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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index K > Johannes Kepler Quotes > God

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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.


Johannes Kepler Quotes on God (18 quotes)

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[The sun] … which alone we should judge to be worthy of the most high God, if He should be pleased with a material domicile, and choose a place in which to dwell with the blessed angels.
— Johannes Kepler
As translated in Edwin Arthur Burtt, 'Kepler’s Early Acceptance of the New World-Scheme', The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science: A Historical and and Critical Essay (1925), 48. From the Latin [as best as Webmaster can tell]: “[solem] … unum dignum omnes aestimaremus, in quo Deus Opt. Max., si corporeo domicilio delectaretur et capi loco posset, cum beatis angelis inhabitaret,” in Christian Frisch (ed.), Opera Omnia, Vol. 8, Part 1, 267.
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Theologus esse volebam: diu angebar: Deus ecce mea opera etiam in astronomia celebratur.
I wanted to become a theologian. For a long time I was restless. Now, however, behold how through my effort God is being celebrated in astronomy.
— Johannes Kepler
Letter to Michael Maestlin (3 Oct 1595). Johannes Kepler Gesammelte Werke (1937- ), Vol. 13, letter 23, l. 256-7, p. 40. As translated in Owen Gingerich, 'Johannes Kepler' article in Charles Coulston Gillespie (ed.) Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1973), Vol. 7, 291. Also seen translated as “I wanted to become a theologian; for a long time I was unhappy. Now, behold, God is praised by my work even in astronomy.”
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And from this such small difference of eight minutes [of arc] it is clear why Ptolemy, since he was working with bisection [of the linear eccentricity], accepted a fixed equant point… . For Ptolemy set out that he actually did not get below ten minutes [of arc], that is a sixth of a degree, in making observations. To us, on whom Divine benevolence has bestowed the most diligent of observers, Tycho Brahe, from whose observations this eight-minute error of Ptolemy’s in regard to Mars is deduced, it is fitting that we accept with grateful minds this gift from God, and both acknowledge and build upon it. So let us work upon it so as to at last track down the real form of celestial motions (these arguments giving support to our belief that the assumptions are incorrect). This is the path I shall, in my own way, strike out in what follows. For if I thought the eight minutes in [ecliptic] longitude were unimportant, I could make a sufficient correction (by bisecting the [linear] eccentricity) to the hypothesis found in Chapter 16. Now, because they could not be disregarded, these eight minutes alone will lead us along a path to the reform of the whole of Astronomy, and they are the matter for a great part of this work.
— Johannes Kepler
Astronomia Nova, New Astronomy (1609), ch. 19, 113-4, Johannes Kepler Gesammelte Werke (1937-), Vol. 3, 177-8.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I am merely thinking God’s thoughts after him.
— Johannes Kepler
Attributed. Could be a boiled down version of a longer quote that includes: “God wanted us to … share in his own thoughts.” (Included here; it begins “Those laws [of nature] are…”) This capsulized version is widely seen linked with Kepler’s name, but never with a citation, for example, in Thomas Winthrop Coit, Inaugural Address Delivered in the Chapel of Morrison College (Nov 1835), 32. As far as Webmaster can determine, historians of science have not found any primary source in which Kepler himself expresses this idea in exactly these words. In a 2001 discussion group post, Ted Davis reported: “I know Kepler pretty well and have searched for it. I’ve also asked Owen Gingerich, who knows Kepler as well as anyone alive, and he can’t confirm it either.”
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I am stealing the golden vessels of the Egyptians to build a tabernacle to my God from them, far far away from the boundaries of Egypt. If you forgive me, I shall rejoice; if you are enraged with me, I shall bear it. See, I cast the die, and I write the book. Whether it is to be read by the people of the present or of the future makes no difference: let it await its reader for a hundred years, if God himself has stood ready for six thousand years for one to study him.
— Johannes Kepler
Harmonice Mundi, The Harmony of the World (1619), end of Introduction to Book V. Trans. E. J. Aiton, A. M. Duncan and J. V. Field (1997), 391.
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If this [the Mysterium cosmographicum] is published, others will perhaps make discoveries I might have reserved for myself. But we are all ephemeral creatures (and none more so than I). I have, therefore, for the Glory of God, who wants to be recognized from the book of Nature, that these things may be published as quickly as possible. The more others build on my work the happier I shall be.
— Johannes Kepler
Letter to Michael Maestlin (3 Oct 1595). Johannes Kepler Gesammelte Werke (1937- ), Vol. 13, letter 23, l. 251, p. 39-40.
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It is a right, yes a duty, to search in cautious manner for the numbers, sizes, and weights, the norms for everything [God] has created. For He himself has let man take part in the knowledge of these things ... For these secrets are not of the kind whose research should be forbidden; rather they are set before our eyes like a mirror so that by examining them we observe to some extent the goodness and wisdom of the Creator.
— Johannes Kepler
Epitome of Copernican Astronomy. In Michael B. Foster, Mystery and Philosophy, 61. Cited by Max Casper and Doris Hellman, trans., ed. Kepler (1954), 381. Cited by Gerald J. Galgan, Interpreting the Present: Six Philosophical Essays (1993), 105. Gerald J. Galgan
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Nothing holds me ... I will indulge in my sacred fury; I will triumph over mankind by the honest confession that I have stolen the golden vases of the Egyptians to build up a tabernacle for my God, far away from the confines of Egypt. If you forgive me, I rejoice ; if you are angry, I can bear it. The die is cast; the book is written, to be read either now or by posterity, I care not which. It may well wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer.
— Johannes Kepler
As given in David Brewster, The Martyrs of Science (1841), 217.
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The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics.
— Johannes Kepler
Epigraph, without citation, in Morris Kline, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), 231. Need primary source. Can you help?
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The sun alone appears, by virtue of his dignity and power, suited for this motive duty (of moving the planets) and worthy to become the home of God himself.
— Johannes Kepler
As quoted in Änne Bäumer-Schleinkofer, Science and Religion (1989), 10.
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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.
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Those laws [of nature] are within the grasp of the human mind; God wanted us to recognize them by creating us after his own image so that we could share in his own thoughts.
[Seen capsulized as: “I am thinking God’s thoughts after him.”]
— Johannes Kepler
Letter (9/10 Apr 1599) to the Bavarian chancellor Herwart von Hohenburg. Collected in Carola Baumgardt and Jamie Callan, Johannes Kepler Life and Letters (1953), 50. See additional notes with the very short alternate version shown above. Thanks for comparing these two versions go to Ted Davis, Professor of the History of Science, Messiah College.
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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.
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What else can the human mind hold besides numbers and magnitudes? These alone we apprehend correctly, and if piety permits to say so, our comprehension is in this case of the same kind as God’s, at least insofar as we are able to understand it in this mortal life.
— Johannes Kepler
As quoted in Epilogue, The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe (1959), 524.
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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.
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See also:

Carl Sagan Thumbnail 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) -- Carl Sagan
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