Giordano Bruno
Every time we, in the past 500 years, thought we enjoyed a unique
cosmic situation, we were wrong. (1)
The sun did not revolve around the earth which Copernicus demonstrated
in his treatise 'On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres' published
in 1543 on the day he died.
The earth did rotate – like the other planets orbiting in ellipses
around the sun as Galileo demonstrated in 'Dialogue on the Two Chief
World Systems' published in 1632. And when Galileo as the first
applied the telescope to study the sky, he observed that the nebulous
band of the Milky Way was resolved into a myriad of stars. (2) Six
months after the publication of Galileo's book, he was summoned to
Rome to face the Catholic Inquisition and there, on account of his
defence of Copernicanism, he was found guilty of heresy and had to
remain under house arrest for the rest of his life.
This was a trifle, however, compared to the fate the Catholic Church
meted out to Giordano Bruno who in 'On the Infinite Universe and
Worlds' in 1584 aired the intuition that: "Innumerable suns exist;
innumerable earths revolve around these suns in a manner similar to
the way the seven planets revolve around our sun. Living beings
inhabit these worlds". (3) Faced with such a dangerous heresy, the
spiritual guide of Christianity, the Catholic Church, of course had to
intervene and Giordano Bruno was duly condemned to the stake. Before
dying in this extremely painful way, a nail was hammered through his
tongue. Since this misdeed, and with its subsequent saveage
determination to kill important scientific advances, it seems fair to
ask whether the Catholic Church is entitled to retain possession of
its – unique – leading position?
The world picture changed radically during the European Renaissance.
But it is first at the approaching encounter with the planetary
candidates for intelligent life in solar systems near to us (4) that
we, finally, understand the full extent of the intellectual
achievement of European astronomers and philosophers in this era.
Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo reached full recognition a few decades
after their death for their clear and rather precise description of
our solar system.
Measurement, observation, and rational, unprejudiced thought were
instrumental in this endeavour. The next, natural step was to attempt
to determine the composition and structure of the cosmos outside our
solar system. Here observation and measurement with the primitive
instruments of that time were immediately of little use, which did not
make Giordano Bruno desist from conjecturing about and visualizing the
rest of the Universe, what the self-opinionated Catholic Church and
numerous scholars and astronomers otherwise, with withering sarcasm,
even to this day, thought he should.
Giordano Bruno's affiliation to the hermetic tradition has often been
held up against him (5, 6), but in reality almost all Renaissance
astronomers, incl. Kepler and my superstitious compatriot Tycho Brahe
were fascinated by spiritual currents that were certainly not pervaded
by rational thought.
The long-drawn-out search to find fault with Giordano Bruno's
achievement includes blaming Bruno for not having understood the
Copernican heliocentric model properly. The truth is, however, that
the implications of the Copernican model had escaped most astronomers
just after the publication of De Revolutionibus. (7)
Giordano Bruno was the first serious student in the Renaissance of the
cosmology of Lucretius (99-55 B.C.). Lucretius asserted that the
Universe was infinite. (8) That Bruno had the courage to publish On
the Infinite Universe and Worlds conjecturing that the Universe must
contain a multitude of such comparatively simple structures as solar
systems and that some of the planets
of the solar systems are due to be habitated by humans ought to
bring him the credit which is his due - at 400 years' delay.
In 2001, Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of Great Britain, stated: "The
concept of 'a plurality of inhabited worlds' has, ever since (Bruno)
had surprisingly sustained support." (9)
Small wonder, today we have to re-state the achievement of the
scholars of the Renaissance as follows:
On the basis of observation and measurement of relations within our
solar system - *and intuition and conjecture unstoppably
transgressing its borders, once the idea that the earth was not
the centre of the world had taken root*, they arrived at a vision
of our habitated sun system as
one out of many in the cosmos.
This concept will, to all appearances, be confirmed in this or the
next decade.
Steen Hjortsø
References:
1. Shostak, Seth: Is there other Intelligent Life in the Universe ?
Prospect, June 2000.
2. Chapman, Robert D.: Discovering Astronomy. San Francisco: W.H.
Freeman, 1978.
3. Astrobiology's Most Wanted. A failure to recant resulted in the
strange case of Giordano Bruno.
http://www.science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast21_may99_2.htm
4. Lunine, Jonathan I.: In search of planets and life around other
stars.
PNAS Online, Vol. 96, Issue 10, May 11, 1999.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/96/10/5353
5. Goldish, Matt: Giordano Bruno and the Kabbalah: Prophets,
Magicians, and Rabbis. Journal of the History of Philosophy. Berkeley,
October 1999.
6. Gatti, Hilary: The State of Giordano Bruno Studies at the End of
the Four-Hundreth Centenary of the Philospher's Death. Renaissance
Quarterly, Spring 2001.
7. Zeilik, Michael: Astronomy. The Evolving Universe. 9th ed..
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
8. Koyré, Alexandre: Von der geschlossenen Welt zum unendlichen
Universum. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1980.
9. Rees, Martin: Our Cosmic Habitat. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson,
2001.