Kepler’s Early Astrological Calendars: Matter, Methodology and Multidisciplinarity

Abstract

From the beginning of his career, Kepler saw astrology as part of a larger intellectual enterprise that we might today consider interdisciplinary. In his quest to recover Adam’s prelapsarian knowledge, Kepler pursued archetypal principles that underlay observable phenomena. Kepler associated the apprehension of such principles with the physician’s arrival at ‘the inward causes’ of illnesses from their outward symptoms. In his early astrological calendars, Kepler interpreted his task of weather forecaster as that of diagnosing the earth’s meteorological responses to the realisation of archetypal principles in the configurations of the heavens. I argue that Kepler’s novel integration of medicine and astrometeorology indicated his intention from early on to restore astrology, along with all other areas of knowledge, to a superior philosophical standing.astrology, Johannes Kepler, medicine