It's All Greek : Three of Kepler's Book Titles
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | webová stránka ročníku 24 (2021) |
| Keywords | Kepler; Greek; learned Neo-Latin; Dioptrice; Harmonice mundi; Astronomia nova aitiologetos; the word aitiologetos |
| Description | Three of Kepler’s major works have Greek words in their titles: Astronomia nova "aitiologétos", Dioptrice, and Harmonice mundi. We perform a linguistic analysis, examine the usage of Greek terms in Neo-Latin literature, and conjecture Kepler’s particular reasons for including these words prominently in his book titles. In particular, we show why the letter ‘c’ in dioptrice and harmonice should be pronounced as a hard ‘k’, and that the abbreviated title should be Harmonice and not harmonices. We pay special attention to Kepler’s neologism "aitiologétos", examining its general context and the potential sources of Kepler’s inspiration. We suggest that its least unfaithful English translation is ‘etiological’. |
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