Kepler's Mistake: Rethinking The Excesses Of Rationalism

By Marcelo Gleiser

Those who know me also know that Kepler, the brilliant 17th-century German astronomer, is my scientific hero, a real source of inspiration. And since my birthday is today, I am giving myself a small gift and writing about him. In my mind, no other character in the history of science, not even Galileo and his embattlement with the Inquisition, represents so clearly the archetype of the lone visionary fighting to vindicate his world vision while his life is torn to pieces by personal tragedy and religious persecution. I even wrote a historical novel about his life, which was published in Portuguese and hopefully one day will be published in English. (I'm working on revisions now...)

Kepler is popularly known for his discovery of the three laws of planetary motion: orbits are elliptical; the planets trace equal areas in equal times as they go around the Sun; and his harmonic law, a mathematical relation between the time it takes for a planet to orbit the Sun and its distance from it. These were the first quantitative laws of astronomy, found in Kepler's book New Astronomy, published in 1609, the year Galileo pointed his telescope to the sky. ...