Heavenly Intrigue by Joshua Gilder & Anne-Lee Gilder

Author:Joshua Gilder & Anne-Lee Gilder
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307275066
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2005-06-13T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

CONFRONTATION

IN PRAGUE

ON HEARING OF KEPLER’S UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL IN PRAGUE, BRAHE IMMEDIATELY DISPATCHED HIS ELDEST SON, TYGE, AND SOON-TO-BE SON-IN-LAW, Franz Tengnagel, in a carriage to the home of Baron von Hoffmann, where Kepler was staying, to transport him back to Benátky. With them Brahe sent a letter excusing his own absence in the carriage—there were several important observations he needed to make that night and the next morning—and welcoming the young astronomer in the warmest language: “You will come not so much as a guest as a very pleasing friend and observer of our contemplations of the sky and a most acceptable companion. Then, God willing, face-to-face we will talk of many things.”

That was perhaps the high point of their relationship. Within a month, Brahe was writing to Hoffmann that “some difficulties have insinuated themselves” concerning Kepler’s domestic arrangements at Benátky and that Kepler had requested that the three of them consult together before any final agreement was concluded. Though Brahe approved of the idea, it seems that the meeting never came to pass. A few days later, Kepler descended into what he himself would afterwards describe as “the rage of an uncontrollable spirit,” “immoderate mental conditions,” and “great insane acts,” all of which lasted for a full three weeks and very nearly brought his association with Brahe to an abrupt and early end.

Kepler’s frustration had been building from the very start. What Brahe saw in Kepler was an intelligent man with a passion for astronomy who could help prepare his works for publication. Much of this involved tedious number crunching: taking Brahe’s raw data—the thousands of observations he had made at Hven and Benátky—and calculating the “composed motion” of circles and epicycles that would turn his Tychonic system from a rough schematic diagram of the heavens into an accurate model from which exact predictions of planetary motion could be made.

It was the kind of work Kepler loathed. As he described in his Self-Analysis, “For although he [Kepler] is very hardworking, nevertheless he is a very fierce hater of the work. However, he works on account of a desire of knowing and a love of inventing and of things discovered.” But here, with Brahe, there was no love of inventing, because much of the work was focused on the Tychonic system—which Kepler, as a Copernican, disdained—and the demands on his time were such that he had little time left over for his own theories. “I would have brought my discussion about the Harmony of the World long ago to an end,” he would later write, “except that the Astronomy of Tycho occupied me so totally that I almost was insane.”

Even more of an impediment was that Brahe, having already been plagiarized once, kept his observations close, giving Kepler only limited access to those matters he was working on at the time. And the data that Brahe did make available was proving more intractable than Kepler had first imagined.

Shortly after his arrival, Brahe had assigned Kepler the Mars portfolio. For

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