Reply #4: The Folly of Giordano Bruno

[struggle4progress]

Guest Editorial (The SETI League)
by Prof. Richard W. Pogge, Ohio State University

... In popular accounts of the life of Bruno, it is often said that he was condemned for his Copernicanism and his belief in life on other worlds. He is portrayed as a martyr to free thought, and an early, prosecuted proponent of the modern view of the universe, hounded across Europe by the Inquisition for his beliefs and finally paying the ultimate price for them in a fiery public death. He has become a symbol of the intolerance of authority in the face of new ideas. These accounts, however, often leave out two fundamental aspects of the case of Giordano Bruno that cast matters in a somewhat different light. The first calls into doubt how closely we should link Bruno with the history of astronomy and what came to be called the "Scientific Revolution", and the second offers a perspective on the undeniable tragedy of his life that make him less of a symbol, but in the balance makes him more human.

The one key fact of the study of Bruno's life is that we do not actually know the exact grounds of his conviction on charges of heresy. The simple reason is that the relevant records have been lost. This is quite unlike the state of affairs in the later trial of Galileo, where we have extensive documentation including the forgeries that played a role in the case against him. In the case of Bruno, we must seek clues in contemporary accounts and in an examination of his writings.

Except for certain particular passages that excite our interest today, much of his work had little to do with astronomy. Indeed, Bruno was not an astronomer and demonstrated a very poor grasp of the subject in what he did write. The theme of his On the Infinite Universe and Worlds is not Copernicanism but pantheism, a theme also developed in his On Shadows of Ideas. It appears that his personal cosmology informed his espousal of Copernicus, not the other way around. Much of his work was theological in nature, and constituted a passionate frontal assault on the philosophical basis of the Church's spiritual teachings, especially on the nature of human salvation and on the primacy of the soul (or in modern terms, he opposed the Church's emphasis on spiritualism with an unapologetic and all-encompassing materialism). Copernicanism, where it entered at all, was supporting material not the central thesis. This suggests that the Church's complaint with Bruno was theological not astronomical.

Further support for the idea that Copernicanism was likely to have played only a minor role if any in his conviction comes from the contemporary record of the discussion of this idea. What many popular accounts seem to miss is that the Church did not formally condemn Copernicanism until well after Bruno's death. While Copernicanism was indeed a topic of discussion and controversy in Bruno's time, few astronomers supported it in 1600, and the Church itself was not to express an official opinion on the matter until 1616. By that time, Galileo's telescopic observations (from 1610 on) had completely changed the intellectual landscape, and the Church only then felt compelled to respond to the rapidly growing controversy. The issue was brought to the fore by the publication of a book by Paolo Antonio Foscarini (1565-1616) that defended Copernicanism against charges made by itinerant preaching monks that it was in conflict with Scripture, casting the issue in theological terms that the Church could no longer ignore ...

http://www.setileague.org/editor/brunoalt.htm


Here's the author's webpage:

Richard W. Pogge
Professor of Astronomy
The Ohio State University
Department of Astronomy
http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/


So far as possible, historical matters should be addressed accurately. Examined honestly, Bruno may not have been an important (or even a competent) scientific thinker. He perhaps remains important as a symbol of freedom of thought and conscience.