Nicholas of Cusa 1401 – 1464

Nicholas of Cusa was a German cardinal, philosopher, and mathematician at the threshold between the medieval and Renaissance worlds. His treatise On Learned Ignorance argued that the highest human wisdom is the recognition that the infinite is not commensurable with the finite, and he developed the doctrine of the coincidence of opposites in God. He anticipated several themes of early modern thought, including an infinite universe and the relativity of motion. He served as a reformer of the Church, a diplomat for the papacy, and a patron of humanist scholarship.