Customer Reviews

Kepler (Dover Books on Astronomy)

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4 star:		(2)
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Although written in 1948, Caspar's biography is today still the most comprehensive attempt to portray the person of Kepler in a unified manner. This work reflects Caspar's lifetime of work dedicated to Kepler's many publications, manuscripts, and correspondences, and, thanks to additional citations made by editor Owen Gingerich, the reader may now find where nearly all of these passages derive from. Both the common reader and serious student may benefit from this book, for it combines Kepler's scientific studies with the deeply personal conflicts of an early modern genius. Caspar's biography is fundamental not only for studies made on Kepler, but also for the Scientific Revolution in general.

Like the other reviewers have said, this book is simply the best combination of an account of Kepler's life, theories, and works.

This biography is fine, but it cannot be recommended above Koestler's biography, which is more beautifully written and, I think, not as scholarly inferior as some people say. The discrepancy in terms of style seems to be due in part to this translation being rather clumsy (although I have not compared it with the German original). Let us consider some comparisons between this book and Koestler's in this regard. Where Koestler has (quoting Kepler) "geometry was implanted into man ... and not merely conveyed to his mind through the eyes" (p. 262), Caspar reads: "geometry ... has been transferred to man ... [and] not received inside through the eyes" (p. 381). Or (again quoting Kepler): "be greeted, double knob, children of Mars" (Caspar, p. 201) versus "hail, burning twin, offspring of Mars" (Koestler, p. 377).

Now it may be said that Koestler operates with a poetic licence (which is probably true in the latter case, but often not), but so should this book, which is also a popular account with no footnotes or references. No footnotes or references, that is, except those added by the translator/editor. And in these she reveals her appalling lack of taste. She is extremely inconsistent in what gets a footnote and what does not, which seems to be due, firstly, to the fact that she does not know the material very well, and, secondly, to the fact that she shamelessly wants to refer to her own work whenever possible. And she completely destroys the flair of Caspar's stylish sentence "[Kepler] did not start with doubt, as another soon did, but with an unquestioned faith in ratio" (p. 377) by inserting a dimwitted attempt at a joke: "Ed. note: Doubtless, reference here is to Descartes (1596-1650)."

Quibbles aside, this is of course still a very interesting book. Here are some of my favourite themes:

"Aesthetic-artistic consideration of the universe" (p. 382). "I consider it my duty and task ... to advocate ... what I ... have recognized as true and whose beauty fills me with unbelievable rapture on contemplation." (Kepler, p. 298). "I may say with truth that whenever I consider in my thoughts the beautiful order, how one thing issues out of and is derived from another, then it is as though I had read a divine text, written onto the world itself ... saying: Man, stretch thy reason hither, so that thou mayest comprehend these things" (p. 152).

Mathematics a means to this end. "Kepler consciously renounced [Archimedean] rigor and wanted to take over from Archimedes only so much as 'is sufficient for the pleasure of the lovers of geometry.'" (p. 234). "Don't sentence me completely to the treadmill of mathematical calculations and leave me time for philosophical speculations, which are my sole delight. Each one has his own particular pleasure, one the tables and nativities, I the flower of astronomy, the artistic structure of the motions." (Kepler, p. 308).

Man's cognitive abilities designed for this purpose. "[T]he world partakes of quantity and the mind of man grasps nothing better than quantities for the recognition of which he was obviously created." (p. 96). "Nature loves these relationships in everything that is capable of thus being related. They are also loved by the intellect of man who is an image of the Creator." (p. 94). Cf. also p. 93 and above.

The universe designed for this purpose. "The earth's axis in inclined to the ecliptic in consideration of the people distributed over the whole surface of the earth, so that the change of the heavenly phenomena should extend to all places on the earth and consequently all people have a share in it. ... Sun and moon have the same apparent sizes, so that the eclipses, one of the spectacles arranged by the Creator for instructing observing creatures in the orbital relations of the sun and the moon, can occur. The earth moves around the sun to make it possible for man to get to know the world and its dimensions." (p. 296).

Reception of the above. These ideas were quite well received e.g. in the case of the Mysterium Cosmographicum: "Professor Georg Limnäus in Jena ... is ecstatic that at last someone had again revived the time-honoured Platonic art of philosophising. ... [Tycho Brahe] takes unusual pleasure in the book: ... the zeal, the fine understanding and acumen ought to be praised [even though] certain details give him pause." (p. 69-70). It was different with the more modern physics of the Astronomia Nova: "Kepler ran up against rejection and lack of understanding on all sides. Maestlin, Fabricius, Longomontanus and others shook their heads." (p. 135).

This biography is simply the best on the life and trials of Johannes Kepler.Anyone,who is exploring the field of astronomy,should invest their time in reading this great book.It's the fascinating story of a genius scientist having to deal with the heretical zeitgeist and relentless religious persecution of his times.Ironically,more from his own protestant leadership rather than the catholic church.Kepler was like the modern Socrates during this epoch leading to the Age of Reason. Kepler supported the Greek Copernican world model,which was in direct oppossion to the teachings of all christian-jewish European schools.Kepler did not want to 'drag the owls of knowledge to Athens',yet to bring their greek pagan wisdom to the heart of the European centers of learning.This is just an excellent book for any astute historian with a budding interest in the laws of the stars above us.

The author of this book, Professor Max Caspar, spent most of his life studying that of Johannes Kepler, and put the results of this study into this book, which is acknowledged to be the definitive biography of Johannes Kepler, and the source for most of those that have followed it. The book covers all of Kepler's life; his personal life and the science that he produced. The book discusses his two marriages, his struggles with various religious authorities to get him to adhere to their beliefs, the struggle to prevent his mother from being burned at the stake as a witch, his interactions with Tycho Brahe and his various patrons, and much more. The book also provides a lot of information about the times in which he lived - the turbulent religious strife, culminating in the 30-years war, that greatly influenced his life, the political infighting of the Holy Roman Empire in which he became embroiled, and the social climate the resulted in his mother's trial for witchcraft. Professor Caspar paints a vivid picture of Kelper and shows him to be a man of extreme principle, even to the extent of refusing to renounce his ideas concerning the fine points of Christian doctrine, even when this meant banishment and possible death.

Professor Caspar does an excellent job of showing Kepler to have been one of the greatest scientists, on a par with Newton and Galileo, if not superior to them. He did much more than just developing his famous three laws. Among many other things he explained the optics of the telescope and was tantalizingly close to deducing the laws of gravity. In fact, he essentially deduced their essence, if not their exact form, about 50 years before Newton.

While this is a very good book and one from which I learned at lot, I couldn't give it five-stars. The book lacks the illustrations that would have made Kepler's science come alive. While the lack of these illustrations was a determent, I do not feel that in and of itself it would have been enough to down rate the book to four-stars. My biggest problem was with professor Caspar's style of writing. This book was originally written in German in 1948 and this English translation bears all of the hallmarks of this. The sentences and paragraphs are very long and convoluted. Many paragraphs are a page long and a few run to almost two pages. Likewise, the sentences are typically Germanic in structure. The writing is quite florid and often I felt that it tended to surround the main idea and submerge it in a torrent of adjectives. This is certainly not the style of writing that a modern reader of English is accustomed to. At first this style bothered me so much that I did not know if I could finish the book, but after a while I got used to it and the glories of what was contained in it shone brightly through. However, to some degree I feel that this is a case where less could have been more; where the extensive and minute details of Kepler's life sometimes overshadowed the discussion of Kepler's scientific accomplishments.

I recommend this book to those who want to know all about Kepler's life and are not satisfied with the abbreviated version that one finds in a Wikipedia article (in this case much of it drawn from this book). I especially recommend the book to those interested in the history of science and the development of the modern concept of a sun-centered solar system and Newtonian gravity and the giant upon whose shoulders Newton stood.

....about Kepler, you must have this book. Period.

By the way, Arthur Koestler's Sleepwalkers (and the Kepler chapters
which were published under the title The Watershed) rely heavily
on Caspar's book.