Schultheisz Emil: Traditio Renovata. Tanulmányok a középkor és a reneszánsz orvostudományáról / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 21. (Budapest, 1997)
10. The beginning of quantification in physiology
67 nonetheless comprehend real knowledge, increasingly subject to continuing experience and participating effectively in truth as it is, for, with Plato, he believed that 'the knowledge which we have will answer to the truth which we have'. 8 A natural development of this view was his doctrine of 'Learned Ignorance', that the more we learn, the more we come to a realization of our own real ignorance in the face of the Infinity. Cusa's rebellion against the scholastics included a reaction against reason and logic in learning about God, the Universe, or the world around us. In the metaphysics he makes a distinction between reason and intellect: Reason must think in opposites. A is either B or not B. A figure is either a circle or not-a-circle. A square is not-a-circle. To Reason, a circle and a square are separate, yet as the number of sides increases toward infinity, the difference between a polygon and circle disappears, and the law of opposites no longer holds, but a new law appears, the Coincidence of Opposites. This is an act of intellect. God is of course both Being and Non-Being, and the reconciliation of opposites in Him gives the real validity to the whole argument. 4 In the physical world, reason and logic are in no greater measure the fundamental approach to wisdom than observation or measurement, which are so important that they become practically the etalon of the human mind. This is expressed at the very first pages, which echo the words of a sermon of Johannes Tauler, one of the great German mystics (nevertheless, scientist!) who had written that: The great masters of Paris read big books and turn the pages; this is good, but others read the living book where everything lives eternally and turn to the heavens and the earth... 1 0 This is the beginning of physiological thinking in medicine. Cusa's association of mind and measurement comes back in the form of a Latin pun later on: I think there is not, nor ever was, any perfect man that did not frame some conception of the mind, such as it was I for my part, have a conception, that the mind is the bond and measure of all things, and I conjecture it is called Mens a mensurando, the mind from measuring. 1 1 As mentioned before, Cusa's observations in relation to natural philosophy are to be found in the 'Fourth Booke concerning Statiçk Experiments', or 'Experiments of the Ba lance'. This book also involves a discussion on the value of measurement in a complex of varying circumstances. The weight of water is first considered, recalling Vitruvius who, writing of architecture, bids us "chose such a place to dwell in, as hath light and airy waters, and avoid them places, whose waters are heavy and earthy ". 1 2 It goes on to the specific gravity of blood and urine, in sickness and health, at various ages, and in different countries, then to 'Herbes, Stocks, Leaves, Fruits, Seeds, and Juyces 13 applied in medicine, to be followed by directions for counting the pulse, letting water run out of a clepsydra 'wĥi est the pulse of a sound young man would stick an hundred ' and weighing 8 The dialogues of Plato. Ed. B. Jowett. Oxford, Vol. IV, 645 (Plato, Parmenides). 9 Hoffman, E., Nikolaus von Cusa. Zwei Vorträge. Heidelberg, 1947, 80. 1 0 Die Predigten Tau eñs. Ed. Vetter. Berlin, 1910, 421. 1 1 Cusa, op. çit., 59. 1 2 Ibid., p. 172. 1 3 Ibid. , p. 174.
