The Cosmic Mystery

The Cosmic Mystery

There were only six planets known in Kepler’s time : Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Kepler wondered, why only six? Why not twenty or a hundred? Why did they have the spacing between their orbits that Copernicus had deduced? No one has ever asked such questions before. There were known five regular or “platonic” solids, whose sides where regular polygons, as known to the ancient Greek mathematicians after their time of Pythagoras.

Kepler thought the two numbers were connected, that the reason there were only six planets was because there was only five regular solids, and that these solids inscribed nested one within another, would specify the distances of the planets from the Sun.

In these perfect forms, he believed he had recognised the invisible supporting structures for the spheres of the six planets. He called his revelation the Cosmic Mystery. The connection between the solids of Pythagoras and the disposition of the planets could admit but one explanation : The Hand of God, Geometer.

The Hand of God, Geometer, created a Holy Geometry. Image: Mist by © Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

Kepler was amazed that he – immersed, so he thought, in sin, – should have been divinely chosen to make this great discovery. He submitted a proposal for a research grant to the Duke of Württemberg, offering to supervise the construction of his nested solids as a three-dimensional model so that others could glimpse the beauty of the holy geometry. It might, he added, be contrived of silver and precious stones and serve incidentally as a ducal chalice. The proposal was rejected with the kindly advice that he first construct a less expensive version out of paper, which he promptly attempted to do: “The intense pleasure I have received from this discovery can never be told in words… I shunned to calculation no matter how difficult. Days and nights I spent in mathematical labors, until I could see whether my hypothesis would agree with the orbits of Copernicus or whether my job was to vanish into thin air”.

But no matter how hard Kepler tried, the solids and the planetary orbits did not agree well. The elegance and grandeur of theory, however, persuaded him that the observations are unobliging by many other theorists in the history of science. There was then only one man in the world who had access to more accurate observations of apparent planetary positions, a self-exiled Danish nobleman who had accepted the post of Imperial Mathematician in the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II. That man was Tycho Brahe. By chance, at Rudolf’s suggestion, he had just invited Kepler, whose mathematical fame was growing, to join him in Prague.

Johannes Kepler envisioned Tycho’s domain as a refuge from the evils of the time, as the place where his Cosmic Mystery would be confirmed.