When Johann Kepler contemplated the snowflake, he brought to his account a mind conditioned by his early duties of an astrological nature and by mystical speculation, including an affection for the geometry of regular solids. Nevertheless, his work on the trigonal symmetry of ice crystals contains startling adumbrations of much later developments in thermodynamic processes and the morphogenesis of self-organizing systems. Tycho Brahe and Galileo appreciated his genius, which ranged comfortably between microscopic and macroscopic domains to achieve a grand synthesis.
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