1. Although this work is historical in nature, it will not focus on a simple enumeration of facts from the history of science and, basically, not on recognition of the merits of the great natural scientist. We need historical examples only to illustrate a certain point of view on the emergence and development of natural science theories. At the same time, we will have the opportunity to dwell in more detail on the importance that the problematic has for modern science, which was clearly revealed in the particular era we are considering – in the 17th century.
In contrast to the purely empirical point of view, according to which the laws of nature can be practically reliably extracted from experimental data alone, many physicists have recently begun to emphasize again the role played by the focus of attention and intuition in ideas and concepts, as a rule, far going beyond pure experience and necessary to build a system of laws of nature, i.e., a natural science theory. With such a not purely empirical approach, which we will join, the question arises: what should be the bridge that establishes at least some kind of connection between sensory perception, on the one hand, and logical concepts, on the other. All consistent thinkers come to the conclusion that pure logic is fundamentally unable to establish this connection. The most satisfactory solution, apparently, is to instead of trying to establish such a connection, introduce the postulate of order in the Universe, independent of our arbitrariness and different from the world of phenomena. Whether they are talking about the “reflection of things in ideas” or “the essence of metaphysical, that is, existing in themselves things”, the connection between sensory perception and idea remains a consequence of the fact that both the soul of the knower and the cognized one in sensations are subordinate to a certain order, which is considered objective.
Any incomplete knowledge of this order, which prevails in nature, leads to the formulation of statements, on the one hand, corresponding to the world of phenomena, and on the other, going beyond it, since they use common logical concepts that “idealize” this world. The process of cognition of nature – just like the sensation of happiness experienced by a person in cognition, i.e., when his mind learns new knowledge – is apparently based on the correspondence, coincidence of pre-existing, internal images of human thinking and external things and their essences . As you know, such views on the knowledge of nature go back to Plato and, as we will see, clearly stand out with Kepler. Indeed, Kepler speaks of ideas that exist in God’s spirit and are transmitted in the act of creation to the human soul as a likeness of God. These prototypes, which the soul can perceive with the help of an innate instinct, Kepler calls the prototypes. Kepler’s prototypes largely coincide with those introduced into modern psychology by K.G. Jung “elemental images”, or archetypes, acting as “instinctive representations.” Modern psychology, having proved that cognition is a long process that begins in the field of the unconscious long before the rational formulation of the subject of cognition, has drawn attention to the preconscious, “archaic” stage of cognition. At this stage, instead of clear and concise concepts, images saturated with vivid emotional content come to the forefront, which are not thought, but contemplated clearly and directly. Since these images are “an expression of a foreseeable, but still unknown entity”, they, in accordance with the introduction of K.G. Jung’s definition of a symbol can be called symbolic. In this world of symbolic images, archetypes act as ordering operators and formative factors, and at the same time play the role of that same sought-after bridge between sensory perception and ideas. Therefore, they are important prerequisites for the emergence of natural science theories. However, care should also be taken to transfer a priori knowledge to the realm of the conscious and establish its connection with rationally formulated ideas.
2. The rationalistic mindset that has spread among natural scientists since the 18th century led to the fact that the latent processes that accompanied the development of natural science, although they always took place and invariably had a decisive influence, were essentially not taken into account, that is, remained in the field of the unconscious. On the other hand, in the Middle Ages and up to the beginning of a new time, there was no natural science in the full sense. Everything was only at the already mentioned pre-scientific stage of the magical-symbolic description of nature. As an example, alchemy can serve as an example of such a description; its psychological interpretation is the subject of detailed research by K.G. Cabin boy. Therefore, my attention will be directed to the 17th century, when, as a result of tremendous spiritual efforts, the natural-scientific thinking grew from the mother body of the magico-animistic approach to the study of nature (in those days a completely new one). I believe that the figure of Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), whose ideas mark an important intermediate stage between the old magical-symbolic and modern quantitative-mathematical description of nature, is especially suitable for illustrating the connection between archetypal, notions and natural science theories.(1).
Much of what was later critically separated from each other in those days was still a single whole: the world view was not yet divided into religious and scientific. Religious utterances, the almost mathematical symbol of the trinity, certain optic points of the time, serious achievements in the theory of vision, in particular, an indication that the retina should be the perceiving organ of the eye, are all contained in one book, Ad Vitellionem Paralipomena “). Kepler was an avid advocate of the Konernikan heliocentric system; he wrote the first comprehensive textbook written on this subject: “A Summary of Copernican Astronomy” (“Epitome astronomiae Copernicanae”). Below we dwell in detail on the connection of his heliocentric views (I deliberately set them out in such a way as to emphasize the influence of his religious beliefs) with the special form of his Protestant-Christian religiosity and with its archetypal representations and symbols. Based on heliocentric views, Kepler formulated three famous laws of planetary motion: 1) orbits are ellipses with the Sun in one of the tricks (in the work “De motibus stellae Maitis” – “The motion of the star Mars”); 2) the law of squares (in the same work – “De motibus stellae Martis”); 3) the circulation period τ is proportional to a3 / 2, where a is the semimajor axis (in the work – “Harmonice Mundi”, book V). Soon after its discovery, these laws, now included in all textbooks, made it possible to lay the foundation upon which Newton (2) He built his theory of gravitation, namely, he formulated the law of decrease in the force of attraction inversely with the square of the distance between the heavy masses. However, the laws Kepler found (the third law was found after years of effort) were by no means what he originally intended to find. Kepler was fascinated by the old Pythagorean idea of “music of the spheres,” which played a considerable role in alchemy in his time, and he tried to find the same proportions in the movement of planets that are found in the harmonious sound of tones and in the forms of regular polyhedra. For him, the true spiritual heir to the Pythagoreans, all beauty lay in the right proportions, for, as he said, “geometria est archetypus pulchritudinis mundi” (geometry is a prototype of the beauty of the world). This basic position contains both Kepler’s strength and its limitations: his ideas about the correct bodies and harmonious proportions did not find their full confirmation in the planetary system, and the direction of research developed by his contemporary Galileo, who paid attention to the constancy of the acceleration of bodies with free fall, it was completely alien to Kepler’s mindset. It is backward: after all, at that time, the rejection of ideas about the animation of the material world, which ended only in the “Beginnings” of Newton, had not yet achieved any significant progress. Kepler’s planets were still living beings endowed with an individual soul, and since the Earth had lost its special position among other planets, he had to postulate the existence of anima terrae (the soul of the Earth). We will see that the souls of celestial bodies play a significant role in Kepler’s views on astronomy. And yet, the rejection of ideas about the animation of the material world with Kepler has already begun. True, in several places he mentions the alchemical world soul resting in substance – anima mundi. It is she who determines the appearance of new stars (“New in the constellation Ophiuchus”, chap. 24 – “De Stella nova in pedeserpentarii”). The receptacle of this soul, that is, the place where it is found in especially strong concentration, is the Sun. Nevertheless, it is clearly seen that the world soul in Kepler’s ideas is nothing more than a kind of relic, a relic and, unlike the individual souls of individual celestial bodies, plays a subordinate role. Although the influence of Paracelsus and his students on Kepler’s ideas is undeniable, the difference between Kepler’s natural science and the magical-symbolic thinking of alchemists is felt so strongly that the famous alchemist and member of the Rosicrucian order Floodd opened up a fierce polemic against the Kepler’s main work “Peace Harmony” “(” Harmonices mundi “). In section 6, we will return to this controversy in which two fundamentally opposed spiritual worlds clashed. Before proceeding to a detailed presentation of Kepler’s ideas, we give brief biographical information for orientation in the chronology of his life. Kepler was born in 1571 in the small Württemberg town of Weil. He was brought up in the spirit of Protestantism and at the insistence of his parents was to become a priest, but soon after familiarizing himself with the Copernican teaching, he came into conflict with the prevailing evangelical theology in Württemberg. Mestlin, his teacher of mathematics and astronomy, helped him gain a teacher’s place in Graz. Kepler’s first work, The Secret of the Universe (Mysterium cosmographicum), which he sent from Graz in the hope that it would be printed in Tübingen, brought much new trouble to Mestlip. The local senate opposed its publication, since the underlying theory of the Earth’s motion could harm the views set forth in Scripture; however, in the end, the difficulties were overcome, and the work was published. But here for Kepler new trials came: Ferdinand II, the ruler of Styria, brutally pursued the reformation in his lands. As a Protestant, Kepler was forced to leave the country under pain of death. Fortunately, he managed to establish contact with Tycho Brahe, who, after the death of his patron king of Denmark, Frederick II, accepted the invitation of Emperor Rudolph II and in 1599 moved from his famous observatory Uraniborg on the island of Hven to Prague. An invitation from Tycho Brahe followed that same year, just at the time Kepler was expelled from Graz. The joint work of both astronomers in Prague was extremely fruitful. True, two years later Tycho died; however, using Tycho’s precise observations, Kepler was able to derive his first two laws. The circles were replaced by ellipses (1609 g) – a great revolution in astronomy happened! After the death of Rudolph II, Kepler moved to Linz. He had to spend a lot of energy to protect his mother from accusations of witchcraft (one of Kepler’s mother’s neighbors fell ill and claimed that she had allegedly bewitched her). In the end, Kepler managed to save his mother from torture and a bonfire. In 1619, when Kepler published his main work, De Harmonices mundi, Ferdinand II assumed the imperial throne. The persecution of the Protestants intensified, and in 1626 Kepler was forced to leave his place in Linz. After negotiations with Wallenstein, who at that time was ousted and then killed, Kepler went to Regensburg in 1630, intending to demand that the Reichstag satisfy his financial claims. His health was already undermined. He did not endure the ordeals and worries associated with his move to Regensburg. He was buried at the gates of the city. The Thirty Years War almost immediately erased even the traces of his grave.
3. Much more important is Kepler’s grave, his ideas openly set forth in his well-preserved works. To a more detailed consideration of them as documents of the era that have come down to us in spite of all the political and religious turmoil of the bloody period in the history of science, we now want to proceed.
Kepler’s archetypal representations are hierarchically ordered – so that at the highest level is a triune Christian deity devoid of any kind of visualization, and any subsequent stage in one sense or another is an image of a higher level. At the same time, Kepler proceeded from the doctrine of “signatura rerum” – the sign of things, developed by Agrippa from Nettesheim and Paracelsus and his followers. According to this doctrine, which arose in the Middle Ages and is closely connected with the old idea of the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm, things have a hidden essence that manifests itself in their external form. Therefore, the external form indicates a directly not observed layer of reality. In the most perfect way, embodying the essence of God himself (“idea ipsius essentiae”), Kepler considered a three-dimensional sphere. Even in his youthful work “The Secret of the Universe” (3) he wrote: “The image of the triune god is a spherical surface, namely: the god-father in the center, the god-son on the surface and the holy spirit – in a symmetrical relationship between the center and the spherical surface described around it.” According to Kepler, the movement from the center to the periphery, or emanation, should mean the symbol of creation, and the curved surface of the sphere – the eternal being of God. The values originally invented by the creator (Quanta or Quantitates ») are curved, a symbol of the spiritual or mental. Consequently, the curved is more perfect than the direct one, serving as a symbol of the material world and of everything earthly. This conclusion allows us to come to the following quote from Prince. IV “Harmonies of the world.” In addition, it can also be concluded from it that in the Kepler’s hierarchical ordering, the human spirit refers to the divine spirit in the same way as the circle to the sphere.
From this it follows first of all that a straight line, described when a point moves from the center to any one point on the surface (sphere), means the beginning of creation, like the eternal conception of a son (symbolized by rays drawn from the center to an infinite number of points on the entire surface; the latter is formed by these infinitely many lines of exactly the same length). The straight is an element of bodily form. Being carried out not only in length, but also in width, she herself gives an idea of a certain bodily form, forming a plane. The intersection of a sphere and a plane is a circle – an inherited image of a creative spirit that must lead the body. The circle is to the sphere in the same way that the human spirit is to the divine spirit, the line is to the surface (both are arbitrarily curved); however, to the plane containing it, the circle is in the same relation as exists between the disjoint and disparate curve and straight line. The circle at the same time belongs to the secant plane, forming its boundary, and to the truncated sphere, being the place of their meeting, just as the spirit is also enclosed in the body, being the beginning connecting its external forms, and in God, being a radiance emanating from the divine face to „ body, and thus possessing a more noble nature. Therefore, the circle is the beginning, establishing harmonious proportions, their highest source and at the same time is the ultimate abstraction, because neither the circle of any particular size, nor such an imperfect circle, which are the material, perceived circles, does not have the image of God’s spirit, and, most importantly, the abstract circle should be as far from everything material and sensual as it is far from each other and at the same time abstract concepts of a curve – a symbol of the spiritual – and a straight line, meaning the corporal. This reason is enough for us to look for a source of harmonious relations for objects accessible only to the soul, only among completely abstract quantities (4).
Such a picture of the relationship of the human spirit to the spirit of God is in full accordance with the already mentioned point of view on knowledge, as on the coincidence of external impressions with pre-existing internal images. Kepler, addressing his beloved author Proclus, formulates this point of view very clearly, as can be seen from the following passage:
To know is to compare what is perceived from the outside with internal ideas and make a judgment about how much both coincide. Proclus perfectly expressed this with the word “awakening,” as if from a dream. Indeed, just as what we met makes us recall what we knew before, in the same way, sensory perceptions, when they are known, contribute to the awakening of previously existing internal images, and they begin to glow in the soul, while before they were hidden in potency. Where did these images come from? All ideas, or abstract forms of thinking that I just talked about, are embedded in a creature with the ability to know, and are not gleaned from conversations, but depend on a natural instinct and are innate, like the number of leaves inherent in different plant species from birth, or the number of cells with seeds in an apple (5).
Later we will return to Kepler’s views on plant morphology. Kepler always uses the notion of “instinct” in the passage, in the sense of “perceptive ability,” and he refers to the perception of quantitatively defined geometric shapes. Geometry is of the highest value to him. “Traces of geometry are imprinted in the world as if geometry was a prototype of the world” (6). “Geometric figures are eternal, geometric theorems are always true in God’s spirit. Consequently, quantities (quanta) serve as a prototype of the world. ” (7). “The human spirit is the image of the divine spirit and bears the imprint of the geometric ideas of its prototype from the moment people arose” (8).
Let us now cite two quotes from the already mentioned book IV, “Harmonies of the world”.
The mathematical conclusions, on the basis of which the material world must be built, are eternal, as God is eternal. God is soul and spirit in the highest sense of the word. Christians know that human souls are created in the image and likeness of God … “Mathematical conclusions” are inherent in the soul from creation “(” eius iuerat animae “) (9).
So we ask, how can one comprehend the essence of something that the spirit did not know and could not know if it were devoid of sensory perception of external things? The answer to this question was given in his philosophical works by Proclus. Now, if I’m not mistaken, we use the word “instinct” for this, because the human spirit and other souls are characterized by instinctive knowledge of quantities („quantitas”), although it cannot give them any meaning. The human spirit in itself knows what a straight or equal distance from a point is, and therefore can imagine what a circle is. But as soon as he can, he can even earlier seek evidence and, therefore, perform the function of the eye in contemplation (if he needs it) of the drawing. Of course, for the spirit, if it did not have an eye, it would take an eye to know external things, and the laws of the structure of the eye would be predetermined by the spirit and contained in it … because the inherent knowledge of the spirit inherent in the dictates what the eye should be. Consequently, the eye has become like a spirit, and not vice versa. One may ask, why so many words? Geometry exists from the creation of things, eternal, as the spirit of God is eternal. Geometry is God himself (for, what is in God, what is not God?) And serves as a prototype for the creation of the world. Along with the image of God, geometry entered people and was perceived by them not only through the eyes (10).
When Kepler in his letter says that, for example, the equality of the square of the side of the (regular) quadrangle to the half of the square of the diameter (of the circumscribed circle) “is eternal in the spirit of God,” we see in this statement the joy of one of the first discoverers of quantitative, mathematically formulated laws of nature . However, sharing the modern point of view, it should be noted that the axioms of Euclidean geometry are not the only ones possible. Earlier, I warned that judgments established by rational formulations can never be considered the only possible premises of the human mind. At the same time, in particular, I had in mind some of the provisions of Kant’s philosophy, which, in my opinion, are erroneous. Therefore, I propose to preserve in geometry a priori instinct-driven step that precedes the emergence of ideas and is characterized by visual images (for this reason I do not follow Kant, who translated the word “instinct” used by Kepler as “pure contemplation”). On the contrary, I completely share the opinion that a person has an instinctive, that is, unconnected with external experience, tendency to interpret his sensory perceptions in the spirit of Euclidean geometry. He needs to do some mental work in order to realize that the premises of Euclidean geometry are not the only possible ones. Kepler’s following general statement is in full accordance with modern views: “Perceived harmonies have something in common with archetypal harmonies, because they establish concepts and principles of comparison, that is, they determine spiritual activity. Such a comparison is the essence of those and other harmonies” (11).
4. Following Kepler, we will now go down one step in his hierarchically ordered picture of the world and move on to considering the idea of God’s spirit in the material world. For Kepler, who was thinking in the spirit of the doctrine of the sign of things, celestial bodies orbiting the sun personified the perfectly spherical image of the trinity, although they were less perfect. The sun, located in the center and serving as a source of light, heat and, thus, life, was especially convenient as a symbol of the god-father. I will cite in this connection the following very characteristic passage from his book on optics.
The nature of each thing, to the extent that the conditions of its existence allow, should reflect God. Since the omniscient creator intended to arrange everything in the best, most beautiful and most perfect way, he did not find anything that would be better or more perfect than himself. Therefore, having decided to create a material world, God chose for him such a form that most resembled the image of God himself. So all forms of the existence of quantities arose and in them – the difference between straight lines and curves and the most perfect of the figures – the sphere. Having created it, the wise creator embodied in it, at the whim of his own, the image of the blessed trinity. Therefore, its center is, as it were, the beginning from which a spherical body is born; the surface of a sphere is the image of the innermost point; further, the desired path of it is that which occurs when this point countless times loses itself until all these outputs are equal, and this point tells (surfaces) such an extent that the point and surface are interconnected by an inverse density relation to extent. Thus, absolute and absolute unity, the closest unity, the finest harmony, connection, correspondence, proportion and proportionality arise comprehensively between a point and a surface; and although there are clearly three elements: the center, the (spherical) surface and the space between them, they form a single whole. None of them can even be imagined to be absent without everything being destroyed.
Therefore, this is the real and best form of the material world, which is directly or in one way or another accepted by all bodily beings, striving for the highest perfection. Therefore, all bodies that are limited by their finite surface and cannot reach a spherical shape themselves are endowed with various forces, which, although localized in bodies, nevertheless have some freedom and are completely devoid of bodily matter. These forces consist of special matter, which takes the form of geometric dimensions, go beyond the body and try to take a spherical shape. This is especially pronounced in a magnet, but is also found in other bodies. Is it therefore worth wondering if this principle of all the beauty of the world, which served, like the prophet Moses, as a tool for the creator during the creation and spiritualization of all things, was introduced on the first day of creation into barely created matter? Should I be surprised, I say, if this principle is the most beautiful thing in the whole material world (12), the prototype of all living things, the bonds connecting the physical world with the spiritual world – entered the beginning according to which the world was created? Thus, the Sun is that body which is characterized by the ability to transfer itself to other things, which we call light. Even for this reason, it is appropriate for him to be the middle and center of the world, so that it can continuously and evenly emit (light) throughout the universe. All other bodies, also emitting light, only imitate the sun. (13).
First of all, I would like to draw attention to the allusion to the photometric law contained in the above passage, which Kepler reports in the same book. According to this law, as we say now, illumination is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the light source, which, by assumption, is considered point. The word “amplitudinem”, translated as “extension”, here means, obviously, the area of a spherical surface, which is actually proportional to the square of the length of the radius. Kepler’s photometric law plays an extremely important role and brings him very close to the discovery of the law of gravity. This example clearly shows that Kepler’s symbolic image precedes the conscious (rational) formulation of the law of nature. Symbolic images and archetypal representations serve Kepler as the means that allow him to search for the laws of nature. Therefore, we consider Kepler’s views on the correspondence that exists between the Sun and the planets surrounding it, on the one hand, and the abstract spherical image of the trinity, on the other hand, primary, since this intuitive archetypal representation was the basis of his views on the Sun and the planets and his passionate religious faith into the heliocentric system, and not vice versa, as one might erroneously assume with a rationalist approach. Belief in the heliocentric system, which Kepler shared from his early youth, allowed him to seek a genuine expression of the beauty of the world in the laws of true planetary motion. First, his searches went on the wrong path, then their direction was changed in accordance with the results of observations.
Kepler’s views of the Sun and the planet as an image of the trinity are also clearly visible from the following passage from his work Tertius interveniens in German. Later we will return to the meaning of the title and to the contents of this book. The following passage; taken from section 126 of the book and is called “Philosophical reasoning about the sign of things.” It reads as follows:
“The celestial bodies are, as it were, marked and displayed in geometric bodies. The same applies to celestial movements taking place in a circle, if they are attributed to a circle drawn on a geometric plane ”(see above, section 59).
The Most Holy Trinity is embodied in the curvature of the sphere, and the last in the world. The main person – the divine principle – is embodied in the center, but the center is located on the Sun, which is the center of the world, for it gives rise to any movement of light and life on Earth.
So, the moving principle is imprinted in a potential circle, that is, at its various points, while bodily matter – in the third magnitude, having the form of three dimensions. Consequently, any form of matter is imprinted on the surface, and just as the shape determines the appearance of matter, so the geometric body is formed by its external faces and surfaces, for the fact that it consists of, you can even give shape.
The Creator, at his whim, created nature in his own image and likeness to teach her how to play, and at the same time, as a game for his own fun. . .
From the words about pristine beauty it is clearly seen that Kepler connects the trinity with the three-dimensionality of space, and considers the sun and planets to be less perfect images of an abstract spherical symbol. This point of view allows Kepler to avoid pagan worship of the Sun and remain within the framework of Christian doctrine. In this regard, I would like to point to the Epilogue de Sole conjecturalis, with which Kepler completes his main work, The Harmony of the World. In this epilogue, among other things, Kepler analyzes the pagan hymn to the sun of his beloved author Proclus from the position of Christianity. Kepler’s idea of a game that began with the creation of the world, which, imitating God, nature repeats, also meets the idea of the sign of things.
Regarding the concept of “moving principle”, I should note that Kepler’s views on the root cause of motion fluctuate. In one place of his work, De Stella nova Serpentarii, he says:
Finally, the driving forces of the luminaries seem to be endowed with understanding, because they seem to understand and represent their path and strive for it, though not with the help of reasoning, like we humans, but with the help of an innate impulse imprinted in them from creation. In the same way, the spiritual forces of natural things have knowledge of the goal towards which they direct all their actions (14).
Here Kepler has an animistic point of view, but in another place he says the following:
The Sun among the moving luminaries itself is motionless, but it serves as a source of movement and carries the image of the God the father, for what creation is for God, movement serves for the Sun. It moves inside the fixed stars, just as the father reproduces himself in the son. If these stars did not create space with their stillness, nothing could move. The Sun lavishes its motive power through the medium in which it is moving, just as the God-father creates with the holy spirit or the power of the holy spirit (15).
This point of view has much in common with modern field physics. Indeed, Kepler imagined the force of gravity emanating from the Sun, like light, but different from light. Referring to Gilbert’s experiments, he compared it with the action of a magnet.
Since we will discuss in detail Kepler’s collision with a representative of traditional alchemy, Flooddom, it is important to note that the Keplerian symbol is of the type that K.G. was named due to its spherical shape Jung’s mandala has nothing to do with number. This is all the more important because Kepler, a remarkable expert on the Pythagorean speculations with numbers, was, in particular, familiar with the Quaternary. A detailed discussion of this concept serves as a historical introduction to the Keplerian theory of musical intervals, placed in the book. III “Harmonies of the world.” However, all these ancient speculations for Kepler are nothing more than a curiosity; the number four is devoid of symbolic character. Apparently, the absence of symbolism in the Keplerian spherical image for time is closely related to the absence of the quadruple symbol. The rectilinear movement from the center is the only thing contained in the Keplerian symbol, and since everything essential in this symbol is captured in a spherical surface, it can be characterized as static. Since before Kepler the trinity was never presented in the form of such an image, and since Kepler is at the beginning of the century of natural science, one can involuntarily suggest that the Kepler mandala symbolizes a certain attitude, or mental order, which in its value goes far beyond Kepler’s personality attributes; it was they who caused the origin of that natural science, which today we call classical. From a certain inner center, the soul moves outside (in the sense of extraversion), to the material world, in which, by assumption, all processes are something automatic, so that the spirit embraces this material world with its ideas, as if resting (16).
5. The next step in the Keplerian hierarchical ordering of the Universe, which we traced from the triune God and ideas embodied in the spirit of God, through his spherical image – in the material world, to the Sun and celestial bodies revolving around him, leads us to individual souls.
We already mentioned that the Earth for Kepler was as much a living thing as man. Just as living beings have hair, the earth has grass and trees; its “scales” are cicadas; living things emit urine – the Earth has mountain springs; excrement corresponds to ashes and other products of volcanic eruptions; metals and rainwater respond to blood and sweat; Earth’s food is seawater. As a living creature, the Earth also has a soul (“anima terrae”), whose properties were largely considered similar to those of the human soul (“anima hominis”) (17). Therefore, by individual souls we can understand both the souls of the Earth and planets, as well as human souls. At the same time, the soul of the Earth (“anima terrae”) is that forming principle (“facultas for-matrix”) that acts in the earth’s interior, which imprints in precious stones and petrified the outlines of the outlines of five regular bodies. Here Kepler follows the ideas of Paracelsus, who used the concept of archaea to denote the highest active principle of nature, producing both that which leaves a sign (“signator”), and the signs themselves (“signatura”). Indeed, in a polemic with Floodd, Kepler, making a concession to his opponent, says that he could, if he wished, call the soul of the Earth Archean (18). It is important to note what reasons, according to Kepler, cause a change in weather and meteorological phenomena: too heavy rains mean, for example, that the Earth is sick.
The main thing in Kepler’s characteristic ideas about the soul of the Earth is that this soul, being, of course, an imperfect image of God, is partly a point, and partly a circle: “anima est punctum qualitativum” (“soul is a point category”). Such a doctrine dates back to the late antique philosophers – Neoplatonists and Neo-Pythagoreans, who shared similar views. (19). In questions about which functions of the soul should be attributed to the central point, and which ones to the peripheral circle, opinions are divided. In general, the functions of contemplation and imagination are attributed to the point, and the active and motor actions on the body are attributed to circles, however, conclusions, reasoning and logical conclusions must also correspond to it. Kepler often compares the process of the movement of the soul from a central point to the periphery of a circle with the expiration of a flame. He unequivocally emphasizes the analogy between this movement and the rays emanating from the Sun, linking the radii drawn from the center with the symbol of the trinity. One involuntarily begs the thought of an analogy between the process of movement of the soul from the center of the circle to the periphery and extroversion in modern psychology. In the system of Kepler’s ideas, she would answer the prototype of divine creation, while God’s being would be interpreted as a prototype of introversion.
Kepler’s point of view is explained in the following quote from Harmony of the World:
The soul has the shape of a point in actual being and the shape of a circle in potential being. Since the soul is energy, it from its abode at a point passes into a circle, as if trying to feel the external object surrounding it from all sides, like a sphere, or control the body .. The soul is surrounded by the body and hides in it, rooted in its unshakable point, where does the rest of the body come from. What is its path, if not a straight line, for the straight is the true path? Like light and flame, the soul moves like a radiance emanating from its sources, that is, in straight lines. It moves to the external bodies of the eye according to the same laws by which it reaches the dwelling at the point of light from the heavenly luminaries (20).
Kepler’s special views on astrology are also connected with the idea of the soul as a point and at the same time as a circle, the presentation of which is already devoted to his already mentioned work “Tertius interveniens”. Here Kepler acts as the third participant in the controversy between. G. Rozlin, who defended the point of view of traditional astrology, and F. Fezelius, who rejected all astrology as superstition, and contrasted them with his own point of view, which was significantly different from the views of both authors. On the first page of the book under its title are the following explanatory words: “A warning to some theologians, physicians and philosophers, especially Dr. Philip Fezelius, that they, rightly rejecting astrological superstitions, would not splash out a child and water, and thus would not do harm to their ignorance professions. ” Kepler formulates his astrological ideas in an earlier work on a new star, where he polemicizes with Picco della Mirandola; he returns to the same subject in his main work, Harmony of the World.
Leaving aside at first the question of the extent to which his astrological statements are true in essence, we’ll try to find out what place in the complete system of Kepler’s natural science ideas we are interested in takes his own astrology, which is significantly different from the generally accepted one.
According to Kepler, the main property of an individual soul, which he calls “formative force” (“vis formatrix”), or “formative matrix” (“matrix formativa”), is its ability to instinctively respond to certain harmonic proportions corresponding to rational partitions circles. In music, this property of the soul is manifested in its ability to perceive the harmonies of certain musical intervals (it follows that Kepler’s perception of sound has not a purely mechanical explanation). Similarly, the soul must have a specific ability to respond to the harmonic proportions of the angles formed by the light rays coming from the stars to the Earth. From these positions, according to Kepler, one should approach astrology. In his opinion, the true location of the stars does not have the slightest significance for astrology. All influence should be attributed only to the rays of light emitted by the stars. The soul, with the help of instinct, without rational reasoning, knows about harmonic proportions, for, having the shape of a circle, it is like a god in which these proportions and the geometric truths arising from them have been from time immemorial. Knowing this, the soul falls under the influence of the external forms of those configurations that form light rays, and imprints them in memory from birth. I quote Kepler about this:
I turn to astrologers. Speaking of my opinion, I believe that there are no luminaries in the heavens that bring misfortune, also because human nature moves on the Earth, which itself is subject to the influence of planetary radiation. Likewise, a hearing endowed with the ability to discern harmonies is so influenced by music that it prompts the one who hears it to dance. I spoke a lot about this in my response to Dr. Rozlin’s objections to the book “On the New Star” and in other places, including many places of Prince IV, “Harmonies of the World,” especially in Chapter 7 (21).
… the natural point (“punctum naturale”) (that is, the natural soul “in each of the people or in the globe itself) seems to have all the properties of a real circle. The circle resides in it in potency near the place where the rays intersecting at that point converge (22).
… the natural soul of man is no more than one single point … and in it the image and character of all heaven will be captured in potency, even if they are a hundred times bigger … (23)
The nature of the soul behaves like a point, for it can be transformed into a point where the rays converge (24).
According to Kepler, the soul, due to its inherent circle shape, has an innate idea of the zodiac. The fate of people is affected not by motionless stars, but by planets (through their rays). The question of how “the twelve signs of the zodiac is distributed among the seven planets”, from his point of view, is pure nonsense, but the basic principle of astrology is supposedly quite justified. A special role is played by the harmonious combination of two color rays, called the “aspect”.
Kepler clearly formulates her views in “Harmonies of the World”: “Since the soul has an idea of the Zodiac or, rather, its center, it senses which planet, at what time and at what degree of the circle of the sky it is, and has the ability to measure angles between rays coming to earth. Since she perceives from the radiance of the divine essence the geometric figure of the circle and (comparing the circle with one or another part of it) archetypal harmonies, although not in a purely geometric form, but as if weighed down and saturated with a certain extract from the shining rays, and since she already knows measuring angles, the soul considers some angles equal, or harmonic, while others – unequal ” (25).
According to Kepler, a preexisting form is formed into the human soul from birth itself, formed by the rays of light coming from the stars (planets) to the Earth.
Absurdly should be considered not the assertion that the location of stars affects the nature and appearance of a person. It is much more appropriate to call as such a statement about the influence of human nature on luminaries (as something unsteady in form) than, on the contrary, on the influence of luminaries on a person (26).
The true angle between two light rays, according to Kepler, is an angle corresponding to either regular polygons, which can cover the entire plane without gaps, for example: a regular triangle, square or hexagon, or star-shaped shapes closely connected with regular polyhedra. At the same time, Kepler tried to establish a direct connection with the proportions corresponding to the musical intervals of consonances, but was forced to recognize the well-known difference between these proportions and the division of the circle accepted in astrology. I will not dwell on the details relating here, but only give a few figures from the Keplerian “Harmony of the World”. They clearly show the relationship between the inscribed and the central figure, consisting in the fact that the angle between two adjacent sides of the latter is equal to the central angle between the radii drawn in two neighboring vertices of the first, and vice versa.
According to Kepler, it is precisely the inscribed and central figures that must correspond to two forms inherent in the soul: the circle and the point. Since these ideas are apparently of particular interest to psychologists, I will allow myself to give a verbatim quote.
This can be proved on the basis of the internal properties of the soul, which we have already discussed in Sec. 3. Since it is the soul that gives life to the harmonies of configurations, endowing them with an external form, the figures characteristic of it due to the same difference, due to which it appears in the form of a circle, then in the form of a point, that is, the center of a circle, are undoubtedly , can be inscribed and central. Although each soul carries in itself the shape of a circle, as if abstracted not only from matter, but also from extent, by virtue of which the circumference and center, as stated in Ch. 3, in this case they coincide, and we can talk about the soul either as a potential circle, or as a point with various properties in different directions and therefore endowed with certain qualities, however, despite this difference, some functions of the soul should be considered inherent circles, and others – a point. Just as it is impossible to imagine a circle without a center, as well as a center without a circle enclosed inside a circle circumscribed around it, in the same way there is nothing happening in the soul, no matter what is preceded by some imaginary impression; and, conversely, all internal perception or thought is directed to external movement. To an even greater degree is directed outside all the internal functions of the soul. The most important and highest function of the soul, called the “spirit”, is nothing but the center, rational thinking is the circle, for just as the center is inside and the circle is outside, the spirit is within itself, and rational thinking seems to wind from him a thread. And just as the center is the starting point of the circle, so the spirit is the source, root cause and foundation of rational thinking.
On the other hand, all these functions of the soul, both spirit and rational thinking and even sensory perception, serve as a kind of center, if we consider them in relation to motor functions, as to a circle. And indeed, just as the circle lies outside the center, so the action takes place outside; rational thinking happens inside. External action is in the same relation to internal contemplation, and bodily movement is to sensory perception, in which the circle is located at its center. The center, which is surrounded by a circle on all sides, is especially suitable as a symbol of the receptive principle. In the same way, the soul, endowed with the gift of perception, senses the rays emanating from the planets, sensing and perceiving the influence of external objects. Now compare both comparisons. As the center of the circle is the same in both, the form of cognition in them is one and the same: first, the spirit, then the soul endowed with the gift of perception, or a soul similar to it, sensing the rays emanating from the planets. Neither side of the soul contains a rational element in itself, but cognizes, bypassing it. By virtue of this, the soul. (I mean the perishable nature and the function of perceiving the human spirit) is the smallest way of the point – just as the rational understanding of these actions, or actions, of the soul, in one way or another has a circle in its image.
So, since the soul perceives the heavenly rays and seals them in its very being, we consider the soul as a point. Since it acts, we inspire May with the perceived harmony of the rays, and transfers this harmony to our creations, we must consider it as a circle. It follows that the soul, if it seeks to know the harmony of the rays, should be represented in the form of a central figure, but if it aspires to action (causing various meteorological phenomena or something similar in a person), then it should be represented in the form of a figure inscribed in a circle . Since we are more interested in action than in the way the soul perceives rays, consideration of the properties of the inscribed figure is more important for us than consideration of the properties of the central figure (27).
Enough has been said about the internal and external figure of the “aspect”. The enormous significance that Kepler attaches to the external figure once again points to his extremely animistic views. Since the soul of the Earth determines the weather and, like everything connected with the soul, has the ability to respond to “aspects”, the weather must also be sensitive to “aspects”. Kepler believed that he was able to prove the validity of this statement by studying numerous meteorological observations and that it, in turn, serves as a proof of the existence of the soul of the Earth. The animistic views on the root causes of the movement of the luminaries, which we have already mentioned, led Kepler to the hypothesis of a universal relationship between celestial phenomena and the ability of an individual soul to perceive.
In visible heaven, nothing can and cannot happen that in some mysterious way would not be felt on Earth and would not affect all the abilities that the soul of natural objects is endowed with. Thus, these abilities here on Earth have the same effect as in the heavens themselves (28).
It is interesting that Kepler, along with the passive perceiving expression of the formative principle, tried to introduce the active effect of the same formative principle, believing that it lies at the basis of plant morphology. What is capable of perceiving harmonious forms can also create them (for example, create flowers of plants with their correctly located petals), and vice versa. Thus, Kepler raised the question of whether the soul of a plant has the ability to respond to proportionality in the arrangement of the rays emitted by celestial bodies. This question remained open, for Kepler did not want to affirm anything without properly set experiments.
From what has been said it is clear that in Kepler’s theoretical ideas, astrology was completely subordinated to natural science, causal thinking. Unceasingly emphasizing the role of light rays, he turned astrology into a part of physics (more precisely, into a part of optics). Kepler resolutely rejected the geometric constructions widely practiced in astrology associated with the sky of fixed stars (for example, drawing a line connecting the Earth with the vernal equinox). In addition, Kepler repeatedly emphasized that according to his views, the primary cause of astrological influences are not celestial bodies, but individual souls with their inherent ability to selectively respond to certain characteristic proportions. Since the ability to react, on the one hand, is subject to the influence of the material world, and on the other, is based on the image of God, Kepler made individual souls (the soul of the Earth and man) the main carriers of world harmony.
Kepler’s peculiar views on astrology did not receive recognition. Apparently, this is due to the fact that the adoption of his point of view would make the obviously absurd conclusion that artificial sources of light should also have an astrological effect almost inevitable.
I would like to make one general remark about astrology. All her statements (including the famous horoscope compiled by Kepler for Wallenstein) are very vague in nature, and I see no reason why it should be considered that horoscopes have some objective meaning, independent of the subjective psychology of astrologers (29).
6. Kepler’s views on the harmony of the world, essentially based on strictly quantitative, mathematically provable statements, were incompatible with the basic principles of the archaic-magical description of nature as they appear in the main work of the famous physician and Rosicrucian Robert Floodd from Oxford (Utruisque Cosmi Maioris scilicet et Minoris Metaphysica, Physica atque technica Historian, 1. Aufg. Oppenheim, 1621). In the “Appendix” to the book: V “Harmonies of the world” (30) Kepler sharply criticized the mentioned work of Floodd. Fludd, being a representative of traditional alchemy, spoke in the work “Demonstratio quaedam analitica” (31) with polemics against the Keplerian “Application”. Kepler objected to this by publishing his Apologie (32) followed by another “Replication” (33) Floodda …
Floodd believed that without knowledge of the alchemical or Rosicrucian sacraments, a true knowledge of the harmony of the world, and therefore of astronomy, is impossible. Without knowing these sacraments, one can only come to an arbitrary, subjective fiction. Kepler, on the contrary, considered the possession of objective science that which could be proved mathematically, quantitatively; nevertheless, the rest was attributed to the subjective. From the closing words of the already mentioned “Appendix” to Prince V “Harmonies of the world” (34-35) it is clearly seen that Kepler already had to fight to justify the applicability of the methods of rigorous mathematical proof:
My opinion is clear from this brief consideration: although knowledge of harmonic proportions is very important for understanding the innermost secrets of the deepest philosophies that Robert (Floodd) talks about, nevertheless (Floodd), even after reading all my work, has remained no less distant from these intricate secrets than themselves (proportions) – from the most accurate mathematical proof
Floodd, as can be seen from the following statements, denied the need for any quantitative measurements:
What he (Kepler) expressed so verbally and eloquently, I reduced and explained with the help of hieroglyphic figures full of deep meaning, not because I (as the one claims) love the paintings, but because I decided (being the one to whom he [Kepler] hints, as reckoning himself among the alchemists and hermetists) to combine a lot in the small, to collect the extracted essence, to discard the precipitate, and to transfer the useful into a suitable vessel in order to reveal the secrets of science, to make hidden what is hidden and to discard the outer covers, without many extra words, as in Mirror, contemplate with your eyes and inner spirit. the nature of things, like a gem in a gold frame, faceted in a shape that best suits its nature (36).
The destiny of an ordinary mathematician is to engage in the shadows of greatness, while alchemists and hermetists comprehend the true essence of natural things (37).
Naked nature is revealed and made available to the judgment of only selected mathematicians experienced in formal mathematics. For false mathematicians who have not reached perfection, it remains invisible and hidden. It is the latter who judge the shadows instead of judging the substance, and amuse themselves with empty reasoning. True mathematicians, rejecting shadows, consider substance and rejoice in revealing the truth (38).
It is here that the whole difficulty lies, for he (Kepler) conceived the external movements of things that became, while I examined the internal essential impulses that arise from nature itself (39). He grabbed the tail, but I hold on to the head. I observe the root cause, he is her actions. Even if external movements took place (as he claims) in fact, he would still be smeared from head to foot in the mud and clay of the powerlessness of his theory and entangled in its gloomy fetters, although he could have got rid of his honor without prejudice them and at an inexpensive price to buy off captivity. But he who digs another hole – he himself gets into it ” (40).
It is clear that the rejection of everything quantitative in favor of “form” (we would say “symbol” instead of “form”) is in flagrant contradiction with natural science thinking, and Kepler therefore objected to Flood (41):
When I call your so-called harmonic symbols obscure, I speak of my own mind. You yourself help me when you say that your scientific intentions could not be proved mathematically. But without such proof, I feel blind
The parties to the dispute could not come to an agreement on what should be called light and what should be called dark. The symbolic paintings of Floodd and the geometric drawings of Kepler are also in irreconcilable contradiction. For example, Kepler immediately indicated that on Flood’s “world monochord”, the measures of planetary spheres do not coincide with their true empirical meanings. When Floodd objected that the “wise” should not care about the true dimensions of the spheres and that nothing significant depends on these sizes, Kepler very opportunely remarked that where it comes to music – and, in particular, about the relationship characteristic of the quart 4: 3, quantitative ratios play a significant role. In addition, Kepler, naturally, could not agree with Floodd, when he instead of the Sun placed the Earth in the center of the planetary spheres.
Floodd neglected everything quantitative, believing that it, like everything that has parts and is not one, belongs to the dark principle (matter, the devil) …
Kepler also had to reject “formal mathematics,” which Floodd contrasted with “ordinary mathematics.”
If you know other mathematics (in addition to the one from which everyone who has been revered as mathematicians) takes their name, i.e., mathematics is natural and formal, then I must say that it remained unknown to me even when we left the quantities , found refuge in the very general beginning of words (teachings, doctrines), and you must know about it, I’m not talking. You, Robert, love fame, it contains all the evidence for you. How accurate and reliable they are, I believe that you will reason without me. I think of visible and sensible movements, but you prefer to consider internal acts and try to break them into separate steps. I grabbed the tail, but hold it in my hand. You prefer to hold on to your head, unless you have dreamed about it. I am content with the effects, that is, the movements of the planets. If among the reasons you find the same clear harmonies that I found in the movements, then in fairness I will have to congratulate you on your ingenuity, and myself – on your observation, as soon as I can notice something (42-43).
However, the state of affairs is not as simple as Kepler imagines it. Kepler’s theoretical views are not purely empirical and contain such an essentially speculative element: the idea of the material world as the realization of a preexisting archetypal picture. Interestingly, even this inconsistent speculative side in Kepler’s views diverges from the less pronounced empirical side of Flood’s views. The latter tried to reinforce his speculative philosophy of light and dark principles by natural science experiments with the so-called “weather predictor” (“Wetterglas”). Although the relevant quotes are taken from the later work of Flood Philosophia Moysaica (Gouda, 1637), published after the death of Kepler, I will nevertheless dwell briefly on this experiment, since it is one of the most bizarre episodes from the history of thought of the XVII century,
The “Weather Predictor” was arranged as follows. A glass vessel with an opening below, containing air diluted by heating, was immersed in another vessel with water. The level of a column of water in a glass vessel depended on both temperature and air pressure. However, the last concept was not known before Torricelli, and those fluctuations in water level, which are caused by a change in time of air pressure, are usually attributed to temperature fluctuations. When heated, the column of water fell, and when cooled, it increased, due to the expansion and contraction of the air remaining above the water column. The device was a kind of combination of a thermometer and a barometer and behaved back to what we are used to (44).
From fig. 2 and the following quotes from Phil. Moys. ”It is clear that Floodd considered the“ weather predictor ”as a reflection of the struggle between light and dark principles in the macrocosm, as was already mentioned.
As for the fact that the device, usually called the weather predictor, some of the living people falsely attribute to themselves, that is, falsely boast to them as their own invention, the human vanity and thirst for honors are so strong that people have little to do with at what price does the glory go to them, and even less with what the path to it is: a straight line or a curve. This was the only reason why pagan philosophers fraudulently ascribed themselves the philosophical principles that rightfully belonged to the wisest philosopher, the prophet Moses, covering his theft with new names and as if hiding it under gilding.
Our device also has a lot of inventors, not belonging to the number of true and genuine creators of it, but boasting, as if by slightly changing the prototype shape, they themselves came up with its main idea. But I am not ashamed to ascribe the principles of my philosophy to Moses, to my teacher, who accepted them as created and inscribed by the finger of God. Therefore, I can not consider myself the first of those who invented this device, although I used it in my natural history of the macrocosm and in other places in order to prove the truth of my philosophical reasoning. I must admit that I found it in one manuscript, which had been fifteen years old, where a geometric drawing of the device was given. Therefore, first I will talk about how the device looked when I found it in that old manuscript, and then I will describe its type and device in the form in which it is usually known and used (45).
Before turning to visual evidence, it is necessary to understand for yourself that the air in general, that is, the common element of the sublunar world, is the subtlest and ethereal part of the “water under the firmament” that Moses speaks of. From this it is clear that any part of this air is in harmony with the whole, and therefore the air enclosed in the glass part of our device has the same nature and is in the same condition as air around the world. Since there is an inextricable connection between the two, the common sublunar air behaves in the same way as the private air enclosed in a glass vessel, which is part of all air in general. The air in the vessel is similar to the ruach-elohim god’s spirit, which hovers over water and animates it with its presence, revitalizes, gives it shape and spreads, giving it movement, so that in its absence, i.e. when it ceases its action and active emanation, or, emitting rays, goes into itself, water also contracts, thickens, loses movement and finds peace (46).
A “weather predictor” in the sense of Flood could be called a “luminometer” – a “gauge of non-existence”.
For the psychology of antagonism between Kepler and Floodd, the fact that the number four had a special symbolic character in Flood was important, while Kepler did not distinguish it. Some information about this can be found in the quotation from Floodd’s Discursus Analiticus in Appendix II.
We hope that what was said above allowed the reader to feel the general atmosphere of the first half of the 17th century, in which then the new, using quantitative categories, natural-scientific mathematical thinking encountered an alchemical tradition using symbolic representations and qualitative categories. The first appears in the person of Kepler, painfully trying to find new ways, a creative person, creating a warehouse; the second, in the person of his epigon Flood, must have clearly felt a threat to his hopelessly outdated world of sacraments, coming from a new relationship between empirical induction and logical and mathematical thinking. It seems that, entering into an astronomical or physical discussion, Floodd was always wrong. Rejecting the categories of quantitative, he deprived himself of the opportunity to know its laws and necessarily entered into an irreconcilable contradiction with natural science thinking.
Floodd’s views will become somewhat clearer if we indicate their connection with the general, throughout the history of the division of thinkers into two classes: some consider the quantitative relations between parts significant, others, on the contrary, the qualitative indivisibility of the whole. We find this separation even in the ancient world, for example, in two corresponding definitions of beauty: for some, beauty is the proportionality of parts and the whole, while for others it is the eternal radiance of the “one” penetrating through a material phenomenon. (The second definition does not even mention the part.) The views of the latter go back to Plotinus (47). Later, we find equally opposite opinions in the famous debate about color theory between Goethe and Newton. Goethe disgusted the “parts” and always paid particular attention to the indignation introduced by the device into “natural” phenomena. We believe that the difference between the one and the other point of view, essentially, is reduced to the psychological difference between the sentient, or intuitive, and thinking type. Goethe and Floodd act as representatives of the sentient type, Newton, Kepler and even Plotinus as representatives of the thinking type, although the latter, unlike Aristotle and Plato, cannot be called a consistent thinker (48).
It is precisely because a modern man, in principle, cannot recognize for any of the types we have mentioned that there is greater comprehension in comparison with the other type, the old, long-standing polemic between Floodd and Kepler may be of primary interest to us, although the ideas of both about the music of the world now have lost their meaning. This is evidenced, in particular, by the fact that, from the point of view of psychology, the “Quaternary” Floodd attitude corresponds to a greater completeness of perception than the “triple” installation of Kepler (49). Before Kepler, the soul was a kind of symbolic image by which they tried to express the measurable sides of perception, including the immateriality of emotions and intuitive assessments, then Kepler considered the soul almost as a system of resonators, admitting a rigorous mathematical description. Even rejecting the possibility of knowing the quantitative side of nature and its laws, Floodd, using his “hieroglyphic figures”, tried to maintain the unity of the internal perception of the “observer” (as we would say today) and the external processes occurring in nature, and thereby the integrity of the consideration of all nature. It is this integrity that makes up the idea of an analogy between microcosm and macrocosm. Apparently, it is already absent from Kepler and completely falls out of the picture of the world of classical science (50). Modern quantum physics once again emphasizes the perturbations introduced during the measurement process (see the next section), and modern psychology again uses symbolic images (namely, those that spontaneously arise in dreams and dreams) in order to know the processes that occur in collective (“objective”) soul. Thus, in physics and psychology, modern man again sees a reflection of the old antithesis between quantitative and qualitative. However, since the days of Floodd and Kepler, we have come much closer to the possibility of building a bridge between the extreme poles of these two opposites: first, the idea of complementarity in modern physics has allowed us to come to a new synthesis of representations that were previously considered opposite (for example, waves and particles), and show that the contradiction between them is apparent; secondly, the use of old alchemical ideas in the psychology of K.G. Jung showed that the unity of mental and physical phenomena is more profound. Unlike Kepler and Floodd, we consider acceptable only such a point of view that recognizes both sides of reality – quantitative and qualitative, physical and mental – complementing each other and considers them in indissoluble unity.
7. A return to the archaic point of view, the unity and isolation of which was achieved at the cost of naive ignorance of ideas about nature, is obviously impossible for modern man. Nonetheless, it is a strong desire for ever-greater unity of the picture of the world that makes modern man aware of the importance that the pre-scientific level of cognition has for the formation of scientific ideas (we already spoke about this at the beginning), and along with the study of natural science from the outside, he studies it from the inside. While the first direction is the subject of research, our knowledge of external objects, the second allows you to identify those archetypal representations that were used to create scientific concepts. Full understanding can be achieved only by combining both of these areas.
The generally accepted desire for a greater unity of our picture of the world is especially strong among scientists for the reason that at present we have natural sciences, but there is no more natural-scientific picture of the world. After the discovery of the quantum of action, physics gradually had to abandon the proud claims that it had before it the fundamental possibility of understanding the whole world. It is this circumstance, which corrects the former one-sidedness, that could carry the germ of further successes in advances towards a single picture of the world, into which the natural sciences will enter only as an integral part.
I will try to show this on the example of the still unsolved problem of the connection of processes occurring in the material world with processes occurring in the soul – a problem that Kepler has encountered. After he showed that the optical image on the retina is inverted relative to the original object, the whole scientific world puzzled for a while over the question, why do we see objects not upside down, but straight? It was easy to see that this question is an imaginary problem, since a person cannot compare images with real objects and only registers sensory perceptions that arise when certain sections of the retina are excited. The general problem of the connection between the mental and physical, internal and external cannot be solved with the help of the concept of “psychophysical” parallelism that has arisen over the past hundred years. Modern natural science has led us to a more satisfactory point of view on this connection, introducing the concept of complementarity directly into physics. The most satisfactory situation would be when the physical and mental could be considered as complementary aspects of the same reality; however, it is not known whether it is possible, as Bohr and other researchers suggest, to speak of the true relationship of complementarity between mutually exclusive opposites in the following sense: would not the exact observation of physiological processes lead to such interference in mental processes that the latter would become completely inaccessible to observation? At the same time, there is no doubt that modern physics has generalized the old opposition of the knowing subject to the knowable object, replacing this opposition with the idea of a section passing between the observer, or the means of observation, and the observed system. If the existence of such a cross section is a necessary condition for human cognition, then the physicist considers his position to some extent arbitrary and considers it as a result determined by various considerations and, therefore, to some extent dependent on freedom of choice. But that is not all. The old philosophical system attributed the psychic to the subjective side of the section, i.e., to the side facing the knowing subject. The material belonged to the other side of the objectively observable. The modern point of view in this regard has a slightly greater freedom: on the one hand, microphysics has shown that automatic recording devices can also be surveillance tools; on the other hand, modern psychology has shown that the unconscious, belonging to the introspective side of the observed, also has an objective reality. Thus, on the one hand, order in nature, which, by assumption, is objective in nature, is relativized with respect to equally necessary means of observation that are outside the observed system; on the other hand, another facet of the difference between the “physical” and the “mental” is established.
The observer, or the means of observation that microphysics has to take into account, differ significantly from the unrelated observer of classical physics. By the latter, I mean an observer who can influence the observed system, but its influence can always be excluded with the help of deterministic corrections. On the contrary, in microphysics the nature of the laws of nature is such that. for any knowledge obtained as a result of measurement, one has to pay the loss of another, additional knowledge. Therefore, each observation is an uncontrolled indignation of both the means of observation and the observed system, and violates the causal relationship of the phenomena preceding it with the phenomena following it. The uncontrolled interaction of the observer and the observed system does not allow us to take the deterministic point of view of the phenomenon accepted in classical physics: the game according to predefined rules will be interrupted by the observation made after the free choice of the observer stops on one of the mutually exclusive experimental schemes. Such an observation, which differs significantly from events that occur automatically, can be compared with the act of creation in the microcosm or with a transformation, although with a result that is not predictable in advance and does not depend on external influences (51).
Such is the way that in modern physics manages to satisfactorily take into account the role of the observer. The reverse action of the knowable on the knower goes beyond the limits of natural science, since it belongs to the totality of all experiences experienced by the knower. We have seen that not only alchemy, but also the heliocentric idea are an instructive example of the problems of the relation of cognition to the religious experience of transubstance experienced by the knower. It is possible to comprehend this attitude only with the help of symbols that allow not only to clearly express the emotional, sensual side of the experience, but also to establish a connection with the entire body of knowledge of the historical era under consideration and with the real process of cognition. It is precisely because in our time it is customary to reject the possibility of constructing such symbolism, it is especially interesting to turn to a different era, which was alien to the concepts of scientific mechanics, which have now become classical, but are characterized by ideas that allowed us to provide evidence of the existence of a symbol that fulfills at the same time religious and science function.
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I consider it my duty to express my deep gratitude to everyone who assisted me in this work and contributed to its publication. I am especially grateful to prof. E. Panovsky (Princeton) for extensive discussions on those aspects of the problems raised in the work that relate to the history of thought, as well as for the selection and critical discussion of original texts and translations from Latin; prof. K.G. Jung and Dr. K.A. Mayer for detailed and informative discussions of the psychological side of the formation of natural science concepts and their archetypal foundations; Dr. M. L. von Franz, who took upon himself the translation from Latin of most of the most important quotes cited in our work, and the thorough and often time-consuming viewing of various original texts.
FROM THE EDITOR
Pauli’s article on Kepler requires some explanation. First of all, the article was written in honor of the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, this explains its name. The fact is that Jung was interested in innate representations of man (artifact), in particular, such as representations of harmony. For example, one might ask, why does human thinking distinguish certain images as beautiful? Pauli writes about the same problem, but only in connection with the history of science.
Not always and not everyone understands the role of Kepler. Its significance is not limited to the discovery of the laws of planetary motion. In fact, he created a scientific method on which all further natural science developed. At the end of the 16th century, when the first work of the 26-year-old “mathematician of the glorious province of Styria” was published, science in our sense of the word was only in its infancy. There was still no logic of evidence; there was practically no even the language of science. Nature and everything that happens in it reflects, as it was believed, a certain supreme will, and the question of the causes of the phenomenon should have seemed completely inappropriate and even unworthy from the point of view of prevailing religious ideas. Kepler was the first to ask this question in violation of tradition *. But, asking a question about the reasons for the motion of the planets, Kepler had to solve the question and in what language, in the framework of which model to look for an answer to it. This was the first difficulty. Kepler was looking for connections between different systems of phenomena and concepts, and it was natural for him to start a search along the simplest path for him – to look for a connection between the various properties of the planetary system and the mystical symbols of religion (such a utilitarian use of religion could not be approved by his contemporaries).
However, the model associated with religious symbols did not satisfy Kepler himself. In 1620, in the second edition of The Secrets of the Universe, Kepler replaced the word “soul” with the word “power”, turning to a more familiar language for us. Refusing religious images, he goes on to search for analogies of planetary systems with harmonic systems of geometric figures and bodies, and then with musical harmonies. In his searches, the main thing was to search for a connection between different systems and attempts to find some common “super-laws” of nature. Success came when Kepler was able to express harmony directly in numbers. The numerical model (not yet expressed by formulas) proved to be the most effective. The way from the little conscious sensations of beauty and harmony to the discovery of numerical patterns is what Pauli talks about.