User:Rockinplayer/Michael Maestlin

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Micheal Maeslin used his notability to project his religious and political views.  In 1582, Michael Maestlin voiced his view in treaties on the new Gregorian calendar and its creation His arguments focused on mathematics perceptive and political perceptive. He agreed that Julian calendar was inaccurate and that it states a year to be 365 days and 6 hours long, but as Maestiling said, the year is "365 days, five hours, forty-nine minutes and 46 thirds long". Also, he discusses that the golden numbers are calculated wrong. While his argument with mathematics mostly supports the replacement of the Julian calendar, his argument for political reasons differ. Maestlin was against the adoption of the Gregorian calendar even though he believed there was a need for a new accurate calendar. He argues that the need for a new calendar was known for two hundred years, but nothing was done. He suggested that the reason that calendar was being adopted now was because the catholic church lost power, and the Pope wanted "to further his dominion". This stems from Maestlin's dislike of the position of the Pope, which is shown by his statement, the Pope does not direct "the movements of the sun and moon". Maestlin believed that the Pope was trying to project power into countries that rather recently rid the Pope's powers. Then he suggested that only educated people would notice the problems with the calendar. He believed the judgment day in the year 2000, which with the Julian calendar is an inaccuracy of three days. So he does not believe the correction is worth it.

Career

The information Maestlin used for his appendix from the Prutenic Tables, which was by Erasmus Reinhold, was used to help readers that were not well educated in astronomy to be able to read Johannes Kepler’s Mysterium Cosmographicum.

Maestlin’s appendix was written more than once, and in the final version he wrote the appendix in correspondence to “the needs of a hypothetical educated reader.” However, Maestlin also answered the questions Kepler had while writing the Mysterium Cosmographicum in his appendix.

Legacy

Michael Maestlin has more than one piece of art that is in memoriam to him. The first is a woodcut portrait that was solely made for Maestlin. The second one is part of a monument that was made for Johannes Kepler in Weil-der-Stadt, which was Kepler’s hometown. Kepler’s monument has four statues of those who deeply influenced his work in astronomy, and needless to say, one of them is of Michael Maestlin. The third art work of Maestlin is a plaque, which is also on Kepler’s monument, that shows Maestlin teaching Kepler and his other students.