Abstract
Johannes Kepler dedicated much of his work to discover a law for the refraction of light. Unfortunately, he formulated an incorrect law. Nevertheless, it was useful for anticipating the behavior of light in some specific conditions. Some believe that Kepler did not have the elements to formulate the law that was later accepted by the scientific community, that is, the Snell–Descartes law. However, in this paper, we propose a model that agrees with Kepler’s heuristics and that is also successful in anticipating the behavior of light when it passes through a surface that separates two media with different optical densities. This model adopts strategies that were recommended by Kepler in two types of analogies. The obstacles that led to the failure of the two types of analogies are presented in the article, and we argue that the model proposed here could overcome these specific obstacles. Finally, we show how the proposed model could be articulated with Kepler’s metaphysics of light.
Highlights
In 1600, Johannes Kepler joined Tycho Brahe, who by that time had become imperial mathematician in the court of Rudolf II
We propose a diagram or “paper tool” that avoids empirical obstructions and that agrees with the recommendations of the first two families of analogies
The paper has the following structure: In the first two sections, we present the first two families of analogies and their empirical obstacles; in the third part, we present our proposal and demonstrate that this new diagram or tool leads to analogies that can suitably adjust both families and that can anticipate the Snell–Descartes law; in the fourth section, we present Kepler’s metaphysical basis that could have accompanied the defense of this tool
Summary
In 1600, Johannes Kepler joined Tycho Brahe, who by that time had become imperial mathematician in the court of Rudolf II. We will argue that this tool would have agreed with Kepler’s metaphysical presuppositions with regard to the nature of light With this in mind, the paper has the following structure: In the first two sections, we present the first two families of analogies and their empirical obstacles; in the third part, we present our proposal and demonstrate that this new diagram or tool leads to analogies that can suitably adjust both families and that can anticipate the Snell–Descartes law; in the fourth section, we present Kepler’s metaphysical basis that could have accompanied the defense of this tool
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