I was reading a Jeremy Bernstein essay when I came across the following:
James I was not exactly noted for his physical courage. At meetings of his court in England he wore a stiletto-proof vest.
The image that this conjured up of a king in need of protection from lethal women in high heels made me laugh, & relax to keep on reading in order to find out if John Donne really did meet Kepler in Linz in 1619; I had been finding Bernstein’s erudite style, punctilious scholarship & his insistence on telling me that he would return to this point shortly somewhat trying – Oh do get on with it!
The answer is yes – Donne did meet Kepler. But the great astronomer seemed to know nothing at all about Donne’s work, only that he had come as chaplain to a high powered diplomatic mission sent at the command of James I. And Donne, despite his interest in these new philosophies, seemed to be equally unaware of Kepler’s achievements.
I also enjoyed Bernstein’s lament that the political & religious history of that period, with its ‘Kings, Queens, Electors, Dukes, Archdukes, Lords & Ladies, Ambassadors, Bishops, Popes, Princesses, Princes’ is more complicated than the Quantum Theory.’
Histories after all depend on individual differences, & not the statistical motion of a mass of undifferentiated electrons.
