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his mystical speculations appear his new and audacious ideas on the structure 

 of the universe and man's place therein. Basing his ideas on the mystical con- 

 ception of infinity of the neo-Platonists, he asserts that it is impossible for 

 the universe to have a spherical form, as Aristotle declares, for then it would 

 always be possible to conceive of something existing outside the sphere, in 

 which case it would not be the whole universe. Rather, the latter is infin- 

 ite; it exceeds all form and all limitations. Nor, in that case, can the globe 

 be the centre of the cosmos, for the cosmos has no centre, but man on the 

 earth imagines he is in the centre of the cosmos, and he would believe the 

 same were he to find himself on the sun or any other star. Cusanus thus 

 maintained the relativity of mental observation. He derives this knowledge 

 of his from what he calls " docta ignorantia (wise ignorance)," by which he 

 means the knowledge that all contrasts as well as all change in existence 

 finally become absorbed in an absolute maximum, infinite and unfathomable 

 as God Himself. It was this '' docta ignorantia" that Aristotle lacked, and 

 therefore he believed in a finite world and absolute mental observations. For 

 the rest, Cusanus employs his mode of thought ^uite as much in theologi- 

 cal sophistry, as, for instance, touching the true nature of the Trinity; but 

 while these subtleties are now long forgotten, through his ideas of nature 

 he takes his place as one of the pioneer thinkers of the beginning of the new 

 era, half medieval mystic, half modern natural philosopher. His bold ideas 

 seem otherwise to have attracted but little attention outside learned circles; 

 it was not realized how revolutionary they were, all the more so as he did 

 not concern himself with the details of our solar system; consequently he 

 did not attack the theory of the earth as the centre of the sun's orbit. His 

 high position in the Church undoubtedly saved him from such persecution 

 as afterwards befell many of those who deduced the inevitable consequences 

 of his theories. 



If, then, Cusanus's ideas operated in silence, the views which about a 

 hundred years later were expressed by Copernicus attracted all the more at- 

 tention. Born in 1473 at Thorn in Poland, Nicolaus Copernicus received his 

 education at the Italian university of Bologna and finally became dean in 

 his own native city, where he died in 1543. Even in his youth he was a 

 keen student of mathematics and astronomy and already at that early age 

 began his life's work, to think out a new cosmic system which, more easily 

 than the Aristotelean-Ptolemaic, could be reconciled with the observations 

 made in his own time upon the movements of the heavenly bodies. Their 

 irregularities could in fact never be satisfactorily explained on the basis of 

 the old solar system. Copernicus discovered a better means of accounting for 

 the irregularities by letting the sun, in contrast to the direct evidence of the 

 senses, represent the centre of the cosmic system, and the earth assume the 

 place among the wandering planets which the sun held in the old system. 



