Kepler’s obsession with geometry, both sacred and profane, verged on the irrational. But his fervor made him who he was. As the writer Arthur Koestler astutely observed, “Johannes Kepler became enamored with the Pythagorean dream, and on this foundation of fantasy, by methods of reasoning equally unsound, built the solid edifice of modern astronomy. It is one of the most astonishing episodes in the history of thought, and an antidote to the pious belief that the Progress of Science is governed by logic.”
