Brahe Quotes

[The Old Astronomer to His Pupil] Reach me down my Tycho Brahe, I would know him when we meet, When I share my later science, sitting humbly at his feet; He may know the law of all things, yet be ignorant of how We are working to completion, working on from then to now. Pray remember that I leave you all my theory complete, Lacking only certain data for your adding, as is meet, And remember men will scorn it, 'tis original and true, And the obloquy of newness may fall bitterly on you. But, my pupil, as my pupil you have learned the worth of scorn, You have laughed with me at pity, we have joyed to be forlorn, What for us are all distractions of men's fellowship and smiles; What for us the Goddess Pleasure with her meretricious smiles. You may tell that German College that their honor comes too late, But they must not waste repentance on the grizzly savant's fate. Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night. What, my boy, you are not weeping? You should save your eyes for sight; You will need them, mine observer, yet for many another night. I leave none but you, my pupil, unto whom my plans are known. You 'have none but me,' you murmur, and I 'leave you quite alone'? Well then, kiss me, -- since my mother left her blessing on my brow, There has been a something wanting in my nature until now; I can dimly comprehend it, -- that I might have been more kind, Might have cherished you more wisely, as the one I leave behind. I 'have never failed in kindness'? No, we lived too high for strife,-- Calmest coldness was the error which has crept into our life; But your spirit is untainted, I can dedicate you still To the service of our science: you will further it? you will! There are certain calculations I should like to make with you, To be sure that your deductions will be logical and true; And remember, 'Patience, Patience,' is the watchword of a sage, Not to-day nor yet to-morrow can complete a perfect age. I have sown, like Tycho Brahe, that a greater man may reap; But if none should do my reaping, 'twill disturb me in my sleep So be careful and be faithful, though, like me, you leave no name; See, my boy, that nothing turn you to the mere pursuit of fame. I must say Good-bye, my pupil, for I cannot longer speak; Draw the curtain back for Venus, ere my vision grows too weak: It is strange the pearly planet should look red as fiery Mars,-- God will mercifully guide me on my way amongst the stars.

Let me not seem to have lived in vain.

The position I now favor is that economics is a pre-science, rather like astronomy before Copernicus, Brahe and Galileo. I still hold out hope of better behavior in the future, but given the travesties of logic and anti-empiricism that have been committed in its name, it would be an insult to the other sciences to give economics even a tentative membership of that field.1

Two classics stuck with them. Ender’s Game delighted them all; here were soldiers who were just like them, except smaller. The main character was even bred to fight alien species like they were. The next day the members of the 8th greeted each other with the salutation ::Ho, Ender,:: until Brahe told them to knock it off and pay attention.

At dinner members of the 8th enthusiastically told each other to pass the fucking salt, you fucking sack of shit, until Brahe told them to quit that goddamn shit, cocksuckers, because it got old pretty goddamn quick.

And when statesmen or others worry him [the scientist] too much, then he should leave with his possessions. With a firm and steadfast mind one should hold under all conditions, that everywhere the earth is below and the sky above and to the energetic man, every region is his fatherland.

And remember men will scorn it, 'tis original and true, And the obloquy of newness may fall bitterly on you.

Here is the essence of mankind's creative genius: not the edifices of civilization nor the bang-flash weapons which can end it, but the words which fertilize new concepts like spermatoza attacking an ovum. It might be argued that the Siamese-twin infants of word/idea are the only contribution the human species can, will, or should make to the reveling cosmos. (Yes, our DNA is unique, but so is a salamander's. Yes, we construct artifacts, but so have species ranging from beavers to the architecture ants... Yes, we weave real fabric things from the dreamstuff of mathematics, but the universe is hardwired with arithmetic. Scratch a circle and pi peeps out. Enter a new solar system and Tycho Brahe's formulae lie waiting under the black velvet cloak of space/time. But where has the universe hidden a word under its outer layer of biology, geometry, or insensate rock?)

There was general agreement that Brahe was correct, until Gell-Man taught the squad to swear in Arabic.

The supernova of 1987 had just been discovered, and Feynman was very excited about it. He said, “Tycho Brahe had his supernova, and Kepler had his. Then there weren’t any for 400 years.

All three of Kepler’s laws of planetary motion can be derived from Newtonian principles. Kepler’s laws were empirical, based upon the painstaking observations of Tycho Brahe. Newton’s laws were theoretical, rather simple mathematical abstractions from which all of Tycho’s measurements could ultimately be derived. From these laws, Newton wrote with undisguised pride in the Principia, “I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the World.

A philosopher/mathematician named Bertrand Russell who lived and died in the same century as Gass once wrote: “Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.” Here is the essence of mankind’s creative genius: not the edifices of civilization nor the bang-flash weapons which can end it, but the words which fertilize new concepts like spermatozoa attacking an ovum. It might be argued that the Siamese-twin infants of word/idea are the only contribution the human species can, will, or should make to the raveling cosmos. (Yes, our DNA is unique but so is a salamander’s. Yes, we construct artifacts but so have species ranging from beavers to the architect ants whose crenellated towers are visible right now off the port bow. Yes, we weave real-fabric things from the dreamstuff of mathematics, but the universe is hardwired with arithmetic. Scratch a circle and π peeps out. Enter a new solar system and Tycho Brahe’s formulae lie waiting under the black velvet cloak of space/time. But where has the universe hidden a word under its outer layer of biology, geometry, or insensate rock?)

Forget your magic mirror," she decided to say. "If I lived here, I would spend my whole life in here, reading." "They're just... books...." He carefully lit the candelabra at the front and placed Lumière on the floor, dismissing him. "Just books? That's like saying Alexandria is just a library." She ran over to the closest shelf and tilted her head, reading the titles. "You don't understand. I don't understand how you don't understand. Look- here's an ancient text in Greek about astronomy... and next to it is everything Galileo Galilei ever wrote!! This whole section is about the stars and planets and the entire universe!" The Beast stood, looking slightly embarrassed, scratching the back of his neck with his hand. Belle grabbed a book and ran over to him, shoving it in his face. "Up until this man, Copernicus, everyone thought the entire universe rotated around the earth- that we were the center of it all." She flipped open to a page that had an engraving of planets and their paths, little callouts to their names and the length of their orbits. "Thanks to men like him and Tycho Brahe and Kepler, we now know nothing revolves around the earth- except the moon.

When all these data were collected they came into the hands of Kepler,* who then tried to analyse what kind of motion the planets made around the sun. And he did this by a method of trial and error. At one stage he thought he had it; he figured out that they went round the sun in circles with the sun off centre. Then Kepler noticed that one planet, I think it was Mars, was eight minutes of arc off, and he decided this was too big for Tycho Brahe to have made an error, and that this was not the right answer. So because of the precision of the experiments he was able to proceed to another trial and ultimately found out three things.

Then a man named Tycho Brahe* evolved a way of answering the question. He thought that it might perhaps be a good idea to look very very carefully and to record exactly where the planets appear in the sky, and then the alternative theories might be distinguished from one another. This is the key of modern science and it was the beginning of the true understanding of Nature – this idea to look at the thing, to record the details, and to hope that in the information thus obtained might lie a clue to one or another theoretical interpretation.

Tycho Brahe clung to a lousy idea, Hans. That’s all it was. People like us—you must know this by now—we can’t do that. We know damn well when we’re right. We know a long time before anyone else even suspects it.” He cleared his throat. “Or when we’re wrong. That’s how we live. That’s how we die.

In the sixteenth century the Reformation introduced a new idea. This was the notion that knowledge is not simply the province of ecclesiastical institutions but that, especially when it comes to matters of conscience, each man should decide for himself. The “priesthood of the individual believer” was an immensely powerful notion because it rejected the papal hierarchy, and by implication all institutional hierarchy as well. Ultimately it was a charter of independent thought, carried out not by institutions but by individuals. The early Protestants didn’t know it, but they were introducing new theological concepts that would give new vitality to the emerging scientific culture of Europe. Here is a partial list of leading scientists who were Christian: Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Brahe, Descartes, Boyle, Newton, Leibniz, Gassendi, Pascal, Mersenne, Cuvier, Harvey, Dalton, Faraday, Herschel, Joule, Lyell, Lavoisier, Priestley, Kelvin, Ohm, Ampere, Steno, Pasteur, Maxwell, Planck, Mendel. A good number of these scientists were clergymen. Gassendi and Mersenne were priests. So was Georges Lemaitre, the Belgian astronomer who first proposed the “big bang” theory for the origin of the universe. Mendel, whose discovery of the principles of heredity would provide vital support for the theory of evolution, spent his entire adult life as a monk in an Augustinian monastery. Where would modern science be without these men? Some were Protestant and some were Catholic, but all saw their scientific vocation in distinctively Christian terms.

Tycho Brahe When Tycho Brahe lost his nose in a duel was he forced to wear sungoggles?

Indeed, this was the dirty little secret about the Copernican theory. None of it could be confirmed with direct evidence. Copernicus had come up with the notion that the earth must be going around the sun along with the other planets without making any new astronomical observations. He had simply found the idea in a book on the ancient Greek mathematician Aristarchus.§ Again, the chief reason Copernicus did not publish his theory during his lifetime was not that he feared the disapproval of the Church—he was worried it was so contrary to our everyday experience, it would be laughed off the stage.26 Nothing any astronomer had ever seen, not even Tycho Brahe’s meticulous observations from his island observatory outside Copenhagen, confirmed any aspect of it. Brahe himself felt perfectly comfortable sticking to the old geocentric theory.

I don’t want to pull a Brahe.

Perhaps every man imagines his friends and allies in much the same manner as Ptolemy or Brahe had imagined the cosmos: as systems that buttress our personal faiths.

Sixteenth-century Danish nobleman and astronomer Tycho Brahe was the greatest naked-eye astronomer and an interesting character. His colorful past included being kidnapped by his uncle, being given an island, constructing a state-of-the-art and gorgeous observatory, being evicted from his island only to have his observatory destroyed by the islanders after his departure, and wearing a metal prosthetic nose after having the tip of his own nose cut off during a mathematics-inspired duel. Brahe died in 1601 as a result of a burst bladder after he held his pee too long.

Curious archaeologists later dug up Brahe’s body and found a green crust on the front of his skull – meaning Brahe had probably worn not a silver but a cheaper, lighter copper nose. (Or perhaps he switched noses, like earrings, depending on the status of his company.)

No attack on Christianity is more dangerous,” Jerome Wolf wrote Tycho Brahe in 1575, “than the infinite size and depth of the universe.

In the early evening of the second day, Andrea Gell-Man introduced the 8th to the concept of profanity, which she picked up at lunch and shared just before dinner. At dinner members of the 8th enthusiastically told each other to pass the fucking salt, you fucking sack of shit, until Brahe told them to quit that goddamn shit, cock-suckers, because it gold old pretty goddamn quick. There was a general agreement that Brahe was correct, until Gell-Man taught the squad to swear in Arabic.

Mind has its inertia as well as matter; and its progress to truth can only be insured by the gradual and patient removal of the obstructions which surround it.