Re: VMs: Kepler & the VMS

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jeff,

Kepler moved to Prague in 1600 to take a post as Tyco Brahe's assistant: 
when Brahe died in 1601, Kepler took over the post of Imperial 
Mathematician. Alas, when Emperor Rudolf abdicated (due to failing health) 
in 1611, the new Emperor (Matthias, Rudolf's brother) quickly proved to be 
far less tolerant to Protestants. After the death of his wife (in 1612) and 
seven-year-old son, Kepler left Prague for Linz (in Austria).

Note that he also later returned to Prague (between 1627 and 1630) to try 
to reclaim money owed to him by the court.

A good article by the excellent J.V.Field:-
	http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Kepler.html

Another good article:-
	http://es.rice.edu/ES/humsoc/Galileo/People/kepler.html

OK...we have some strong links between Emperor Rudolf's Imperial Court and 
the VMs, and (as a mysterious document containing curious cosmological 
diagrams) there's a reasonable chance that, yes, Imperial Mathematician 
Kepler might well have been shown the VMs.

But, hey, why not go the whole hog and bring Tyco Brahe into it as well? Or 
in fact any of the many thousands of distinguished visitors to the Imperial 
Court? In short, is there any evidence privileging Kepler over anyone else?

BTW the problem with reading <ol> as the number pair "04" is that <l> is 
overwhelmingly preceded by <o> (yes, it's probably of those verbose pairs I 
keep banging on about), which makes is *far* too easy to find instances of 
"1604" (the year of the famous supernova about which Kepler famously wrote) 
in the text.

I'm not saying you're right or wrong (pizza is far too important for that), 
but rather (like Seth) what's the evidence? Even the most superficial 
reading of the history of Rudolf's court should make it clear that it had 
an abundance of the "right people at the right time" to have seen, handled 
or owned the VMs. Perhaps even a plethora of them. :-) What is so special 
about Kepler?

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....


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