Johannes Kepler is often cited as a witness to scholars’ resistance to the shift from Latin to vernacular languages in the scientific literature in the early 17th century. Allegedly he was unable to read Italian, and reacted to Galileo's transition from Latin to Italian by accusing him of committing a crimen laesae humanitatis, with the double sense of “crime against humanity” and “crime against classical scholarship”. The paper shows that this claim is groundless. The arguments are as follows: 1. Kepler's alledged remark about Galileo is not documented in Kepler's works. 2. Kepler was very well able to read Italian books. 3. The expression crimen laesae humanitatis is not attested in the neo-Latin literature of the 17th century 4. All the references of this statement can be traced back to a book by the Heidelberg professor of Romance Studies Leonardo Olschki of 1922, who did not mark the expression as a quotation and who did not give any source reference. 5. Kepler himself published scientific texts in his native German and contributed to the development of a German astronomical terminology.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Alessandro De Angelis;
(2024)
Galileo and the 1604 Supernova: With a Translation of the "Dialogo de Cecco di Ronchitti da Bruzene"
Article
Roberto Biancarelli Martinelli;
(2004)
Paul Homberger: il primo intermediario tra Galileo e Keplero
Chapter
Pietro Daniel Omodeo;
(2015)
Riflessioni sul moto terrestre nel Rinascimento: tra filosofia naturale, meccanica e cosmologia
Chapter
Patricia Radelet-de-Grave;
(2015)
La chute des corps, le mouvement des corps célestes et l'unification des mondes
Article
Michel-Pierre Lerner;
(2017)
De Copernic à Galilée: brève histoire d'une condamnation
Chapter
Édouard Mehl;
(2018)
Kepler’s Second Copernican Campaign. The Search for an Annual Stellar Parallax after the Roman Decree (1616)
Book
Danielson, Dennis Richard;
(2014)
“Paradise Lost” and the Cosmological Revolution
Article
Dmitriev, I. S.;
(2012)
And Still They Write... (the Trial of Galileo as Interpreted by Contemporary Russian Intellectuals)
Article
Finocchiaro, Maurice A.;
(2001)
Science, Religion, and the Historiography of the Galileo Affair: On the Undesirability of Oversimplification
Chapter
Feldhay, Rivka;
(2001)
Recent Narratives on Galileo and the Church: Or the Three Dogmas of the Counter-Reformation
Article
Hon, Giora;
(2004)
Putting Error to (Historical) Work: Error as a Tell-tale in the Studies of Kepler and Galileo
Article
Laura Simoni Varanini;
(2003)
La "Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo" fra Galileo e Bruno
Book
Natacha Fabbri;
Federica Favino;
(2018)
Copernicus Banned: The Entangled Matter of the anti-Copernican Decree of 1616
Article
Rudd, M. Eugene;
(2007)
Chromatic Aberration of Eyepieces in Early Telescopes
Book
Michael Slater;
(2024)
Tropes and the Literary-Scientific Revolution
Book
Gaulke, Karsten;
(2010)
Kepler, Galilei, das Fernrohr und die Folgen
Article
Reeves, Eileen;
(1999)
Old Wives' Tales and the New World System: Gilbert, Galileo, and Kepler
Article
Bucciantini, Massimo;
(1994)
Dopo il Sidereus nuncius: Il copernicanesimo in Italia tra Galileo e Keplero
Article
Zik, Yaakov;
(2003)
Kepler and the Telescope
Book
Kepler, Johannes;
Guiducci, Mario;
Grassi, Horatio;
Galilei, Galileo;
(1960)
The Controversy on the Comets of 1618: Galileo Galilei, Horatio Grassi, Mario Guiducci, Johann Kepler
Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza
Annals of Science: The History of Science and Technology
Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology
Galilæana: Journal of Galilean Studies
Be the first to comment!