Giordano Bruno

This article is about the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno. For other uses, see Giordano Bruno (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Bruno Giordano.

Giordano Bruno
Portrait from Opere di Giordano Bruno, published in 1830
Born
Filippo Bruno

January or February 1548
Nola, Kingdom of Naples
Died17 February 1600 (aged 51–52)
Rome, Papal States
Cause of deathExecution by burning at the stake
EraRenaissance
SchoolRenaissance humanism
Neopythagoreanism
Main interests
Cosmology
Notable ideas
Cosmic pluralism

Giordano Bruno (/dʒɔːrˈdɑːnoʊ ˈbruːnoʊ/; Italian: [dʒorˈdaːno ˈbruːno]; Latin: Iordanus Brunus Nolanus; born Filippo Bruno, January or February 1548 – 17 February 1600) was an Italian philosopher, poet, alchemist, astrologer, cosmological theorist, and esotericist.[1][2] He is known for his cosmological theories, which conceptually extended to include the then-novel Copernican model. He practiced Hermeticism and gave a mystical stance to exploring the universe. He proposed that the stars were distant suns surrounded by their own planets (exoplanets), and he raised the possibility that these planets might foster life of their own, a cosmological position known as cosmic pluralism. He also insisted that the universe is infinite and could have no center.

Bruno was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition on charges of denial of several core Catholic doctrines, including eternal damnation, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and transubstantiation. Bruno's pantheism was not taken lightly by the church,[3] nor was his teaching of metempsychosis regarding the reincarnation of the soul. The Inquisition found him guilty, and he was burned at the stake in Rome's Campo de' Fiori in 1600. After his death, he gained considerable fame, being particularly celebrated by 19th- and early 20th-century commentators who regarded him as a martyr for science. Some historians are of the opinion his heresy trial was not a response to his cosmological views but rather a response to his religious and afterlife views,[4][5][6][7][8] while others find the main reason for Bruno's death was indeed his cosmological views.[9][10][11] Bruno's case is still considered a landmark in the history of free thought and the emerging sciences.[12][13]

In addition to cosmology, Bruno also wrote extensively on the art of memory, a loosely organized group of mnemonic techniques and principles. Historian Frances Yates argues that Bruno was deeply influenced by the presocratic Empedocles, Neoplatonism, Renaissance Hermeticism, and Book of Genesis-like legends surrounding the Hellenistic conception of Hermes Trismegistus.[14] Other studies of Bruno have focused on his qualitative approach to mathematics and his application of the spatial concepts of geometry to language.[15][16]

  1. ^ Gatti 2002, p. 1.
  2. ^ Pogge, Richard W. "The Folly of Giordano Bruno". Ohio State University Department of Astronomy. Updated February 24, 2014. http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Essays/Bruno.html
  3. ^ Birx 1997; Collinge 2012, p. 188.
  4. ^ Yates 1964, p. 450.
  5. ^ Michael J. Crowe, The Extraterrestrial Life Debate 1750–1900, Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 10, "[Bruno's] sources... seem to have been more numerous than his followers, at least until the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revival of interest in Bruno as a supposed 'martyr for science.' It is true that he was burned at the stake in Rome in 1600, but the church authorities guilty of this action were almost certainly more distressed at his denial of Christ's divinity and alleged diabolism than at his cosmological doctrines."
  6. ^ Adam Frank (2009). The Constant Fire: Beyond the Science vs. Religion Debate, University of California Press, p. 24, "Though Bruno may have been a brilliant thinker whose work stands as a bridge between ancient and modern thought, his persecution cannot be seen solely in light of the war between science and religion."
  7. ^ White 2002, p. 7: "This was perhaps the most dangerous notion of all... If other worlds existed with intelligent beings living there, did they too have their visitations? The idea was quite unthinkable."
  8. ^ Shackelford, Joel (2009). "Myth 7 That Giordano Bruno was the first martyr of modern science". In Numbers, Ronald L. (ed.). Galileo goes to jail and other myths about science and religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 66. "Yet the fact remains that cosmological matters, notably the plurality of worlds, were an identifiable concern all along and appear in the summary document: Bruno was repeatedly questioned on these matters, and he apparently refused to recant them at the end.14 So, Bruno probably was burned alive for resolutely maintaining a series of heresies, among which his teaching of the plurality of worlds was prominent but by no means singular."
  9. ^ Gatti, Hilary (26 October 2012). "Why Giordano Bruno's "Tranquil Universal Philosophy" Finished in a Fire". In Lavery, Jonathan; Groarke, Louis; Sweet, William (eds.). Ideas under Fire: Historical Studies of Philosophy and Science in Adversity. Fairleigh Dickinson. pp. 116–118. ISBN 978-1-61147-543-2. One of the first and most notable developments consisted in a growing awareness that earlier commentators had indeed been right to consider Bruno's trial as being closely linked to that of Galileo (...) Jean Seidengart underlined the particular emphasis to be found throughout the trial on Bruno's doctrine of a plurality of worlds." and "Bruno, however, by admitting so candidly his distance from the Catholic theology, was indirectly questioning such a system of law, which imposed on his conscience views different from his own. (...) he was doing it in the name of a principle of religious pluralism which derived directly from his cosmology.
  10. ^ Martínez, Alberto A. (2018). Burned Alive: Giordano Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-1780238968.
  11. ^ Koyré, Alexandre (1980). Estudios galileanos (in Spanish). México D.F.: Siglo XXI Editores. pp. 159–169. ISBN 978-9682310355.
  12. ^ Gatti 2002, pp. 18–19: For Bruno was claiming for the philosopher a principle of free thought and inquiry which implied an entirely new concept of authority: that of the individual intellect in its serious and continuing pursuit of an autonomous inquiry… It is impossible to understand the issue involved and to evaluate justly the stand made by Bruno with his life without appreciating the question of free thought and liberty of expression. His insistence on placing this issue at the center of both his work and of his defense is why Bruno remains so much a figure of the modern world. If there is, as many have argued, an intrinsic link between science and liberty of inquiry, then Bruno was among those who guaranteed the future of the newly emerging sciences, as well as claiming in wider terms a general principle of free thought and expression."
  13. ^ Aquilecchia, Montano & Bertrando 2007: "In Rome, Bruno was imprisoned for seven years and subjected to a difficult trial that analyzed, minutely, all his philosophical ideas. Bruno, who in Venice had been willing to recant some theses, became increasingly resolute and declared on 21 December 1599 that he 'did not wish to repent of having too little to repent, and in fact did not know what to repent.' Declared an unrepentant heretic and excommunicated, he was burned alive in the Campo dei Fiori in Rome on Ash Wednesday, 17 February 1600. On the stake, along with Bruno, burned the hopes of many, including philosophers and scientists of good faith like Galileo, who thought they could reconcile religious faith and scientific research, while belonging to an ecclesiastical organization declaring itself to be the custodian of absolute truth and maintaining a cultural militancy requiring continual commitment and suspicion."
  14. ^ The primary work on the relationship between Bruno and Hermeticism is Yates 1964; for an alternative assessment, placing more emphasis on the Kabbalah, and less on Hermeticism, see DeLeón-Jones 1997; for a return to emphasis on Bruno's role in the development of Science, and criticism of Yates' emphasis on magical and Hermetic themes, see Gatti 2002.
  15. ^ Alessandro G. Farinella and Carole Preston, "Giordano Bruno: Neoplatonism and the Wheel of Memory in the 'De Umbris Idearum'", in Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 55, No. 2, (Summer, 2002), pp. 596–624
  16. ^ Saiber 2005.