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Nicholas of Cusa

Name: Nicholas of Cusa

Nickname/Alias: Nikolaus von Cusa; Nicolaus Cusanus

Achievements: Anticipated Copernicus

Born: 1401; Kues (now Berkanstel-Kues), near Trier, Germany

Died: August 11, 1464; Todi, Papal States (Aged 63)

Field & Discipline: Philosophy; Mathematics

Language: German; Italian; Latin

Education: University of Heidelberg (1416-17); University of Padua (1417-23);

University of Cologne (1425)

Major Work:

“On Learned Ignorance” (1440)

Life & Times:

At the University of Padua, Nicholas met the physician [a pal of] Toscanelli* and came under the influence of the Italian humanist educators Guarino da Verona and Vittorini de Feltre. At Padua, Nicholas studied canon law, in which he received a doctorate in 1423, and became familiar with the latest physical and mathematical theories.

In 1425 he entered the University of Cologne to study philosophy and theology and began teaching canon law. At Cologne he also began his independent research into original documents concerning Germanic law, through which he was able to show that the Donation of Constantine was an 8th-century forgery (a fact that was publicly exposed in a famous work of 1440 by the Italian humanist [anticipated work of] Valla*).

During this period he also began collecting manuscripts of classical texts, discovering among others Pliny the Elder's “Natural History” and twelve comedies of Plautus, all then considered lost. Nicholas also started corresponding with notable scholars across Europe, including another Italian humanist [corresponded with] Poggio Bracciolini*.

Nicholas's reputation as an important theologian was established in 1432, when he went to the Council of Basel (1431-47) to defend the claims of Ulrich of Manderscheid to the archbishropic of Trier against Bishop Raban of Speyer, whose claim was supported by Pope Eugenius IV.

Although he lost the case, the publication of his work on ecclesiastical law, “On Catholic Concordance,” 1433 which was followed in 1434 by his “On Presidential Authority in a General Council,” in which he supported the authority of the general councils of the church over that of the pope, caused Nicholas to become one of the most respected members of the council.

During 1433-34, relations between Eugenius IV and the council worsened, finally reaching a crisis over the question of a site for a proposed council for reunion with the Greeks. One of the presidents, Cardinal Giulian Cesarini, led a minority group which included Nicholas in endorsing the pope's choice of site in Italy, and when Eugene moved the council to Ferrara in 1437, Nicholas left Basel.

In September-November 1437 Nicholas sailed to Constantinople as a member of the papal legation, sent to encourage the Byzantine emperor and the patriarchs of the Greek Church to unite with the papacy and Rome.

In the 1430s and 1440s Nicholas became skilled in theology, mathematics, diagnostic medicine, philosophy, science, and the arts, and in 1436 wrote his first scientific work, “On Revising the Calendar.”

In 1440, Nicholas produced his most famous philosophical work, “On Learned Ignorance,” based on a defence of his two celebrated principles, “learned ignorance” and “the reconciliation of opposites.”

For Nicholas, “learned ignorance” was the highest intellectual level accessible to the human mind, since Truth - which is absolute, one, and infinitely simple - is ultimately unknowable. Knowledge, by contrast, is relative, multiple, complex and at best only approximate. The road to truth therefore leads beyond reason and the principle of contradiction; it is only by intuition that we can discover God, in whom all contradictions meet.

In this work, as in later ones, Nicholas borrowed symbols from geometry to demonstrate these points, for example comparing man's search for truth to the task of converting a square to a circle, and placing mathematics and experimental philosophy at the service of philosophy in an attempt to describe the limits of human knowledge.

From the summer of 1438 onwards, Nicholas carried out diplomatic missions for the pope, during which he was in constant negotiation with the German princes. He was ordained a priest sometime between 1436 and 1440, and in December 1448, in reward for his part in persuading the princes to recognize the authority of Pope Eugenius IV and his successor Nicholas V, he was made cardinal, and then on 3 January 1449 was given the titular church of St. Peter ad Vincula in Rome. Soon afterwards, in March 1450, he was elevated to the position of bishop at Brixen in Northern Italy, being consecrated by Nicholas V himself.

Meanwhile, Nicholas continued his mathematical studies, producing his “On Geometrical Transformations,” 1445, “On Arithmetical Compliments,” 1445 and “On Squaring the Circle,” 1450. In the summer of 1450, Nicholas then wrote three dialogues.

The first two are the philosophical synthesis of his mathematical work, in which a layman explains, in the form of Platonic dialogues, Cusan philosophy (especially its mathematicizing tendencies) to an Aristotelian scholar, while the third treatise contains methods for calculating physical parameters through measurement, using apparatus: scales, balances and water clocks.

Nicholas emphasized the importance of gaining knowledge through experimentation and, in sections on cosmology, anticipated the heliocentric system of [anticipated] Copernicus* and, in theorizing the existence of other inhabited world, the word of [anticipated] Fontenelle*. He also made a study of plant growth, from which he concluded that plants absorb nourishment from the air, the first modern formal experiment in biology and the first proof that air has weight.

During the period December 1450 to March 1452, Nicholas V made Nicholas papal legate to Germany, tasked with enforcing church and lay-educational reform. In a tour of

Vienna (where he visited the Austrian astronomer and mathematician [visited] Peuerbach*), Magdeburg, Haarlem, and Trier, he was busy curbing superstition, and preaching against the sale of indulgences It was probably during this period that Nicholas drew one of the earliest maps of Central Europe.

During his tenure as bishop of Brixen (1452-57), Nicholas attempted to regain former lands of the diocese from Duke Sigismund of Austria, Count of Tyrol, and was defeated in battle. Fearing for his life, Nicholas fled from Brixen in June 1457.

During his last years, Nicholas became an influential adviser and papal representative of Pius II at Rome. He also composed his “On Actualized Possibility,” 1460, “On the Not-Other,” 1462 (in which he demonstrates how God is known only through ignorance), “On the Shape of the World,” 1462, “On the Pursuit of Wisdom,” 1463, and others.

Nicholas also spent the 1450s involved in the founding and completion (1458) of a hospital for the poor at his birthplace, Kues, to which he left his extensive library at his death inTodi in Umbria, Italy. He had been travelling from Rome to Ancona, and was attended on his deathbed by both Toscanelli and the Lisbon canon Fernao Martins de [at deathbed was] Roriz*. The hospital still exists with his library intact, and remains a centre of scholarly activity to this day.

Extra Connections:

He influenced [influenced] Montaigne*, [influenced] Helmont*

Ludwig von Bertalanffy, a biologist, sees Cusa as precursor to Cybernetics/General Systems.

Assessment: A major figure in pre-Copernican thinking.

Oneliner: Nicholas of Cusa, medieval forerunner of Copernicus

Bibliography:

Wikipedia