2. This caused him much pain, and even though he had relatively high social standing, as Imperial Mathematician, he never succeeded in getting the ban lifted from his church. Even before this ban though, was when Kepler began his findings. The life-long question that concerned Kepler was the nature of the timing and motion of the celestial bodies in space. He was convinced that simple mathematical concepts existed that could make sense of the planetary system. He saw the planetary system operating according to its own set of mathematical laws, and not previous ones, which was quite a radical idea for those times. Kepler was a mathematician rather than an observer. To make his calculations, Kepler was supplied with years of impeccable data by his elder, Tache Brahe, who had carefully marked the position of Mars in relationship to the rest of the bodies in space. Kepler rejected many ideas, such as circular orbits, because they did not fit Brahe's observations. He stuck very close to the observations that Brahe had made for him, as he was certain that they would be very accurate. In 1609, Kepler finally published his first two laws of planetary motion in a book entitled New Astronomy. A decade later, in 1619, his third law was published in The Harmonies of the World. Through these works, Kepler can be credited, in many respects, to mark the beginnings of what we call modern science. Kepler developed his empirical laws from Brahe's data on Mars. "By the study of the orbit of Mars," he said, "we must either arrive at the secrets of astronomy or forever remain in ignorance of them." However, in what proved to be a step that would change science, Kepler then went on to say that his laws applied to all the planets, including the Earth, without ever actually checking to make sure that this was true. Today we know that his laws even apply to comets. Though Kepler may not have expected this, his laws can also predict and explain the motion of sat...
