Heavenly Intrigue

Heavenly Intrigue
Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and the Murder Behind One of History’s Greatest Scientific Discoveries
Joshua Gilder and Anne-Lee Gilder
Anchor Books, 2005
304 pp.

In the Western world, we tend to think of our scientific geniuses as rather pristine men, certainly not given to the passions and prejudices of ordinary people. So it’s quite an interesting read to learn of the demons that haunted Johannes Kepler, the man who laid the foundations of modern physics. What’s more is that authors Joshua and Anne-Lee Gilder accuse him of murder.

In a similar vein to James A. Connor’s book “Kepler’s Witch,” the Gilders show us a deeply devout yet tortured man in Johannes Kepler. Convinced of his own genius, he was also a vindictive and angry individual who resented others and was extremely ambitious. Unlike Connor’s book, though, the Gilders aren’t as sympathetic although they remain fair in describing the difficulties Kepler had all his life, especially in a Europe ridden with hatred and suspicion because of the Reformation. For a man like Kepler, whose passion for decoding the heavens as a way of understanding the mind of God, life could not have been more difficult.

The opposite was true for Tycho Brahe, the Danish astronomer whose path crossed with Kepler when the latter came to work for him. The Gilders draw on a good deal of historical evidence to describe both men’s work and its significance for later science, but also present the meeting of both men in almost star-crossed terms: the affable and wealthy Brahe contrasted strongly with the envious Kepler. Of course, the purpose is to set up the Gilders’ primary theme: that Brahe died a mysterious death and that Kepler had the motive, method and opportunity to carry it out.

The Gilders succeed in writing a highly readable yet compact history of the slow acceptance of the Copernican theory of heliocentrism and two of its principle actors. While Brahe comes out as a bit of the doomed hero, it is the complex Kepler who commands the most attention. A committed man of science, he was also an astrologer who charted horoscopes for himself and wound up stealing some of Brahe’s data for his own purposes. Learning of these unsavory details of Kepler’s life goes a very long way to demolishing any myths that we have men such as himself, Brahe or others like Issac Newton. We often prefer that these heroes come out rather unblemished. The Gilders—using forensic evidence to confirm the presence of poison in Brahe’s remains and label Kepler as their prime suspect—have crafted a detailed study of two men who may have plumbed the heavens, but whose passions where very much rooted in this world.