Descartes: A Biography

c CUNYB/Clarke     December, :

In Search of a Career (–) 

international centre for the new sciences, and a welcome and supportive

haven for those interested in mystical, hermetic, or astrological studies.

By the time of his death in,hehad turned the city into a research

centre for those interested in scientific developments and a haven of reli-

gious toleration. For example, when the famous Danish astronomer Tycho

Brahe (–) was forced to leave Denmark in,hefound a

welcoming refuge at the royal court at Prague.ADutch physicist and

friend of Beeckman, Willebrord Snellius, visited during the winter of

–, thereby establishing a model for Descartes’ travels two decades

later. Johannes Kepler (–) succeeded Brahe as royal astronomer

at Prague in,having spent almost one year previously as his assis-

tant. During his research in Prague, Kepler published theNew Astronomy

() and theHarmony of the World(), which made public for the

first time his three laws of planetary motion.

Rudolph II has been variously characterized as melancholic or

schizophrenic, but his refusal to take sides between Catholicism and var-

ious reformed churches provided a tolerant religious oasis in a very tur-

bulent empire. Rudolph’s fascination with clocks and similar machines

meant that he employed some of the best clock makers in Europe, who

designed technically advanced and artistically extravagant clocks (includ-

ing the first to measure in seconds).Perhaps the other side of his per-

sonality was expressed in his abiding interest in the occult. Paracelsus had

died in, leaving behind a heady mix of applied chemistry, medicine,

and mystical philosophy derived from Neoplatonism and from various

alchemical and astrological sources. Michael Maier (–), a friend

of the English alchemist Robert Fludd and a follower of Paracelsus, was

physician to the emperor and a consultant on a wide range of mystical,

alchemical, and magical questions. During Rudolph’s reign, the court

welcomed the English alchemist John Dee (–)andhis travel-

ling companion and principal scryer, Edward Kelley. The royal visitors

also included Franciso Pucci (–), who was executed as a heretic

bythe Roman Inquisition, and Giordano Bruno (–), who suf-

fered the same fate at the Campo de’ Fiori, Rome. Thus Prague was

widely perceived not only as a religiously tolerant imperial centre, but

also as equally receptive to a wide range of scientific and pseudo-scientific

studies.

Apart from the exceptional religious toleration that characterized the

imperial city, the intellectual climate that was explicitly cultivated in