European Union Forums

[Urwen]

In the book the Copernican revolution Kuhn says that “Nicholas of Cusa had propounded a radical Neoplatonic cosmology and had not even bothered about the earth as a moving star, like the sun and the other stars, and though his works were widely read and had great influence, he was not condemned or even criticized by his church”. Why was it that this radical theory not condemned by the church and the Copernican theory was? Was it the content of the theory or were the times just different, what makes theories in general dangerous to the church?

[Hama]

From my point of view, everything that is radical and even if it have sense is not supported by hard defined organizations such is the catholic church, so every point of view that have to destabilize in a way something rigid like the church doctrine is treated like something negative. The reason is that, because the church is an immense organisation can't be flexible, if it do so (to became flexible) it instantly loses its credibility and soon stop to act like a base (terra firma) for belivers, so it start like a domino effect one trouble start another, felxibility runs to loosing credibility, losing credibility runs to losing believers, with a million of side effects, more or less important. Nicolas of Cusa didn't want to remove the base, his essential feeling was to put together euclidean geometry (figurative speaking) with philosophy, he was so much a believer that is possible to reach his feelings easily trough his docta ignorantia when he he speaks about the universal truth, maybe just this sentence catch fully his thinking.. when he speaks about the circle and the polyandrous object... the basic difference between Copernicus and nicolas of cusa is that cusa used God as a point of view, but copernicus used him (Nicolas Cusanus).