Kepler (Spanish Edition)
by John Banville
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Book Summary Information
Author: John BanvilleEdition: Paperback
Audio: Spanish (Unknown); Spanish (Original Language); Spanish (Published)
Published: 2005-03
ISBN: 8435015890
Number of pages: 287
Publisher: Edhasa
Book Reviews of Kepler (Spanish Edition)
Book Review: Astronomy and Counter Reformation forces in Kepler's life
Summary: 5 Stars
John Banville is an exceptional writer and his biography of Kepler is excellent. Banville is able to show the frustrations in the career of an exceptional thinker and also to capture in beautiful poetic language the three principles that he developed that influenced future scientists.
Banville does a good job of showing the conflicting religions of Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism that were practices throughout the Holy Roman Empire. The more northern the state and the more remote, the more likely that the Lutheran faith was practiced. Kepler was a Lutheran but it would be difficult to claim that the followed entirely the teachings of Martin Luther but used his own perceptions and experiences as a mathematician and scientist to interpret the gospels. He was born in Germany but taught in a Lutheran school in Graz Austria, a town that underwent forced conversions to Roman Catholicism during the counter Reformation.
Kepler is known for developing the three laws of planetary motion, his support for Copernicus, his use of the vast observations of Tycho Brahe to prove his points, and his laying the groundwork for Newton. Banville deals with the principles in a poetic language that explains the principles to the non-scientist reader in the language of myth and dream and lyric.
Kepler was hired as the assistant to Tycho Brahe, the Danish scientist who used systematic observations of the stars to establish a vast amount of observational data of the heavens. Kepler used the 10 years of observing Mars to make his breakthrough discovery that the planets do not travel around the sun in a circular path but in an ellipse. Tycho Brahe was looking for a smart assistant to help carry his work forward, Kepler was not able to agree with Brahe but was able to use the tables developed by Brahe and his assistants to prove his own theories. The novel shows that great men with great minds have difficulties following each other. Jung was forced to break with Freud and thus Kepler was forced to break with Brahe. Kepler did inherit Brahe's position as Imperial Mathematician for the Holy Roman Empire, a position for which he rarely was paid and for which he had to produce astrological charts for fortune tellers for Emperors and Generals.
Brahe is an interesting character in the novel. He wishes to use Kepler's mind and work to support his own theories and did not realize Kepler's level of brilliance and independence. Brahe lost his nose in a duel and used a gold and silver prosthetic nose. Brahe was the first to use nightly systematic observation of the heavens with recorded results over long periods of time. This resulted in his being able to be the first person in 1600 years to identify a new star in 1572, which ran counter to Church teaching that the heavens never change. Brahe was allowed to work in isolation in a castle on a Danish island, a small paradise, until he ran afoul of the Danish king and was exiled to Bohemia.
Kelper was able to also demonstrate that the planets speed up as their elipse nears the sun and then to slow down as they travel further from the sun. He was also able to develop the period formula for the elipse of each planet. His theory that a unifying force the force of gravity.
Kelper's life was sad in many ways, considering that his first marriage was unhappy since he never met the social expectations of his wife Barbara. They lost small children to disease which broke Kepler's heart. Kepler's mother is a cruel sarcastic woman who dabbles in healing which eventually gets her accused of witchcraft. He serves two Holy Roman Emperors, both of whom fail to pay him correctly. He is often under religious persecution for his Lutheran belief in a Roman Catholic court. He is in debt most of his life and yet despite all the challenges, Banville is able to show who Kepler was able to detach himself and think through complex astonomical issues to their end using mathematics, geometry and observation.
This is a thoughful and satisfying book.
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