Kepler/Chapter 5

by Walter William Bryant

CHAPTER V.

KEPLER'S LAWS.

When Gilbert of Colchester, in his "New Philosophy," founded on his researches in magnetism, was dealing with tides, he did not suggest that the moon attracted the water, but that "subterranean spirits and humours, rising in sympathy with the moon, cause the sea also to rise and flow to the shores and up rivers". It appears that an idea, presented in some such way as this, was more readily received than a plain statement. This so-called philosophical method was, in fact, very generally applied, and Kepler, who shared Galileo's admiration for Gilbert's work, adopted it in his own attempt to extend the idea of magnetic attraction to the planets. The general idea of "gravity" opposed the hypothesis of the rotation of the earth on the ground that loose objects would fly off: moreover, the latest refinements of the old system of planetary motions necessitated their orbits being described about a mere empty point. Kepler very strongly combated these notions, pointing out the absurdity of the conclusions to which they tended, and proceeded in set terms to describe his own theory.

"Every corporeal substance, so far forth as it is corporeal, has a natural fitness for resting in every place where it may be situated by itself beyond the sphere of influence of a body cognate with it. Gravity is a mutual affection between cognate bodies towards union or conjunction (similar in kind to the magnetic virtue), so that the earth attracts a stone much rather than the stone seeks the earth. Heavy bodies (if we begin by assuming the earth to be in the centre of the world) are not carried to the centre of the world in its quality of centre of the world, but as to the centre of a cognate round body, namely, the earth; so that wheresoever the earth may be placed, or whithersoever it may be carried by its animal faculty, heavy bodies will always be carried towards it. If the earth were not round, heavy bodies would not tend from every side in a straight line towards the centre of the earth, but to different points from different sides. If two stones were placed in any part of the world near each other, and beyond the sphere of influence of a third cognate body, these stones, like two magnetic needles, would come together in the intermediate point, each approaching the other by a space proportional to the comparative mass of the other. If the moon and earth were not retained in their orbits by their animal force or some other equivalent, the earth would mount to the moon by a fifty-fourth part of their distance, and the moon fall towards the earth through the other fifty-three parts, and they would there meet, assuming, however, that the substance of both is of the same density. If the earth should cease to attract its waters to itself all the waters of the sea would he raised and would flow to the body of the moon. The sphere of the attractive virtue which is in the moon extends as far as the earth, and entices up the waters; but as the moon flies rapidly across the zenith, and the waters cannot follow so quickly, a flow of the ocean is occasioned in the torrid zone towards the westward. If the attractive virtue of the moon extends as far as the earth, it follows with greater reason that the attractive virtue of the earth extends as far as the moon and much farther; and, in short, nothing which consists of earthly substance anyhow constituted although thrown up to any height, can ever escape the powerful operation of this attractive virtue. Nothing which consists of corporeal matter is absolutely light, but that is comparatively lighter which is rarer, either by its own nature, or by accidental heat. And it is not to be thought that light bodies are escaping to the surface of the universe while they are carried upwards, or that they are not attracted by the earth. They are attracted, but in a less degree, and so are driven outwards by the heavy bodies; which being done, they stop, and are kept by the earth in their own place. But although the attractive virtue of the earth extends upwards, as has been said, so very far, yet if any stone should be at a distance great enough to become sensible compared with the earth's diameter, it is true that on the motion of the earth such a stone would not follow altogether; its own force of resistance would be combined with the attractive force of the earth, and thus it would extricate itself in some degree from the motion of the earth." The above passage from the Introduction to Kepler's "Commentaries on the Motion of Mars," always regarded as his most valuable work, must have been known to Newton, so that no such incident as the fall of an apple was required to provide a necessary and sufficient explanation of the genesis of his Theory of Universal Gravitation. Kepler's glimpse at such a theory could have been no more than a glimpse, for he went no further with it. This seems a pity, as it is far less fanciful than many of his ideas, though not free from the "virtues" and "animal faculties," that correspond to Gilbert's "spirits and humours". We must, however, proceed to the subject of Mars, which was, as before noted, the first important investigation entrusted to Kepler on his arrival at Prague.

The time taken from one opposition of Mars to the next is decidedly unequal at different parts of his orbit, so that many oppositions must be used to determine the mean motion. The ancients had noticed that what was called the "second inequality," due as we now know to the orbital motion of the earth, only vanished when earth, sun, and planet were in line, i.e. at the planet's opposition; therefore they used oppositions to determine the mean motion, but deemed it necessary to apply a correction to the true opposition to reduce to mean opposition, thus sacrificing part of the advantage of using oppositions. Tycho and Longomontanus had followed this method in their calculations from Tycho's twenty years' observations. Their aim was to find a position of the "equant," such that these observations would show a constant angular motion about it; and that the computed positions would agree in latitude and longitude with the actual observed positions. When Kepler arrived he was told that their longitudes agreed within a couple of minutes of arc, but that something was wrong with the latitudes. He found, however, that even in longitude their positions showed discordances ten times as great as they admitted, and so, to clear the ground of assumptions as far as possible, he determined to use true oppositions. To this Tycho objected, and Kepler had great difficulty in convincing him that the new move would be any improvement, but undertook to prove to him by actual examples that a false position of the orbit could by adjusting the equant be made to fit the longitudes within five minutes of arc, while giving quite erroneous values of the latitudes and second inequalities. To avoid the possibility of further objection he carried out this demonstration separately for each of the systems of Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Tycho. For the new method he noticed that great accuracy was required in the reduction of the observed places of Mars to the ecliptic, and for this purpose the value obtained for the parallax by Tycho's assistants fell far short of the requisite accuracy. Kepler therefore was obliged to recompute the parallax from the original observations, as also the position of the line of nodes and the inclination of the orbit. The last he found to be constant, thus corroborating his theory that the plane of the orbit passed through the sun. He repeated his calculations no fewer than seventy times (and that before the invention of logarithms), and at length adopted values for the mean longitude and longitude of aphelion. He found no discordance greater than two minutes of arc in Tycho's observed longitudes in opposition, but the latitudes, and also longitudes in other parts of the orbit were much more discordant, and he found to his chagrin that four years' work was practically wasted. Before making a fresh start he looked for some simplification of the labour; and determined to adopt Ptolemy's assumption known as the principle of the bisection of the excentricity. Hitherto, since Ptolemy had given no reason for this assumption, Kepler had preferred not to make it, only taking for granted that the centre was at some point on the line called the excentricity (see Figs. 1, 2).

A marked improvement in residuals was the result of this step, proving, so far, the correctness of Ptolemy's principle, but there still remained discordances amounting to eight minutes of arc. Copernicus, who had no idea of the accuracy obtainable in observations, would probably have regarded such an agreement as remarkably good; but Kepler refused to admit the possibility of an error of eight minutes in any of Tycho's observations. He thereupon vowed to construct from these eight minutes a new planetary theory that should account for them all. His repeated failures had by this time convinced him that no uniformly described circle could possibly represent the motion of Mars. Either the orbit could not be circular, or else the angular velocity could not be constant about any point whatever. He determined to attack the "second inequality," i.e. the optical illusion caused by the earth's annual motion, but first revived an old idea of his own that for the sake of uniformity the sun, or as he preferred to regard it, the earth, should have an equant as well as the planets. From the irregularities of the solar motion he soon found that this was the case, and that the motion was uniform about a point on the line from the sun to the centre of the earth's orbit, such that the centre bisected the distance from the sun to the "Equant"; this fully supported Ptolemy's principle. Clearly then the earth's linear velocity could not be constant, and Kepler was encouraged to revive another of his speculations as to a force which was weaker at greater distances. He found the velocity greater at the nearer apse, so that the time over an equal arc at either apse was proportional to the distance. He conjectured that this might prove to be true for arcs at all parts of the orbit, and to test this he divided the orbit into 360 equal parts, and calculated the distances to the points of division. Archimedes had obtained an approximation to the area of a circle by dividing it radially into a very large number of triangles, and Kepler had this device in mind. He found that the sums of successive distances from his 360 points were approximately proportional to the times from point to point, and was thus enabled to represent much more accurately the annual motion of the earth which produced the second inequality of Mars, to whose motion he now returned. Three points are sufficient to define a circle, so he took three observed positions of Mars and found a circle; he then took three other positions, but obtained a different circle, and a third set gave yet another. It thus began to appear that the orbit could not be a circle. He next tried to divide into 360 equal parts, as he had in the case of the earth, but the sums of distances failed to fit the times, and he realised that the sums of distances were not a good measure of the area of successive triangles. He noted, however, that the errors at the apses were now smaller than with a central circular orbit, and of the opposite sign, so he determined to try whether an oval orbit would fit better, following a suggestion made by Purbach in the case of Mercury, whose orbit is even more eccentric than that of Mars, though observations were too scanty to form the foundation of any theory. Kepler gave his fancy play in the choice of an oval, greater at one end than the other, endeavouring to satisfy some ideas about epicyclic motion, but could not find a satisfactory curve. He then had the fortunate idea of trying an ellipse with the same axis as his tentative oval. Mars now appeared too slow at the apses instead of too quick, so obviously some intermediate ellipse must be sought between the trial ellipse and the circle on the same axis. At this point the "long arm of coincidence" came into play. Half-way between the apses lay the mean distance, and at this position the error was half the distance between the ellipse and the circle, amounting to ⋅00429 of a radius. With these figures in his mind, Kepler looked up the greatest optical inequality of Mars, the angle between the straight lines from Mars to the Sun and to the centre of the circle.^[1] The secant of this angle was 1⋅00429, so that he noted that an ellipse reduced from the circle in the ratio of 1⋅00429 to 1 would fit the motion of Mars at the mean distance as well as the apses.

It is often said that a coincidence like this only happens to somebody who "deserves his luck," but this simply means that recognition is essential to the coincidence. In the same way the appearance of one of a large number of people mentioned is hailed as a case of the old adage "Talk of the devil, etc.," ignoring all the people who failed to appear. No one, however, will consider Kepler unduly favoured. His genius, in his case certainly "an infinite capacity for taking pains," enabled him out of his medley of hypotheses, mainly unsound, by dint of enormous labour and patience, to arrive thus at the first two of the laws which established his title of "Legislator of the Heavens".

FIGURES EXPLANATORY OF KEPLER'S
THEORY OF THE MOTION OF MARS.

⁠Fig. 1.⁠Fig. 2.

Fig. 1.—In Ptolemy's excentric theory, A may be taken to represent the earth, C the centre of a planet's orbit, and E the equant, P (perigee) and Q (apogee) being the apses of the orbit. Ptolemy's idea was that uniform motion in a circle must be provided, and since the motion was not uniform about the earth, A could not coincide with C; and since the motion still failed to be uniform about A or C, some point E must be found about which the motion should be uniform.

Fig. 2.—This is not drawn to scale, but is intended to illustrate Kepler's modification of Ptolemy's excentric. Kepler found velocities at P and Q proportional not to AP and AQ but to AQ and AP, or to EP and EQ if EC = CA (bisection of the excentricity). The velocity at M was wrong, and AM appeared too great. Kepler's first ellipse had M moved too near C. The distance AC is much exaggerated in the figure, as also is MN. AN = CP, the radius of the circle. MN should be ⋅00429 of the radius, and MC/NC should be 1⋅00429. The velocity at N appeared to be proportional to EN( = AN). Kepler concluded that Mars moved round PNQ, so that the area described about A (the sun) was equal in equal times, A being the focus of the ellipse PNQ. The angular velocity is not quite constant about E, the equant or empty focus, but the difference could hardly have been detected in Kepler's time.

Kepler's improved determination of the earth's orbit was obtained by plotting the different positions of the earth corresponding to successive rotations of Mars, i.e. intervals of 687 days. At each of these the date of the year would give the angle MSE (Mars-Sun-Earth), and Tycho's observation the angle MES. So the triangle could be solved except for scale, and the ratio of SE to SM would give the distance of Mars from the sun in terms of that of the earth. Measuring from a fixed position of Mars (e.g. perihelion), this gave the variation of SE, showing the earth's inequality. Measuring from a fixed position of the earth, it would give similarly a series of positions of Mars, which, though lying not far from the circle whose diameter was the axis of Mars' orbit, joining perihelion and aphelion, always fell inside the circle except at those two points. It was a long time before it dawned upon Kepler that the simplest figure falling within the circle except at the two extremities of the diameter, was an ellipse, and it is not clear why his first attempt with an ellipse should have been just as much too narrow as the circle was too wide. The fact remains that he recognised suddenly that halving this error was tantamount to reducing the circle to the ellipse whose eccentricity was that of the old theory, i.e. that in which the sun would be in one focus and the equant in the other.

Having now fitted the ends of both major and minor axes of the ellipse, he leaped to the conclusion that the orbit would fit everywhere.

The practical effect of his clearing of the "second inequality" was to refer the orbit of Mars directly to the sun, and he found that the area between successive distances of Mars from the sun (instead of the sum of the distances) was strictly proportional to the time taken, in short, equal areas were described in equal times (2nd Law) when referred to the sun in the focus of the ellipse (1st Law).

He announced that (1) The planet describes an ellipse, the sun being in one focus; and (2) The straight line joining the planet to the sun sweeps out equal areas in any two equal intervals of time. These are Kepler's first and second Laws though not discovered in that order, and it was at once clear that Ptolemy's "bisection of the excentricity" simply amounted to the fact that the centre of an ellipse bisects the distance between the foci, the sun being in one focus and the angular velocity being uniform about the empty focus. For so many centuries had the fetish of circular motion postponed discovery. It was natural that Kepler should assume that his laws would apply equally to all the planets, but the proof of this, as well as the reason underlying the laws, was only given by Newton, who approached the subject from a totally different standpoint.

This commentary on Mars was published in 1609, the year of the invention of the telescope, and Kepler petitioned the Emperor for further funds to enable him to complete the study of the other planets, but once more there was delay; in 1612 Rudolph died, and his brother Matthias who succeeded him, cared very little for astronomy or even astrology, though Kepler was reappointed to his post of Imperial Mathematician. He left Prague to take up a permanent professorship at the University of Linz. His own account of the circumstances is gloomy enough. He says, "In the first place I could get no money from the Court, and my wife, who had for a long time been suffering from low spirits and despondency, was taken violently ill towards the end of 1610, with the Hungarian fever, epilepsy and phrenitis. She was scarcely convalescent when all my three children were at once attacked with smallpox. Leopold with his army occupied the town beyond the river just as I lost the dearest of my sons, him whose nativity you will find in my book on the new star. The town on this side of the river where I lived was harassed by the Bohemian troops, whose new levies were insubordinate and insolent; to complete the whole, the Austrian army brought the plague with them into the city. I went into Austria and endeavoured to procure the situation which I now hold. Returning in June, I found my wife in a decline from her grief at the death of her son, and on the eve of an infectious fever, and I lost her also within eleven days of my return. Then came fresh annoyance, of course, and her fortune was to be divided with my step-sisters. The Emperor Rudolph would not agree to my departure; vain hopes were given me of being paid from Saxony; my time and money were wasted together, till on the death of the Emperor in 1612, I was named again by his successor, and suffered to depart to Linz."

Being thus left a widower with a ten-year-old daughter Susanna, and a boy Louis of half her age, he looked for a second wife to take charge of them. He has given an account of eleven ladies whose suitability he considered. The first, an intimate friend of his first wife, ultimately declined; one was too old, another an invalid, another too proud of her birth and quarterings, another could do nothing useful, and so on. Number eight kept him guessing for three months, until he tired of her constant indecision, and confided his disappointment to number nine, who was not impressed. Number ten, introduced by a friend, Kepler found exceedingly ugly and enormously fat, and number eleven apparently too young. Kepler then reconsidered one of the earlier ones, disregarding the advice of his friends who objected to her lowly station. She was the orphan daughter of a cabinet-maker, educated for twelve years by favour of the Lady of Stahrenburg, and Kepler writes of her: "Her person and manners are suitable to mine; no pride, no extravagance; she can bear to work; she has a tolerable knowledge of how to manage a family; middle-aged and of a disposition and capability to acquire what she still wants".

Wine from the Austrian vineyards was plentiful and cheap at the time of the marriage, and Kepler bought a few casks for his household. When the seller came to ascertain the quantity, Kepler noticed that no proper allowance was made for the bulging parts, and the upshot of his objections was that he wrote a book on a new method of gauging—one of the earliest specimens of modern analysis, extending the properties of plane figures to segments of cones and cylinders as being "incorporated circles". He was summoned before the Diet at Ratisbon to give his opinion on the Gregorian Reform of the Calendar, and soon afterwards was excommunicated, having fallen foul of the Roman Catholic party at Linz just as he had previously at Gratz, the reason apparently being that he desired to think for himself. Meanwhile his salary was not paid any more regularly than before, and he was forced to supplement it by publishing what he called a "vile prophesying almanac which is scarcely more respectable than begging unless it be because it saves the Emperor's credit, who abandons me entirely, and with all his frequent and recent orders in council, would suffer me to perish with hunger".

In 1617 he was invited to Italy to succeed Magini as Professor of Mathematics at Bologna. Galileo urged him to accept the post, but he excused himself on the ground that he was a German and brought up among Germans with such liberty of speech as he thought might get him into trouble in Italy. In 1619 Matthias died and was succeeded by Ferdinand III, who again retained Kepler in his post. In the same year Kepler reprinted his "Mysterium Cosmographicum," and also published his "Harmonics" in five books dedicated to James I of England. "The first geometrical, on the origin and demonstration of the laws of the figures which produce harmonious proportions; the second, architectonical, on figurate geometry and the congruence of plane and solid regular figures; the third, properly Harmonic, on the derivation of musical proportions from figures, and on the nature and distinction of things relating to song, in opposition to the old theories; the fourth, metaphysical, psychological, and astrological, on the mental essence of Harmonics, and of their kinds in the world, especially on the harmony of rays emanating on the earth from the heavenly bodies, and on their effect in nature and on the sublunary and human soul; the fifth, astronomical and metaphysical, on the very exquisite Harmonics of the celestial motions and the origin of the excentricities in harmonious proportions." The extravagance of his fancies does not appear until the fourth book, in which he reiterates the statement that he was forced to adopt his astrological opinions from direct and positive observation. He despises "The common herd of prophesiers who describe the operations of the stars as if they were a sort of deities, the lords of heaven and earth, and producing everything at their pleasure. They never trouble themselves to consider what means the stars have of working any effects among us on the earth whilst they remain in the sky and send down nothing to us which is obvious to the senses, except rays of light." His own notion is "Like one who listens to a sweet melodious song, and by the gladness of his countenance, by his voice, and by the beating of his hand or foot attuned to the music, gives token that he perceives and approves the harmony: just so does sublunary nature, with the notable and evident emotion of the bowels of the earth, bear like witness to the same feelings, especially at those times when the rays of the planets form harmonious configurations on the earth," and again "The earth is not an animal like a dog, ready at every nod; but more like a bull or an elephant, slow to become angry, and so much the more furious when incensed." He seems to have believed the earth to be actually a living animal, as witness the following: "If anyone who has climbed the peaks of the highest mountains, throw a stone down their very deep clefts, a sound is heard from them; or if he throw it into one of the mountain lakes, which beyond doubt are bottomless, a storm will immediately arise, just as when you thrust a straw into the ear or nose of a ticklish animal, it shakes its head, or runs shudderingly away. What so like breathing, especially of those fish who draw water into their mouths and spout it out again through their gills, as that wonderful tide! For although it is so regulated according to the course of the moon, that, in the preface to my 'Commentaries on Mars,' I have mentioned it as probable that the waters are attracted by the moon, as iron by the loadstone, yet if anyone uphold that the earth regulates its breathing according to the motion of the sun and moon, as animals have daily and nightly alternations of sleep and waking, I shall not think his philosophy unworthy of being listened to; especially if any flexible parts should be discovered in the depths of the earth, to supply the functions of lungs or gills."

In the same book Kepler enlarges again on his views in reference to the basis of astrology as concerned with nativities and the importance of planetary conjunctions. He gives particulars of his own nativity. "Jupiter nearest the nonagesimal had passed by four degrees the trine of Saturn; the Sun and Venus in conjunction were moving from the latter towards the former, nearly in sextiles with both: they were also removing from quadratures with Mars, to which Mercury was closely approaching: the moon drew near to the trine of the same planet, close to the Bull's Eye even in latitude. The 25th degree of Gemini was rising, and the 22nd of Aquarius culminating. That there was this triple configuration on that day—namely the sextile of Saturn and the Sun, the sextile of Mars and Jupiter, and the quadrature of Mercury and Mars, is proved by the change of weather; for after a frost of some days, that very day became warmer, there was a thaw and a fall of rain." This alleged "proof" is interesting as it relies on the same principle which was held to justify the correction of an uncertain birth-time, by reference to illnesses, etc., met with later. Kepler however goes on to say, "If I am to speak of the results of my studies, what, I pray, can I find in the sky, even remotely alluding to it? The learned confess that several not despicable branches of philosophy have been newly extricated or amended or brought to perfection by me: but here my constellations were, not Mercury from the East in the angle of the seventh, and in quadratures with Mars, but Copernicus, but Tycho Brahe, without whose books of observations everything now set by me in the clearest light must have remained buried in darkness; not Saturn predominating Mercury, but my lords the Emperors Rudolph and Matthias, not Capricorn the house of Saturn but Upper Austria, the house of the Emperor, and the ready and unexampled bounty of his nobles to my petition. Here is that corner, not the western one of the horoscope, but on the earth whither, by permission of my Imperial master, I have betaken myself from a too uneasy Court; and whence, during these years of my life, which now tends towards its setting, emanate these Harmonics and the other matters on which I am engaged."

The fifth book contains a great deal of nonsense about the harmony of the spheres; the notes contributed by the several planets are gravely set down, that of Mercury having the greatest resemblance to a melody, though perhaps more reminiscent of a bugle-call. Yet the book is not all worthless for it includes Kepler's Third Law, which he had diligently sought for years. In his own words, "The proportion existing between the periodic times of any two planets is exactly the sesquiplicate proportion of the mean distances of the orbits," or as generally given, "the squares of the periodic times are proportional to the cubes of the mean distances." Kepler was evidently transported with delight and wrote, "What I prophesied two and twenty years ago, as soon as I discovered the five solids among the heavenly orbits,—what I firmly believed long before I had seen Ptolemy's 'Harmonics'—what I had promised my friends in the title of this book, which I named before I was sure of my discovery,—what sixteen years ago I urged as a thing to be sought,—that for which I joined Tycho Brahe, for which I settled in Prague, for which I have devoted the best part of my life to astronomical computations, at length I have brought to light, and have recognised its truth beyond my most sanguine expectations. Great as is the absolute nature of Harmonics, with all its details as set forth in my third book, it is all found among the celestial motions, not indeed in the manner which I imagined (that is not the least part of my delight), but in another very different, and yet most perfect and excellent. It is now eighteen months since I got the first glimpse of light, three months since the dawn, very few days since the unveiled sun, most admirable to gaze on, burst out upon me. Nothing holds me; I will indulge in my sacred fury; I will triumph over mankind by the honest confession that I have stolen the golden vases of the Egyptians to build up a tabernacle for my God far away from the confines of Egypt. If you forgive me, I rejoice, if you are angry, I can bear it; the die is cast, the book is written; to be read either now or by posterity, I care not which; it may well wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer." He gives the date 15th May, 1618, for the completion of his discovery. In his "Epitome of the Copernican Astronomy," he gives his own idea as to the reason for this Third Law. "Four causes concur for lengthening the periodic time. First, the length of the path; secondly, the weight or quantity of matter to be carried; thirdly, the degree of strength of the moving virtue; fourthly, the bulk or space into which is spread out the matter to be moved. The orbital paths of the planets are in the simple ratio of the distances; the weights or quantities of matter in different planets are in the subduplicate ratio of the same distances, as has been already proved; so that with every increase of distance a planet has more matter and therefore is moved more slowly, and accumulates more time in its revolution, requiring already, as it did, more time by reason of the length of the way. The third and fourth causes compensate each other in a comparison of different planets; the simple and subduplicate proportion compound the sesquiplicate proportion, which therefore is the ratio of the periodic times." The only part of this "explanation" that is true is that the paths are in the simple ratio of the distances, the "proof" so confidently claimed being of the circular kind commonly known as "begging the question". It was reserved for Newton to establish the Laws of Motion, to find the law of force that would constrain a planet to obey Kepler's first and second Laws, and to prove that it must therefore also obey the third.

1. This is clearly a maximum at AMC in Fig. 2, when its tangent AC/CM = the eccentricity.