Note 126 — THE MONIST. (continued 2)
Reading edition
Like Mr. Peirce, Kepler had, in his days, too, thought of the possibility of making the world evolve from chance. When, in 1604, a new and brilliant fixed star suddenly appeared in Ophiuchos, he took up the problem of star-evolution. We will let Kepler tell the story in his own words as it appears in his treatise on the new star:
“Yesterday, while pondering over the problem, I was called to dinner, and my young wife served the salad. ‘Do you think,’ I asked her, ‘if since the origin of creation, pewter platters, salad leaves, oil and vinegar, and also hard-boiled eggs had been flying in a chaotic mixture through space that Chance would have been able to collect them to-day in a salad?’ ‘Certainly not in such a good mixture as this is,’ was the reply of my beautiful wife.”
Kepler rejected the idea that the world could have evolved by chance.