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

Set against the backdrop of the witchcraft trial of his mother, this lively biography of Johannes Kepler - 'the Protestant Galileo' and 16th-century mathematician and astronomer - reveals the surprisingly spiritual nature of the quest of early modern science.

In Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter style, Connor's book 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 supporting the Copernican system. After a neighbor accused his mother of witchcraft, Kepler quit his post as the Imperial mathematician to defend her.

James 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, although published in their original German dialects, had never before been translated into English. Echoing some of Dava Sobel's work for Galileo's Daughter, Connor has translated the witch trial documents into English. With great respect for the history of these times and the life of this man, Connor's accessible story illuminates the life of Kepler, a man of science, but also Kepler, a man of uncommon faith and vision.

Author: James A. Connor
Publisher: HarperOne
Published: 05/10/2005
Pages: 416
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.30lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9780060750497

About the Author
Connor, James A.: -

James A. Connor is the author of Kepler's Witch: An Astronomer's Discovery of Cosmic Order Amid Religious War, Political Intrigue, and the Heresy Trial of His Mother and Silent Fire: Bringing the Spirituality of Silence to Everyday Life. A former Jesuit priest, Connor is a professor of English at Kean University in Union, New Jersey; he has also held teaching posts at St. Louis University and Gonzaga University. He is a director of studies at the Lessing Institute in Prague. He holds degrees in geoscience, philosophy, theology, and creative writing, and a Ph.D. in literature and science. He is a prize-winning essayist published widely in American Book Review, Traditional Home, Willow Springs, The Critic, The Iowa Review, and The Iowa Journal of Literary Studies.