Nicolas de Cues
Nicolas Krebs (1401 - August 11th 1464), more commonly called Nicolas de Cues , is a German thinker of the end of the Moyen-âge. It is also known under the names of Nicolas Chrypffs , Nicolas de Cusa or Nicole of CUSE because of its birthplace (Cues on the the Moselle).
It was cardinal, then bishop and friend of the pope Pie II. He wrote a Cosmologie (of nature primarily Métaphysique) whose impact, though late, will be of great importance, since Descartes quotes it, two centuries later, like one of the precursors of the scientific thought modern by its originality.
Biography
Nicolas Chrypffs was born in Cues in 1401. Still young person, he flees of at his place to escape the ill treatments from his father. He was high with Deventer, in the brothers of the common life. He studied then the Philosophie, the Jurisprudence and the Mathématiques with Padoue. He was initially lawyer, then Ecclésiastique, and took share with the negotiations of the Réforme. He was named bishop Brixen and was opposed to the archduke Sigismond of Austria. Pie II did it cardinal and sent it in Germany. Its energy to reform manners of the Clergy and its fight against the Superstition met a sharp opposition. He died in 1464 with Leghorn.
Philosophy
Spirit oecumenical and reconciling, Nicolas de Cues marks without question the end of the Moyen-âge, and announces the beginning of the Renaissance. He is the author of disciplinary treaties, which sharpen at the same time with ethics and the right, of arithmetic spiritual, and dogmatic treaties. Curious and rigorous spirit, its library was preserved. It offers in particular the best copies of certain Latin works of Dominican the Maître Eckhart, of which it was partially inspired on certain points of doctrines touching with the mystical life. Assiduous reader of Raymond Lulle, it works out a intellectual method bringing into play the “ coincidence of opposite the ” and the limits:
- “ Thus, our finished intelligence cannot, by means of the similarity, to include/understand with precision the truth of the things. Indeed, the truth is not likely moreover or less, but it is of an indivisible nature, and all that is not truth itself is unable to measure it with precision; thus what is not the circle cannot measure the circle, because its being consists of something of indivisible. Thus the intelligence, which is not the truth, never seizes the truth with such a precision that it cannot be seized in a more precise way by the infinite one; it is that it is with the truth what the polygon is with the circle: larger will be the number of the angles of the registered polygon, more it will be similar to the circle, but never one does not make it equal, even when one multiplies the angles ad infinitum, if it is not solved in identity with the circle. ” ( Of learned ignorance , I, §3.)
Astronomy
De Cues breaks with the distinction aristetolician between the worlds supra-lunar and sublunary, by applying to the “ machine of the world ” the image of the infinite sphere whose center is everywhere, the circumference nowhere . This image, whose origin goes back to Boèce, accepted its final expression at the end of XIIe, in particular at Alain of Lille, in its Rules of Theology. but it was applied to God. Nicolas de Cues, by applying it to the world carries out the first step towards what will become the base of the revolution copernician: to found a cosmology where God does not reside differently than in a spiritual way. He will have Giordano Bruno for successor in this theory of the understandable sphere.
According to Cues, the stars do not follow the spheres and the perfect circles of Greek astronomy, in particular aristotelician. One regards it in this respect sometimes as the inspirer of the elliptic trajectories of Kepler, which is false: of Cues on the contrary sought to show that the Universe is unspecified. The term of indeterminatum is used intentionally in the place of that of infinite, because this last adjective is reserved for God. Descartes will have same prudence, but from a point of view very different from that of Cues. For the ecclesiastic, the comprehension of the world is limited by the reign of the relative relation between the objects of God. While being interested in the concepts of sizes, it notes that only God can carry the ideal of infinite, because if not, “ the world would be limited compared to something of other. ” However, from Cues does not conclude with finitude from the world: in an original cosmology, it calls upon God like infinite center and circumference. It is in the sense that its space design is, partly, relativistic. De Cues advances that it is impossible for the man to build a perfect and final image world, because any point of observation is different, and who more is, none is privileged: “ the machine of the world will so to speak have its center everywhere and its circumference nowhere, since its circumference and its center are God who is everywhere and nowhere . ”
This idea is not a contribution of Cues. The important intellectual movement carried out by Cues is to accompany this relativisation by a frank negation of the traditional hierarchisation of the Universe, which prevailed at its time. There still, of Cues is brilliant metaphysician but poor scientist (perhaps because he believes that no perfect comprehension of nature is possible). It proposes the reciprocal influences of the stars and in particular, of the stars, among which it arranges the Earth. De Cues thinks that the perfection of the Universe precedes by the particular and singular perfections of its parts. It thus rejects the traditional set of themes of a low Ground and sinks above of which wander the Celestial Higher realms.
The cosmology presented by Cues cannot and does not want not to be mathematized, which prevents from regarding it as a real inspirer of the revolution copernician then galiléenne and brings it closer paradoxically, from an epistemological point of view, sublunary vision of Aristote, for which physics could not be placed under the aegis of the numbers. Like all the stars, the Earth fixed, but is not described a more or less erratic trajectory… In addition, the Universe of Cues to properly is not spoken infinite, but unbounded not finished . De Cues thus makes the transition between Cosmos and the modern Universe: Giordano Bruno, reader of Cues, will take as a starting point its proposals for its theory concerning the infinity of the universe; Rene Descartes will recognize in his correspondences the originality of its thought. However, the impact of Nicolas de Cues will be reduced by the Platonic and neo-platonist revival 15th century.
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