Meanwhile the projected Rudolphine Tables were continually delayed by the want of money. Kepler’s nominal salary should have been ample for his expenses, increased though they were by his growing family, but in the depleted state of the treasury there were many who objected to any payment for such “unpractical” purposes. This particular attitude has not been confined to any special epoch or country, but the obvious result in Kepler’s case was to compel him to apply himself to less expensive matters than the Planetary Tables, and among these must be included not only the horoscopes or nativities, which owing to his reputation were always in demand, but also other writings which probably did not pay so well. In 1604 he published “A Supplement to Vitellion,” containing the earliest known reasonable theory of optics, and especially of dioptrics or vision through lenses. He compared the mechanism of the eye with that of Porta’s “Camera Obscura,” but made no attempt to explain how the image formed on the retina is understood by the brain. He went carefully into the question of refraction, the importance of which Tycho had been the first astronomer to recognise, though he only applied it at low altitudes, and had not arrived at a true theory or accurate values. Kepler wasted a good deal of time and ingenuity on trial theories. He would invariably start with some hypothesis, and work out the effect. He would then test it by experiment, and when it failed would at once recognise that his hypothesis was a priori bound to fail. He rarely seems to have noticed the fatal objections in time to save himself trouble. He would then at once start again on a new hypothesis, equally gratuitous and equally unfounded. It never seems to have occurred to him that there might be a better way of approaching a problem. Among the lines he followed in this particular investigation were, first, that refraction depends only on the angle of incidence, which, he says, cannot be correct as it would thus be the same for all refracting substances; next, that it depended also on the density of the medium. This was a good shot, but he unfortunately assumed that all rays passing into a denser medium would apparently penetrate it to a depth depending only on the medium, which means that there is a constant ratio between the tangents, instead of the sines, of the inclination of the incident and refracted rays to the normal. Experiment proved that this gave too high values for refraction near the vertical compared with those near the horizon, so Kepler “went off at a tangent” and tried a totally new set of ideas, which all reduced to the absurdity of a refraction which vanished at the horizon. These were followed by another set, involving either a constant amount of refraction or one becoming infinite. He then came to the conclusion that these geometrical methods must fail because the refracted image is not real, and determined to try by analogy only, comparing the equally unreal image formed by a mirror with that formed by refraction in water. He noticed how the bottom of a vessel containing water appears to rise more and more away from the vertical, and at once jumped to the analogy of a concave mirror, which magnifies the image, while a convex mirror was likened to a rarer medium. This line of attack also failed him, as did various attempts to find relations between his measurements of refraction and conic sections, and he broke off suddenly with a diatribe against Tycho’s critics, whom he likened to blind men disputing about colours. Not many years later Snell discovered the true law of refraction, but Kepler’s contribution to the subject, though he failed to discover the actual law, includes several of the adopted “by-laws”. He noted that atmospheric refraction would alter with the height of the atmosphere and with temperature, and also recognised the fact that rainbow colours depend on the angle of refraction, whether seen in the rainbow itself, or in dew, glass, water, or any similar medium. He thus came near to anticipating Newton. Before leaving the subject of Kepler’s optics it will be well to recall that a few years later after hearing of Galileo’s telescope, Kepler suggested that for astronomical purposes two convex lenses should be used, so that there should be a real image where measuring wires could be placed for reference. He did not carry out the idea himself, and it was left to the Englishman Gascoigne to produce the first instrument on this “Keplerian” principle, universally known as the Astronomical Telescope.
In 1606 came a second treatise on the new star, discussing various theories to account for its appearance, and refusing to accept the notion that it was a “fortuitous concourse of atoms”. This was followed in 1607 by a treatise on comets, suggested by the comet appearing that year, known as Halley’s comet after its next return. He regarded comets as “planets” moving in straight lines, never having examined sufficient observations of any comet to convince himself that their paths are curved. If he had not assumed that they were external to the system and so could not be expected to return, he might have anticipated Halley’s discovery. Another suggestive remark of his was to the effect that the planets must be self-luminous, as otherwise Mercury and Venus, at any rate, ought to show phases. This was put to the test not long afterwards by means of Galileo’s telescope.
In 1607 Kepler rushed into print with an alleged observation of Mercury crossing the sun, but after Galileo’s discovery of sun-spots, Kepler at once cheerfully retracted his observation of “Mercury,” and so far was he from being annoyed or bigoted in his views, that he warmly adopted Galileo’s side, in contrast to most of those whose opinions were liable to be overthrown by the new discoveries. Maestlin and others of Kepler’s friends took the opposite view.
[Chapter V.]
Kepler’s Laws.
When Gilbert of Colchester, in his “New Philosophy,” founded on his researches in magnetism, was dealing with tides, he did not suggest that the moon attracted the water, but that “subterranean spirits and humours, rising in sympathy with the moon, cause the sea also to rise and flow to the shores and up rivers”. It appears that an idea, presented in some such way as this, was more readily received than a plain statement. This so-called philosophical method was, in fact, very generally applied, and Kepler, who shared Galileo’s admiration for Gilbert’s work, adopted it in his own attempt to extend the idea of magnetic attraction to the planets. The general idea of “gravity” opposed the hypothesis of the rotation of the earth on the ground that loose objects would fly off: moreover, the latest refinements of the old system of planetary motions necessitated their orbits being described about a mere empty point. Kepler very strongly combated these notions, pointing out the absurdity of the conclusions to which they tended, and proceeded in set terms to describe his own theory.
“Every corporeal substance, so far forth as it is corporeal, has a natural fitness for resting in every place where it may be situated by itself beyond the sphere of influence of a body cognate with it. Gravity is a mutual affection between cognate bodies towards union or conjunction (similar in kind to the magnetic virtue), so that the earth attracts a stone much rather than the stone seeks the earth. Heavy bodies (if we begin by assuming the earth to be in the centre of the world) are not carried to the centre of the world in its quality of centre of the world, but as to the centre of a cognate round body, namely, the earth; so that wheresoever the earth may be placed, or whithersoever it may be carried by its animal faculty, heavy bodies will always be carried towards it. If the earth were not round, heavy bodies would not tend from every side in a straight line towards the centre of the earth, but to different points from different sides. If two stones were placed in any part of the world near each other, and beyond the sphere of influence of a third cognate body, these stones, like two magnetic needles, would come together in the intermediate point, each approaching the other by a space proportional to the comparative mass of the other. If the moon and earth were not retained in their orbits by their animal force or some other equivalent, the earth would mount to the moon by a fifty-fourth part of their distance, and the moon fall towards the earth through the other fifty-three parts, and they would there meet, assuming, however, that the substance of both is of the same density. If the earth should cease to attract its waters to itself all the waters of the sea would he raised and would flow to the body of the moon. The sphere of the attractive virtue which is in the moon extends as far as the earth, and entices up the waters; but as the moon flies rapidly across the zenith, and the waters cannot follow so quickly, a flow of the ocean is occasioned in the torrid zone towards the westward. If the attractive virtue of the moon extends as far as the earth, it follows with greater reason that the attractive virtue of the earth extends as far as the moon and much farther; and, in short, nothing which consists of earthly substance anyhow constituted although thrown up to any height, can ever escape the powerful operation of this attractive virtue. Nothing which consists of corporeal matter is absolutely light, but that is comparatively lighter which is rarer, either by its own nature, or by accidental heat. And it is not to be thought that light bodies are escaping to the surface of the universe while they are carried upwards, or that they are not attracted by the earth. They are attracted, but in a less degree, and so are driven outwards by the heavy bodies; which being done, they stop, and are kept by the earth in their own place. But although the attractive virtue of the earth extends upwards, as has been said, so very far, yet if any stone should be at a distance great enough to become sensible compared with the earth’s diameter, it is true that on the motion of the earth such a stone would not follow altogether; its own force of resistance would be combined with the attractive force of the earth, and thus it would extricate itself in some degree from the motion of the earth.” The above passage from the Introduction to Kepler’s “Commentaries on the Motion of Mars,” always regarded as his most valuable work, must have been known to Newton, so that no such incident as the fall of an apple was required to provide a necessary and sufficient explanation of the genesis of his Theory of Universal Gravitation. Kepler’s glimpse at such a theory could have been no more than a glimpse, for he went no further with it. This seems a pity, as it is far less fanciful than many of his ideas, though not free from the “virtues” and “animal faculties,” that correspond to Gilbert’s “spirits and humours”. We must, however, proceed to the subject of Mars, which was, as before noted, the first important investigation entrusted to Kepler on his arrival at Prague.
The time taken from one opposition of Mars to the next is decidedly unequal at different parts of his orbit, so that many oppositions must be used to determine the mean motion. The ancients had noticed that what was called the “second inequality,” due as we now know to the orbital motion of the earth, only vanished when earth, sun, and planet were in line, i.e. at the planet’s opposition; therefore they used oppositions to determine the mean motion, but deemed it necessary to apply a correction to the true opposition to reduce to mean opposition, thus sacrificing part of the advantage of using oppositions. Tycho and Longomontanus had followed this method in their calculations from Tycho’s twenty years’ observations. Their aim was to find a position of the “equant,” such that these observations would show a constant angular motion about it; and that the computed positions would agree in latitude and longitude with the actual observed positions. When Kepler arrived he was told that their longitudes agreed within a couple of minutes of arc, but that something was wrong with the latitudes. He found, however, that even in longitude their positions showed discordances ten times as great as they admitted, and so, to clear the ground of assumptions as far as possible, he determined to use true oppositions. To this Tycho objected, and Kepler had great difficulty in convincing him that the new move would be any improvement, but undertook to prove to him by actual examples that a false position of the orbit could by adjusting the equant be made to fit the longitudes within five minutes of arc, while giving quite erroneous values of the latitudes and second inequalities. To avoid the possibility of further objection he carried out this demonstration separately for each of the systems of Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Tycho. For the new method he noticed that great accuracy was required in the reduction of the observed places of Mars to the ecliptic, and for this purpose the value obtained for the parallax by Tycho’s assistants fell far short of the requisite accuracy. Kepler therefore was obliged to recompute the parallax from the original observations, as also the position of the line of nodes and the inclination of the orbit. The last he found to be constant, thus corroborating his theory that the plane of the orbit passed through the sun. He repeated his calculations no fewer than seventy times (and that before the invention of logarithms), and at length adopted values for the mean longitude and longitude of aphelion. He found no discordance greater than two minutes of arc in Tycho’s observed longitudes in opposition, but the latitudes, and also longitudes in other parts of the orbit were much more discordant, and he found to his chagrin that four years’ work was practically wasted. Before making a fresh start he looked for some simplification of the labour; and determined to adopt Ptolemy’s assumption known as the principle of the bisection of the excentricity. Hitherto, since Ptolemy had given no reason for this assumption, Kepler had preferred not to make it, only taking for granted that the centre was at some point on the line called the excentricity (see [Figs. 1, 2]).
A marked improvement in residuals was the result of this step, proving, so far, the correctness of Ptolemy’s principle, but there still remained discordances amounting to eight minutes of arc. Copernicus, who had no idea of the accuracy obtainable in observations, would probably have regarded such an agreement as remarkably good; but Kepler refused to admit the possibility of an error of eight minutes in any of Tycho’s observations. He thereupon vowed to construct from these eight minutes a new planetary theory that should account for them all. His repeated failures had by this time convinced him that no uniformly described circle could possibly represent the motion of Mars. Either the orbit could not be circular, or else the angular velocity could not be constant about any point whatever. He determined to attack the “second inequality,” i.e. the optical illusion caused by the earth’s annual motion, but first revived an old idea of his own that for the sake of uniformity the sun, or as he preferred to regard it, the earth, should have an equant as well as the planets. From the irregularities of the solar motion he soon found that this was the case, and that the motion was uniform about a point on the line from the sun to the centre of the earth’s orbit, such that the centre bisected the distance from the sun to the “Equant”; this fully supported Ptolemy’s principle. Clearly then the earth’s linear velocity could not be constant, and Kepler was encouraged to revive another of his speculations as to a force which was weaker at greater distances. He found the velocity greater at the nearer apse, so that the time over an equal arc at either apse was proportional to the distance. He conjectured that this might prove to be true for arcs at all parts of the orbit, and to test this he divided the orbit into 360 equal parts, and calculated the distances to the points of division. Archimedes had obtained an approximation to the area of a circle by dividing it radially into a very large number of triangles, and Kepler had this device in mind. He found that the sums of successive distances from his 360 points were approximately proportional to the times from point to point, and was thus enabled to represent much more accurately the annual motion of the earth which produced the second inequality of Mars, to whose motion he now returned. Three points are sufficient to define a circle, so he took three observed positions of Mars and found a circle; he then took three other positions, but obtained a different circle, and a third set gave yet another. It thus began to appear that the orbit could not be a circle. He next tried to divide into 360 equal parts, as he had in the case of the earth, but the sums of distances failed to fit the times, and he realised that the sums of distances were not a good measure of the area of successive triangles. He noted, however, that the errors at the apses were now smaller than with a central circular orbit, and of the opposite sign, so he determined to try whether an oval orbit would fit better, following a suggestion made by Purbach in the case of Mercury, whose orbit is even more eccentric than that of Mars, though observations were too scanty to form the foundation of any theory. Kepler gave his fancy play in the choice of an oval, greater at one end than the other, endeavouring to satisfy some ideas about epicyclic motion, but could not find a satisfactory curve. He then had the fortunate idea of trying an ellipse with the same axis as his tentative oval. Mars now appeared too slow at the apses instead of too quick, so obviously some intermediate ellipse must be sought between the trial ellipse and the circle on the same axis. At this point the “long arm of coincidence” came into play. Half-way between the apses lay the mean distance, and at this position the error was half the distance between the ellipse and the circle, amounting to .00429 of a radius. With these figures in his mind, Kepler looked up the greatest optical inequality of Mars, the angle between the straight lines from Mars to the Sun and to the centre of the circle.[3] The secant of this angle was 1.00429, so that he noted that an ellipse reduced from the circle in the ratio of 1.00429 to 1 would fit the motion of Mars at the mean distance as well as the apses.