Talk:Johannes Kepler/Archive 1

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someone has defaced the page. Specifically the area about his death. Just thought I should let someone know.

Removed. It's not clear that previous generations of astronomers had been content to accept authority of ideas. Kepler had new data which other astronomers had, and it took him 20 years to process it all.

whereas previous generations of astronomers had been content to accept the authority of ideas from previous generations

Removed reference to God. The people that initially came up with the idea that planets moved in circles were the Greeks who did not believe that planets moved in that way because God wanted them to. They were polythestic. The reasons for circles came from Plato, which got absorbed into Christian theology, but that's a whole other article.

Also emphasized the fact that before Tycho, all the data suggested that the planets did move in circles, and that showing that they weren't circles was not obvious (it took Kepler decades.)

Roadrunner

Are the two titles The Cosmic Mystery and Misterium Cosmographicum the same book ? It's a bit confusing with alternating Latin and English translated titles.Norwikian 10:34, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

They're the same. Caesar Lexicorum, 00:46, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Kepler

1620 Kepler´s mother was arrested in Leonburg. the name of the city is Leonberg not Leonburg.

Kepler

He was a exermly smart man who knew what he was doing but should not be regarded as just an asrtomer. His work should be study be all to fully understand the orbits of the planets an d other things in the night sky.

The 'See also' link

Removed the 'See also" link pointing to his laws of planetary motion. The link was superfluous, as there was already a link to that topic within the body of the text! Eilthireach 03:57, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Balance

When I came across the article earlier today, it was extremely unbalanced between his mysticism and his scientific work. Of course these are modern categories, but from the amount of space devoted to them, it came across as though his speculation about the platonic solids were somehow ten times more important than his laws of planetary motion! Part of this may be simply because the treatment of his laws of motion was in the Kepler's laws of planetary motion article, but I thought it was just plain goofy. Given some of the controversy there's been over astrology-related articles, I may also be hypersensitive to what I see as attempts by believers in astrology to push a POV that legitimizes astrology, and blurs the line between science and pseudoscience. I've beefed up the discussion of Kepler's laws with a couple of figures and more text. (Most of this is taken directly from a copylefted book I wrote.) Although this may be seen as duplicating the article on Kepler's laws, it is much shorter and less mathematical, so I think it's appropriate to have it in here.--Bcrowell 5 July 2005 16:35 (UTC)

It is also hard to understand why so much space is devoted to his nonsensical books whereas there's no mention of Astronomia nova. Bambaiah 13:37, July 12, 2005 (UTC)
Certianly mathamatical observations outway mystologicalb observations? no?--Hello'from'SPACE 00:12, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Kepler's Third Law

There a request for Kepler's Third Law from Wikipedia:ACF Regionals 2000 answers

If this is another name for a page that already exists could someone more knowledgeable than me make a redirect. Or if not could some make an article.--BirgitteSB 15:55, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

Hi -- The article you refer to has been nominated for deletion. No, there should not be a separate article on the third law. It's covered here.--Bcrowell 17:02, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Quote

There seems to be a typo in this quotation:

As one historian, John North, put it, 'had he not been an astrologer he would very probably have failed to produced his planetary astronomy in the form we have it.'

Can someone check it? It's probably from:

John North, The Fontana History of Astronomy and Cosmology, London 1994, pp. 309-26


Kepler's Equations

There is a very recent paper entitled "Kepler's Equations : A Kinematical Deduction" by Raul Nunes (a copy of which can be downloaded from http://ThreeBirds.com.br/KE.pdf) which contains a new purely kinematical deduction of Kepler's equations for all types of conics. It also includes a lot of bibliographic references about Kepler's works and life.

I have added some information about exactly how Kepler was able to use Tycho's observational data to deduce the orbit of Mars and thus his various laws. Peter Maggs 22:12, 15 October 2005 (UTC)


To Kepler the three laws were a part of his theory. He never thought them so important. It took Newton to make them so. BernardZ 14:32, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Harmonices Mundi or Harmonice Mundi?

Is there an "s" in the name of the book? I'm asking because someone chopped the "s" out in the on Harmonices Mundi article. Curiously, each of these get a lot of Google hits. See here for the hits without the "s", and see here for the hits with the "s". It's not clear to me which is right. (I'm posting this here because this article seems to have more traffic.) --A bit iffy 08:16, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

I have a copy of the book (not an original mind you!) and the author refers to it in the introduction and such as Harmonice Mundi. However, on the facsimile of the original title page it's Harmonices Mundi. The difference could be "Harmony" vs. "Harmonies", but it would still need to be one or the other. Perhaps it's some nuance of Latin I'm missing, but I think the reference should be Harmonice Mundi since so many scholars refer to it like that, without the "s". --DanielCD 12:22, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Anyone here better at Latin than I? --DanielCD 12:26, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

The correct title should be given as Harmonices Mundi Libri V, which in English is "Harmonics of the World, Five Books" in deference to the Ptolemaic work on harmonics with which Kepler saw himself in dialogue. The confusion arises because 'Harmonice' might be considered an ablative and thus the title would read "De Harmonice Mundi" or "Concerning the Harmony of the World." When one considers that Kepler was dealing with an entire system of harmonics on many levels, the plural makes more sense, and Ed Rosen has written extensively on this subject, although the reference escapes me at the moment. The 's' is included on the 1858 facsimile of the title page in C. Frisch's edition of the Opera Omnia, which can be accessed via Gallica.bnf.fr. --PaulRWagner 28 Nov MMV

Copied from Main Page discussion March 8, 2006

The anniversaries section today says that on this day some years ago, Kepler discovered the third law of planetary motion. Huh? You don't discover something like that until years, possibly decades of observing data or reading collected data. Is March 8 the day he settled on its final form? The day he first proposed it? Thought of it? The day it was published in a journal? They day it was submitted to a journal? No discovery of a scientific law happens all in one day. The article on Kepler doesn't specify which. Can we clarify this entry please? 24.243.188.42 02:07, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Google shows that the third law of planetary motion was published in 1619 in Harmonice Mundi. The Wiki article states that it took 2 decades to find the form of the 3 laws. This would make March 8 the anniversary of the day he settled on its final form -- by extensive number crunching (two decades worth). --Ancheta Wis 05:06, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Note: The Kepler article Revision as of 08:36, 9 March 2003 stated the initial March 8, 1618 discovery (and the confirmation on May 15, 1618). But it has apparently been dropped from the article. By the policy of Selected anniversaries we need to reinstate this fact into the article. --05:29, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

First SF writer?

Kepler's posthumous 1634 book Somnum is sometimes called SF. (So is The Divine Comedy...) Trekphiler 01:01, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

  • What's even more wild than that is that Somnium, in manuscript form, may have been what led people to accuse his mother of witchcraft. He wrote it shortly after moving to work with Tycho (I think), and passed it around to a few friends. But the main character was sort of like Kepler; details were different, but a lot of it was pseudo-autobiographical. And the main character figures out how to get to the moon (that's what the main of it is, going to the moon and observing Earth from there, showing how a change of perspective makes the Copernican system more believable) by having his mother, a healer and spiritualist, commune with spirits. So that may have been the basis for the witchcraft rumors that eventually grew into an actual trial. I hope to do some more work on this soon, but if you're interested in improving the article, check out Kepler's Dream by Lear. --ragesoss 09:15, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Lutheran vs. German in intro

PhilipC, I've reverted your changed of "Lutheran" to "German" in the first sentence, as Lutheran was much more key to his identity than German, since this was the time of the Holy Roman Empire and he worked in both present-day Germany and Austria. It may be appropriate to include something about Germany later in the intro if you can find a way to do it elegantly.--ragesoss 01:06, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

That's a good point, but I was thinking more of encyclopaedic convention than biographic emphasis. "Lutheran astronomer, astrologer and mathematician" read a bit oddly to me, as though the article were claiming the existence of some kind of "Lutheran school" for these disciplines. Personally I'd be happier something like: "an astronomer, astrologer and mathematician who followed the Lutheran faith and was born in Weil-der-Stadt in what is now Germany"; but all the relevant information appears in the body of the article, so this may be sheer pedantry on my part. PhilipC 17:07, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually, a "Lutheran school" isn't too far off. Even though it wasn't peculiar to those disciplines, being a Lutheran academic at that time meant something very different (and perhaps more coherent) than, say, being a Catholic or Calvinist (perhaps on par with "Jesuit"). The education system and the "Philippist" (after Melancthon) educational philosophy were important for the way Kepler thought about the world, and the way he did his (what we would call) science. The Barker and Goldstein reference goes into some detail about this. But your concerns about encyclopedic convention are significant. Let's wait and see if anyone else chips in or comes up with a better way to reword the intro while maintaining the proper emphasis and flow. Thanks, PhilipC.--ragesoss 00:56, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Kepler's birth place Weil der Stadt then was part of the "Holy Roman Empire of German Nationality". It is located in today's Germany. Kepler spoke german. He was imperial mathematician of the emperor of the "Holy Roman Empire of german nationality". So, there's absolutely no reason to object the claim that Kepler is a german.(anonymous user, January 18, 2006)

I grant that German may be a valid descriptor, but I think Lutheran is still far more central for his biography. Your revision also makes the sentence somewhat awkward. I'll try to think of a way to include German in the first sentence without disrupting it.--ragesoss 21:08, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

astrology edits

Theodore7, I've reverted your recent edits to Kepler. While I appreciate you point about the importance of astrology, this article was already clear about it being a significant part of Kepler's professional work. Many of the people in the article (Tycho, Galileo) were also astrologers, but in the context of this article "astronomer" or "astonomer/astrologer" are fine concise descriptions the way they are, and should not be simply replaced with "astrologer." Replacing "Lutheran mathematician, astrologer and astronomer" with simply "astrologer" is the kind of edit that requires discussion and consensus. I hope you will try to contribute something substantial (and sourced) to Kepler article, but please use the talk page to argue your point before making any more such changes--ragesoss 14:46, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

First to predict a transit of Venus?

In the article it's stated that "he was the first astronomer to successfully predict a transit of Venus (for the year 1631).", now this is not my field of expertise but didn't ancient civilizations already notice this and where able to predict it, like for example the Maya Civilization?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayan_Calendar

http://www.experiencefestival.com/venus_transit

http://www.astrologycom.com/venustransit.html

http://www.mayanmajix.com/art1034.html

http://www.crystalinks.com/workshop666.html

http://www.world-mysteries.com/gw_whart2.htm

Some (if not all) of these links have some extra baggage of information regarding other things then just the Venus transit but it should show the point that I am trying to make, could someone well informed on this clear this up?

Cultural depictions of Johannes Kepler

I've started an approach that may apply to Wikipedia's Core Biography articles: creating a branching list page based on in popular culture information. I started that last year while I raised Joan of Arc to featured article when I created Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc, which has become a featured list. Recently I also created Cultural depictions of Alexander the Great out of material that had been deleted from the biography article. Since cultural references sometimes get deleted without discussion, I'd like to suggest this approach as a model for the editors here. Regards, Durova 15:42, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Very few biography subjects warrant a separate page just for cultural references. Separating them detracts from the completeness of the article and forces the reader to follow a link for information that belongs in the same article. Cultural references frequently get deleted because they are unsourced or are too trivial to be meet encyclopedic standards. Finell (Talk) 16:36, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
I agree that very few biography subjects warrant a separate page, which is why I've posted this suggestion only to Wikipedia's core biographies. Because, as you say, these references often get deleted I've relied on the core biographies list rather than the size of a current cultural references section to suggest this solution. If you think it's inappropriate in this case I'll defer to that opinion. However, I would like to suggest that even "trivial" references can become useful educational tools for important biographies. In my music history class (dare I say at Columbia University?) a good portion of the class thought they had never heard Richard Wagner's music until the instructor reminded them of the soundtrack to Apocalypse Now and the Warner Bros. cartoon "What's Opera, Doc?" Respectfully, Durova 05:33, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Oct 19 edit by non-user

I am that guy. No account. I just removed some redundancy as it was pretty redundant to say the same thing twice, pretty much in succession and repeating itself. So I took the first instance of the redundant info out so that the redundancy would be no longer be present.

"To his disappointment, Kepler's attempts to fix the orbits of the planets within a set of polyhedrons never worked out, but it is a testimony to his integrity as a scientist that when the evidence mounted against the cherished theory he worked so hard to prove, he abandoned it.

His most significant achievements came from the realization that the planets moved in elliptical, not circular, orbits. This realization was a direct consequence of his failed attempt to fit the planetary orbits within polyhedra. Kepler's willingness to abandon his most cherished theory in the face of precise observational evidence also indicates that he had a very modern attitude to scientific research."

The first paragraph of those two has been removed so as to eliminate some redundancy in the article, with the result of one less instance of the article repeating itself. -- Pat (not-a-user)

Tycho Brahe's Mars Observations - plot

It would be nice to include a plot of Tycho's data Kepler used in formulating his laws. I have the raw data (from "Brahe, Tycho. Tychonis Brahe Dani Opera Omnia (in Latin). Vol 1-15. 1913-1929. Edited by I.L.E. Dreyer.") and created a plot using R (see below). I would like to add some regression analysis in order to highlight the periodic nature of the data. This can be a bit tricky with R for non-linear fits. If anyone knows an easy way, let me know and I can recreate the plot. I can also upload the raw data somewhere, if someone would like it?--Thorwald 04:35, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Image:Tycho Brahe - Mars observations plot-v1.png

Caps on book titles?

Capitalization of the Latin book titles in this article is inconsistent. Is it not true that conventionally only the first word and proper nouns in Latin titles should be capitalized? In any case (sorry about that) let's set a convention and conform to it.Myron 13:53, 16 November 2006 (UTC)