Nicholas Oresme

Nicholas Oresme (c.1325-1382) likely came from humble beginnings; we assume this because he attended the College of Navarre, a royally funded and sponsored college for those who could not afford the University of Paris. He had his master of arts by 1342, and received his doctorate in 1356. He became known as an economist, philosopher, mathematician and physicist.

One of his published works was:

Livre du ciel et du monde
(The Book of Heaven and Earth)
In this work he discussed the arguments for and against the rotation of the Earth.

• He dismissed the notion that a rotating Earth would leave all the air behind, or cause a constant wind from east to west, pointing out that everything with the Earth would also rotate, including the air and water.
• He rejects as figures of speech any biblical passages that seem to support a fixed Earth or a moving sun. (Keep in mind even today we unanimously speak about the beauty of the sun setting when it's really the Earth rising!)
• He points out that it makes more sense for the Earth to move than for the (presumably more expansive and massive) heavenly spheres and Sun to move.
• He assures his readers that all the movements we see in the heavens could be accounted for by a rotating Earth.
• Then he assures the reader that everyone including himself thinks the heavens move around the earth, and after all he has no real evidence to the contrary!

Years later, Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) wrote his theories out in a way so similar to Oresme's that it is assumed he had access to Oresme's writing.

Reasoning Wrong

Nicholas of Cusa (c.1400-1464) believed in using reason to determine how the universe worked. He did not exactly take a "scientific" approach: he argued from his understanding of metaphysics and, in some cases, numerology. His guesses, however, were better than some early scholars' observations.

Because he could not accept that God was finite, and since God is not separate from the entirety of the universe, he argued that the universe must by necessity be infinite. Also, because God must provide the center for His own totality, the Earth cannot be at the center of the universe—that would mean Earth was the center of God. Not being at the center of the universe, the Earth cannot be immovable, and it, along with the Sun, must be in motion just like every other observable heavenly body. This idea influenced Giordano Bruno.

Again, denying perfection for anything but God, he would not accept planetary orbits as perfectly circular, paving the way for Kepler (who referred to Nicholas as "divinely inspired") to design elliptical orbits in his planetary theory.

Cusa's thoughts on what we now call infinitesimals in his De Circuli Quadratura (On Squaring the Circle) helped Kepler out when trying to calculate the area of a circle, by picturing it as an infinite series of triangles. Cusa's reasoning for this was that the circle encompassed all other forms. Cusa's and Kepler's work was later important to  Leibniz' Law of Continuity.

Tomorrow: his views on bringing religions together.

Nicholas of Cusa

American History has a charming anecdote that the head of the US Patent Office once declared there was nothing left to invent. The background for this fable is explained here. Someone in 2010 said that we create as much data in 2 days as in all of 2003. Our ability to find and learn new things looks like it will never match the things there are to learn.

With the amount of knowledge being gained rapidly accelerating, why don't we know everything yet? Will we know everything?

Nicholas of Cusa (c.1400-1464) had an opinion on this. He outlined the problem in the opening remarks of his De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance):

It so far surpasses human reason, however, to know the precision of the combinations in material things and how exactly the known has to be adapted to the unknown that Socrates thought he knew nothing save his own ignorance, whilst Solomon, the Wise, affirmed that in all things there are difficulties which beggar explanation in words;

He argued, however, that every living creature is

endowed with suitable faculties and activities; ... there is in them a discernment that is natural and in keeping with the purpose of their knowledge, which ensures their natural inclination serving its purpose and being able to reach its fulfillment.

If that is true, he says, then limits to our ability to know things must be built-in by our Creator for a purpose. And that purpose is that, at the end of our reasoning, when reason fails, we must turn to faith for the ultimate answers.

For this, Nicholas has been declared an anti-intellectual by at least one prominent modern scholar. But this misses his point: until we reach the limits of what we can figure out, we must travel as far as we can with reason. Just how far Nicholas of Cusa let his reason take him (and in ways that were appreciated by men like Bruno, Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler) I will explore this week.