QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

(anima) is replaced by force (vis), we have the very principle on which celestial physics in
Astronomica Nova is based”. To substitute the word vis for the earlier anima is an abandoning of
the animistic in favour of a mechanistic conception. Elsewhere, Kepler expressed the opinion
that he no longer wished to regard nature as a divinely-animated being but as clockwork. Neither
of these two words, however, tells us very much. Soul is an unknown agens, and so is force. The
only thing established with certainty in both cases is the behaviour of the body. Giving a name to
the unknown cause of a particular mode of behaviour does not result in the gaining of a deeper
understanding of that behaviour. Kepler did however take the first step in the right direction
because his use of the word vis heralded the move to determine what could be learned about
planetary motion with the aid of mechanics. Kepler was the individual who, more than anyone
else, inaugurated the new era by gradually discarding the ideas of antique and mediaeval science
and evolving the new concepts that would open the door to classical science. 183
The new elements in Kepler’s work are not, in the first place, his results which greatly deviate
from those achieved using the old system, his main achievement is a method which is very
clearly different. The principal features of this method are:
(1) The rejection of all arguments solely based on tradition or authority.
(2) Scientific enquiry independent of all philosophical and theological tenets.
(3) Constant application of the mathematical mode of thinking in the formulation and elaboration
of hypotheses.
(4) Rigorous verification of the results thus deduced by means of empiricism raised to the
highest degree of accuracy. 184
As a scientific philosopher, Kepler’s solid and forward-looking achievement was his insistence
that valid mathematical hypotheses must be exactly verifiable in the observed world. His
metaphysics shows strong similarities to the early Pythagorean speculations. Kepler believed that
he he had shown the necessary and rational ground of the world by penetrating to the
mathematical structure which connected facts formerly held to be distinct. For him, the real
world was the mathematical harmony discoverable in things and his new conception of causality
was essentially the Aristotelian formal cause reinterpreted in terms of precise mathematics. The
underlying mathematical harmony discoverable in observed facts was the cause of these facts,
i.e. why things are as they are. The real qualities of things were what was caught up in the
mathematical harmony underlying the world of the senses, and thus all certain knowledge must
183 Dijksterhuis 1986, 310, 312, 314, 321.
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