Aristotelesçi Kozmolojinin Yıkılışı: Nicolaus Cusanus

According to the Aristotelian cosmological model, the universe is single and limited, and has a hierarchical structure in which beings become less perfect as they move away from God, and more perfect as they approach God. This hierarchical structure was accepted for two thousand years, both during the early and middle ages, and it is generally thought that this cosmology was destroyed in the 16th century with Nicolaus Copernicus.However, a century before him, Nicolaus Cusanus (1401-1464) destroyed the Aristotelian hierarchical understanding of the universe by stating that the universe is limitless. Similarly, Cusanus prevented the Aristotelian understanding of “natural philosophy” based on the relationships between God and creatures, and argued that the “nature” that Aristotle put forward as the internal principles of the movements and rest of beings could no longer be known and discoverable things that would ground our concepts about things. For according to Nicalous, everything in the universe is neither more nor less than the weakened and coincidental existence of God’s infinite unity. This article will show how Cusanus destroyed Aristotelian cosmology and its views of nature, both in terms of his understanding of the infinite universe and in his efforts to frame and evaluate the relationship between God and creatures.