Kepler

by Walter William Bryant

This book is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

Genres: Astronomy, Science, Biography

60 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1920

About the author

British astronomer and author

Reviews

[Brandon Meredith]

Honestly, this is a remarkable story. Kepler was one among a handful of men that invented science during the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries. And it’s quite shocking to see how beholden he was (and the others were) to magic, mysticism, and religion. It’s almost unbelievable that they could have shuffled off that snake skin to give us the scientific method.

Also, Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion were amazing. He was the first one to describe their motion as elliptical! In 1609! Astronomers had been working on that for literal millennia! He just needed Tycho Brahe’s 20 years of data on the motion of Mars and ten years of his own to study said data. Easy-peasy!

And those three laws presaged Newton’s own laws of (universal) motion. I don’t know how well Newton knew Kepler’s work, but I plan to find out! I’m reading a bio of Newton right now. :)

This is a lovely slim volume (about 75 pages). I listened to it for free on LibriVox. It’s startlingly science-y, that is, the author doesn’t shy away from describing the science of Kepler. Indeed he even uses a lot of (but not too many) old-timey science terms. Wish I had listened to the glossary first, rather than last!

[Juan]

Kepler vivió en una época en que la ciencia no tenía la menor noción de las
leyes físicas ocultas en la naturaleza.
Fue la primera persona en la historia de la especie humana en entender correcta y cuantitativamente la mecánica de los planetas y el Sistema Solar.
Introdujo tres leyes importantes acerca del movimiento de los planetas, y ayudó a que el modelo del Sistema Solar de Copérnico obtuviera aprobación general.
A través de su obra podemos encontrar la armonía y la resonancia entre nuestros pensamientos y la forma en que funciona el mundo.
Aceptó los hechos a pesar de ir en contra de sus muy queridas creencias, prefirió la dura realidad a sus más caras ilusiones.

[Laila Kazemi]

Short and concise biography of a great scientist

[Josh Hedgepeth]

Not the underrated gem I'd hoped for. A lackluster end to the year. Simply put, it's a rather dull book with, at times, dated language.