Geometry existed before the creation. It is co-eternal with the mind of God...Geometry provided God with a model for the Creation.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that geometry is a fundamental aspect of the universe, existing alongside divine thought and aiding in the act of creation.
Kepler emphasizes the idea that geometric principles predate creation itself, indicating that there is an intrinsic connection between mathematics, specifically geometry, and the divine mind of God. He posits that geometry serves as a foundational blueprint or model through which the universe was created, bridging science and spirituality by underscoring how logical structures govern the cosmos.
In practice
In a lecture on the intersection of science and spirituality, one might quote Kepler to illustrate the importance of mathematics in understanding our universe.
...Those laws are within the grasp of the human mind. God wanted us to recognize them by creating us after his own image so that we could share in his own thoughts... and if piety allow us to say so, our understanding is in this respect of the same kind as the divine, at least as far as we are able to grasp something of it in our mortal life.
A most unfailing experience... of the excitement of sublunary (that is, human) natures by the conjunctions and aspects of the planets has instructed and compelled my unwilling belief.
We find, therefore, under this orderly arrangement, a wonderful symmetry in the universe, and a definite relation of harmony in the motion and magnitude of the orbs, of a kind that is not possible to obtain in any other way.
I am stealing the golden vessels of the Egyptians to build a tabernacle to my God from them, far far away from the boundaries of Egypt. If you forgive me, I shall rejoice; if you are enraged with me, I shall bear it. See, I cast the die, and I write the book. Whether it is to be read by the people of the present or of the future makes no difference: let it await its reader for a hundred years, if God himself has stood ready for six thousand years for one to study him.
Eyesight should learn from reason.
I measured the skies, now the shadows I measure, Sky-bound was the mind, earth-bound the body rests. [Kepler's epitaph]
Science fiction writers aren't fortune tellers. Fortune tellers are fakes.
...there is simply nothing so important to a people and its government as how many of them there are, whether their number is growing or declining, how they are distributed as between different ages, sexes, and different social classes and racial and ethnic groups, and again, which way these numbers are moving.
The world today is made, it is powered by science; and for any man to abdicate an interest in science is to walk with open eyes towards slavery.
There can sometimes be this fear among laypeople: 'I don't understand everything in science perfectly, so I just can't say anything about it.' I think it's good to know that we scientists are also confused some of the time.
It is hardly possible to maintain seriously that the evil done by science is not altogether outweighed by the good. For example, if ten million lives were lost in every war, the net effect of science would still have been to increase the average length of life.
Science is the acceptance of what works and the rejection of what does not. That needs more courage than we might think.
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