Kepler's Argument for Intelligent Design Based on His Wife's Salad

Johannes Kepler 

The story of Kepler’s wife’s salad as told by Richard Wurmbrand:

“It is said that a scientist, coming home from his laboratory, was called to supper by his wife. A salad was set before him. Being an atheist, he said,

“If leaves of lettuce, grains of salt, drops of vinegar and oil, and slices of eggs had been floating about in the air from all eternity, it might at last happen by chance that there would come a salad.”
 

“Yes,” answered his wife, “but not so nice and well-dressed as mine.”[1]

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Although Wurmbrand doesn’t say so, the story actually is told by Johannes Kepler, who wasn’t an atheist,[2] as something that actually happened to him.  He tells it his in connection with the sudden appearance of a supernova in the foot of constellation Ophiuchus (Serpent-Handler). Following is an English translation of the Kepler's story followed by the original Latin text from his collected works:

“I will tell those disputants, my opponents, not my own opinion, but my wife’s.  Yesterday, when weary with writing, and my mind quite dusty with considering these atoms, I was called to supper, and a salad I had asked for was set before me.  ‘It seems, then,’ said I, aloud, ‘that if pewter dishes, leaves of lettuce, grains of salt, drops of water, vinegar, and oil, and slices of egg, had been flying about in the air from all eternity, it might at last happen by chance that there would come a salad.’  ‘Yes,’ says my wife, ‘but not so nice and well-dressed as this of mine is.’”[3]

Heri dum fessus à scribendo, animoque intus pulverulento ab atomorum istarum considerationibus, ad coenam vocor: apponit mihi ea, quam dixi, acetarium. Ergo, inquam ego, si toto aëre confertae volitarent patinae stanneae, folia lactucae, micae salis, guttae aquae, aceti, olei, ovorum decusses, idque ab aeterno duret: futurum est tandem aliquando, ut fortuitò tale coeat acetarium: respondit bella mea: Sed non hoc decore, neque hoc ordine.[4]

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[1] Richard Wurmbrand, The Answer to the Atheist’s Handbook (Bartlesville, OK: Living Sacrifice, 1975) (Kindle Edition).

[2] See intro to Johannes Kepler, The Harmony of the World (Trans. & ed.  E. J. Aiton, A. M. Duncan, and J. V. Field; n.p.: American Philosophical Society, 1997), xxii: “Kepler did believe in the exceptional possibility of supernatural appearances. Having made a detailed distinction between the natural and supernatural, he claimed to show that the new star of 1604 appearing at a return to the Fiery Trigon—itself a natural event—was due to Divine Providence, like the Star of Bethlehem.  To support his argument that the formation of the new star at the time of the return to the Fiery Trigon could not be attributed to chance, he cited his wife’s reply when he asked her if the salad she had prepared for dinner could have come together of its own accord.”

[3] David Brewster, The Martyrs of Science: Or The Lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1860), 200. Brewster includes the passage in its larger context.

[4] De stella nova in pede serpentarii (1606): 27, ll. 22-28, in Johannes Kepler, Gesammelte Werke (21 vols.; ed. Walther von Dyck, Max Caspar, Fran Hammer, Martha List, and Volker Bialas; Munich: C.H. Beck, 1937-2009), 1:285.