Novelties in the Heavens between 1572 and 1604 and Kepler's Unified View of Nature

See Barnes R. B. , Prophecy and gnosis: Apocalypticism in the wake of the Lutheran Reformation (Stanford, CA, 1988); Granada M. A. , “Cálculos cronológicos, novedades cosmológicas y expectativas escatológicas en la Europa del siglo XVI”, Rinascimento, 2nd ser., xxxvii (1997), 1997–435.

Methuen C. , “‘This comet or new star’: Theology and the interpretation of the nova of 1572”, Perspectives on science, v (1997), 499–515; Granada M. A. , “Michael Maestlin and the new star of 1572”, Journal for the history of astronomy, xxxviii (2007), 2007–124. On the nova of Cassiopeia in general, see Weichenhan M. , “Ergo perit coelum…”: Die Supernova des Jahres 1572 und die Überwindung der aristotelischen Kosmologie (Stuttgart, 2004), and, more briefly, Lerner M.-P. , “La supernova de 1572: Une diversité d'interprétations”, L'astronomie, cxix (2005), 2005–65.

Now in Tycho Brahe's Opera omnia (henceforth TBOO), ed. by Dreyer J. L. E. (Copenhagen, 1913–29), vols ii-iii.

For the discussion between Fabricius and Kepler in the years preceding the publication of the Astronomia nova (1602–8), see Voelkel J. R. , The composition of Kepler's Astronomia nova (Princeton and Oxford, 2001), chap. 8.

For a similar poem by Philippe Lansbergen on the nova in Serpentarius, see Hallyn F. , “Un poème inédit de Philippe Lansbergen sur l'étoile nouvelle de 1604”, Humanistica Lovaniensia, xlvi (1997), 258–65.

Leonhard Thurneisser zum Thurn, Stellae prodigiosae, Anno 1572 den 8. tag Nouembris … erstlich erschienen (n.p., n.d. [1573?]). On this see Weichenhan , “Ergo perit coelum…” (ref. 2), 461–3. This short print was accompanied by a German poem of 365 verses.

See Aston M. , “The fiery trigon conjunction: An Elizabethan astrological prediction”, Isis, lxi (1970), 159–87; Granada M. A. , “Thomas Digges, Giordano Bruno e il copernicanesimo in Inghilterra”, in Ciliberto M. Mann N. (eds), Giordano Bruno 1583–1585: The English experience/L'esperienza inglese (Florence, 1997), 125–55; idem, Introduction to Giordano Bruno, De gli eroici furori / Des fureurs héroïques, Opere complete / Oeuvres complètes, vii (Paris, 2007), pp. xxviii–xl. On Dee and Digges, see also Goulding R. , “Wings (or stairs) to the heavens”, in Clucas S. (ed.), John Dee: Interdisciplinary studies in English Renaissance thought (Dordrecht, 2006), 41–63.

Cf. Luke, 21.25: “And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity” (King James Version).

For this distinction, see Courtenay W. J. , Capacity and volition: A history of the distinction of absolute and ordained power (Bergamo, 1990).

On this, see (besides Pierre Duhem's classic study [ To save the phaenomena ] (Paris, 1908; English transl. by Doland E. Maschler C. (Chicago, 1969)), the more recent reassessments by Lloyd G. E. R. , “Saving the appearances”, Classical quarterly, xxviii (1978), 1978–22 (reprinted in Lloyd G. E. R. , Methods and problems in Greek science (Cambridge, 1991), 248–77), on Astronomy Greek , and Jardine N. , The birth of history and philosophy of science (Cambridge, 1984), 225–57 (“The status of astronomy”), on the medieval and Renaissance discussions up to Kepler.

Cf. Granada M. A. , “Aristotle, Copernicus, Bruno: Centrality, the principle of movement and the extension of the Universe”, Studies in history and philosophy of science, xxxv (2004), 91–114.

De stella nova in pede Serpentarii , in Kepler J. , Gesammelte Werke , ed. by Caspar Max (Munich, 1937–; hereafter JKGW), i, 246.

In his first work (Mysterium cosmographicum, 1596), Kepler's purpose was to unveil “The secret of the Universe”, the term ‘cosmographicum’ indicating his research was at the same time astronomical and cosmological. On this, see Stephenson B. , Kepler's physical astronomy (Princeton, 1994); Voelkel , The composition of Kepler's Astronomia nova (ref. 4), chaps. 2 and 3; M. A. Granada, “The defence of the movement of the Earth in Rothmann, Maestlin and Kepler: From heavenly geometry to celestial physics”, in Bucciantini M. Camerota M. Roux S. (eds), Mechanics and cosmology in the medieval and early modern period (Florence, 2007), 95–119.

Cf. Barker P. , “The optical theory of comets from Apian to Kepler”, Physis, xxx (1993), 1–25, pp. 18–24; Boner P. , “Kepler on the origin of comets: Applying earthly knowledge to celestial events”, Nuncius, xxi (2006), 2006–47. See also Boner's Ph.D. dissertation, “Kepler's living cosmos: Bridging the celestial and terrestrial realms”, Cambridge, 2006, 86–124. Cf. also the still relevant study by J. A. Ruffner, “The curved and the straight: Cometary theory from Kepler to Hevelius”, Journal for the history of astronomy, ii (1971), 1971–94 (on Kepler, pp. 178–83). Interestingly, Ruffner's article highlights how Kepler's basic archetypical principles — The curved and the straight, associated respectively with immortality and ephemeral life — Induced Kepler from the first years of the seventeenth century to concede to comets (as transitory objects in the sky) a rectilinear path, unifying thus the sublunary and supralunary realms with respect to mutability and immutability.

For De cometis, see JKGW , viii, 131–262. The main cosmological results were already present in the German treatise on the comet of 1607: Aussführlicher Bericht Von dem newlich im Monat Septembri und Octobri diss 1607. Jahrs erschienenen Haarstern oder Cometen und seinen Bedeutungen (Halle, 1608: JKGW, iv, 57–76).

JKGW, i, 246.19–20.

Ibid., chap. 22, 259.25–26.

In the letter to David Fabricius of 11 November 1605 ( JKGW , xv, no. 358), Kepler states — On account of the nova of 1604 and against its interpretation by Fabricius as a star coeval with all the rest, extraordinarily illuminated by God on precise occasions to warn mankind of impending novelties in human things — His agreement with Cornelius Gemma concerning the existence of a “spiritum in toto universo quotidie … et [hic spiritus] noverit, quid ex qualibet redundanti materia fieri commodissime possit” (lines 739–42: “a spirit throughout the whole universe, which produces every day all kinds of bodily forms … and knows how something can be done easily from whatever redundant matter”). In the same manner as this spirit produces in the sublunary world “ex qualibet redundanti materia” all sorts of little animals, it produces in the heavens “stars and comets” from “ethereal matter”; see ibid., lines 741 ff. Kepler had already expressed the same idea in the letter of 21 February 1605 to Wolfgang Wilhelm von Neuburg (JKGW, xv, no. 332). Interestingly, this adoption of a spiritual principle, active throughout the whole universe and especially in the heavens, appears in the same letter (no. 358), where Kepler announces to his correspondent Fabricius his discovery of the elliptical path of Mars (lines 304 ff.: “itaque omnino Martis via est ellipsis”, line 312). We can say, therefore, that the development of the celestial geometry and of the ‘mechanical’ celestial physics, which explains the displacement of the planet through the action of physical agents (“mainly magnetical”), coincides in time with his formulation of this wider cosmology (silenced in Astronomia nova and explicit in De nova stella), which assumes the existence of spiritual agents (called in chap. 24, 268 f., “facultas naturalis”, “facultas naturalis architectonica”, “facultas architectatrix”). Concerning Kepler's connection with Cornelius Gemma, see now F. Hallyn, “A poem on the Copernican system: Cornelius Gemma and his cosmocritical art”, in Hirai H. (ed.), Cornelius Gemma: Cosmology, medicine and natural philosophy in Renaissance Louvain (Pisa and Rome, 2008), 13–31, pp. 26 f.

Concerning this discussion with Fabricius, see Granada Miguel A. , “Kepler and Bruno on the infinity of the universe and of solar systems”, Journal for the history of astronomy, xxxix (2008), 469–95, pp. 476 f. We also refer to Granada Miguel A. , “Johannes Kepler and David Fabricius: Their discussion on the nova of 1604”, paper read at the conference “Cosmological Continuity and the Conception of Modern Science” (Johns Hopkins University, 15–16 May 2009), forthcoming.

Chap. 24 (“On the efficient [cause] of the new star”) is indeed very brief, following Kepler's initial statement: “in a dubious question I will not argue extensively [in re dubia non multum contendam]”, 267.10. Nevertheless, Kepler says: “I hope to be heard with equanimity, especially by [Johann Georg] Brengger and others, who maintain that this star cannot be ascribed to nature unless a new physics of the heavenly bodies is devised” (267.17–20). The only letter to Kepler by Brengger extant before 1607 is one of 23 December 1604 (no. 310, JKGW , xv, 82–92). Such a statement does not appear in the letter. However, the expression used by Kepler (“a new physics of the heavenly bodies”) recalls the ‘physica coelestis’ constructed contemporarily in the Astronomia nova in order to explain the motion of Mars. Thus, the physical explanation of planetary motion in Astronomia nova and the physical explanation of the generation of the nova in De stella nova (with all its conjectural character) are both integral components of the project of a ‘new astronomy or celestial physics’.

De stella nova, JKGW, i, 267–70.

Ibid., 267.21–30. Cf. 269.9–10 and 13: “For there is no seat for it [the natural faculty] but the same empty liquid …, the whole ethereal substance [enim sedes ei nulla, nisi in ipso liquido inani …, in tota substantia aetherea“].

Ibid., 268.23–27. “… atque ut rursum exempla coelestium sumamus a terrestribus, [facultas] quae id praestet in aethere quod aliqua nomine occultissima, reipsa manifestissima facultas praestat in hoc nostro calido aëre. Haec nempe est illa, quae quoties invenit superfluam aliquam materiam; convertit illam in animalculum tale” (”… and in order to take again for the heavens examples from the terrestrial things, [a faculty] that performs in the ether what another faculty (very occult as concerns its name, but most manifest in the thing itself) performs in our warm air. Then, this faculty always transforms superfluous matter in such a little animal…”). 269.28–36: “Huic igitur animae dabimus hoc officii, ut vel ipsa, dum purgat et depurat corpus suum, proprietate sua essentiali hujusmodi vapores pingues et impuros cogat, et quasi detergat; vel etiam excretos ex globis stellarum, quasi possessionem vacuam occupet: Utrolibet vero modo, ex materia inventa, vel genita; inter fixas, stellam immobilem; inter Planetas, Cometam mobilem, efficiat; eo instinctu, quo hanc terrestrem facultatem inter animalia diffusam, animalcula, ut papiliones, et similia, fabricari diximus” (“We shall assign, therefore, to this soul this office: That it, while purging and purifying its body, through some essential propriety of its own, assembles and almost dissipates fat and unclean vapours of this kind, or takes possession of excrescences from the stellar globes. In both cases, however, from the matter found or engendered, it produces, amongst the fixed stars, an immobile star; amongst the planets, a mobile comet, with the same instinct as we say this terrestrial faculty diffused through the animals produces little animals, such as butterflies and the like”). Concerning these questions, see now the excellent study by Boner P. , “Life in the liquid fields: Kepler, Tycho and Gilbert on the nature of the heavens and the earth”, History of science, xlvi (2008), 275–97.

Near the end of the seventeenth century, Kepler's conception of comets was still remembered: “it is probable that the acute Kepler is in the right, who conceiveth a Comet to be a long Collection of corrupt and filthy matter, a kind of an Apostem in the Heavens, that as Man's Body putrid Humours often gather into one part, so they do in the Heavenly ones. And these superfluous and excremental humours breaking out, the Aether (like the Body of Man) is thereby kept Sound and Hale, the unwholsome matter is purged and drained away by these Catharticks. By this means the Heavens exonerate themselves of Noxious Qualities which had been long gathering, and would in time corrupt them. So that the evacuation of this matter is for the Preservation of the Heavens”, Edwards John , Cometomantia (London, 1684), as quoted by Schechner S. J. , Comets, popular culture, and the birth of modern cosmology (Princeton, 1997), 102.

As suggested by Kepler in a letter to Georg Brengger of 5 April 1608 (JKGW, xvi, no. 488, 353 f.): “Neque tamen absurdum globos exhalare in aetherem. Quid si enim et Terra exhalet in aetherem?” (“However, it is not absurd to say that globes exhale into the ether. For what if the Earth too exhales into the ether?”). On the presence in contemporary cosmological discussions of the Stoic doctrine of earthly exhalations, see Granada Miguel A. , “Giordano Bruno et le banquet de Zeus entre les Éthiopiens: La transformation de la doctrine stoïcienne des exhalaisons humides de la terre”, Bruniana & Campanelliana , iii (1997), 185–207. Cf. Boner , op. cit. (ref. 14), 122–3.

In another letter to Brengger (of 30 November 1607; letter no. 463) Kepler had affirmed: “You think that the globes of the stars are most pure and simple; to me they seem to be like our Earth” (JKGW, xvi, 86.86–87).

See Simon G. , Kepler astronome astrologue (Paris, 1979), 337 f., 344. We must bear in mind, however, that the Astronomia nova, intended as it is to present a ‘celestial physics’ restricted to the movements of the planets around the Sun, abstracts from the full extent of the new celestial physics, which appears instead prominently, although necessarily in conjectural form, in the contemporary De stella nova. Cf. ref. 20 above.

See the presentation of the position of both Epicureans and Aristotelians in chap. 26, 276 f.

JKGW, i, 291. See Boner P. , “Kepler v. the Epicureans: Causality, coincidence and the origins of the new star of 1604”, Journal for the history of astronomy, xxxviii (2007), 207–21.

See De stella nova, JKGW, i, 357–90.

Ibid., chap. 26, 279 f.

The connection of chronology with astronomy receives in Kepler a profound reassessment in contrast with the subordination of astronomy to eschatological chronology in radical Protestants like Roeslin. On this, see Granada M. A. , “Helisaeus Röslin on the eve of the appearance of the nova of 1604: His eschatological expectations and his intellectual career as recorded in the Ratio studiorum et operum meorum (1603–1604)”, Sudhoffs Archiv , xc (2006), 75–96, and Mehl E. , “Héliocentrsime et eschatologie: L'astronomie et le ‘soleil de justice’”, in Granada M. A. Mehl E. (eds), “Nouveau ciel, Nouvelle terre”: La révolution copernicienne dans l'Allemagne de la Réforme, 1530–1630 (Paris, 2009), 355–80.

See Granada M. A. , “Kepler v. Roeslin on the interpretation of Kepler's nova: (1) 1604–1606”, Journal for the history of astronomy, xxxvi (2005), 299–319. Concerning Fabricius, see our article cited above, ref. 19.

Cf. Rabin S. J. , “Kepler's attitude toward Pico and the anti-astrology polemic”, Renaissance quarterly, l (1997), 750–70.

Barker Peter Goldstein Bernard R. , “Theological foundations of Kepler's astronomy”, Osiris, n.s., xvi (2001), 88–113; Westman R. S. , “Was Kepler a secular theologian?”, in Westman R. S. Biale D. (eds), Thinking impossibilities: The intellectual legacy of Amos Funkenstein (Toronto, Buffalo and London, 2008), 34–62.

Something very similar was intended by Tycho with his conceptions, connected instead with Paracelsianism, about the correspondence between astronomia superior and inferior or astronomy and alchemy, as manifested for example in his motto “Suspiciendo despicio / Despiciendo suspicio” (“By looking up, I am looking down / By looking down, I am looking up”) and in his alchemical interpretation of the origin of the nova of 1572 from the ether in the Milky Way. See Brahe Tycho , Astronomiae instauratae progymnasmata, in TBOO, iii, 305 ff., and Segonds A. , “Tycho Brahe et l'alchimie”, in Margolin J.-C. Matton S. (eds), Alchimie et philosophie à la Renaissance (Paris, 1993), 365–78. For a more recent analysis of the analogies and differences between Tycho and Kepler on this point, we refer to Boner, op. cit. (ref. 23), 278–82. See also Segonds A. , “Astronomie terrestre / Astronomie céleste chez Tycho Brahe”, in Granada Mehl (eds), op. cit. (ref. 32), 109–42 (pp. 122–6 on Tycho's motto), and Mosley A. J. , “Heaven and Earth in the late-sixteenth century: Tycho and Kepler on the sub- and supra-lunary”, ibid., 143–54.

On Kepler's redefinition of astrology see Simon , Kepler astronome astrologue (ref. 27); Field J. V. , “A Lutheran astrologer: Johannes Kepler”, Archive for the history of exact sciences, xxxi (1984), 189–273.

De stella nova, chap. 28, 314.35–36: “Animis quippe et facultatibus rerum sublunarium cognatio intercedit cum natura caeli”.

Ibid., 315.19: “occulta quadam ratione”; 322.17–19: “de occulta illa facultate, quae homini cum omnibus rebus naturalibus communis est … occulto instinctu”.