Blog @ Work

Stress management & Johannes Keppler

The nineteenth day of "30-Day Bloggers Group"  [13+]

Talk Tuesday!
What do you do to make yourself happy, while knowing it irritates others?

In order to survive life and make something out of this crazy ride we call living I have to apply some stress management. That means I have to take care of my time, my energy and my resources very carefully in order not to burn out.

In reality that means I have to say no to some offers or do things in a slower pace people are used to coming from me. I have to disappoint them sometimes. This is no fun, but I do it anyway in order to keep control over my affairs the best I know how. I can’t please everybody and I have to take care of myself since I am the only one who can do that.

Pick something that happened on this day and talk about it in your blog. I've included a link to give you some ideas. (BCoFs)

http://www.onthisday.com/events/july/19

1595 Astronomer Johannes Kepler has an epiphany and develops his theory of the geometrical basis of the universe.

I once came across the historical novel Keppler by John Banville and read a few pages. It was winner of "The Guardian" Fiction Prize in 1981. I know it was astonishing but I never finished the book. I wished I had.

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.

Kepler experienced 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 (the novel Keppler).

Kepler claimed to have had an epiphany on July 19, 1595, while teaching in Graz, demonstrating the periodic conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the zodiac; he realized that regular polygons bound one inscribed and one circumscribed circle at definite ratios, which, he reasoned, might be the geometrical basis of the universe.

Johannes Keppler was first to correctly explain planetary motion, thereby, becoming founder of celestial mechanics and the first "natural laws" in the modern sense; being universal, verifiable, precise.

All too fascinating. I will try to fetch that historical novel from somewhere and read it this time!