The Sleepwalkers (157 page)

No
philosopher
had
laid
such
a
monstrous
egg
before.
Or,
in
Kepler's
own
words
of
wistful
hindsight:

"What
happened
to
me
confirms
the
old
proverb:
a
bitch
in
a
hurry
produces
blind
pups...
But
I
simply
could
not
think
of
any
other
means
of
imposing
an
oval
path
on
the
planets.
When
these
ideas
fill
upon
me,
I
had
already
celebrated
my
new
triumph
over
Mars
without
being
disturbed
by
the
question
...
whether
the
figures
tally
or
not...
Thus
I
got
myself
into
a
new
labyrinth...
The
reader
must
show
tolerance
to
my
gullibility."
²⁶

The
battle
with
the
egg
goes
on
for
six
chapters,
and
took
a
full
year
of
Kepler's
life.
It
was
a
difficult
year;
he
had
no
money,
and
was
down
with
"a
fever
from
the
gall".
A
threatening
new
star,
the
nova
of
1604
had
appeared
in
the
sky;
Frau
Barbara
was
also
ill,
and
gave
birth
to
a
son
–
which
provided
Kepler
with
an
opportunity
for
one
of
his
dreadful
jokes:

"Just
when
I
was
busy
squaring
my
oval,
an
unwelcome
guest
entered
my
house
through
a
secret
doorway
to
disturb
me."
²⁷

To
find
the
area
of
his
egg,
he
again
computed
series
of
one
hundred
and
eighty
Sun-Mars
distances
and
added
them
together;
and
this
whole
operation
he
repeated
no
less
than
forty
times.
To
make
the
worthless
hypothesis
work,
he
temporarily
repudiated
his
own,
immortal
Second
Law
–
to
no
avail.
Finally,
a
kind
of
snowblindness
seemed
to
descend
on
him:
he
held
the
solution
in
his
hand
without
seeing
it.
On
4
July,
1603,
he
wrote
to
a
friend
that
he
was
unable
to
solve
the
geometrical
problems
of
his
egg;
but
"if
only
the
shape
were
a
perfect
ellipse
all
the
answers
could
be
found
in
Archimedes'
and
Appollonius'
work".
²⁸
A
full
eighteen
months
later,
he
again
wrote
to
the
same
correspondent
that
the
truth
must
he
somewhere
half-way
between
egg-shape
and
circular-shape
"just
as
if
the
Martian
orbit
were
a
perfect
ellipse.
But
regarding
that
I
have
so
far
explored
nothing."
²⁹
What
is
even
more
astonishing,
he
constantly
used
ellipses
in
his
calculations
–
but
merely
as
an
auxiliary
device
to
determine,
by
approximation,
the
area
of
his
egg-curve
–
which
by
now
had
become
a
veritable
fixation.
Was
there
some
unconscious
biological
bias
behind
it?
Apart
from
the
association
between
the
squaring
of
the
egg
and
the
birth
of
his
child,
there
is
nothing
to
substantiate
that
attractive
hypothesis.
^*

____________________

And
yet,
these
years
of
wandering
through
the
wilderness
were
not
entirely
wasted.
The
otherwise
sterile
chapters
in
the
New
Astronomy
devoted
to
the
egg
hypothesis,
represent
an
important
further
step
towards
the
invention
of
the
infinitesimal
calculus.
Besides,
Kepler's
mind
had
by
now
become
so
saturated
with
the
numerical
data
of
the
Martian
orbit,
that
when
the
crucial
hazard
presented
itself,
it
responded
at
once
like
a
charged
cloud
to
a
spark.

This
hazard is perhaps the most unlikely incident in this unlikely story.
It presented itself in the shape of a number which had stuck in
Kepler's brain. The number was 0.00429.

When
he
at
last
realized
that
his
egg
had
"gone
up
in
smoke"
³⁰
and
that
Mars,
whom
he
had
believed
a
conquered
prisoner
"securely
chained
by
my
equations,
immured
in
my
tables",
had
again
broken
loose,
Kepler
decided
to
start
once
again
from
scratch.

He
computed
very
thoroughly
a
score
of
Mars-Sun
distances
at
various
points
of
the
orbit.
They
showed
again
that
the
orbit
was
some
kind
of
oval,
looking
like
a
circle
flattened
inward
at
two
opposite
sides,
so
that
there
were
two
narrow
sickles
or
"lunulae"
left
between
the
circle
and
the
Martian
orbit.
The
width
of
the
sickle,
where
it
is
thickest,
amounted
to
0.00429
of
the
radius: