QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

Copernicus had adhered to Plato’s conception that the planets orbited the sun in perfect circles.
In consequence, his doctrine was not, from a mathematical point of view, much simpler or more
accurate than Ptolemy’s epicyclic theory. In itself, the introduction of a heliocentric world-view
as such could not lead to greater accuracy in the planetary tables until more accurate
observations of the positions of the planets were available. Since he had been convinced of the
simplicity and harmony of the universe, Copernicus had been satisfied with the minimum
number of observations required to determine the ideal system of motion. 174 Even supporters of
the Copernican theory were not necessarily fascinated just by the scientific applicability of the
model, they were also attracted by its aesthetic beauty and its harmonic symmetry. It is these
factors which are thought to have attracted the attention of Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) and
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), who were fascinated by Neo-Platonism. Without their efforts to
clarify and remove the internal contradictions in Copernicus’s work, the Copernican revolution
might not have taken place, at least in the way that it actually did. 175
Kepler was strongly influenced by the mysticism of the Renaissance era. He believed in the
transcendental power of numbers and geometric shapes and regarded the sun as the manifestation
of divinity in nature. He continued wholeheartedly with the Pythaorean quest for harmonious
numbers and geometrical excellence. He even went to the extent of writing down the tune for
each planet in musical notation. 176 In 1595, he was inspired to propose that the planets must be
connected with the fact that there are precisely five regular polyhedra, and that there must be a
correlation between their distances from the sun. Even if there has perhaps never been another
scientific investigator whose imagination soared as high as Kepler’s, he at the same time took an
enormously critical approach towards his inspirations, examining them both soberly and with
great patience. 177 In spite of his mystical leanings, Kepler drew a clear line between uncontrolled
speculation and mathematics based on observations. As part of the process of working out his
inspirations, Kepler published Mysterium Cosmographicum, a work in which, at the age of 24, he
174 Dijksterhuis 1986, 300. In place of the some eighty epicycles of the Ptolemaic system, Copernicus was able to
“save the phenomena” with only thirty-four. Before the days of the telescope, the testimony provided by the senses
appeared perfectly plain on this matter. Burtt 1980, 36-38.
175 Tarnas 1998, 255.
176 Polanyi 1958, 6-7. The speculative nature of Kepler’s views is not comparable to the hermetic natural
philosophy of his “magical” contemporaries like Paracelsus who despised ordinary mathematics. Lehti 1987 222-
226.
177 Trusted 1991, 44. Dijksterhuis 1986, 303-304. Kepler has however been considered the foremost astrological
theoretician of his era. Even Galileo routinely calculated astrological birth charts – as did most Renaissance
astronomers. In De Revolutionibus, Copernicus made no distinction between astronomy and astrology. Tarnas 1998,
294-5.
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