The Pursuit of Harmony follows astronomer Johannes Kepler and his efforts to establish harmony across the religious, scientific, and political boundaries of seventeenth-century Europe. Kepler, it argues, hoped to harness his vision of cosmic harmony to a new vision of political and religious harmony, in which diverse perspectives could coexist in one peaceful community. The book situates Kepler at the heart of confessional struggles about the future of Lutheranism and its relationship to other Christian confessions, at the center of debates within the Republic of Letters about the new science, ... More

The Pursuit of Harmony follows astronomer Johannes Kepler and his efforts to establish harmony across the religious, scientific, and political boundaries of seventeenth-century Europe. Kepler, it argues, hoped to harness his vision of cosmic harmony to a new vision of political and religious harmony, in which diverse perspectives could coexist in one peaceful community. The book situates Kepler at the heart of confessional struggles about the future of Lutheranism and its relationship to other Christian confessions, at the center of debates within the Republic of Letters about the new science, and in the midst of the heated court politics of the Holy Roman Empire. Harmony, in all cases, guided Kepler's efforts, and The Pursuit of Harmony charts the metaphysics that underpinned those efforts and the various theological, rhetorical, and mathematical strategies that Kepler employed in order to further them. In so doing, it offers not merely a new approach to Kepler himself, but also to European intellectual life in the post-Reformation era.