Content
The book contained in particular the first version in print of his third law of planetary motion. The work was intended as a textbook, and the first part was written by 1615. Divided into seven books, the ''Epitome'' covers much of Kepler's earlier thinking, as well as his later positions on physics, metaphysics and archetypes. In Book IV he supported the Copernican cosmology. Book V provided mathematics underpinning Kepler's views. Kepler wrote and published this work in parallel with his '' Harmonices Mundi'' (1619), the last Books V to VII appearing in 1621. Kepler introduced the idea that the physical laws determining the motion of planets around the Sun were the same governing the motion of moons around planets. He justified this claim in Book IV using the telescope observations of the moons ofReception
Due to the book's support for heliocentrism, the first volume was put on the Index of Prohibited Books on 28 February 1619.Maurice Finocchiario, Retrying Galileo, 1633-1992, Chapter 1, page 20Editions
* 1635 reprintTranslations
* 1939: ''Epitome of Copernican astronomy. Books IV and V, The organization of the world and the doctrine ...''; trans. by Charles Glenn Wallis. Annapolis: St John's Bookstore. * 1955: Reissued with Ptolemy's Almagest. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica (1955). * 1995: ''Epitome of Copernican astronomy; & Harmonies of the world''; translated by Charles Glenn Wallis. Amherst: Prometheus Books.Notes
{{Wikiquote 1610s books 1621 books Astronomy textbooks Works by Johannes Kepler 17th-century books in Latin