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Johannes Kepler
(27 Dec 1571 - 15 Nov 1630)
German astronomer who formulated three major laws of planetary motion which enabled Isaac Newton to devise the law of gravitation. Working from the carefully measured positions of the planets recorded by Tycho Brahe, Kepler mathematically deduced his three laws from the data.
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Johannes Kepler Quotes on Geometry (8 quotes)
>> Click for 57 Science Quotes by Johannes Kepler
>> Click for Johannes Kepler Quotes on | God | Heaven |
>> Click for 57 Science Quotes by Johannes Kepler
>> Click for Johannes Kepler Quotes on | God | Heaven |
At ubi materia, ibi Geometria.
Where there is matter, there is geometry.
Where there is matter, there is geometry.
— Johannes Kepler
Concerning the More Certain Fundamentals of Astrology (1601, 2003), 7. Latin text quoted in Ian Maclean, Logic, Signs and Nature in the Renaissance: The Case of Learned Medicine (2007), 188.
Geometry is one and eternal shining in the mind of God. That share in it accorded to men is one of the reasons that Man is the image of God.
— Johannes Kepler
Conversation with the Sidereal Messenger [an open letter to Galileo Galilei], Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo (1610), in Johannes Kepler Gesammelte Werke (1937- ), Vol. 4, 308, ll. 9-10.
Geometry is unique and eternal, a reflection of the mind of God. That men are able to participate in it is one of the reasons why man is an image of God.
— Johannes Kepler
As quoted in Epilogue, The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe (1959), 524, citing Letter (9 or 10 April 1599) to Herwart von Hohenburg.
Geometry, which before the origin of things was coeternal with the divine mind and is God himself (for what could there be in God which would not be God himself?), supplied God with patterns for the creation of the world, and passed over to Man along with the image of God; and was not in fact taken in through the eyes.
— Johannes Kepler
Harmonice Mundi, The Harmony of the World (1619), book IV, ch. 1. Trans. E. J. Aiton, A. M. Duncan and J. V. Field (1997), 304.
I am much occupied with the investigation of the physical causes [of motions in the Solar System]. My aim in this is to show that the celestial machine is to be likened not to a divine organism but rather to a clockwork … insofar as nearly all the manifold movements are carried out by means of a single, quite simple magnetic force. This physical conception is to be presented through calculation and geometry.
— Johannes Kepler
Letter to Ilerwart von Hohenburg (10 Feb 1605) Quoted in Holton, Johannes Kepler's Universe: Its Physics and Metaphysics, 342, as cited by Hylarie Kochiras, Force, Matter, and Metaphysics in Newton's Natural Philosophy (2008), 57.
Therefore I chance to think that all Nature and the graceful sky are symbolised in the art of geometry. … Now as God the maker play’d He taught the game to Nature whom He created in His image; taught her the self-same game which He played to her.
— Johannes Kepler
In Tertius Interveniens (1610), as quoted and cited in an epigraph, Jagdish Mehra, Einstein, Hilbert, and The Theory of Gravitation: Historical Origins (1974), 1.
Thus God himself was too kind to remain idle, and began to play the game of signatures, signing his likeness into the world; therefore I chance to think that all nature and the graceful sky are symbolized in the art of geometry.
— Johannes Kepler
In Tertius Interveniens (1610), as quoted in Freeman Dyson, 'Mathematics in the Physical Sciences', Scientific American (Sep 1964), 211, No. 3, 129.
Why waste words? Geometry existed before the Creation, is co-eternal with the mind of God, is God himself (what exists in God that is not God himself?); geometry provided God with a model for the Creation and was implanted into man, together with God’s own likeness—and not merely conveyed to his mind through the eyes.
— Johannes Kepler
From Harmonice Mundi, Lib. IV, Cap. I, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. VI, as quoted and cited in an epigraph, Jagdish Mehra, Einstein, Hilbert, and The Theory of Gravitation: Historical Origins (1974), 1.
See also:
- 27 Dec - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Kepler's birth.
- Johannes Kepler And the New Astronomy, by James R. Voelkel. - book suggestion.
- Booklist for Johannes Kepler.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
