O telescope, instrument of much knowledge, more precious than any sceptre!
Interpretation
The telescope is a valuable tool for gaining knowledge about the universe, surpassing even symbols of power.
In this quote, Johannes Kepler emphasizes the significance of the telescope as a scientific instrument that allows humanity to explore and understand the cosmos. He suggests that the knowledge gained from observing the heavens through a telescope is far more valuable than any earthly power represented by a sceptre, highlighting the importance of inquiry and discovery in advancing human understanding and insight.
In practice
In a presentation about the history of astronomy, this quote can illustrate the pivotal role of telescopes in expanding our understanding of the 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]
If Mars formed life, then life on Earth could have been seeded by life on Mars, making every life form on Earth descended from Martians.
Through every rift of discovery some seeming anomaly drops out of the darkness, and falls, as a golden link into the great chain of order.
We farm workers are closest to food production. We were the first to recognize the serious health hazards of agriculture pesticides to both consumers and ourselves.
If we could honestly promise young couples that we knew how to give them offspring with superior character, why should we assume they would decline? Common sense tells us that if scientists find ways to greatly improve human capabilities, there will no stopping the public from happily seizing them.
The scientist who recognizes God knows only the God of Newton. To him the God imagined by Laplace and Comte is wholly inadequate. He feels that God is in nature, that the orderly ways in which nature works are themselves the manifestations of God's will and purpose. Its laws are his orderly way of working.
The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests.
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