Equal Areas in Equal Times |
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3 August 2023
My memories of learning astrophysics are happy ones. Celestial bodies led us to a number of important laws of physics. Copernicus made the persuasive argument for a heliocentric solar system, and was opposed my one of the best precision astronomers of the time, Brahe. Brahe famously died after drinking too much at a party, leaving his assistant Kepler with a trove of data. Kepler took that data and used it to find a mathematical model for the orbits of the planets around the sun: they traced equal areas in equal times along elliptical paths. Not even pure circles! John Banville took a wealth of historical data about the man, Kepler, and created a fictionalized account of the man's life. He recreates dialogue, fills in details, and adds an inner monologue. It seems a bit strange at times to call it fiction. Half way through Banville even switches from a narrative form to just letters from Kepler to various people telling the story, which kind of makes me think that he couldn't decide the form to write it in and so went with both. David Sobel's Galileo's Daughter is much more consistant in being just letters, but he also stayed true enough to the source material to be classified non-fiction.
Throughout Banville tells the story from Kepler's perspective. And Kepler doesn't come off so much as an admirable character as a brilliant one. Banville does some element descriptive work telling us about what Prague, Graz, etc. was like during that period. He also gives us a window to what it was like being a protestant during the Reformation in central Europe: dangerous! Not having read any other biographies of Kepler I don't if Banville's account is better or worse than a straight-up biography would be. I enjoyed it, but for that reason I don't know that I'd recommmend it.
