APPENDIX

Kepler's Discovery, or the
Hoofprint of Incompetence?

by Chris Landry, LaRouche Youth Movement

Since the time of Paolo Sarpi, plagiarism hasn't changed that much: It is the act of copying or stealing another person's work without attribution. It is less crude if the thief understands what the originator accomplished (i.e., if the thief is competent). In the Internet universe of Wiki-Ped plagiarists, which is now more and more dominant, a mere explanation is all a perverted mind is concerned with, and competence generally gets thrown out with the discovery.[1]

Since its inception in 2000, the LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM) has been involved in a thorough investigation of the works of Johannes Kepler, C.F. Gauss, Bernhard Riemann, et al. The intention has been to uncover the true roots of modern science, making the rediscovery ourselves, of original scientific works, in order to then know how to rebuild our decaying society. We have since created several pedagogical web pages to help others understand how these fundamental discoveries were made. This work has been the result of a serious commitment to true science, which is inseparable from the political responsibility we have taken for the development of human civilization.

Recently, a website claiming to have accomplished the same work was uncovered by the LYM. This website (www.keplersdiscovery.com) is an incompetent hoax, as will be demonstrated in what follows. Here, it is important to note that plagiaristic thieves of this type, are not just mere plagiarists.

Historically, plagiarism generally was a reaction against thinkers who made true discoveries. As is typified by the work of Sarpi's lackey, Galileo Galilei, against Kepler,[2] the goal of plagiarizing a great thinker's work is to bury the way in which the discovery was made, providing anecdotal empirical descriptions, and thereby attempting to prevent the rediscovery of that original breakthrough. This methodology keeps humanity in the dark about how the human mind actually works.

How can you tell if you're looking at stolen goods or the real thing? To the trained mind, it's not difficult. Thankfully, the Lord has blessed us, throughout history, with a swarm of incompetents, who can't quite perform their job. There is good reason for this: They themselves don't understand what they are doing, and this is reflected in their efforts. In modern times, this is especially true, where even the most emphatic of empiricists are mere approximations of idiocy. At least Euclid was clever.

Therefore, in the service of humanity, I make a public example of the poor fool(s) who places his or herself at the service of the powers that be, leaving in their tracks "The Hoofprint of Incompetence."[3]

The author of the present article is one of several authors of the LaRouche Youth Movement's Kepler's "Harmony of the World" website, created in the Winter of 2006 (www.wlym.com/kepler).[4]

An Anonymous Author

Let us examine this case more closely.

Take a look at the "identity-less" fake Kepler website section on The Harmony of the World.[5]

At first glance, it seems like a harmless Wikipedia entry, listing the usual bone dry "definitions" of what the subject at hand is. It is interesting to note the cooperation of Wikipedia with the fake Kepler website. Take a look at the similarly convoluted Wikipedia entry on Harmonices Mundi. At the bottom of that page, the fake Kepler site is linked as a "summary" of Kepler's work.[6]

First of all, this is hardly worth qualifying as a "summary" of The Harmony of the World.

Take, for example, the author's failure to outline (or even name) Kepler's Eight Degrees of Knowability.[7]

In the WLYM.com "Harmony of the World" web page, "Knowability" gives the reader pedagogical examples of the significance of the constructible figures. Kepler uses the degrees of knowability to demonstrate the "Nobility" of the constructible geometric figures. Knowability deals with how the side of a regular planar geometric figure (triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon, octagon, etc.) relates to the diameter of the circle that circumscribes that shape.

This simple basic principle has implications all throughout Kepler's Harmony of the World, and it should be noted here: Any person claiming to know and promote Kepler's Discovery, especially his "most important" discovery, The Harmony of the World, should know that the fundamental geometric guiding principle which unfolds throughout the five books of The Harmony of the World, is what Kepler defines as the Eight Degrees of Knowability.

To further make the point, readers should work through the LYM's Degrees of Knowability page, then take up the simple task of determining the seven harmonic intervals, which are audible representations (as are all harmonic proportions) of the regular figures inscribed in a circle, and the proportions found therewith.[8],[9]

It isn't just that the basic understanding of harmony was violated. There are several other points at which the author of the fake Kepler site reveals himself as the crude plagiarist that he is. Take, for example, these statements from the fake website (www.keplersdiscovery.com/Harmonies.html), which were left totally unanswered because the thief is scientifically incompetent:

• Where did Kepler "rigorously look for the causes in the harmonic intervals"? The fake site gives no reason, whereas the WLYM website produced ample resources for a reader to discover.[10]
  
  
• How did Kepler "demonstrate that no smallest interval exists"? There are just declarative statements at the fake site. Take a look at the WLYM page[11] to see how Kepler figures this out.
  
  
• What does Kepler mean by "curvature" in musical space? The fake site only provides another declarative statement based on what that author fails to understand.[12]
  
  
• What is the "basis for the harmonic proportions"? Well, as we saw demonstrated in the Degrees of Knowability, the anonymous author gives no reason for the basis of the harmonic proportions. It is in the degrees of knowability that the basis and order of the harmonies are defined.
  
  
• Why is this important in terms of the Solar System? Again there is no answer or reason, mere declaration on part of our anonymous author. Since the author of that fake Kepler site is plagiarizing and does not understand what he is doing, he fails to recognize the significance of this point and misses it altogether.[13]
  
  
• How does Kepler discover the Third Law? Here, we find more of the same. Since the author of the fake site makes convoluted statements based on what he doesn't understand, he cannot demonstrate why or how Kepler figures this out.[14]
  
  
• If you notice, the plagiarist doesn't speak of an ellipse; it just pops out at the last minute. There is no discussion of why a planet speeds up or slows down, or how you measure an arc length from the Sun.[15]

I would seriously doubt that the author of the fake Kepler website would begin to understand how the mathematician Carl F. Gauss determined the orbit of Ceres, because that discovery of the orbit of that asteroid is crucially dependent on Kepler's harmonic principles.[16]

The WLYM is in the process of rediscovering how Gauss discovered that orbit, based on a very small number of observations.[17]

It is through irony and creativity that the mind knows reality. You cannot know reality from your senses alone. We live in one universe, which we perceive through many senses.

Discovery of universal principles is the basis for human society. That is the basis for history as well. To know history is to know the human mind; this is true science. All great thinkers, such as Johannes Kepler, Carl F. Gauss, and Nicholas of Cusa exemplify this quality. They make history by pushing the boundary of human knowledge. Plagiarists are just washed away as mere "flotsam and jetsam" in the stream of life.

[1] As in Wikipedia: the reality we can all agree upon.

[2] "What Galileo Avoided," EIR, Dec. 23, 2005.

[3] That means, don't take it personally, Anonymous Grad Student (the person who claims to have built the fake Kepler's Discovery website—that bizarre, almost page-by-page, animation-by-animation, unpedagogical clone of the LaRouche Youth Movement's pedagogical websites on Kepler, Gauss, A. Kästner, Nicholas of Cusa, et al.).

[4] www.wlym.com/kepler. Copyright 2006 LaRouche Youth L.L.C., for those of you who were wondering.

[5] www.keplersdicovery.com/Harmonies.html.

[6] See "Further Links" section at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonices_Mundi.

[7] For a real pedagogical example of what Knowability is, see: www.wlym.com/~animations/harmonies/site.php?goto=knowability.html.

[8] For a thorough pedagogical work-through of the seven intervals and their relationship to Knowability see: www.wlym.com/~animations/ harmonies/site.php?goto=scale.html.

[9] All readers of this article should actually read Kepler's work, and work through, along with the book, the LaRouche Youth Movement's pedagogicals on The Harmony of the World. A true discovery must come from the sovereign individual mind, and can never be explained. Never accept a faker's work, especially an anonymous faker's work.

[10] Stated in Section 3-MUSIC of the fake Kepler site. See www.wlym.com/~animations/harmonies/site.php?goto=scale.html for a pedagogy on this subject.

[11] This is a statement that was made on the fake Kepler site, Section 3-MUSIC. See footnote 10.

[12] This statement sounds very confused, based on what that author failed to grasp. Just see the end of his "Section 3-MUSIC."

[13] This is addressing what the fake Kepler site did in Section 4, titled THE PLANETS. For a very good pedagogy on this subject see: www.wlym.com/~animations/harmonies/site.php?goto=BookV.html. Work through the Book V section of the site and figure it out for yourself

[14] See the end of Section 4 of the fake Kepler website. For another great pedagogy on the origins of Kepler's Third Law see: www.wlym.com/~animations/harmonies/site.php?goto=prop13.html.

[15] See the beginning of Section 4. The question of elliptical motion is a crucial part of Kepler's The Harmony of the World. For a pedagogical example of the nature of the ellipse, and, what is and how to measure an observed arc length from the Sun, see: www.wlym.com/~animations/ harmonies/site.php?goto=chapters_3_4.html.

[16] At this point you should really wonder. See for yourself: www.keplersdiscovery.com/Gauss.html.

[17] On Carl F. Gauss, see
www.wlym.com/~animations/ceres/index.html.