Kepler's Witch

An Astronomer's Discovery of Cosmic Order Amid Religious War, Political Intrigue, and the Heresy Trial of His Mother

By: James A. Connor

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eBook | 13 October 2009

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This biography of "the Protestant Galileo" and 16th century mathematician and astronomer reveals the spiritual nature of the quest of early modern science.

In the style of Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter, James A. Connor's Kepler's Witch brings to life the tidal forces of Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and social upheaval. Johannes Kepler, who discovered the three basic laws of planetary motion, was persecuted for his support of the Copernican system. After a neighbor accused his mother of witchcraft, Kepler quit his post as the Imperial mathematician to defend her.

Connor tells Kepler's story as a pilgrimage, a spiritual journey into the modern world through war and disease and terrible injustice, a journey reflected in the evolution of Kepler's geometrical model of the cosmos into a musical model, harmony into greater harmony. The leitmotif of the witch trial adds a third dimension to Kepler's biography by setting his personal life within his own times. The acts of this trial, including Kepler's letters and the accounts of the witnesses, previously published in their original German dialects, have been translated into English for the first time.

With a great respect for the history of these times and the life of this man, Connor's accessible story illuminates the life of Kepler, the man of science, but also Kepler, a man of uncommon faith and vision.

"Connor's skillful narrative brings to life a fascinating time of changing cosmologies and an extraordinary man who wanted to know the mind of God." —Pulitzer Prize-winning author Kenneth Silverman