Name: Harmonices Mundi: Harmonies of the World
Author: Johannes Kepler

— Johannes Kepler —

Harmonices Mundi: Harmonies of the World

This is Charles Glen Wallis’s English translation of Johannes Kepler’s Harmonice Mundi (1618), first published in 1939 by Encyclopaedia Britannica and later reissued in 1952 in volume 16 of Great Books of the Western World. It is now in the public domain. Wallis (1914–1944), an American classical scholar and poet, produced the first complete modern English rendering of this major 17th-century work before his early death on his 30th birthday from injuries of an accidental fall. Harmonice Mundi sets out Kepler’s doctrine of celestial harmonies, integrating planetary motion, geometrical ratios and the aspect theory that shaped his astrological views and led to the development of Kepler’s Third Law.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ✦ ✦ ✦ ━━━━━━━━━━━

Published on Skyscript: 2021-01-01 -

Harmonices Mundi: Harmonies of the World by Johannes Kepler

View fullscreen | view PDF | download PDF

━━━━━━━━━━━ ✦ ✦ ✦ ━━━━━━━━━━━

For reference or quotation
the following format is suggested:

Johannes Kepler, Harmonices Mundi: Harmonies of the World; tr. C.G. Wallis (1939); Skyscript digital ed. (2021). Accessed: ,

Portrait of Johannes Kepler, Astronomer (1571 - 1630) by Unknown artist

Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) was a German astronomer and astrologer whose work bridged Renaissance cosmology and the emerging scientific revolution. As Imperial Mathematicus, he practised astrology professionally while reforming it through geometry and harmonic proportion. His Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596) and Harmonices Mundi (1619) reveal his belief in a divinely ordered cosmos which led to the development of his three laws of planetary motion. For more information on his life and work see the detailed biography: Johannes Kepler: Music of the Spheres by David Plant.