From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe

Koyré, Alexandre. From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins P, 1957. Relevant portions available on line as of August 2023, here.[1]

If in some sense all artists are realists, attempting to tell truth about the world, then the vision of the world they accept as true conditions their art. In this influential work, KA elucidates a change in vision crucial for artists who deal with forms in space.[2]

In Koyré's translation, Nicholas of Cusa (Latin form: Nicolaus Cusanus, German: Nikolaus Cryfftz or Krebs, 1401-64)[3] writes, with Koyré's clarifying interpolations in square brackets: "Accordingly, if we consider the diverse motions of the [celestial] orbs, [we find that] it is impossible for the machine of the world to have any fixed and motionless center" (Closed World ch., p. 11; ch. 1, translating De docta ignorantia ["Of Learned (or Learnéd), Ignorance," I.II, chapter ii, p. 99 in the critical edition of E. Hoffmann-R. Klibansky, cited by Koyré p. 179, note 11: Opera omnia, Jussu et Autoritate Academiae litteratum Heidelbergensii ad codium fidem edita, vol. 1 [Libsiae, 1932]). Koyré's method throughout is long quotations from the thinkers he studies, interspersed with, and connected by, his commentary and analysis.

For fuller discussion, see "Machina Mundi: How Medieval Thinkers Foreshadowed Modern Physics."[4]

See Closed World to Infinite Universe for how that "machine of the world" became a more literal formulation — incrementally losing vitalism, Metaphysics, spirituality, and Aristotle — as the Medieval period moved into the Early-Modern world of Galileo and on into the (absolute) time of Newton, Berkeley, Leibniz, and on to modern science.

Note Henry More (1614-1687)[5] in an exchange with René Descartes: "As for myself, I believe [...] that God is extended in His manner just because He is omnipresent and occupies intimately the whole machine of the world as well as its singular particles. How indeed could He communicate motion to matter, which He did once, and which, according to you, he does even now, if He did not touch the matter of the universe in practically the closest manner, or at least had not touched it at a certain time?" (quoted Koyré p. 111, our bold emphasis; see at internal link Machina Mundi: Machine of the World and the work of John of Sacrobosco).

For further images useful for getting a feel for the transition to a clockwork universe, especially an instructive diagram of the "Divine Monochord" — the hand and forearm of God adjusting the tension on a cosmic instrument — see "[Robert] Fludd and the Harmony of the Spheres" essay in the Astrology/Mysticism section of a website on such matters by Jessica Davidson, "Writer - Storyteller - Mystic," dated 10/07/2023 (10 July 2023), and as of August 2023, available here.[6]

Note ch. VII[,] "Absolute Space, Absolute Time[,] and Their Relations to God: Malebranche | Newton|and Bentley" and the issue of "action at a distance" for gravity and the persistence through the end of the 17th c. and beyond of spirit and God, including consistently, if in the background, for the pious Isaac Newton: the universe is not yet (necessarily) a clockwork set in motion by a God who then moves on (or just a clockwork).[7]

Ch. IX[,] "God and the World: Space, Matter, Ether[,] and Spirit: Isaac Newton."[8] Newton talks of "strong Attractions" (qtd p. 213), "The Attractions of Gravity, Magnetism, and Electricity" (qtd p. 210), how "[...] Particles attract one another by some Force, which in immediate Contact is exceeding strong, at small distances performs the chymical [sic] Operations [...] and reaches not far from the Particles with any sensible effect" (also p. 210), and suggests something like entropy: "[...] Motion is much more apt to be lost than got" (qtd p. 216), if colliding particles stop one another, "[...] motion is lost in every impact" and, if this were so, "would not the world-machine run down very quickly and very quickly come to a stop" (qtd p. 211) — which sound quite modern. However, on the subject of a "tenuous ether" or something like it, Newton asserts, perhaps more clearly than in some earlier writings,

And for rejecting such a Medium, we have the Authority of those oldest and most celebrated Philosophers of Greece and Phoenicia, who made a Vacuum, and Atoms, and the Gravity of Atoms, the first Principles of their Philosophy [...]. Later Philosophers banish the Consideration of such a Cause out of natural Philosophy, feigning Hypotheses for explaining all things mechanically, and referring other causes to Metaphysicks: Whereas the the main business of natural Philosophy is to argue from Phaenomena [...] till we come to the very first Cause, which certainly is not mechanical; and not only to unfold the Mechanism of the World, but chiefly to resolve these and such like Questions. (qtd p. 208; our boldface)

Whatever would be made of Newton, his was a universe that ran mathematically like clockwork, but was not a clockwork universe. Leibniz came closer, and then, what would probably be to the horror of most of these thinkers, had they lived to see it, the mechanical cosmos was there (at least, in simple ways, for a while): Chapter XI[,] "The Work-Day God and the God of the Sabbath: Newton & Leibniz";[9] XII[,] "Conclusion: The Divine Artifex and the Dieu Fainéant (Lazy God)."[10]

RDE, initial; finishing, 2Aug23, 22Aug23, 28-31Aug23