Google tells me that upon this date in 1618, Johannes Kepler confirmed the third law of planetary motion. That law, translated from Math into English essentially says–to the best of my understanding–that the larger the orbital distance for a planet, the longer it will take that planet to complete one orbit, and the more slowly that planet will move.
I’ve been talking lately of mysticism, so I think it’s important to speak of Kepler and the Music Of The Spheres. What seems like dry and boring science were to him the keys to the relationship between God, math and science. He spent years pursuing his theories, composing music according to the mathematical constructs of the laws of planetary motion. It would take thirty years to fully perform Harmonices Mundi as written by Kepler.
I wish modern science had retained some of Kepler’s courage of faith, belief in God and universal order. I’ve heard several people say recently that ‘religion is the source of most of the grief in the world.’ It strikes me as such a shame that in focusing on the wars and cruelty most of us have forgotten that the key to outer space came from the persistent mystical faith of one man and his successful attempt to translate that faith into science.
Wow, Kat…being a student of physics (as the engineer in me is) I have never heard it put quite that way. That is a purely eloquent post.
I wish that too, Kat, I wish that too.
[…] Katherine Coble has a great post regarding Johannes Kepler discovering the harmonics law. […]
Well, Kat, yeah, Newton’s religion led to a bunch of discoveries. Except that they proved to be true only in limited circumstances. Einstein’s religion let him show where Newton was wrong, but his beliefs made him reject quantum physics. If religion opens a person to looking and the world in new ways, it can open up all sorts of knowledge. If religion tells a person that nothing new can be known about the world, you get Young Earth Creationists.
Kepler was cool, though. He was sort of the last of the scholastics, pursuing the Quadrivium (mathematics, geometry, music, astronomy).
That’s a more moderate version of the ‘all conflicts are religious!’ meme, but not by much. Since societies have always been religious albeit in different ways (An Introduction to Western Philosophy, Third Edition), it seems odd to me to try to claim religion was always TEH BAD. I mean, after all, pure atheist societies haven’t done so well so far, yes?
It’s all well and good to say ‘Reason will save us!’ but the modern hard atheism really has pretty little to go on other than sentiment. You can say that the new societies will be much better and shinier than the old ones, but I find myself a little suspicious. I’m a bit of an iconoclast and strongly dislike theocracy, but I just might perfer the devil I know to a shining edifice of Pure Reason and Utilitarianism.
And, poor Newton and Einstein. They shoved the world out of neutral for a few decades back in the day and did more than almost anyone else to advance Science, but they clash a bit with a hard science VS religion worldview and thus must be discarded as crackpots because they failed to understand everything in the universe, which must’ve been religions fault!
Einstein’s own formulation of why he rejected quantum physics was “God does not play dice with the universe.” It’s not a position I’m attributing to him because I want to blame his religion for his mistake. His world view, his religious understanding, wouldn’t let him accept Heisinger’s ideas. He said so himself.
Kathy,
Just last week I read that scientists are saying there is music around the sun – Music of the Spheres!
Great mother’s day tribute by the way. Too bad some people judge the past accorting to present standards which are so selfconciously sensitive they have no room for humor
His world view, his religious understanding, wouldn’t let him accept Heisinger’s ideas.
Do you mean Heisenberg? Of the Uncertainty Principle?
If so, that puts me in mind of one of my all-time favourite sig lines:
Heisenberg May Have Slept Here
That just cracks me up for some reason…
Too bad some people judge the past accorting to present standards which are so selfconciously sensitive they have no room for humor
If you are talking about the carpet, I stand by my belief that it was just as ugly in 1978 as it is now.
If you look at what I wrote from another angle, it says ‘Heisenberg’. If you look at it and it says ‘Heisinger’ then possibly someone else wrote it, not me.
Thanks for the correction, BTW; I knew it wasn’t right but I couldn’t figure out how, and I clearly had Schroedinger on the brain, too.
Being a programmer, I’m fond of the term Heisenbug. Although if I never encountered one again I’d be very happy.
[…] May 15th, 2007 by Katherine Coble So here we are having conversations–good conversations–about Christianity, Mysticism, the saving grace of the Blood of Christ and other little faith items. […]
If you are talking about the carpet, I stand by my belief that it was just as ugly in 1978 as it is now. Not the carpet – the sale to gypsies