Kepler V . The Epicureans: Causality,Coincidence and the Origins of the New Star of 1604

Kepler reported that the celestial novelty was first seen “scarcely distinguishable from the clouds” on 30 September/9 October 1604 by Johannes Brunowsky in Prague. Helisaeus Roeslin (1545–1616) in Alsace first identified the new luminary on 2/12 October, and soon thereafter Michael Maestlin (1550–1631) recorded his first observation from Tübingen. Kepler first witnessed the new star on 7/17 October, observing it four days later in the palatial garden of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II in Prague. Kepler located the new luminary with a sextant designed by Tycho Brahe. See KGW , i, 157.33–159.34; cf. Granada Miguel A. , “Kepler v. Roeslin on the interpretation of Kepler's nova: (1) 1604–1606”, Journal for the history of astronomy, xxxvi (2005), 299–319, p. 305.

KGW, i, 157.8–9.

Ibid., 157.9–11.

Ibid., 157.16–18.

Ibid., 157.12–15.

Ibid., 165.19–20. Kepler admitted later in the De stella nova that “God alone is truthful, while every man, including me and the interpretation of the marvel which I contemplate, is deceiving” (ibid., 292.1–3). On the restricted role of natural human knowledge in Kepler's predictive interpretation of the new star, see Granada , “Kepler v. Roeslin” (ref. 1), 311–13.

KGW, i, 314.9–16: “There would be many excuses, if in consideration of such a matter I would in general avoid any explication of prognostications. Up until now I have even proved hesitant in explaining the causes of the star and its coincidence with the great conjunction…. And so fear of the same uncertainty also takes hold of me in revealing the significations. The uncertainty with which I am struck is made all the greater by the multitude of men who pursue the knowledge of future events more fervently than philosophy.” Kepler remained similarly hesitant on the subject of comets, whose appearances often entailed that any events ensuing immediately afterwards were attributed to them. As an example of “the grave errors” to which such hasty correlations could contribute, Kepler cited Seneca's interpretation of the comet appearing during the reign of Nero. Seneca quickly interpreted the comet as a sign of “the happiness of the times immediately following the comet”, yet he might have more accurately predicted “the sorrowful state that soon ensued”; see KGW, viii, 240.8–23: “With the conspiracy of the Roman nobiles uncovered, Nero surviving, the victor and ruthless avenger drained the city of Rome of citizens and the Curia of senators, amongst whom was also Seneca himself”.

KGW, i, 283.5–6, 286.4–5.

Letter to David Fabricius, 4 July 1603, KGW, xiv, no. 262, 898–9.

On Craig's prolonged polemic with Tycho, in which he rejected the latter's claim to have established comets as ethereal phenomena, see Mosley Adam , “Tycho Brahe and John Craig: The dynamic of a dispute”, Tycho Brahe and Prague: Crossroads of European science, ed. by Christianson John R. Hadravová Alena Hadrava Petr Šolc Martin (Frankfurt am Main, 2002), 70–83.

Letter to David Fabricius, 4 July 1603, KGW, xiv, no. 262, 907–10.

KGW, xiv, 905–7.

Ibid., 901–3.

Ibid., 910–12.

KGW, i, 359.7–13.

Ibid., 359.16–18.

Ibid., 359.13–15. On Kepler's acceptance of Suslyga's supposition, see Granada , “Kepler v. Roeslin” (ref. 1), 304.

Ibid., 359.18–20.

KGW, v, 18.20–21.

Ibid., 18.21–23.

Ibid., 18.23–28.

Melanchthon Philip , Corpus Reformatorum , ed. by Bretschneider Karl G. Bindseil Heinrich E. (28 vols, Halle, 1834–60), xi, 838; cf. Barker Peter , “Astronomy, Providence, and the Lutheran contribution to science”, in Reading God's world: The scientific vocation, ed. by Menuge Angus J. L. (St Louis, 2004), 157–87, pp. 164–5.

See Kusukawa Sachiko , The transformation of natural philosophy: The case of Philip Melanchthon (Cambridge, 1995), 129–50, 170–1.

KGW, i, 283.28–37.

Ibid., 285.18–28; cf. Owen Gingerich's biography of Kepler in the DSB.

Letter to David Fabricius, 4 July 1603, KGW, xiv, no. 262, 911–12: “Nature loves simplicity, and even as it is discovered most laboriously, [the Epicureans] reject it”.

KGW, i, 283.5–6, 284.18–21.

Ibid., 284.21–22.

Ibid., 286.1.

Ibid., 288.9–11.

Ibid., 288.8–15. On Kepler's interpretation of the new star as a divine sign, see Granada , “Kepler v. Roeslin” (ref. 1), 312–13.

KGW, i, 283.6–7.

Ibid., 280.25–292.11.

In a letter of March 1598, Kepler proclaimed himself “a priest of nature”, whose responsibility it was “not to teach the praise of the intellect, but above all to observe the glory of the Creator with regard to the book of nature”. His position perceived in such a way, Kepler neither proposed new hypotheses nor improved upon the suppositions of other scholars for the sake of personal glory. “This glory suffices”, he explained, “to be able to guard by my discovery the gates of the temple at whose great altar Copernicus prays”. See KGW , xiii, no. 91, 182–92. On the complementarity of the books of Scripture and nature in Kepler's conception of himself as “an exegete of God's works”, see Howell Kenneth J. , God's two books: Copernican cosmology and Biblical interpretation in early modern science (Notre Dame, 2002), 109–35.

KGW, i, 284.30–40.

Ibid., 283.9–10; 283.19.

Ibid., 283.7–8.

Ibid., 283.3–4, 283.32–33.

Ibid., 283.10–13.

Ibid., 284.21–23. In support of his claim that no perfect imitation was ever made by chance, Kepler cited a passage from Cicero's De divinatione, 1, 13: “Carneades used to say that the head of Pan appeared in a stone split open at the Chian quarries. I suppose that the figure was not considerably dissimilar, but certainly not such that you would say that it was made by Scopas. And even if it were made by Scopas, it is undeniably so that chance has never perfectly imitated the truth”.

KGW, i, 285.32–34.

Ibid., 285.40–286.3.

Virgil , Aeneid , 6, 724–7; cf. KGW, i, 267.23–26.

Aristotle , De generatione animalium , 762a, 19–23; cf. KGW, i, 267.27–29.

Ibid., 268.6–10. In his summary of the physical features of the new star, Kepler noted its expression of “the colours of the rainbow”. It grew increasingly red, he observed, the closer it approached the western horizon. Its variability led some astronomers to compare it with a torch, whose “continuation of flames is broken up by the impulse of winds, the new [flames] succeeding the original ones scarcely upon their expulsion or extinction”. The new luminary appeared to cool down during its western transit, but, given its strong scintillation, Kepler preferred to compare it to “a multi-sided diamond, which redirected the rays of the Sun to the eyes of spectators by varying degrees of brightness”. The luminosity of the new star was so intense that it surpassed not only fixed stars of the first magnitude, but also “Saturn, Mars and Jupiter, which, remaining in its proximity throughout all of October, were easily distinguished from its turbulent glimmering”. See ibid., 160.24–161.7.

Ibid., 268.2–8. Kepler explained that the natural faculty was distinguished by the works of corresponding bodies, “and not the other way around, the works of all things distinguished by one or another example of a faculty”.

Ibid., 268.3; cf. Aristotle, De anima, 416b; De generatione animalium, 730a, 739b, 762a.

Originally signifying those things “obtained by digging”, or “any rock, mineral or mineral substance dug out of the earth”, the term ‘fossil’ now more narrowly denotes the “remains of animals and plants, belonging to past (usually prehistoric) ages, and found embedded in the strata of the earth” (Shorter Oxford English dictionary). Kepler clearly intended the earlier, more comprehensive meaning of the term, in accordance with such classical scholars as Pliny, whose definition of fossilis derived from fodio, “to dig up, unearth, mine, quarry” (Oxford Latin dictionary; cf. Pliny, Naturalis historia, Book 16, 59; Book 36, 161, 192). Georgius Agricola (1494–1555), arguably the leading authority on early modern mineralogy, attributed the same comprehensive sense to the term in his De natura fossilium (Basil, 1546).

KGW, i, 268.11–23.

Ibid., 268.26–28. In emphasizing the all-encompassing nature of Kepler's theological notions, Kenneth J. Howell has argued that Kepler “envisioned both the celestial and terrestrial worlds as a unified whole because they both were embodiments of the essence of God”. See Howell , God's two books (ref. 34), 134.

KGW, i, 268.35–37.

Ibid., 268.26–33.

Ibid., 288.23–28. Kepler suggested that comets also originated from highly condensed areas of the ether, as “a sort of excrement”. He believed that such regions of ethereal condensation accounted for periods of increased observational interference, as for example when the Sun was noted in April 1547 to be made faint by “a cloak of rusty, blood-red colour”. He claimed that the same cause accounted for the period of solar obfuscation that endured for an entire year after the assassination of Julius Caesar. In both cases, the existence of the natural faculty in the ether was deemed necessary for the subsequent cleansing of the condensed area. See KGW, viii, 225.11–19.

KGW, iv, 334.3–4.

Ibid., 335.5–12.

Ibid., 334.27–28.

See Granada Miguel A. , Sfere solide e cielo fluido: Momenti del dibattito cosmologico nella seconda metà del cinquecento (Naples, 2002), 6–11, 19, 22, 127.

KGW , i, 335.13–28. See Bucciantini Massimo , Galileo e Keplero: Filosofia, cosmologia e teologia nell'Età della Controriforma (Turin, 2003), 137: “In fact, the German astronomer refutes any sort of generation of the new star from the sublunary world, as well as any hypothesis of commingling between the air and the ether, under the form of emanations or smoke that ascend from the Earth into the immensity of the universe”.

See Kepler Johannes , Kepler's conversation with Galileo's Sidereal messenger, transl. by Rosen Edward (New York, 1965), 19.

Ibid.

Barker Peter , “Stoic contributions to early modern science”, in Atoms, pnuema, and tranquillity: Epicurean and Stoic themes in European thought, ed. by Osler Margaret J. (Cambridge, 1991), 135–54, pp. 138, 154.

KGW, i, 287.4–6. In contrast with the conjunction of the three superior planets, which relied essentially on the position of the Earth as a place of observation, the new star stemmed from causes Kepler considered purely physical. Accordingly, he deduced “different phenomena separately according to their own causes, the conjunction of the [superior] planets from astronomy and the emergence of the star from natural philosophy”.

KGW, i, 284.14–18.

Ibid., 284.19–21.

Ibid., 283.36–40. In his consideration of the sublunary significance of comets in the De cometis libelli tres (1619), Kepler claimed that comets also provided compelling proof of the providential presence of God. With their unpredictable appearances, Kepler proposed, comets provided an opportunity for Epicureans and atheists to mend their mistaken ways. See KGW, viii, 240.1–7: “And so it is apparent that according to this end comets are exhibited in the heavens, [namely] to bear witness to the existence of God, who foresees and announces future events, permits misfortunes, orders, governs and restrains; by this, Epicureans and atheists are admonished for their errors, and the committers of sin and the slaves of passion are called to the emendation of life and the aversion of evil”.

Ibid., 346.38–39.

Ibid., 347.2–4.

Ibid., 347.7.

On Tycho's interpretation of the new star of 1572 as an omen of great alterations, see Thoren Victor E. , The Lord of Uraniborg: A biography of Tycho Brahe (Cambridge, 1990), 70: “… only one other comparable phenomenon had been recorded –- the new star observed by Hipparchus some 125 years before Christ, and about 3,840 years after the Creation. That star had been a herald of cataclysmic change in the civilized world, involving the spiritual and political decline of the Jews, and the transfer of Mediterranean hegemony from Greece to Rome. Given this kind of precedent, the possibilities appeared to be unbounded, and the astrological configurations seemed to agree.” Cf. Dreyer J. L. E. , Tycho Brahe: A picture of scientific life and work in the sixteenth century (New York, 1963), 49–52.

Ibid., 347.14–17.

Kepler considered Fabricius to be Europe's finest observational astronomer following the death of Tycho. See ibid., 210. 33–36; cf. Christianson J. R. , On Tycho's island: Tycho Brahe and his assistants, 1570–1601 (Cambridge, 2000), 273–6.

Letter to Fabricius David , 1 June 1607, KGW, xv, no. 430, 15–19.

KGW, xv, 23.

Ibid., 300–7.

KGW, i, 342.21–26.

Ibid., 354.25–28.

Ibid., 354.28–31.

Ibid., 291.34–35.

Ibid., 291.27–30.

Ibid., 291.30–32.

Ibid., 291.37; 292.1–3.

On Kepler's interpretation of the new star as a divine sign, see Granada , “Kepler v. Roeslin” (ref. 1), 312.

KGW, i, 285.37–40.

See Kusukawa , The transformation of natural philosophy (ref. 23), 188; Barker , “Astronomy, Providence, and the Lutheran contribution to science” (ref. 22), 157–8, 176; and Barker Peter Goldstein Bernard R. , “Theological foundations of Kepler's astronomy”, Osiris, xvi (2001), 88–113, pp. 88–90.