14/365 Kepler
Johannes Kepler
near blind from smallpox since youth
unable to clearly view
the very celestial bodies he studied
Kepler threw to the wind
the dust of former foundations
science and mysticism
abandoning preconceptions of both
His masterpiece,
Mysterium Cosmographicum
(The Mytery of the Universe)
New conception of the mechanism
of planetary motion,
as inanimate clockwork,
intricate and predictable.
A striking model
Crafted first in colored paper
He planned to cast it in silver
use it as both scientific illustration
and fancy punch bowl for parties
Following the heliocentric Copernican model
rejecting the Ptolemaic
Kepler considered the planets,
five in number,
six if Copernicus was to be believed
and Earth was to be numbered among them,
recalling the elements of Aristotle
five in number
the polyhedra of Euclid
five in number,
six if the sphere was included.
He imagined them, nested,
a beautiful convergence,
each Platonic solid delicately inscribed within a sphere,
each sphere within another solid:
sphere, Saturn's orbit
cube, the element "earth"
sphere, for Jupiter
tetrahedron, fire
sphere, Mars
dodecahedron, ether
sphere, Earth
icosahedron, air
sphere, Venus
octahedron, water
sphere, Mercury
Each concentric globe approximating
the orbit of a planet
A perfect geometry
to the solar system in which
society was yet to believe
Proposing the sun itself
propelled the planets along
with a force he termed "vigour"
felt more strongly by the nearer planets
than those more distant.
It was beautiful
rebellious
divine revelation and heresy
elegant
until Kepler himself discovered
the orbits were elliptical
shattering the symmetry
his model crumbling at its core
Kepler, the half-blind young astronomer
accepted this
the inequality of beauty
and truth
the dismantling of revelation
years of epiphanies
This was not the end for him
from the elipses sprang new beauty
ratios of period squared
to radius cubed
explanations for the mysteries
of varying speeds of orbit
tables predicting motion and position
thirty times the accuracy of Copernicus
relied on for decades,
an end to a journey
at the elegant convergence of beauty
and truth
near blind from smallpox since youth
unable to clearly view
the very celestial bodies he studied
Kepler threw to the wind
the dust of former foundations
science and mysticism
abandoning preconceptions of both
His masterpiece,
Mysterium Cosmographicum
(The Mytery of the Universe)
New conception of the mechanism
of planetary motion,
as inanimate clockwork,
intricate and predictable.
A striking model
Crafted first in colored paper
He planned to cast it in silver
use it as both scientific illustration
and fancy punch bowl for parties
Following the heliocentric Copernican model
rejecting the Ptolemaic
Kepler considered the planets,
five in number,
six if Copernicus was to be believed
and Earth was to be numbered among them,
recalling the elements of Aristotle
five in number
the polyhedra of Euclid
five in number,
six if the sphere was included.
He imagined them, nested,
a beautiful convergence,
each Platonic solid delicately inscribed within a sphere,
each sphere within another solid:
sphere, Saturn's orbit
cube, the element "earth"
sphere, for Jupiter
tetrahedron, fire
sphere, Mars
dodecahedron, ether
sphere, Earth
icosahedron, air
sphere, Venus
octahedron, water
sphere, Mercury
Each concentric globe approximating
the orbit of a planet
A perfect geometry
to the solar system in which
society was yet to believe
Proposing the sun itself
propelled the planets along
with a force he termed "vigour"
felt more strongly by the nearer planets
than those more distant.
It was beautiful
rebellious
divine revelation and heresy
elegant
until Kepler himself discovered
the orbits were elliptical
shattering the symmetry
his model crumbling at its core
Kepler, the half-blind young astronomer
accepted this
the inequality of beauty
and truth
the dismantling of revelation
years of epiphanies
This was not the end for him
from the elipses sprang new beauty
ratios of period squared
to radius cubed
explanations for the mysteries
of varying speeds of orbit
tables predicting motion and position
thirty times the accuracy of Copernicus
relied on for decades,
an end to a journey
at the elegant convergence of beauty
and truth
posted by Christopher at 11:29 AM
The number of unmatched socks in this sock drawer is: 0. Add your own sock.
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