1. Ptolemy,AlmagestXIII.2, Toomer G.J.Ptolemy's AlmagestLondon and New York 1984 600 600 Kepler quoted this passage [Epitome of Copernican Astronomy(1618–1621), book IV,Gesammelte Werke(Munich, 1953), VII, 291; translated by C.G. Wallis,Great Books of the Western World, vol. 16 (Chicago, 1952), p. 888], and commented that ‘… Ptolemy seems to extend this justification much too far, to the point that it undermines the entire science of astronomy and so satisfies neither astronomers nor philosophers; nor yet can it be supported in Christian teaching’. Presumably, the ‘Christian teaching’ that Ptolemy violated was to describe the planets (or their spheres) as ‘eternal [works] of God’ which is contrary to the doctrine of creation. Kepler's Latin version of the passage inAlmagestXIII.2 differs slightly from the Greek; there follows a translation of Kepler's Latin: ‘For it is not right to compare our human [undertakings] to the eternal [works] of God (immortalibus Dijs), and to seek proof of lofty matters from examples of things that are very dissimilar’ [translated by A. C. Bowen].
2. Jardine , N. 1984.The Birth of History and Philosophy of Science244–244. Cambridge
3. In contrast to Kepler, Tycho Brahe (d. 1601) responded to Ramus's challenge by saying that ‘without hypotheses the celestial phenomena cannot be reduced to certain science …’, concluding the Ramus ‘did not seem to have penetrated deeply into this art [of astronomy]’: Brahe TychoOpera omniaDreyer J.L.E. Copenhagen 1913–1929 VI 88 88 quoted in A. Blair, ‘Tycho Brahe's Critique of Copernicus and the Copernican System’,Journal of the History of Ideas, 51 (1990), 355–77 (p. 368). See E. Aiton, ‘Johannes Kepler and the astronomy without hypotheses’,Japanese Studies in the History of Science, 14 (1975), 49–71.
4. Kepler . 1984.Ptolemy's AlmagestVol. VII, 295–295. London and New York translated by Wallis (footnote 1), p. 892; see Kepler,Mysterium Cosmographicum, chapter 20 (edition 1621, p. 77); translated by A. M. Duncan,Johannes Kepler: The Secret of the Universe(New York, 1981), p. 203: ‘If for the word “soul” you substitute the word “force”, you have the very same principle on which the Celestial Physics is established in theCommentaries on Mars[i.e., Kepler'sAstronomia Nova], and elaborated in Book IV of theEpitome of Astronomy. For once I was imbued with the doctrines of J. C. Scaliger on moving intelligences. But when I pondered that this moving cause grows weaker with distance, and that the Sun's light also grows thinner with distance from the Sun, from that I concluded, that this force is something corporeal, that is, an emanation which a body emits, but an immaterial one’. Dijksterhuis's identification of Scaliger's view with the Stoic doctrine is incorrect (E. J. Dijksterhuis,The Mechanisation of the World Picture[London, 1961], p. 310). Kepler did consider and reject the Stoic view, probably in the form presented by Tycho Brahe.
5. The Astronomer's Role in the Sixteenth Century: A Preliminary Study