Sources: fiction

Another amazing essay by Maria Popova, this one on Johannes Kepler and his remarkable, tragic story. Great description of his contributions to modern cosmology but most interesting in organizing the story around his work of fiction, The Dream, intended to help show common readers the intuitions supporting Copernican cosmology, but which inadvertantly lead to his mother’s trial for witchcraft.

A good read but interesting mainly for a lot of time spent covering the problems encountered by Carrère, and others, in casting characters based on real people close to the author. The claims generally rest on complaints by those represented that they are not represented, in some sense, truly, and that the author, therefore, has transgressed on the subject’s autonomy in a morally significant way. Carrère himself seems to agree with this claim and likens himself to the torturer. I find the whole thing very odd but it is an interesting starting point for thinking about representation, interpretation, identity, and reality; though perhaps not moral claims…