this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2025
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There is a wonderful book by Johannes Kepler about snowflakes. It's a great read, because he's one of the all-time greats and his thinking is fascinating and insightful and wrong at just about every turn, but he's doing his best. Though knowing what we know now he never even stood a chance. I mean, the guy didn't know that water and ice are the same thing.
Highly recommended.
He didn't know about molecules so... There was no language for him to differentiate between matter and states of matter.
The summaries I find reference him theorizing that water may be spherical, leading to the hexagon pattern. He also related the feathery ends to steam hitting a cold window.
It seems to me that he knew that steam, water, and ice were the same thing.
Well, you'd be wrong. He thought they were different substances, one turning into another.
I really recommend finding the book and reading it. It's short and fairly easy to read. IIRC it was written as a Christmas present for someone, not as a super serious scientific treatise.