Kepler's Tübingen: stimulus to a theological mathematics

Abstract

After the Reformation the University of Tubingen became the central training institution for pastors, teachers and administrators in the Duchy of Wurttemberg. This important role shaped the university and encouraged discussion about the merits of teaching the traditional, Aristotelian, curriculum in a university which was dedicated to imparting Lutheran ideals. The roots of this discussion are found in the work of Philip Melanchthon, an important influence in Tubingen. Melanchthon defends the study of philosophy because it prepares people for an orderly and ethical life. An essential part of this study is astronomy, since in Melanchthon's view the observation of the regular movements of the skies can raise the human mind to God and bring an appreciation of the order which God had intended for the world.Melanchthon's defence of the study of astronomy was probably better known to astronomers than to theologians. However, the work of Melanchthon's student Jacob Heerbrand (professor of theology 1557-1600) abounds with references to the 'Book of Nature' and its manifestation of divine providence. The parallel drawn by Heerbrand between the 'Book of Nature' and the 'Book of the Scriptures' encourages the use of similar methods in the interpretation of both: a careful study of what is actually 'written' in the book, in the language in which the book was 'written'. In his biblical justification for the making of exact observations in astronomy, Michael Maestlin (professor of astronomy 1584-1631) draws on these ideas together with the wisdom tradition of the Old Testament, which explicitly teaches that the structures of the natural world can reveal its creator.Although Melanchthon exhorted students to study the heavens, he in fact subordinated the resulting conclusions to the authority of Aristotle, although he, like most theologians, submitted Aristotle's pronouncements to the Bible. Not all his contemporaries were prepared to bow to Aristotelian supremacy in physics. Their distrust of scholastic philosophy led some sixteenthcentury thinkers to seek a philosophical basis for certainty and to assert the primacy of mathematical over rhetorical proof. However, this could lead to difficulties. Maestlin argued that his observation of the Stella nova of 1572 and the comets of 1577-78 and 1580 had demonstrated that these phenomena were above the moon, in contradiction to the teaching of Aristotle, who must therefore be wrong. He drew his conclusions on the basis of Aristotelian principles of philosophical demonstration taught by Andreas Planer (professor of logic 1578-1606).The example of Maestlin shows that the biblical exhortation to study the heavens, coupled with the use of Aristotelian logic in the derivation of authoritative proof, was in the late sixteenth century already producing results which conflicted with Aristotelian physics, and, ultimately, also with the Bible. For Kepler and his contemporaries the Protestant emphasis on a literal interpretation of the Bible and the seeking of God's providence in nature could easily act as the stimulus to an astronomy in praise of God. The intellectual problems which were to arise from taking seriously the biblical call for observation of the heavens were, however, already in the making.