Schmitt C.B. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy

The

new

philosophy

of

nature

237

Aristotelian physics

and

establishing

a

complex relationship between them

and

the

scientific revolution. Thanks

to

Copernican cosmology, such

criticism focused

on the

connection between Aristotelian physics

and

metaphysics,

and led, via

Bruno's notion

of an

infinite universe,

to a

thorough reappraisal

of

philosophical problems.

MARSILIO

FICINO

While

Ficino's concerns were primarily philosophico-religious,

his

Theologia

platonica

(1482)

and his

commentaries

on

Hermes Trismegistus,

Plato

and

Plotinus

had a

considerable influence

on

developments

in the

philosophy

of

nature.

He had

intended

to

erect

a

Christian apologetic

against heterodox tendencies like Alexandrism, Averroism

and

Epicurean-

ism.

His

first step

was to

reconstruct

a

traditional philosophy which, from

remotest antiquity down

to

Plotinus,

had

demonstrated

the

concord

of

pagan thought with

the

truth

of

Christian revelation, whose highest

mysteries

it had

prefigured. Ficino chose

to

demonstrate

the

homogeneity

of

that

particular

brand

of

philosophy

and

Christianity because

he

recognised both,

the

difficulty

of

reconciling Christian beliefs with

Aristotelianism

and the

failure

of

to

deal with those areas

where Aristotelianism

and

Christianity differed. Such areas included

the

question

of

the eternity

of

the world,

the

mortality

of

the soul,

the

unicity

of

the intellect

and an

astrological determinism

that

regarded

the

individual

person,

and

indeed religion itself,

as

transient

phenomena bound

by

astrological

cycles.

At

the

heart

of

Ficino's cosmological

attempt

to

reconcile

cyclical

and

eschatological

notions

lay his

desire

to

ensure

that

the

cosmic location

of

the

rational soul

—

a

category which included

the

human soul

—

guaranteed both

its origin

and its

imperishable destiny.

The

location

of

the rational soul

at the

centre

of the

hierarchy

of

being, between

the

perceptible

and the

intelligible,

was a

recognition

of its

privileged position

in the

created

universe, where

it

gave

life

and

awareness

to the

perceptible world.

The

rational soul

thus

sanctioned

the

ontological difference between

the two

realms while also establishing

a

constant relationship between them.

According

to the

Neoplatonic tradition, this ensured

a

reading

of the

cosmos,

of its

forces

and of the

correspondences between levels

in the

hierarchy

of

being

in

which Ficino could find

an

ever-changing

and

different reflection

of

God's actions.

Ficino

followed

the

main lines

of

Aristotelian cosmology, with

its

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

238

Natural philosophy

hierarchy

of

celestial

and

elemental spheres centred

on an

immobile earth.

He concentrated, however,

on

reducing

the

gulf

between

the

supralunary

and sublunary realms.

The

weight

of

magic

in his

work shows

that

the

metaphysical

structure

of the

real, with

its

secret

web of

hidden links,

revealed

to the

sage

the

splendour

of

the divine

life

itself, although

not in its

purest form, within

the

perceptible world.

For man to be

able

to

retrace

the

process

of

emanation, each degree

of

being

had to

suggest

its

ontological

function,

its

defined

nature

and a

higher reality

to

which

it

was bound

as to a

constitutive structure.

The

soul made real

the

link between

the

perceptible

and intelligible worlds

by

uniting itself with

that

which represented

the

highest corporeal

level,

namely

the

nature

of the

heavens.

By

means

of

its

celestial

body

the

soul could make itself

the

bond between

the two

worlds

since

the spiritus

omnipresent

in the

sublunary realm

was the

instrument

of

vivification

as

well

as the

indispensable medium

for its

descent into

the

elementary body.

Magic,

and the

astrological premises

that

accompanied

it,

made operational

a

fully

evolved nexus

of

forms which guaranteed

the

existence

of a

sphere

in

which man's cosmological position took

on a new

dimension.

For

if

the soul

vivified

the

corporeal world through

spiritus, and

if

a

spiritus of

celestial origin was diffused throughout

nature,

then

not

only

was

the

soul's process

of

ascent

and

descent clarified,

but the

highest

part

of

the soul

was

clearly

not

attached

to the

corporeal realm. Proof

of

this

was

man's ability, under certain conditions,

to

attain

supracosmic

levels,

to

command

the

elements

and to

prophesy.

The

process

of

ascent

was

complementary

to

magic;

the two

were interwoven

and

restricted

to the

initiated.

In

Ficino's

natura the

soul always preserved

a

link with

its

origin.

This,

in

turn,

was the

foundation

for the

hypothesis

that

the

soul

had a

different ontological

status

and

exceptional attributes. Such

a

hierarchy

justified

magic

and

astrology

as a

reflection

of

the domination

of

the body

by

the

soul.

In

other words,

the

natural

order both revealed

a

dependence

of

the corporeal

on the

spiritual

and

existed

as a

potentiality which

the

soul

could

activate, correct

and

modify. Thus,

as far as man was

concerned,

magic

and

astrology,

and the

animism they presupposed, referred

to the

realm

of the

contingent

and the

possible, wherein

nature

was

called

to

behave differently from

how it

would have behaved

if it had

been left

to

itself. This behaviour

was not

arbitrary because

at the

operative

level

magical

action

was the

obverse

of the

philosopher's awareness, which

individuates

the

laws

of

the real

and

pursues them

to

their source, where

it

discovers

that

magical action

is not by

nature

different from

the

awareness

which

can be

mobilised

in us.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The

new philosophy of nature

239

There are, however, a number of ambiguities in Ficino's thought. For

instance, the circular motion of the

spiritus,

even in the sublunary sphere,

entailed an animated, living cosmos, conceived as an organism. This motion

could

be seen as independent of the Aristotelian laws of rectilinear motion.

Another problematic aspect of Ficino's thought was

that

his

attempt

to

rationalise religious

truth

- which he only relinquished on the threshold of

the Christian mystery - by demonstrating its convergence with the pia

philosophia

involved

giving

a determining role to certain texts in his

reworking of traditional cosmology, elevating them to the

status

of

revelation. This revelation, while dependent on and inferior to its Christian

counterpart, threatened to supplant it at the philosophical

level.

The

Hermetic texts were

thus

placed on the same

level

as,

if

not above, Genesis,

since they clarified the mysteries of the Scriptures by defining the

nature

of

the soul and the origin of the cosmos in a rigorously philosophical fashion.

Above

all, Ficino tended to divinise the heavens, especially the sun, which

he regarded as the living symbol of the divinity and the

heart

and source of

created

life.

Thus

—

in the

view

of Garin and

Yates

—

he foreshadowed and

perhaps determined the fate of Copernicanism and the various

natural

philosophical responses it generated.

1

GIOVANNI

PICO

Giovanni

Pico's writings, before his attack on astrology, attempted to

provide a secure basis for human freedom and to reformulate the

relationship and contrast between

nature

and spirit. For Pico magic

corresponded exactly, at the operative

level,

to a mystical and aristocratic

conception of the highest form

of

knowledge.

Magic was the activity of an

individual who, through a knowledge of the most secret mysteries, could

illuminate the divine presence in each and every thing. In this sense magic

represented the other aspect of the celestial ladder which leads man to God,

and was simultaneously a premise

—

in so far as it was knowledge

—

and a

consequence

—

in so far as it was action

—

of

that

ladder. Thus

natural

and

demonic magic become two opposing outlets for man's activity, represent-

ing his capacity to cooperate with the forces of good or

evil.

The parallel

between the

structure

of magical action and the modality of the

epistemological process

thus

found its rationale, as in Ficino, in the identity

1.

See

Yates

1964 and

Garin

1975.

Garin

1976c

is

very

important

for

understanding

Ficino

and

Pico

in

relation

to

astrology.

For a

discussion

of the

Yates

thesis,

see Occult and Scientific Mentalities 1984, and

in

particular

Vickers'

introductory

essay.

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240

Natural philosophy

of

the ultimate force towards which both moved, the former attempting to

modify

natural causality and the latter striving to attain a higher

level

of

consciousness.

Pico's

Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem,

2

however, raises

various problems with respect to his earlier work and to the

views

of

Ficino

which,

in so far as they relate to the anti-astrological argument, he now

openly

attacked. Pico tended to reduce the supralunary—sublunary relation-

ship to

that

between general and proximate causes and sought thereby to

reassess the extent to which matter determined natural processes. He

stressed

that

matter was the single cause of disorder, irregularity and

imperfection in the terrestrial sphere and stated emphatically

that

to regard

the stars as the cause

of

individual phenomena was to deny their

nature

and

dignity.

The stars only influenced the sublunary sphere as universal agents,

causing regularity and order. The

evils

which Pico's opponents blamed on

the stars should instead be attributed to matter itself and to the particular

conditions under which the celestial influence — itself unalterable and

unspecifiable

—

was received. Having restricted the influence of the stars to

the Aristotelian principles of motion, heat and light, Pico divorced

philosophy, understood as the correct attitude towards nature, from

astrology,

magic and any other superstitious practices. In particular,

philosophy showed

that

the putative connection between astral

cycles

and

the destinies

of

religions

derived from an erroneous application

of

corporeal

laws

to an independent order and thus threatened to include miracles, the

prophets and the unique character of Christianity in a purely naturalistic

perspective. Furthermore, astrology's Egyptian origins, from which it

drew its nobility, betrayed a double inadequacy: its practical and theoretical

shortcomings derived from the Egyptians' imperfect understanding of

astronomy and from their ignorance

of

natural philosophy. From this shaky

foundation rose causal links between heterogeneous events, which is a precise

definition of the fundamental error of astrology. On the other hand, by

positing matter as

that

which modifies celestial influences and proximate

causes,

that

is, by assuming contingency to be intrinsic to nature, Pico

sought to preserve miracles as unpredictable divine interruptions of the

causal chain assumed by astrology. He understood

that

astrology saw in the

heavens the origin both of

that

which could be embraced by a rule and of

that

which seemingly could not: it recognised disorder neither in

miraculous events nor in events which were simply unusual. Attributing a

2. The Disputationes

appeared

posthumously

in 1496,

edited

by

Pico's nephew

Gianfrancesco;

see

G.

Pico

1946-52.

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The

new

philosophy

of

nature

241

causal role

to the

heavens allowed astrology either

to

assert

the

natural

character

of

these events

or to

explain away their rarity.

The

heavens change

from moment

to

moment

and

their individual causality only makes sense

in

so

far as it is

linked

to the web of

relationships which define

the

astral

situation

at

each

instant,

a web

which repeats itself completely

or

partially

only

at

ever-increasing intervals. Thus

it is the

rarity

of an

event which

makes

it

miraculous,

not the

fact

that

it

belongs

to a

different order. Here

Pico

highlights

one

of

the reasons

for

astrology's success:

it

offered

a

rational

explanation

for

something which was inexplicable

at the

natural

and

human

levels.

Because

of

their ontological superiority, celestial causes were

invoked

to

account

for

this.

So

astrology could explain both

the

existence

of

occult

qualities (which Pico

attributed

to the

properties

of

light without

giving

a

plausible justification

for

their variety

and

diversity)

and the

fact

that

at

certain moments

in

history mankind, through courage

and

self-

abnegation, could change

its

habits

and

initiate

new

religious

leges.

Pico's

exceptional success testifies

to his

acuteness,

but

resistance

to his

views

should

not be

underestimated.

He

accounted comfortably

for the

differences between

the sub- and

supralunary spheres,

but he had

difficulties

in explaining

the

origin

of

occult

effects,

even though

he

attributed

them,

as

Ficino

did, to

celestial heat.

To be

consistent with

his own

logic

he had to

refer them

to the

heavens

as

their

natural

cause.

But was it

then

possible

that

the action

of

the heavens

on the

elements

was not

unique

and

that

in

certain

cases

the

elements received

a

specification

at

source?

If, on the

other hand,

matter

and

proximate causes

are

used

to

explain occult

effects,

surely Ficino

had shown Pico

that

magical action depended

on

man's ability

to

dispose

matter

to

receive celestial influences,

that

is, it

depended

on

modifying

the

conditions under which

the

celestial influences, themselves assumed

to be

unalterable, were received. Does this

not

mean

that

the

presuppositions

of

operative magic could

be

reconciled with those invoked

by

Pico

to

account

for

celestial action, amounting

to a

legitimisation

of

the link between magic

and astrology?

The sheer variety

of

problems which Pico faced suggests

that

belief

in

astrology

was

more

than

an

acceptance

of

all

the

specific assumptions which

he attacked. That

is,

astrology offered

a

relatively straightforward account

of

a

very wide range

of

natural

and

human phenomena

and

seemed

especially

to

explain those phenomena which appeared most mysterious

and inexplicable. Therefore,

to

point

out the

mathematical shortcomings

of

the astrologers

was

merely

to

point

out

areas where corrections should

be

made

(as did

Cardano

in his

commentary

on

Ptolemy's

Tetrabiblos). The

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242

Natural philosophy

heterogeneity of the spiritual and the corporeal presupposed the separation

of

two levels which astrology, more or less openly, believed

that

it could

discuss on the basis

of

experience. The relationship between the conclusions

of

the

Disputationes

and the teachings of Ficino was more delicate: the

attempt

to reveal the connection between astrology and magic, between

astrology and all the pseudo-sciences, became in Pico an explicit rejection of

that

seminal wisdom by means

of

which

Ficino had reconciled Christianity

and the ancient theology.

PIETRO

POMPONAZZI

The vitality of astrological beliefs and the difficulty of defining and

delineating the sphere

of

the occult are important in Pomponazzi's thought,

but they are connected with the problems of establishing the scope of

human knowledge and

of

answering the teleological questions posed when

man is demoted to mortality. Pomponazzi's De

immortalitate

animae

(1516)

combined the hypothesis

of

the human soul's mortality with

that

of

a drastic

limitation of man's epistemological capacities. The consequences of this

were already evident in his De

incantationibus

3

where he defined the causes

of

occult phenomena. There, within the framework of a

natural

determin-

ism embracing all magical phenomena, Pomponazzi developed an ambigu-

ous notion of the miraculous. He denied the reality of miracles in a

theological

sense but found a new reality for them elsewhere, claiming

that

even

Christian miracles could be explained in terms of

natural

causes. But

before this statement can be understood, it is necessary to clarify his concept

of

nature.

In Pomponazzi's

view,

the heavenly bodies were simply a medium for

the action of the intelligences, so

that

nature

referred to something to

which

it was bound and on which it depended but which was beyond it

and transcended it. It was necessary to look both at the particular way in

which

the human world, in all its historical and religious complexity, was

part

of

nature,

and at the forms by which the divinity regulated this

complex

of phenomena. The notion of

nature

thus

became more

problematic because it had to account for a series of different events,

ranging from the existence

of

occult

qualities to the rise and

fall

of

religions.

Pomponazzi declared

that

it was necessary to go back to experience, and by

3. The De incantationibus

first

appeared

in 15 56 and was

reprinted,

together

with

the Defato, at

Basle

in

1567;

both

editions

were

the

work

of

Guglielmo

Gratardo.

Both

works,

finished

in 1520,

were

widely

circulated

in

manuscript.

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The

new

philosophy

of

nature

243

experience

he

meant both

the

observations supplied

by

astrology

and the

testimony

of

reliable historians.

In

fact,

the two

factors interwove

constantly: astrology showed

that

the

causal nexus between

earth

and the

heavens existed because

the

astrologers' predictions

had

been confirmed

(which

proved

the

validity

of

astrology's premises). This was attested

by the

ancient historians,

who

taught

that

all

important political

and

religious

changes were preceded

or

accompanied

by

exceptional

natural

events

which

allowed

the

changes

to be

predicted. Christianity, like earlier

religions,

was

subject

to

this

natural

causality. Everything

had to be

explained

in

relation

to a

structure

which was

of

necessity always identical

to itself;

but

this raised

the

problem

of

the succession

of

different religions.

The doctrine

of

great astrological

cycles

allowed Pomponazzi

to

explain

how

a

religion

was

born

and how it

died.

The way in

which Christianity

arose

and

seemed

to be

moving towards

an end

—

a

prediction made

by

Cardano

and

also found prominently

in

Bruno's

Spaccio

—

provided

Pomponazzi with

a

model

for the

life-cycle

of

every

religion. New celestial

influences favoured

the

emergence

and

activities

of

prophets

and

legislators,

allowing

them, thanks

to

miracles,

to

produce great changes

in

people's

beliefs

and to

introduce

new

rites

and

gods. Diminutions

of

such influences

slowly

led to the

extinction

of

these religions. Their succession must

therefore

be

explained with reference

to the

intervention

of

intelligences

acting through

the

medium

of

cosmic

cycles.

Assigning naturally deter-

mined temporal limits

to

religions assimilated them

to the

rest

of

reality,

which

was

subject

to

generation

and

corruption. Therefore,

all

miracles

were real,

not

just Christian ones.

But it

would never

be

possible

to

state

with absolute certainty

that

they were extraneous

to the

natural

order,

because their occurrence involved either divine intelligences

or

celestial

bodies with precise,

if not

entirely understood, modalities

of

action.

The recourse

to

experience, even

if

only

within

the

context

of

astrology,

indicated man's contemplative limit, which

was

reflected here

in the

hypothetical

or

multiple answers given concerning

the

cause

of

individual

occult

phenomena. Such uncertainties demonstrated both

how

difficult

it

was

to

clarify

the

connection between

the

earth

and the

heavens

and the

extent

of the

occult sphere, which Pomponazzi could

not

adequately

or

unambiguously account

for

because

it lay

outside

the

limited context

of

active

and

passive qualities.

The root

of

this uncertainty

was

already evident

in his De immortalitate.

Here Averroes' thesis

of

a unified intellect was presented

as

both

an

arbitrary

interpretation

of

Aristotle

and a

ridiculous opinion

per se.

Man apprehended

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244

Natural philosophy

the universal,

but

only

by

abstracting

it

from

the

particular because

his

intellect was connected

to his

senses. His way

of

knowing

was better defined

as

ratio

than

as

intellect since

it

proceeded discursively, unlike

the

intuitions

of

the intelligences. Reason was

thus

brought down

to the

human

level,

the

tool

of a

limited creature. Only those things which

we

learnt through

reason could shed

any

light

on our

condition, which could, however, never

be entirely illuminated.

The

kind

of

knowledge

man

achieved located

him

between animals

and the

intelligences

in the

hierarchy

of

beings. This

location

guaranteed man's uniqueness with respect

to all

other earthly

creatures

but set

insuperable limits

to his

contemplative powers. Thus

the

difficulty

of

conceiving immortality within Aristotelianism (because

of the

impossibility

of

going beyond

the

information provided

by

sense data)

coincided

with

the

affirmation

of

a radical limitation

of

man's capacities

for

knowledge

—

a

limitation even more apparent

in De incantationibus and De

fato.

In

the

face

of

certain traditional objections

to the

mortality

of the

soul,

Pomponazzi

concluded

by

maintaining

that

virtue was

the

specific duty

of

each

human

life

because

man was

denied

any

higher understanding while

on earth. Man's epistemological limitation

and his

self-realisation

in his

actions also became central themes

in

Cardano.

But it

was already clear

that

the independence

of

reason

had

always

to

come

to

terms with

the

uncertain

frontiers

of

that

which exceeded

our

knowledge.

ATTACKS

ON

ARISTOTLE

Geographical

discoveries, emerging experimentalism, technical progress

and practical experience

all

changed

the

picture

of

nature.

Nature became

a

more

abundant

and

almost infinite collection

of

phenomena waiting

to be

interpreted. The notion

that

nature

offered

a

collection

of

discoveries

yet to

be made

was

associated with

the

term

secretum. The

limitations

to our

knowledge

suggested

that

the

decoding

of

nature

could

not be the

work

of

a

single

individual

but

would eventually

be

achieved through

the

collabora-

tion

of

many researchers, all attentive

to the

practical aspect

of

knowledge,

a

view

which Cardano expressed

in

his

De immortalitate animorum

(1545).

This

lent weight

to

criticisms

that

Aristotelian notions about

matter

and

privation were

too

abstract.

A

small number

of

ordering principles were,

of

course, necessary, provided

that

they possessed

a

physical concreteness.

There

was a

general emphasis

on

concrete

and

specific explanation.

The

appeal

to

firsthand experience encouraged attentiveness

to the

particular,

The

new

philosophy

of

nature

245

always

seen

as

introducing

a

specific element into

the

context

of

general

categories.

The

term

miraculum

therefore meant either

the

unpredictable

variety

of

natural

formations

or a

general fundamental

structure

which

could

be

rigorously established.

It

tended

to

lose

its

theological connotation

and

at

times indicated only

a

phenomenon which, regarded

as

exceptional

if

not actually supernatural,

was to be

rationally reduced

to

order

and

regularity through

the

discovery

of its

natural

causes.

The concept

of

an independent study

of

nature,

free

as far as

possible from

metaphysical presuppositions,

was

based

on

individuating

the

ever-

changing relationship between concrete physical factors. Awareness

of

man's epistemological limits

thus

coincided, paradoxically, with confi-

dence

in a

rationality aware

of

occult

and

astrological causality

at

every

level.

Magical

and

astrological survivals

in

these writers indicated

that

causal relationships,

as

they gradually ascended

to

more complex processes

higher

in the

ontological scale, could only with difficulty exclude specific

celestial

actions, which were apparently more difficult

to

individualise.

The

resultant animist-organic

view

of

nature

thus

looked

to

teleology

for the

ultimate criterion

of

explanation

and

intelligibility. Nature appeared

as an

intelligent activity directed, within

the

given material conditions,

to

achieving

its own

ends

and

therefore

was

transparent

to man. For

other

reasons naive forms

of

anthropomorphism

or

anthropocentrism were

rejected. Mathematics

was

excluded

as

unsuitable

for

defining

the

intelligible essence

of

nature,

centrality being given instead

to the

action

of

celestial

warmth

and spiritus in

earthly processes. Reflection

on the

relationship between rationalism

and

esotericism was nourished

by

various

factors:

the

relativity

of the

independence

of the

study

of

nature,

the

obscurity

of the

astrological causal nexus,

the

problematic relationship

between

the

intelligible

and the

perceptible,

and

finally

the

idea

that

nature

was

largely unknown although conceivably reducible

to

ordering physical

principles

or to

purely empirical enquiry. This relationship between

rationalism

and

esotericism, between experience

and

what governs

it,

while

not entirely intelligible,

led

some, such

as

Cardano, Bruno

and

Campanella,

to derive

the

meaning

of

their actions from

an

inspiration higher

than

nature

itself,

an

inspiration which was, however, always directed

to

earthly

ends even when religious connotations were present.

The Copernican cosmology introduced crucial innovations.

It did not,

for

example, destroy

the

basis

of

astrology

but

raised certain internal

problems. Thus, Bruno found

it

difficult

to

establish

the

causality

of the

fixed

stars

because

in an

infinite universe

it was

only

by an

optical illusion

246

Natural philosophy

that

they appeared to lie in a single sphere. One decisive factor in particular

resulted from the Copernican hypothesis. The character of the 'revelation'

which

Ficino attributed to sources like the Hermetic texts had led him to

reappraise traditional cosmology in relation to the

nature

of the rational

soul

and the role of

spiritus

- 'an almost disembodied body', extremely

subtle and capable of uniting the perceptible and the intelligible. But

Copernican

heliocentrism encouraged both a positive reassessment of the

Presocratics to the detriment of Aristotle and a sharper look at the way in

which

the geocentric hypothesis had evolved. Thus, in Bruno's

view,

Aristotle

had confused the appropriate mathematical hypotheses with

concrete physical reality, and from this the system

of

concentric spheres had

evolved.

4

More

importantly, the Copernican theory, in so far as it revealed the

true

structure of the cosmos, was not simply a scientific discovery; it allowed

man to look at the plan of creation, to scrutinise God's hidden intentions.

Copernican

heliocentrism, as Rheticus had already asserted in his

Narratio

prima

(1540,

1566),

could be regarded on the same

level

as a genuine

revelation. Thinkers like Bruno and Patrizi, who had been deeply

influenced by Ficino, began to reverse the relationship between ancient

revelation and the structure of the cosmos posited by Ficino. The

spiritualisation

of

the cosmos was no longer dictated by a handful

of

esoteric

texts.

Instead, it was the new image

of

the cosmos which guided a re-reading

of

the ancient texts, which then provided indirect confirmation of the

correctness of the new cosmology. The new book of

nature

now had the

deciding

vote in the interpretation

of

revelation. For various reasons, Bruno

moved

from the Copernican hypothesis to postulating an infinite universe.

The

views

of Nicholas of Cusa on the infinity of the universe certainly

played

a role in this, but there seem to have been two decisive reasons for

Bruno's belief.

5

One was the sheer immensity

of

the Copernican universe:

6

in order to account for the absence of stellar parallax, it was necessary to

postulate an enormous distance between the sphere

of

Saturn and the sphere

4. See

Bruno

1879—91, 1, 2, pp. 171-2 (De immenso,

vi.2).

Reassessment

of the

Presocratics

-

either

wilfully

misrepresented

by

Aristotle

or

taken

out of

context

- is

found,

with

differing

emphases,

in

Bruno,

Cardano,

Campanella,

Patrizi

and

Telesio.

In Cardano it is

associated

with

the

espousal

of

Hippocrates

against

Galen.

There

is no

specific

study

of the

relationship

between

the

reassessment

of

Presocratic

natural

philosophy

and the

return

to the

ancient

theology.

5. Koyre 1957 is

still

useful

for

Nicholas

of

Cusa's

conception

of an

infinite cosmos.

It is

hardly

necessary

to

stress

the

influence

of

Nicholas'

'coincidence

of

opposites'

on

Bruno's

philosophy

at the

moral,

physical

and

metaphysical

levels.

6.

Copernicus

had

already

discussed

immensitas and the

immensum

caelum comparatione terrae in his De

revolutionibus orbium caelestium

(1.6).

The Narratio prima,

which

Bruno

probably

knew

from

the 1566

reissue

with

the De revolutionibus,

deals

with

the

same

topic.

Schmitt C.B. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy

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