Of Mites and Men: Johannes Kepler on Stars and Size

Abstract

In his 1606 De Stella Nova, Johannes Kepler attempted to answer Tycho Brahe's argument that the Copernican heliocentric hypothesis required all the fixed stars to dwarf the Sun, something Brahe found to be a great drawback of that hypothesis. This paper includes a translation into English of Chapter 16 of De Stella Nova, in which Kepler discusses this argument, along with brief outlines of both Tycho's argument and Kepler's answer (which references snakes, mites, men, and divine power, among other things).