Nicholas of Cusa: Unacknowledged Father of Modern Science

When the twentieth century mathematical genius Georg Cantor developed his theory of the transfinite, it was far from accidental that he turned to Nicholas of Cusa's platonic dialogues on the subject of the infinite. The dual Cusanian concepts of learned ignorance and the Non-other taken together as a sort of fugue have just now been once again been proven to have supplied the groundwork (or better Grundlagen) for any possible advancement of true science. (As opposed to some execrable tripe that masquerades as such.)

The recent astrophysical discoveries that were announced this week regarding the lack of evidence of so called dark matter in the solar system's near vicinity and that the overwhelming majority gamma rays cannot be traced as stemming from known cosmic sources emphatically direct our attention to the truth of Riemann's assessment that in the realm of the very large (as well as in the infinitesimally small) the more our technology allows us to understand of phenomena the greater and more vast the paradoxes of what Kepler, following Plato, designated as the mind of the universal composer become.

For Cusa the concept that human intelligence can only ever be in the process of become less ignorant due to the ineluctable unapproachability to the true infinite or non other is truly the basis for all possible scientific progress.