Your query is certainly allowed.
massa means "mass".
Is that all you want to know? Are you aware you've quoted only part of a sentence?
First, let me thank you for your kind, and swift, reply.
Here’s the essential question: What is Kepler’s usage of
massa?
The word mass has two meanings and I want to know which one Kepler meant in that quoted sentence fragment that I posted.
The two meanings are descriptive of a “lump” of stuff (a lump, a thing, an item), and also can mean a physics quantity, as in the mass of a kilogram of something. Just as a kilogram of something has a weight, it also has a mass. Kepler was the first to use the Latin
moles to mean the mass of something (i.e., the physics quantity); here in the quoted sentence fragment he seems to be using
massa in the same way. Newton would do exactly that a half-century later. That is, Newton, also writing in Latin, would use
massa to mean a measure of quantity-of-matter. So the real question is, Is that what Kepler is doing here?
(Somewhat similar to our English word “weight,” which also has two meanings: a lump or a physics quantity. For example, we can say a set of three red weights are on the exercise mat, and the three of them are of different weights. In the first usage, the red weight is a lump of stuff, whereas in the second usage, the lump has a weight.
So the weight of an iron weight , and similarly, the mass of an iron mass.)
It is in the crucial sentence fragment that I initially posted, wherein Kepler says, “quantum est massa, massae Terrae cognate” that the mystery lies.
Does Kepler mean the Earth (as a lump, a thing) or does he mean the Earth’s mass, its quantity-of-matter? Is Kepler using mass to signify the physics quantity? A physics quantity m as in f=ma.
Here’s the entirety of Kepler’s note:
De fluxu et refluxu maris quam certa res est, tam longe abest Lunae humectatio a rei causa. Modum, quomode [quomodu] Luna causetur fluxum et refluxum maris, primus, quod sciam, detexi in prolegomeuis Commentariorum de motibus Martis. Modus talis est, ut Luna, non in quantum humida vel humectans, sed in quantum est massa, massae Terrae cognata, vi magnetica trahat aquas, non ut humorem, sed ut terrea substantia et ipsas praeditas, ob quam et gravitatis momenta sunt sortitae.
Again let me mention that the original printing is rather muddied; it might be helpful if you would read it as it appears in his book; I’ve uploaded it here for you to see. It's paragraph 90.
Thank you; much obliged.
-Carolyn252
If you've never ever studied any Latin, you probably don't know this, so I'll tell you: massae is the same word as massa, but in a different grammatical form - the "dative case" (or genitive or even yet another thing, but in your sentence it's dative), which, practically and basically, means "to the mass". Are you after a translation of the sentence or were you just intrigued by the difference between massa and massae?
Thank you so much for your answer to my original posting. I did understand that the word meant mass and that the two different spellings were a grammatical form differentiation. My specific query is explained in my reply to the first responder. Do let me know your thinking on this. Thanks again.
-Carolyn252
