Kepler

by John Banville

Book Overview

The Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea re-creates the life of the Renaissance mathematical genius Johannes Kepler and his incredible drive to chart the orbits of the planets and the geometry of the universe.

In a brilliant illumination of the Renaissance mind, acclaimed Irish novelist John Banville tells the story of Johannes Kepler. Wars, witchcraft, and disease rage throughout Europe. For this court mathematician, vexed...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679743707
• ISBN13: 9780679743705
• Release Date: October 1993
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Biographical Novel

Close on the heels of finishing Banville's novel Doctor Copernicus, a story based on the life of Nicholas Copernicus, I started reading this novel on the life of Johannes Kepler. I had enjoyed Mr. Banville's book on Copernicus but I found that I enjoyed this book on Kepler even more. In terms of structure and power of prose, the two books are much the same but in Kepler Banville seems to know his man much better. Doctor Copernicus powerfully evokes its time period and setting but it does so at the expense of the main character in some ways. Here, Kepler and his story seem to be more the driving force which made for an even more interesting read. Many of the main conflicts of Kepler's life are here--his struggles with Brahe, his problems with his wife, his mother's trial for witchcraft, his endless search for riches & fame along with truth--and they are brought out well through the eyes of the main character. Banville's mastery of beautiful prose my still lie in the years following this early novel; however, he was a writer of incredible power from his earliest books. For someone interested in science as I am, reading this book is a no-brainer: it needs to be read. However, any reader will find much to enjoy here.

The Music of the Spheres

John Banville takes his astonomical fiction "Doctor Copernicus" to the next stage in "Kepler." Both books are powerful feats of the imagination, in which Banville attempts to re-create that curious and pregnant stage in history when the medieval world was giving way to the first stirrings of modernity. Amid the tumult of the Thirty Years War, which would have have such a large impact on the future of Europe and indeed the entire world, an equally momentous change was taking place in the sciences. Alchemy and astrology still rule, but the natural sciences and astronomy are gradually coming into their own. Johannes Kepler builds on the insights of Copernicus and the observations of Tycho Brahe to create new theories of planetary motion that reinforce and are themselves strengthened by the work of Galileo. Banville has created a multi-dimensioned work, part picaresque, part epistolary novel, part flashback, in which Kepler struggles past politics, religious discord, family distractions and war to seek out the celestial harmonies that he is convinced are there for the discovering. "Kepler" is not the greatest of Banville's novels, but that still makes it a very good one indeed.

Increidible and interesting

I love this book from start to finish. It is a little know book about Kepler and the trials and tribulations he had to endure in his dogmatic era. The workings of brilliance shine forth in this novel. A must for history lovers also.

infinite theories to fit finite data -> the spiralling in

Kepler experienced, on the most personal level, the difference between astrology and astronomy. His initial theories, based on geometry but not yet algebraically sensible, seemed to fit the amazingly-accurate measurements of Tycho Brahe, but there was a deeper elegance to discover in the elliptical orbits. Since infinite theories fit any finite set of experimental data points, and science (as Popper observed) "tells us when we're wrong but never when we're right", any lack of rigor or verification leads the scientist into numerological games in search of elegance whenever he lacks peer pressure to force him to real rigor. Banville's Kepler spirals in to the ellipse in an incredible chaos of personal stress, forced to rigor by the many competing theories of existence that seem to dominate his own psyche and the fate of his family. He never abandons his own quest for personal truth, even as the personality of the planets is revealed to be as mathematically simple as any clockwork. In the end, his process is himself, repeatable only in the mathematical sense, never in the experience.The "spiralling in", as dozens of irrational but elegant theories battle for attention, on the way to the single simplest almost-obvious truth, will be familiar to anyone who has done basic science. The search for truth through personal chaos will be familiar to anyone who has ever had a family!

A work of shining light

There are only a few writers, in my experience, that are able to express melancholy and madness with a twist of humour. Even fewer who must have devoted as much time in reseach as in writing. John Banvilles' words have he ring of truth about them, his utterances are masterpieces. This is a book of treasures.