Girolamo Cardano

Cardano, Girolamo (1501-76) Italian mathematician, scientist, doctor, and philosopher. One of the great exemplars of the Renaissance ideal of the ‘universal man’, Cardano embraced a fundamentally neoplatonist view of the world. Mathematics, rather than sense experience, would be the key to unlocking esoteric knowledge of the whole unified world. His Opera omnia were published in ten volumes in 1663, while his autobiography, written in 1575, is a valuable document in Renaissance history. See also libertins.