The Catholic Historical Review

128BOOK REVIEWS This volume contributes significantly to our appreciation of a much-maligned and little-understood ecumenical tradition. Andrew Sorokowski Assumption College Worcester, Massachusetts Kepler's Tübingen: Stimulus to a Theological Mathematics. By Charlotte Methuen. [St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History.] (Brookfield, Vermont : Ashgate. 1998. Pp. xii,280. $76.95.) In the biography of the German mathematician and astronomerJohannes Kepler (I57I-I63O), a gap has long existed in a knowledge of his education at the University of Tübingen. Charlotte Methuen illuminates the principal responses within the university to the natural sciences. A fuller understanding of their place and role at Tübingen in the second balf of the sixteenth century requires, she writes, interdisciplinary studies, drawing upon at least the history of science , church history, and the history of education. Such work can provide a better grasp of the complex relations between science and theology, as well as the role of the culture in shaping, guiding, or impeding the growth of scientific knowledge. Unlike Peter Dear, Allen Debus, Paolo Mancosu, and Robert Westman , who begin their interdisciplinary research with the history of science, Charlotte Methuen commences her investigation of the intellectual context of the sciences in church history. In a skillful study of primary sources and leading secondary authors, including Friedrich Seek, Methuen examines the Stift, theological scholarship system, at Tübingen when Kepler was a student. She analyzes trends in the teaching of logic, theology, Aristotelian natural philosophy, and astronomy. A Lutheran university , Tübingen was strongly influenced by Martin Luther's approach to nature and his disciple Philip Melanchthon's educational reforms. Luther viewed nature as a second, limited book (liber naturae) important to recognizing God as creator, but the first and higher book was the Scriptures (liber scripturae). Melanchthon's Loci communes had students study languages, logic, ethics, rhetoric, mathematics, and Aristotelian natural philosophy. Both men required textual exegesis to establish the accuracy of texts. Unusual was Melanchthon's emphasis on mathematics for its utility and the power of its proofs. Since it plumbed the vestigia Dei in the cosmos, astronomy was his chief mathematical science. Melanchthon also accepted Ptolemy's astrology as a good source for a knowledge of God. Among the Tübingen faculty, Methuen identifies many who encouraged greater study of mathematics. These go from Peter Apian to Simon Grynaeus, an editor of Euclid and commentator on Proclus,who stressed the beauty and clarity of mathematics and the power of its proofs in pursuing certain knowledge. They also include the theologian Jacob Heerbrand, a pupil of Melanchthon and teacher of Kepler, who taught that the structure and order of the cosmos, not book reviews129 Platonic Forms, indicate God's presence. Heerbrand's treatment of the book of nature as a text encouraged more questioning of ancient authorities. This suggests an openness to innovation in the mathematical sciences at Tübingen, rather than a simple Kuhnian revolutionary interpretation of the scientific change of that time. Dr. Methuen clarifies the thought of Michael Maestlin, a student ofApian and perhaps the teacher who most influenced Kepler. His tripartite method joined exact observations with hypotheses and mathematical proofs. These can lead, Maestlin asserted, to a greater admiration of God's glory. Of necessity, geometrical proofs are correct. The nova of 1572, which Maestlin placed above the sphere of the moon, contrary to Ptolemaic astronomy, and the comets of 1577-78 and 1 580 undercut the Aristotelian notion that the heavens are perfect and immutable. The search for more correct interpretations in the sciences, such as the Copernican system, demanded reliable and improved observations. Maestlin thought that there can be only one truth, and he sought to make his findings consistent with biblical authority. While Kepler is clearly an heir of Ptolemy, as J. V Field notes, Methuen adds that the teaching of most Lutheran professors at Tübingen did not deter but encouraged his research. He surpassed them in rejecting ancient authorities and, after reading Tycho Brahe, later gave greater weight to exact observation. Methuen's term "theological mathematics" to describe Kepler's work, however, seems a misnomer. His conception of the divine structure of the universe is religiously inspired, and he derives some methods from...