Johannes Kepler

Wolfgang Osterhage, born in 1948, holds Ph.D.s in Physics and Information Science. He is a consultant to international organisations and corporations, and a lecturer and visiting professor at various institutions in Germany. After many years of professional activity in other countries, he now lives and works as an independent author in the Rhineland.

• Introduction: Scope.- The Order of Things: the quest for world harmony.- Time and Space: historic context and political and economic situation in Middle Europe.- Childhood and Youth (1571-1594): studies and exams in southern Germany; first encounters with Greek mysticism and the work of Copernicus.- Graz –professorship, “Mysterium cosmographicum”, correspondence with Galileo.- Prague –  cooperation and discord with Tycho Brahe, Mars data, Tabulae Rudolphinae, “Astronomia Nova”, first and second law of planetary movements, various publications, the telescope.- Linz – torn between Lutheranism, Calvinism and Catholicism, “Harmonices Mundi”, third law of planetary movements, logarithms.- Between Ulm and Prague - completion of the Tabulae Rudolphinae, encounter with Wallenstein, prognostica.- Sagan – court astrologer; death in Regensburg.- The Order of Things Revisited – the dismantling of world harmony, deconstruction and back to the unification attempts of modern physics.