Questioni di quanti, atomi e indivisibili. Immagini d'infinità all'alba del moderno

The questions discussed in this study concern the notions of minimum, atom, point, and the problem of infinite divisibility of the continuum physical-geometrical, in the philosophical-scientific and theological debate between the XVI and XVII centuries. In this context, the Giordano Bruno’s concept of matter, infinity and his refusal of the Aristotelian idea of eternal divisibility, represents the philosophical and the methodological perspective of the modern and experimental sciences. Bruno’s necessity – expressed in the De la causa Principio et Uno and in the De infinito universo e mondi (1584) – to consider the infinite universe and to investigate it by a principle of homogeneity and uniformity, both a philosophical-naturalistic and historic point of view, starts the modern science’s need to recognize in the minimum and in the maximum the same principles and laws. By this perspective and the analysis about the infinity and infinites this study would be an examination of the heritage and the distances between Bruno’s natural philosophy and the modern scientific currents of the XVII century.