SOURCE: "Johannes Kepler's Universe: Its Physics and Metaphysics," in Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought: Kepler to Einstein, Harvard University Press, 1973, pp. 69-90.

In the following essay, originally published in 1956 and reprinted in 1976, Holton discusses why Kepler is often difficult to read and how his digressive style primarily reflects the difficulties seventeenth-century scientists encountered in making the transition from medieval to modern explanations of the cosmos. He further asserts that Kepler's juxtaposition of mathematical, astronomical, and metaphysical ideas are really a manifestation of his simultaneously seeing "the universe as physical machine, the universe as mathematical harmony, and the universe as central theological order."

The important publications of Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) preceded those of Galileo, Descartes, and Newton in time, and in some respects they are even more revealing. And yet, Kepler has been strangely neglected and misunderstood. Very few of his voluminous writings have been translated into English.¹ In...