Global InformationGiordano Bruno information
Giordano Bruno | |
|---|---|
 Portrait from Opere di Giordano Bruno, published in 1830 | |
| Born | Filippo Bruno January or February 1548 Nola, Kingdom of Naples |
| Died | 17 February 1600 (aged 51–52) Rome, Papal States |
| Cause of death | Execution by burning at the stake |
| Era | Renaissance |
| School | Renaissance 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, cosmological theorist and esotericist.[1] He is known for his cosmological theories, which conceptually extended to include the then-novel Copernican model. 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.
While Bruno began as a Dominican friar, he embraced Calvinism during his time in Geneva.[2] He was later 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][4][better source needed] nor was his teaching of metempsychosis regarding the reincarnation of the soul. The Inquisition found him guilty, and he was burned alive 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. However, most historians agree that his heresy trial was not a response to his cosmological views but rather a response to his religious and afterlife views,[5][6][7][8][9] although some still contend that the main reason for Bruno's death was indeed his cosmological views.[10][11][12] Bruno's case is still considered a landmark in the history of free thought and the emerging sciences.[13][14]
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.[15] Other studies of Bruno have focused on his qualitative approach to mathematics and his application of the spatial concepts of geometry to language.[16]
- ^ Gatti, Hilary. Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science: Broken Lives and Organizational Power. Cornell University Press, 2002, 1, ISBN 0-801-48785-4
- ^ "Giordano Bruno | Biography, Death, & Facts | Britannica". 19 February 2024.
- ^ Birx, H. James. "Giordano Bruno" Archived 16 May 2019 at the Wayback Machine The Harbinger, Mobile, AL, 11 November 1997. "Bruno was burned to death at the stake for his pantheistic stance and cosmic perspective."
- ^ Collinge, William J. (2012). Historical Dictionary of Catholicism. Scarecrow Press. p. 188. ISBN 978-0-8108-5755-1. Archived from the original on 1 August 2024.
- ^ Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964, p. 450
- ^ 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."
- ^ 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."
- ^ White, Michael (2002). The Pope and the Heretic: The True Story of Giordano Bruno, the Man who Dared to Defy the Roman Inquisition, p. 7. Perennial, New York. "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."
- ^ 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."
- ^ 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.
- ^ Martínez, Alberto A. (2018). Burned Alive: Giordano Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-1780238968.
- ^ Koyré, Alexandre (1980). Estudios galileanos (in Spanish). México D.F.: Siglo XXI Editores. pp. 159–169. ISBN 978-9682310355.
- ^ Gatti, Hilary (2002). Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science: Broken Lives and Organizational Power. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. pp. 18–19. ISBN 978-0801487859. Retrieved 21 March 2014.
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.
- ^ Montano, Aniello (2007). Gargano, Antonio (ed.). Le deposizioni davanti al tribunale dell'Inquisizione. Napoli: La Città del Sole. p. 71.
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.
- ^ The primary work on the relationship between Bruno and Hermeticism is Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and The Hermetic Tradition, 1964; for an alternative assessment, placing more emphasis on the Kabbalah, and less on Hermeticism, see Karen Silvia De Leon-Jones, Giordano Bruno and the Kabbalah, Yale, 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 Hillary Gatti (1999), Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science, Cornell.
- ^ 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; Arielle Saiber, Giordano Bruno and the Geometry of Language, Ashgate, 2005