Fludd

Fludd's 'hieroglyphic' figures do try to preserve a unity of the inner experience of the 'observer' (as we should say today) and the external processes of nature, and thus a wholeness in its contemplation — a wholeness formerly contained in the idea of the analogy between microcosm and macrocosm

Pauli argues that Fludd's symbolic-hieroglyphic method, despite sacrificing quantitative precision, preserved an epistemological wholeness — the unity of observer and cosmos — that Kepler's mathematical physics abandoned and that modern quantum physics and depth psychology are now obliged to recover.

Pauli, Wolfgang, Writings on Physics and Philosophy, 1994thesis

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W. Pauli calls attention to the polemical writings of Kepler and of Robert Fludd, in which Fludd's correspondence theory was the loser and had to make room for Kepler's theory of three principles.

Jung, citing Pauli, identifies the Kepler–Fludd polemic as the historical moment when qualitative-symbolic correspondence theory yielded to quantitative scientific principles, a transition with direct consequences for the subsequent trajectory of Western epistemology.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960thesis

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The divine and mundane triangles Fludd. Utriusque Cosmi etc., p.21 ... the two polar fundamental principles of the universe are formas the light principle, coming from above, and matter as the dark principle, dwelling in the earth.

Pauli presents Fludd's cosmological diagram from the Utriusque Cosmi as a direct illustration of the polar light-and-dark metaphysics underlying Fludd's Hermetic worldview, situating it within the broader Kepler essay as a structural contrast to mathematical astronomy.

Pauli, Wolfgang, Writings on Physics and Philosophy, 1994thesis

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I reflect on the visible movements determinable by the senses themselves, you may consider the inner impulses and endeavour to distinguish them according to grades. I hold the tail but I hold it in my hand; you may grasp the head mentally, though only, I fear, in your dreams.

Pauli quotes Kepler's direct rebuke to Fludd, encapsulating the epistemological divide: Kepler claims empirical, sensory knowledge of planetary motions while dismissing Fludd's inner, qualitative mathematics as merely speculative dreaming.

Pauli, Wolfgang, Writings on Physics and Philosophy, 1994supporting

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it is for the vulgar mathematicians to concern themselves with quantitative shadows; the alchem-

Pauli reproduces Fludd's own counter-polemic, in which Fludd dismisses quantitative mathematics as dealing in mere shadows while claiming that alchemical-Hermetic figuration reaches the essential truth of nature.

Pauli, Wolfgang, Writings on Physics and Philosophy, 1994supporting

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His attitude was essentially the same as that of Robert Fludd in respect of John Kepler. Basically, it was the old controversy about universals, the opposition between realism and nominalism, which in our scientific age has been decided in favour of a nominalistic tendency.

Jung aligns Dorn's Platonic anti-Aristotelianism with Fludd's stance against Kepler, framing the entire conflict as the perennial philosophical controversy between realism and nominalism, ultimately resolved in modernity in favor of the nominalistic-empirical tendency.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Alchemical Studies, 1967supporting

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