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Updated: May 13, 2025
But there was nothing. Copernicus and Kepler lay in full sunlight. The heights of the lunar mountains, the depths of the barren, empty seas were etched black and white, clear and clean. Grim, forbidding desolation, this unchanging Moon. In romance, moonlight may shimmer and sparkle to light a lover's smile; but the reality of the Moon is cold and bleak.
Nobody seemed to dare to depart from this fetish of uniform angular motion and circular orbits until the insight, boldness, and independence of Johann Kepler opened up a new world of thought and of intellectual delight. While at work on the Rudolphine tables he used the old epicycles and deferents and excentrics, but he could not make theory agree with observation.
When Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, Newton's predecessors, came to the point of saying to Christian society, then represented by the Church: "The Bible is mistaken; the earth revolves, and the sun is stationary," they were right against society, which, on the strength of its senses and traditions, contradicted them. Could society then have accepted solidarity with the Copernican system?
Kepler wasted a good deal of time and ingenuity on trial theories. He would invariably start with some hypothesis, and work out the effect. He would then test it by experiment, and when it failed would at once recognise that his hypothesis was a priori bound to fail. He rarely seems to have noticed the fatal objections in time to save himself trouble.
We have seen how Kepler, guided by a preconceived notion of the "harmony of the spheres," after many trials and corrections, ended by discovering his laws. Copernicus recognized expressly that his theory was suggested to him by an hypothesis of Pythagoras that of a revolution of the earth about a central fire, assumed to be in a fixed position.
The cool-headed Delambre, in his "Histoire de l'Astronomie," speaks of Kepler with the heat of a pamphleteer, and cannot repress a frequent sneer at his contemporary, Galileo. We know the splendor of the Newtonian synthesis; yet we do not find ourselves affected by Newton's character or discoveries. He touches us with the passionless love of a star.
In 1592, before Kepler had quitted Tubingen, he was on the eve of entering into the married state. Though the foolish scheme was fortunately broken off, yet he resumed it again in 1596, when he paid his addresses to Barbara Millar of Muleckh, who was a widow for the second time, though only twenty-three years of age.
I will only point out to you these facts: that, from the latter part of the seventeenth century, the noblest heads and the noblest hearts of Europe concentrated themselves more and more on the brave and patient investigation of physical facts, as the source of priceless future blessings to mankind; that the eighteenth century which it has been the fashion of late to depreciate, did more for the welfare of mankind, in every conceivable direction, than the whole fifteen centuries before it; that it did this good work by boldly observing and analysing facts; that this boldness towards facts increased in proportion as Europe became indoctrinated with the Jewish literature; and that, notably, such men as Kepler, Newton, Berkeley, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Descartes, in whatsoever else they differed, agreed in this, that their attitude towards Nature was derived from the teaching of the Jewish sages.
The Unrevealed Scripture and Reason Bishop Butler's Dictum Reverence of Kepler Moral Courage of Sir Oliver Lodge Increase of Laxity The Spirit's Almighty Power Supreme Authority of Scripture The Proper Sphere of Reason Fate of the Heathen Singular Reserve of Preachers Sin is Abnormal Union of Divine Power, Wisdom and Love Reasonableness and Harmony A Multitude of Scripture Promises Discipline Instead of Eternal Torment Dr.
"What would you have thought," inquired Ernest, "if you had seen Newton and Kepler gazing at the sky, before the one had determined the movements of the celestial bodies, and the other the laws of gravitation?
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