SELECTIONS FROM KEPLERS ASTRONOMIA NOVA Format: Paperback

Johannes Kepler wrote Astronomia Nova (1609) in a singleminded drive to sweep away the ancient and medieval clutter of spheres and orbs and to establish a new truth in astronomy, based on physical causality. Thus a good part of the book is given over to a nontechnical discussion of how planets can be made to move through space by physical forces. This is the theme of the readings in the present module. The selection includes Kepler's Introduction as well as a selection of chapters that develop the physics of planetary motion. In these ground-breaking chapters, the true Kepler emerges, not as a speculative mystic or a number-crunching drudge, but as a first-rate scientific thinker with a wonderfully engaging narrative style.

The translation is quite readable ... Donahue prudently allows Kepler 'the courtesy of supposing that what he writes can be understood' [in Donahue's words], and has managed a translation that preserves a good bit of the style of the Latin: sometimes elevated, frequently jocular, on occasion impassioned. The English almost always seems faithful in tone to the original --Bruce Stephenson, Isis