Epitome of Copernican Astronomy and Harmonies of the World

Epitome of Copernican Astronomy and Harmonies of the World - Johannes Kepler Kepler’s work is another step away from the view that the universe and earth were governed by distinct physical rules. Though the variance from Aristotle’s Metaphysics and On the Heavens is noted by Kepler himself, there remains a key similarity. Both see in the sky a theological structure. Kepler’s overt religiosity is seen in everything including man’s opportunity to study the heavens.
Let the eighteenth argument come from the end of movement, by which it is proved that movement belongs to the Earth as the home of the speculative creature. For it was not fitting that man, who was going to be the dweller in this world and its contemplator, should reside in one place of it as in a closed cubicle: in that way he would never have arrived at the measurement and contemplation of the so distant stars…”pg. 75-76
The quest to discover the design yields fascinating comparisons of harmonic theory and planetary orbits as well as stacked geometric shaped orbits (in Matryohka doll fashion). Kepler believed “God has established nothing without geometrical beauty…"pg. 185 and geometry predominates this work just as with the ancient Greeks.

Only books IV and V of Epitome of Copernican Astronomy are available in English. Most of it I didn’t understand anyway. But even those of us without mathematical talent can snatch moments of brilliance from Kepler. He seems slightly more accessible than Copernicus and Ptolemy. Slightly.