him Celestial Harmonies, praise Him also you who believe these Harmonies have
been discovered; and you also my soul praise the Lord as long as I live. ''4° The
discovery of the celestial song is itself a religious hymn, and prayer is the natural
conclusion of renewed astronomy.
Let us return to this relationship of outlook between astrology and astronomy. It
gives us the table on page 448.
This diagram suggests two concluding reflections. The first is that we can in no
way compare Kepler's intellectual reactions with our own. Unlike us, Kepler could
not but take astrology seriously, because if it is the mirror image of astronomy it
3s "De Stella Nova", Chap. XI, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 1, p. 211; "Tertius Interveniens",
Thesis VII, ibid., Vol. 4.
39 "Geometria ante rerum ortum Menti divinae coaeterna, Deus ipse (quid enim in Deo, quod
n o n sit Ipse Deus ?) exempla Deo creandi suppeditavit, et cum imagine Dei transivit in hominem."
Harmonice Mundi, Book IV, Chap. 1.
40 "Harmonice Mundi", Book V, Chap. X, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 6, p. 368.

447
Gdrard Simon
consequently has the same level of plausibility. Far from being completely resolved,
the question of whether astrology was valid was then still quite a pertinent one. Again,
unlike us, who would be inclined to associate astrology with magico-religious thought,
and astronomy with positivism, for Kepler it is astrology that is the profane utilitarian
activity, while astronomy is the science of the sacred, the science of Creation. Neither
his value judgements nor his motivation are like ours: which is an indication of the
very great epistemological distance between him and us.
Astrology Astronomy
GoD MEN
By the mediation of Nature By the mediationof Nature
Which speaks a languagelike theirs whose divine languagethey understand
About their own affairs praising the Creator
Stoops down to Men. Raise themselvesto God.
Which gives a schemeof this type:
Instances Languages Instances
God God
A
Nature Astrologyof signs Mathematical astronomy Nature
\
Men Men

Secondly, the idea of a language of the World, of a book of Nature, is, as we see,
found in all the systems of thought of the time, and reveals a very archaic type of
reasoning. With a Kepler, with a Galileo, this language is transformed and becomes
mathematical: nothing seems to be changed, but nevertheless everything is about to
change. The decisive innovation has slipped into the ancient mode of thought, almost
surreptitiously. This leads us to think about our conception of epistemological
changes. Even a Kepler does not go to sleep one evening in the prescientific twilight to
wake up next morning in the bright light of science. On the contrary, the episte-
mological change requires time, it has its rhythm, its demands, its particular land-
marks: at the beginning of a history we always find the history of a beginning.

448