Chapter 11 Motion, Space, and Early Modern Re-formations of the Cosmos: Nicholas of Cusa’s Anima Mundi and Henry More’s Spirit of Nature
In: Nicholas of Cusa and the Making of the Early Modern WorldSearch for other papers by Nathan R. Strunk in
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In the early modern period theologians reformulated the relation of God in the cosmos to accommodate dramatic shifts in understanding the nature of motion and space brought about by the rise of modern science. An instance of such reform can already be found in Nicholas of Cusa (c. 1401–1464), who was one of the first to respond to the collapse of a stable, geocentric universe that had been replaced by an incessantly moving decentered one. In Book ii of De docta ignorantia, Cusa transposes the Platonic notion of anima mundi into a doctrine of divine omnipresence understood as the moving, living interrelationship of all things. Cusa variously defines “world-soul” as life-giving form, a connecting necessity, an animating principle, and a holism holding the world together. With each of these definitions, Cusa upholds that the living dynamism of divine presence in the world remains consistent with a physical universe in unceasing motion. Two hundred years after Cusa, Henry More (1614–1687) likewise sought to rethink the relationship between God and the cosmos by advancing a doctrine of divine omnipresence that he calls the “universal soul of the world” or the “Spirit of nature.” More revises and challenges Descartes’ conception of space (res extensa) in order to counter Hobbes’ closed, mechanical, and materialistic conception of the world. For More, Spirit like space is extended through the whole cosmos as the principle of its motion, form, and inter-connection – a divine extension mediating the living, vital presence of God within the cosmos much as the soul does the body. In their own ways and for different ends, Cusa and More both transpose the Platonic conception of world-soul in order to reformulate cosmologies that can accommodate and respond to changes in understanding the world initiated by early modern science. Whereas some found in science an occasion to separate God from the world, Cusa and More saw an opportunity to re-form the cosmos and thereby reaffirm the divine living, interconnection “holding together the cosmic frame.”