Some of Kepler's works seem very different in character. His youthful Mysterium cosmographicum (1596) argues for heliocentrism on the basis of metaphysical, astronomical, astrological, numerological and architectonic principles. By contrast, Astronomia nova (1609) is far more tightly argued on the basis of only a few dynamical principles. In the eyes of many, such a contrast embodies a transition from Renaissance to early modern science. I suggest that Karl Popper's fallibilist and piecemeal approach, and especially his theory of errors, might prove extremely helpful in resolving such alleged tension. By abandoning the perspective of the inductivist philosophy of science, which is forced by its own standards to portray Kepler as a “sleepwalker”, I focus on the method he followed: he never hesitated to discuss his own intellectual journey, offering a rational reconstruction of the series of false starts, blind alleys and failures he encountered. The critical dialogue he managed to establish in private correspondence with fellow astronomers he later transplanted into his printed works, whose structure closely resembles that of a dialogue, however implicit.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Bibliography
Aiton, Eric. 1969. Kepler's Second Law of Planetary Motion. Isis 60: 75–90.
Brod, Max. [1920] 1928. The Redemption of Tycho Brahe. London: Alfred A. Knopf.
Bucciantini, Massimo. 2003. Galileo e Keplero: Filosofia, cosmologia e teologia nell'Età della Controriforma. Turin: Einaudi.
Donahue, William H. 1988. Kepler's Fabricated Figures: Covering up the Mess in the Astronomia nova. Journal for the History of Astronomy 19: 217–237.
Donahue, William H. 1992. Translator's Introduction. In Johannes Kepler, New Astronomy, ed. William H. Donahue, 1–19. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gingerich, Owen. 2002. An Annotated Census of Copernicus ' “ De revolutionibus ” (Nuremberg, 1543 and Basel, 1566). Leiden/Boston/Cologne: Brill.
Kepler, Johannes. [1611] 1966. The Six-Cornered Snowflake, ed. Colin Hardie. Oxford: Clarendon.
Kepler, Johannes. [1596] 1981. The Secret of the Universe. Norwalk, CT: Abaris Books.
Kepler, Johannes. [1609] 1992. New Astronomy, ed. William H. Donahue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kepler, Johannes. 1937–2002. Gesammelte Werke, eds. Max Caspar et al. Munich: C. H. Beck.
Koestler, Arthur. 1959. The Sleepwalkers. New York: Macmillan.
Koyré, Alexandre. 1973. The Astronomical Revoluti on: Copernicus, Kepler, Borelli. London: Methuen.
Popper, Karl Raimund. 1983. Realism and the Aim of Science. London: Hutchinson.
Popper, Karl Raimund. 1999. Kepler's Metaphysics of the Solar System and His Empirical Criticism. In All Life is Problem Solving, 74–78. London/New York: Routledge.
Segre, Michael. 1991. In the Wake of Galileo. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Segre, Michael. 1994. Peano's Axioms in Their Historical Context. Archive for History of Exact Sciences 48: 201–342.
Shea, William R. [1972] 1977. Galileo's Intellectual Revolution: Middle Period, 1610–1632. New York: Science History Publications
Stephenson, Bruce. 1987. Kepler's Physical Astronomy. New York: Springer.
Voelkel, James R. 2001. The Composition of Kepler's Astronomia nova. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press.
von Laue, Max. 1952. Introduction. In International Tables for X-Ray Crystallography, Vol. I, 1–3. Birmingham: Kynoch Press.
Westman, Robert S. 1975. The Melanchton Circle, Rheticus, and the Wittenberg Interpretation of the Copernican Theory. Isis 66: 165–193.
Whiteside, Derek T. 1974. Keplerian Planetary Eggs, Laid and Unlaid, 1600–1605. Journal for the History of Astronomy 5: 1–21.
Wilson, Curtis. 1968. Kepler's Derivation of the Elliptical Path. Isis 59: 5–25.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer Science + Business Media B.V.
About this paper
Cite this paper
Gattei, S. (2009). “Why, and to What Extent, May a False Hypothesis Yield the Truth?”. In: Parusniková, Z., Cohen, R.S. (eds) Rethinking Popper. Boston Studies in The Philosophy of Science, vol 272. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9338-8_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9338-8_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-9337-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-9338-8
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)