Harmonice Mundi
book by Johannes Kepler
Harmonice Mundi (Latin: The Harmony of the World, 1619) is a book by Johannes Kepler. In the work, written entirely in Latin, Kepler discusses harmony and congruence in geometrical forms and physical phenomena. The final section of the work relates his discovery of the so-called third law of planetary motion.
The full title is Harmonices mundi libri V (The Five Books of The Harmony of the World), which is commonly but ungrammatically shortened to Harmonices mundi.
Background and history
Kepler began working on Harmonice Mundi around 1599, which was the year Kepler sent a letter to Michael Maestlin detailing the mathematical data and proofs that he intended to use for his upcoming text, which he originally planned to name De harmonia mundi. Kepler was aware that the content of Harmonice Mundi closely resembled that of the subject matter for Ptolemy's Harmonica, but was not concerned. The new astronomy Kepler would use (most notably the adoption of elliptic orbits in the Copernican system) allowed him to explore new theorems. Another important development that allowed Kepler to establish his celestial-harmonic relationships was the abandonment of the Pythagorean tuning as the basis for musical consonance and the adoption of geometrically supported musical ratios; this would eventually be what allowed Kepler to relate musical consonance and the angular velocities of the planets. Thus, Kepler could reason that his relationships gave evidence for God acting as a grand geometer, rather than a Pythagorean numerologist.
The concept of musical harmonies intrinsically existing within the spacing of the planets existed in medieval philosophy prior to Kepler.
“Harmonice Mundi” enters the record as book by Johannes Kepler. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Harmonice, Mundi and book can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Harmonice Mundi” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Harmonice, Mundi and book provides the most credible route into that argument.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 21, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1066757. VIAF identifies the subject as 179053970. The Library of Congress control number is n84802322. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1619 and 1599.
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This entry incorporates text from “Harmonice Mundi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.