Kepler's search for form and proportion

Abstract

Kepler's discovery of the courses of the planets did not result from his mechanical intuition: it was not before Newton that his discoveries could be read in the context of classical mechanics. Kepler's own intentions were more in line with Renaissance Platonism: he sought to reconcile the Holy Scripture with Copernican revolution and found an answer to his questions in Plato's Timaeus. His research into the phenomena of growth and procreation in earthly nature was guided by the same yearning to fathom the formal cause which also directed his astronomical research. He singled out one proportion as the divine symbol of procreation: the golden section. Aside from Pacioli's Divina Proportione, Kepler's writings present the only original thoughts about this particular proportion which were published before the nineteenth century. The Mysterium Cosmographicum is still suffused with the spirit of the Renaissance, but in some of his later writings we can trace the dawning of the new mechanistic era.

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