Abstract
An ancient axiom claims that there is no proportion between the finite and the infinite. In the context of the Christian tradition, which considers nature as creation, creation as the image of the Word of God, and God as ens infinitum, this raises a problem.
For, it seems that it is forbidden for human thought, which is necessarily finite in character, to contemplate the infinite origin, reveal its footprints in nature, and, consequently, find (and found) the true science. The only way to escape this paradox is paradoxically to enter inside it and come to understand reality as symbolic.
For both Cusanus and Leibniz, access to the inaccessible understanding of the infinite consists in symbols. Since mathematics traditionally represents the privileged science of symbolic expression, the core of their inquiry consists in a mathematical treatment of symbols.
Through their exploration of the related concepts of horizon and limit both thinkers offer an analogical approach to the symbolic nature of quantity, and this in turn profoundly shapes their conceptions of continuity, infinity and God. Moreover, their reflections on infinity not only raise the question of the role of a symbolic understanding of nature in the rise of mathematical science, but also show the importance of this notion in the wider reform of human knowledge and praxis