Search
Program Calendar
Browse By Day
Browse By Time
Browse By Person
Browse By Room
Browse By Session Type
Search Tips
Virtual Exhibit Hall
About RSA
Sign In
Johannes Kepler’s Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596) presents itself as an allegorical interpretation of the symbolic cosmic Book, demonstrating that planetary motion fits neatly within a static geometrical structure “inscribed” by a divine author. Few scholars have noticed, then, that the text works to collapse this hermeneutics. It suggests that the sun’s motive force “describes” the eccentric orbits of the planets; and concludes by theorizing that these mathematically irrational shapes indicate a geometric composition that changes over time. That is, the cosmos is not a book of transcendentally imprinted symbols but an aleatory text that writes itself immanently. Kepler’s text invokes symbolic geometry and allegorical cosmology, I argue, only in order to demonstrate that textual representation cannot contain cosmic temporality. This tension manifests as a critique of the way in which cosmological authority and perhaps even God’s Word itself claims textual control over the nature of time.