Tutorial: Melissa Cain Travis on Kepler and Cosmic Comprehensibility
Dr. Melissa Cain Travis is the author of Thinking God’s Thoughts: Johannes Kepler and the Miracle of Cosmic Comprehensibility. She hosted a Zoom video tutorial on the subject that you can purchase here for just $4.99. The presentation is followed by an interactive discussion with the participants.
A host of philosophers, theologians, scientists, and mathematicians have been struck by the uncanny interconnection between three fundamentally distinct domains of reality: nature, mathematics, and the human mind. This resonance has been discussed since antiquity and often attributed to a transcendent rational source of both material and immaterial aspects of reality. Johannes Kepler, a devout Christian who was greatly influenced by this intellectual tradition, was convinced that a tripartite harmony of archetype, copy, and image explained the interconnections that made his natural philosophy possible. This harmony, he believed, allowed him to share in God’s own thoughts.
Dr. Travis demonstrates that Keplerian natural theology is a more robust explanation of cosmic comprehensibility than ever before. In her words, “For more than two millennia, great thinkers of the Western tradition have marveled at the rational order of the cosmos and humankind’s ability to discern it. Kepler, a giant of the scientific revolution, understood the powerful theistic implications of the mathematics-nature-mind resonance that makes the natural sciences possible.”
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