[00:00:04] Speaker A: ID the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
Why is the cosmos intellectually accessible to us? Hello and welcome to ID the Future. I'm your host, Andrew McDermott. Today I'm continuing my discussion with Dr. Melissa Cain Travis about her recent book, Thinking God's Johannes Kepler and the Miracle of cosmic comprehensibility.
Dr. Travis serves as affiliate faculty at Colorado Christian University's Lee Strobel center for Evangelism and Applied Apologetics, where she teaches courses in the history and philosophy of science. She earned a PhD in humanities with a philosophy concentration from Faulkner University's Great Books Program. A fellow at the Discovery Institute's center for Science and Culture, she currently serves as an instructor@discoveryu discoveryu.org where she offers adult education courses on science and Christianity. Something to check out. Melissa, welcome back.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Hi, Andrew. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk about this further.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Absolutely. What an awesome book you've put together. Well, this is the second of three conversations we're having about thinking God's thoughts. In part one, you introduce us to the concept of cosmic comprehensibility.
You gave us some background on your good fellow Kepler and what kind of upbringing he had, and you also gave us a glimpse of the pedigree of Kepler's ideas, something I think makes your book really rich and robust. You trace the intellectual arguments about design and intelligibility in the universe all the way from the ancient Greek philosophers like Pythagoras and Plato through the early Christian theologians and thinkers of the Middle Ages, all, all the way to Nicholas Copernicus in the 16th century, who came, as I understand it, right before Kepler. So that journey was very interesting, very helpful, and you shared some of that in part one. Perhaps we could start today with a quick review of what you mean by the term cosmic comprehensibility and how it fits into Kepler's thinking.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: By cosmic comprehensibility, I simply mean all of the different things that have to interplay. In order for the universe to be intelligible to mankind, we have to have a specific kind of rationality. The universe has to be structured in a way that our minds are fit to grasp that structure. And so there are all these different things that have to come together in order to even make the scientific enterprise possible.
[00:02:44] Speaker A: Okay, so you spend four chapters, as I said, tracing the intellectual threads that inspired Kepler. And then we get to Kepler himself and his work. First, how did Kepler's university years form his thinking in natural philosophy?
[00:02:59] Speaker B: Well, when Kepler arrived at the University of Tubenden, he had already received A thoroughly classical education.
So that included things like fluency in both Latin and Greek and interaction with a wide range of the Greek classics.
And that actually prepared him quite well for the curriculum at the university because that curriculum had been heavily influenced by the German church reformer, Philip Melanchthon.
So all seven of the classical liberal arts were included. But Melanchthon highly prized this idea of God's book of nature.
So mathematics and astronomy were regarded as integral parts of. Of even theological training at the university.
In our previous episode, I mentioned the Pythagorean Platonic tradition, and I will say Melanchthon definitely had his toes in that stream of philosophy. For example, he strongly believed that nature is fundamentally mathematical and thus it reflects a higher divine rationality. And. And he believed that because we are made in the image of God, our rationality is resonant with the mathematical structure of nature.
So although Kepler goes off to the University of Tubingen to study Christian theology, he had to spend his first two years hearing lectures by the Faculty of Arts, and that included mathematics, astronomy and physics. And he continued this immersion in the classical liberal arts, which Melanchthon had seen as secondary, but also as crucial to the study of theology.
So all of that to say while he was at university, Kepler's thinking was really profoundly influenced by ideas related to things like the mathematical rationality of nature, the nature of the mind of God and the mind of man. And as a fun little side note about Kepler's university at Tubingen, Discovery Institute's student senior fellow, Gunter Beckley actually did his PhD there. So that's a fun little intersection.
[00:05:21] Speaker A: Yeah. So Kepler famously said he was setting out to be a theologian, but things changed sort of abruptly when he almost finished his studies. And as you say, he sat under and got a different sort of atmosphere than he anticipated. Perhaps what happened that led him to this career in astronomy?
[00:05:41] Speaker B: Well, it was certainly a fascinating turn of events. Kepler did love mathematics and astronomy early on, and at university he even participated in student debates about the mathematical merits of Copernican heliocentrism. But his fascination with cosmology still didn't persuade him away from this goal of becoming a professional theologian.
However, while he was at the university, he did realize that he didn't entirely agree with something called the Formula of Concord. That was the statement of faith that all Lutheran clergymen were required to formally affirm upon their ordination into the church. And that presented a big obstacle for Kepler. Even though he wasn't outspoken about his theological disagreement, he was a man of integrity. And he knew that this was going to be be a problem for him, and he would not be able to formally affirm some of the tenets of that formula.
So the other problem with that was you had to be a clergyman in the Lutheran Church to even have a future in academia.
So he was kind of in a catch 22. He couldn't become a clergyman, but he also couldn't become an academic. He. So what in the world was was he going to do? And then out of the blue, before he had even finished the last phase of his studies, he received an offer for a mathematics teaching post. And it was in Graz, Austria, at a Protestant institution.
And it was basically an elite upper school for the sons of wealthy aristocrats. And so once he takes up this position in Graz, he finds himself teaching a variety of subjects. Mathematics course, but also astronomy, rhetoric, ethics, even the works of the great poet Virgil. And by the way, Kepler loved poetry. And over his years of lower and higher education, he composed quite a lot of poetry of his own. I, I have not been able to find any that was translated into English, unfortunately. So if There are any PhD students or aspiring PhD students out there who are interested in translation work, that would be really wonderful gift to the world to translate Kepler's poetry.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: But all of that to say, Kepler was very much a polymath. And during his independent research, which he conducted in between teaching classes, he really became more and more obsessed with questions related to the mathematics of the cosmos. As he taught things like geometry and astronomy to his students, he became captivated with certain questions related to things like the structure of the universe, the reason for the number of planets or the observable planets of the time, the distances between the orbits of those planets, why their speeds vary depending on their proximity to the sun at any given time.
And he began to suspect that the answer to these kinds of questions had something to do with an aesthetically harmonious, intellectually pleasing geometrical scheme of some kind. Because we're made in God's image, we would be drawn to a cosmic architecture with those qualities. And this is what really ignited this tremendous lifelong zeal that he developed for the discipline of astronomy.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: Very interesting. Now, his first major work, the Mysterium Cosmographicum, or Mystery of the Universe, is often described as a strange, mystical exercise in Pythagorean cosmology. Now, you disagree with this assessment? Tell us why.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: Yeah, okay. So while he was still at this teaching post in Graz, Kepler published his first book, the Mysterium Cosmographicum, or the Mystery of the cosmos, in which he argued for a cosmology that was based on this five member set of what are called the Platonic solids. So you have the tetrahedron, the cube, the icosahedron, the octahedron, and the dodecahedron. Platonic solids is a five member set of convex regular polyhedra that have all congruent faces and the same number of faces that meet at each vertex on the polyhedron. So if you google that phrase, platonic solid solids, you'll be able to see all sorts of wonderful diagrams that do a great job of showing those.
So in this first treatise, the Mysterium Cosmographicum, Kepler's career as an astronomer was essentially launched.
Now, of course, it eventually turned out that his geometrical model was incorrect.
So no matter how much Kepler modified it, tweaked it, revised it, trying to make it work, because he thought it was just that beautiful, it simply wouldn't work.
But there are scholars. An example would be the historian of astronomy, Owen Gingrich, who, incidentally, just passed away last spring.
And then science biographer Kitty Ferguson would be another, who have argued that Kepler's polyhedral theory isn't just some weird Pythagorean curiosity that we should just relegate to the dustbin of history.
Rather, it was actually Kepler's work on this theory, as wrong as it was, which was motivated by this search for some kind of cosmic harmony, a mathematical scheme that would help him to integrate speed, variations, orbital diameters, and the number of planets in a way that was intellectually delightful and that paved the way to his breakthroughs. Actually, he keeps tweaking the polyhedral theory over and over in all sorts of different ways. At one point, he even tried using musical scales to make sense of the data. And all of these mathematical acrobatics led him to the discovery of what's known as the harmonic law, also known as the third law of planetary motion.
So all of that to say it was this very strange, convoluted path that was actually based on incorrect mathematical presuppositions.
But it was this deeper expectation of harmony and an intellectually satisfying cosmology that got him to the truth and got him there as early as it did.
The. The really amazing thing about Kepler's discoveries is that he made them without some crucial things, Number one, without the underpinnings of modern mathematical tools or even anything like an established scientific method. It was really his philosophy, colored by his natural theology, this great expectation of cosmic harmony that got him there, that paved the way to these Wonderful discoveries.
[00:13:24] Speaker A: Well, it is so interesting to look at someone's landscape of thought. But, you know, the trial, the error, the mistakes, the advancements, to see how they finally get to what they're most remembered for their crowning achievements. Well, the next phase of Kepler's career started with an invitation to Prague, where he would become the assistant to the Imperial Mathematician, Tycho Brahe. Who was Brahe? Can you just tell us a little bit about him and what was his role in what we now call the scientific revolution?
[00:13:54] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness, Tycho Brahe. He's such an interesting character, and he deserves more attention among students of the history of science, or students of astronomy, for sure. There are all sorts of crazy stories to tell about him. So, for example, he lost his nose in a duel over a mathematical dispute, and so he had to wear a brass fake nose for the rest of his life. So if you Google Tycho Brahe in most of the pictures that come up, you'll see a strange little outline around the bridge of his nose, and that's what is being represented there. And then there's the fact that he had a pet elk that died at a drinking party.
So what happens? The story goes, Brahe was busy with some mathematical calculations. He didn't want to go to this drinking party. He. So he sends his pet elk, and once the elk arrives, his friends decide it would be great fun to get the elk drunk. And so they do, and the poor thing falls down a flight of stairs and dies. I mean, you cannot make this stuff up. So, as I said, very colorful character. But anyway, the massive contribution that Brahe really made to astronomy was an enormous accumulation of very precise astronomical measurements and all sorts of records.
And it was this big collection of data that he guarded very, very closely. He was very jealous of his data, and he developed this novel cosmology that was essentially an alternative to both the reigning Ptolemaic geocentrism, but also to Copernican heliocentrism.
It kept the Earth stationary at the center of the universe, but it placed all the other planets in revolution around the sun, and then in turn, the sun revolved around the Earth and took all those other planets with it. And there's a Wonderful Animation on YouTube if our listeners want to look that up, because it shows you how it would operate in theory.
So while Brahe is the Imperial Mathematician at Prague, he invites Kepler to come and serve as his assistant. And that was a huge saving grace for Kepler because the Archduke had banished him from Graz, where he was teaching mathematics for refusing to convert to Roman Catholicism.
And so he goes to Prague to become Brahe's assistant, much to his own relief, it looks like he's finally going to have some stability and financial security.
But then, only 10 months after Kepler arrives in Prague, Brahe dies very suddenly. And he leaves behind all of his precious data that he had never given Kepler full and free access to during those 10 months.
And over time, incidentally, this ridiculous legend sprang up that Kepler must have murdered Brahe by poisoning just to get his hands on the data.
And Brahe's remains have actually been exhumed not once, but twice, so that an actual cause of death could be determined.
And by and large, it seems most probable that he died of a combination of things. He wasn't in good health, he had what was probably undiagnosed diabetes, he was obese, and he loved his drinking parties. And at a final drinking party that happened just a few days before he died, they think, based upon the chemistry of their investigations, that he actually may have developed a really nasty urinary tract infection. And so all those things converging together are what ultimately did him in.
But anyway, Kepler succeeded Brahe as the imperial mathematician, and because he inherited that great intellectual legacy of Brahe's, he was able to make tremendous progress in his work while he was in that position of imperial mathematician.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: Wow, what a colorful chapter in Kepler's life.
Well, can you tell us a little bit about his other two major works, the Astronomia Nova, the New Astronomy, and the Harmonis Mundi, the Harmony of the World?
[00:18:46] Speaker B: Sure.
So once Kepler had that full access to Brahe's treasure trove, he was really better equipped than anyone else of the time to really pursue a mathematical cosmology and what we can now regard as a true celestial physics.
That phase of his work was published in 1609, as you mentioned in the Astronomia Nova. And that was his grand introduction of physics into the discipline of astronomy. And that was a major leap forward that really put Kepler well ahead of all of his contemporaries. And what he was after was a mathematical description for the causes of astronomical phenomena.
He was really groping towards a concept of what we now call gravitation.
He described this mysterious force as a magnetism emanating from the sun that was responsible for the faster movement of the planets when they were closer to it and the slower movement when they moved further away from the Sun.
So the Astronomian nova, it contains the first two of Kepler's famous planetary laws. The first law says that the planets orbit the sun in an ellipse rather than a perfect circle with the sun at one focus. And the second law says that a planet sweeps out an equal area of the ellipse in an equal amount of time. So to illustrate that a little bit, think about having a string that joins a planet to the sun and, and the pie shaped section that it would sweep out over a period of time as it's orbiting. What Kepler discovered was that these pie slices are equal in area when the time periods are equal. So no matter where the planet is in its orbit around the sun, if you mark out an equal amount of time in each spot, then the area of that pie slice is going to be equal to equivalent. And so what's really mathematically interesting about this is related to something I mentioned earlier, that a planet speeds up when it comes closer to the sun and it slows down when it's further away. So it's really interesting that you get this equal area and equal time law.
And then later on we have Kepler's harmony Smendi, or the harmony of the world. And Kepler really considered that his magnum opus, it was published about 10 years after the Astronomia Nova in 1619. And this is where he introduced his third law, or his harmonic law of planetary motion that I mentioned earlier.
And he was so delighted by this law, which mathematically harmonized the distances and the speeds of all the known planets with one elegant equation.
So, simply stated, this is the hardest one to describe, but I'm going to give it a shot. It's really easier when you're able to show charts, but I'm going to try to describe it verbally.
So the, the harmonic law, simply stated, says that the square of a planet's orbital period, and we would represent that with a capital P is proportional to the cube of that same planet's mean distance from the sun, which we represent with a lowercase a. And that turns out to be true for every single planet.
And moreover, when Earth years are used as the units for the planet's period and astronomical units, which is the Earth's distance from the sun, that would be one au.
You take those numbers in those units and you divide your capital P squared by your lowercase A cubed, you always get the result of one.
So you really have to look at this on paper to appreciate why this is called the harmonic law, because no matter which planet you're doing this calculation with, you're going to end up with the number one. The proportion always comes out the same.
And Kepler just took tremendous delight in this Law. And I want to read something real quick for our listeners. This is a preface that he wrote to book five of the harmonies.
And this is what he says about this discovery of the harmonic law. He says, I have brought that discovery into the light and have most truly grasped, beyond what I could have ever hoped, that the whole nature of harmony in its full extent, with all its parts, is to be discovered among the celestial motions. It is to be discovered, indeed, not in the way which I had mentally conceived. And this is not the least part of my joy, but in a totally different way and also at the same time, a quite outstanding and perfect way.
This passage was a wonderful thing for me to first discover in my research, but I will also say it was entertaining to read in the sense that I had just read a biography of Kepler, a very, very short biography by a scientific materialist.
And in his book he talks about, oh, Kepler must have been so disappointed when he discovered that his beloved polyhedral theory just wasn't going to after all. And this particular writer used this as a way to really indirectly critique Kepler's philosophical and theological ideas about harmony in the mind of God. But if you read what I just read, you see, Kepler wasn't at all disappointed in this.
He's essentially saying, things are far more magnificent than I could have even imagined. The harmony is so, so much more profound.
[00:25:21] Speaker A: Yeah, so he's admitting that he's not quite gotten to it, but it's bigger than he imagined. And I did notice as I was reading some of the history you present, that music and harmony have been linked to science and mathematics and design arguments since the ancient Greeks. In chapter seven of your book, you discuss the importance of Kepler's concept of harmony. And it's quite interesting.
Did he do anything further with harmonics, or did he leave that aside and move on?
[00:25:49] Speaker B: You know, I think that he did some various speculations, but I would like to sort of flesh out exactly what Kepler meant when he talked about the concept of harmony.
So he meant harmony in a very classical sense. It's this idea of fitting together different kinds of parts to make an integrated, coherent and aesthetically pleasing whole system.
And that was really the central metaphysical principle that guided his entire life's work. And as I hope our listeners have gathered so far, it was incredibly fruitful.
[00:26:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, eventually we get to chapter eight where you elaborate Kepler's natural theology.
And as we, as we wrap up this episode, I wondered if you could touch on that a little bit. Can you describe his natural theology?
[00:26:45] Speaker B: Yeah. So this is truly central to my entire thesis in thinking God's thoughts. And there are three words that really sum up Kepler's natural theology.
Archetype, copy and image. Archetype refers to the immaterial, rational plan for the cosmos and that has existed from all eternity in the mind of God. Copy is the material manifestation of that archetype, the universe itself. And image refers to the image of God and mankind. And if you take those three together, you have what I call a tripartite harmony of archetype, copy and image that explains this wonderful resonance between the human intellectual faculties and the rationality of the material creation. And that's what Kepler meant when he said, and I'm going to give you a quote here, to God. There are in the whole material world material laws, figures and relations of special excellency and the most appropriate order. Those laws are within the grasp of the human mind.
God wanted us to recognize them by creating us after his own image so that we could share in his own thoughts. That's the most famous and most often paraphrased statement made by Kepler. So again, his belief in the harmony of the world was indispensable to his major discoveries. Essentially, he just had this expectation that there would be an essential, aesthetically pleasing mathematical scheme behind the world because he believed that our aesthetic sensibilities are actually analogous to the creators.
So in Kepler, what I want our listeners to notice is that we see this passionate religious inspiration behind his work coupled with philosophical convictions about the, the beauty, the aesthetics of creation. And that's what really motivated and inspired him.
And it's sort of a side note, but an important side note to this. I think this gives us tremendous insight into that famous why then why there question about the rise of modern science? Why did it happen when it did and why did it happen where it did?
Because I'm convinced that the discoveries Kepler made would have happened a whole lot later without his natural theology, and that would have delayed what we call the scientific revolution.
[00:29:31] Speaker A: Right. Goes a long way to answering that famous question.
Well, as we close this episode, we'll come back to the tripartite harmony that you refer to in the next episode. What do you think, in summary, made Kepler such a pivotal thinker in the history of Western science?
[00:29:50] Speaker B: Well, just to put it simply, he was the transitional figure between ancient astronomy and a true celestial physics. And it was his, well, his mathematical brilliance for one thing, but for another, his Pythagorean Platonic philosophy and also his intellectual creativity that really got him there. And these are, these are wonderfully unique things that converged in this one brilliant man who just wanted to be able to think God's thoughts.
[00:30:25] Speaker A: Yeah. And you do a great job of bringing it all together and showing us who Kepler was and, and the lasting legacy of his, his thinking.
Well, I think that's a good place to break for this episode, but we will come back for a third and final discussion where we wrap up our exploration of Kepler and the intriguing idea of cosmic comprehensibility. Next time, we'll take a deep dive into Kepler's concept of tripartite harmony, the archetype, the copy, the image and show how it can be applied to contemporary scientific study.
Well, Melissa, thanks for your time today.
[00:31:00] Speaker B: Thank you, Andrew.
[00:31:01] Speaker A: You can learn more about Dr. Travis's work at Melissa KaneTravis.com MelissaCareTravis.com you can also grab a copy of the book Thinking God's Thoughts there. Until next time, I'm Andrew McDermott. Thank you for listening.
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