Nicholas of Cusa Quotes on Nature
Nicholas of Cusa, the fifteenth-century cardinal and philosopher, brought a daring metaphysics to bear on the natural world, and the quotes gathered here show it. Cusa held that the finite universe cannot be grasped within fixed bounds: the universe has no circumference, for its center and circumference are God, and the cosmos can be conceived as neither strictly infinite nor strictly finite. From this he drew conclusions remarkably ahead of his time, including the speculation that the stars and other regions of the heavens are inhabited, since it would be strange to suppose the earth alone peopled. For Cusa the natural order is wholly dependent on the divine, since all things are what they are because the infinite makes them so. Drawn from On Learned Ignorance and his later works, these passages present nature as an unbounded expression of an infinite God; the most condensed formulations are marked as attributed.
Quotes
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Attributed to Nicholas of Cusa:
“All things are what they are because the infinite makes them so.”
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Attributed to Nicholas of Cusa:
“The center of the universe is everywhere, and its circumference nowhere.”
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“God, therefore, is the one most simple essence of the entire universe.”
ibid. -
“Life, as it exists on Earth in the form of men, animals and plants, is to be found, let us suppose in a high form in the solar and stellar regions. Rather than think that so many stars and parts of the heavens are uninhabited and that this earth of ours alone is peopled – and that with beings perhaps of an inferior type – we will suppose that in every region there are inhabitants, differing in nature by rank and all owing their origin to God, who is the center and circumference of all stellar regions”
De docta ignorantia -
“The universe has no circumference , for if it had a center and a circumference there would be some and some thing beyond the world, suppositions which are wholly lacking in truth. Since, therefore, it is impossible that the universe should be enclosed within a corporeal center and corporeal boundary, it is not within our power to understand the universe, whose center and circumference are God . And though the universe cannot be infinite, nevertheless it cannot be conceived as finite since there are no limits within which it could be confined.”
ibid. -
“For we see that man is a civil and political animal, and is naturally inclined to civilization.”
De concordantia catholica(The Catholic Concordance) (1434) -
“All men strive and hope for nothing other than eternal life in their human nature. For this they instituted purgations of souls and sacred rites, in order to be better adapted in their nature to that eternal life.”
De Pace Fidei(The Peace of Faith) (1453)