The discovery of Pedro Nunes

Pedro Nunes was the chief cosmographer of the kingdom, tutor of the infantes D. Luis, D. Henrique and D. Duarte, and had some creative ideas about navigation which not always have been well received by those with the practical task of sailing. In his own words: “And I am so scrupulous in mixing with the common rules of this art [of sailing] terms and points of science, that the pilots laugh at so much (…)”.

This gap between the theoretical propositions of Pedro Nunes to navigation and the Portuguese sailors of the time, along with the comments of the latter, were surely subject of his reflection, as shown in the following comment included in the same work: “I do know how badly pilots regard those who speak about India never having been there, and those who practice on the sea never having entered it (…)”

This conflict between the theoretical advances, that introduce new ideas alongside a better understanding of knowledge through praxis, and the practice of navigation, is one of the issues addressed in Blind’s Cane. Deep within, these are the two faces of the same coin – the impetuous will which makes mankind progress.

This bias aside (between Pedro Nunes and the Portuguese practice of navigation), this mathematician was a mandatory reference in Europe throughout the XVIth and XVIIth centuries and among those who studied astronomy and the art of navigation. With international contacts and recognition, this “creative mathematician”, as some call him, and his ideas, travelled and influenced Renaissance Europe of the time. This was another kind of navigation, the navigation of ideas, through which Pedro Nunes got himself noticed in science. And wrote his name on the moon.