seminar: Ubi materia, ibi geometria
speaker: Stefano Gattei (Scuola di Alti Studi IMT, Lucca)abstract: At the height of his career, shortly after the publication of Astronomia nova (1609), Johannes Kepler turned his gaze from the immensity of the heavens to the minutiae of earthly phenomena, from the celestial to the (seemingly) trifling. In his Strena seu De niue sexangula, published in 1611, Kepler recognized that the apparently perfect hexagonal form of a few snowflakes that fell on his coat one day in Prague presented a challenge to the new mathematical science that was struggling to birth in his own mind: why six? What was the physical cause of the six? What principle selected six from the other possible numbers? To the historian of ideas Kepler’s little book displays in compact form the antithesis between the medieval outlook and the new mathematical method. Yet the objective scientific aim is dominant. For beneath its humour and allusive style, and apparently casual repetitiveness, it displays a scientific judgement of the highest calibre. Kepler recognizes a genuine problem, discusses several alternative solutions, rejects them all and passes the problem to the chemists for them to solve in the future. The paper explores the contents of Kepler’s little book and, by putting it properly into context, highlights its relevance for the history of science and, more particularly, for the history of mathematics.
timetable:
Tue 6 Dec, 11:30 - 12:30, Sala Conferenze Centro De Giorgi
<< Go back