The teachers of Johannes Kepler. Theological impulses to the study of the heavens

Résumé En

The significance of Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) in the history of astronomy - or indeed the history of physics - cannot be doubted. In discovering and formulating his laws Kepler abandoned the traditional, Aristotelian teaching that motion in the heavens must, by virtue of the perfection of the heavenly bodies, be circular, and deduced that the planet Mars moved in an elliptical orbit with the sun at one focus. This rejection of accepted principles or hypotheses in favour of the interpretation of observation is a function of a number of factors. This paper argues that one of these was a theological impulse, acknowledged by Kepler himself, which arose from the milieu in which Kepler had been educated. The impulse to a precise study cannot, however, be understood simply as the Lutheran University of Tübingen taught a theology of nature which could be used to justify an exact astronomical study of the heavens. This approach view had its opponents, and Kepler's position can and should be placed within a spectrum of the views propounded by his teachers.