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Article ID: CBB001252886

Praecisio and Conjecture: Cusanus' Ball Game and the “Learned Ignorance” of the World (2013)

Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza
Volume: 28
Pages: 5--8

DOI: 10.1163/18253911-02801002

Publication Date: 2013
Edition Details: First article in special issue “Tennis and the Scientific Revolution”
Language: English

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Science and sports Games Tennis 15th century 16th century Germany Cusanus, Nicolaus

Nicholas Cusanus' De Ludo Globi (1463) is not about tennis, nor does it pave the way for the achievements of the so-called Scientific Revolution. Nevertheless, in a broad sense Cusanus might be viewed as a progenitor of the `scientific' ball player: beyond any impossible, vain, or metaphysical guarantee, scientific knowledge of the finite physical world consists in making conjectures (coniecturas), and making conjectures means literally to throw (conicere). Throwing balls and projectiles toward a target, however, eludes infinity. I will follow in Cusanus's wake in interpreting ludus not as a pastime, but as a speculationis figuratio, keeping in mind two interpretations of this ball game that may be viewed as opposite to each other: Pierre Duhem's hypothesis that Cusanus was proposing a formulation of the Galilean notion of inertia, and Hermann Hesse's linking of the prehistory of The Glass Bead Game to Cusanus.

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Description Contents:

Includes Series Articles

Article Beretta, Marco (2013) Training Tennis Players through Natural Philosophy: From Scaino's Trattato to Garsault's Art du paumier. Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza (p. 19). unapi

Article Pennuto, Concetta (2013) Jeu de la paume: Health of the Body and the Mind in Early Modern Medicine. Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza (p. 43). unapi

Article Tosi, Alessandro (2013) Tennis in Early Modern Visual Culture. Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza (p. 85). unapi

Article Sylla, Edith Dudley (2013) Jacob Bernoulli and the Mathematics of Tennis. Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza (p. 142). unapi

Article Lehman, Christine (2013) Alchemy Revisited by the Mid-Eighteenth Century Chemists in France: An Unpublished Manuscript by Pierre-Joseph Macque. Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza (p. 165). unapi

Article Gattei, Stefano (2013) Galileo and Tennis: Reconciling the New Physics with Commonsense. Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza (p. 66). unapi

Article Dijksterhuis, Fokko Jan (2013) Jeu de Paume and Jeux de la Raison in Seventeenth-Century Optics. Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza (p. 115). unapi

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001252886/

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