The Great Myths 3: Giordano Bruno was a Martyr for Science

The Great Myths 3: Giordano Bruno was a Martyr for Science

Last month the Italian National Association of Free Thought gathered in the Campo de’Fiori in Rome to commemorate the 417th anniversary of the execution by burning at the stake of Giordano Bruno on that spot on February 17, 1600. The ceremony highlighted Bruno as a free-thinker who ran afoul of dogmatic religious beliefs. But he was also remembered by others as a scientist who died because his rational thought contradicted the superstition of his day and a symbol of an eternal struggle between science and religion and Bruno is thus regularly invoked by New Atheists as a primary example of the old Conflict Thesis they love so much.


So the Atheists Against Pseudoscientific Nonsense group on Facebook solemnly remembered Bruno’s fiery death with this meme:


Thus they presented Bruno as a rational scientific thinker who held the idea that the stars were suns that had their own potentially-inhabited planets and who rejected the doctrine of Transubstantiation, all for scientific reasons, and so died a martyr for science.  But while this group’s fight against pseudo science is admirable, their perpetuation of New Atheist pseudo history is not.

Bruno the Mystic
To begin with, any knowledge of Bruno that goes beyond internet memes will make the idea that he was in any sense of the word a “scientist” immediately dubious.  Bruno was a brilliant and eclectic thinker who ranged over a number of the disciplines of his day, and so is difficult to put into any one category.  He was a metaphysicist, a magus, an expert in mnemonics, a neo-Pythagorean, a neo-Platonist and an astrologer.  He advocated a kind of philosophical reasoning, but it was one focused on images and symbols and the use of visualisations and metaphors.  He had a cosmology that included the physical universe, but he rejected the use of mathematics to explore it, considering that too limiting and preferring what he believed was his own intuitive sense for symbols, sacred geometries and what simply felt right.  His eccentric melange of ideas included things like Copernicus’ heliocentrism and Nicholas of Cusa’s centreless infinite universe, but it also included magic, stars and planets with animating souls, ancient Egyptian religion and Pythagorean symbolism.  Probably the best word to describe him in modern terms is to say he was a “mystic”.

Some who are at least partially aware of all this have tried to argue that no-one in this period was a pure scientist and that most of the great scientists of the time not only held views that were distinctly mystical but were also directly motivated by them.  After all, Galileo was a working astrologer, as this was his primary function at the court of the Duke of Florence, and all evidence indicates he, like his contemporary astronomers, fully accepted astrology. Kepler’s discoveries were motivated by his determined belief that the structure of the cosmos was literally based on the five Platonic Solids and their mystical connection to the classical elements of earth, water, air, fire and quintessence. And it’s now becoming much better understood that Newton spent far more time on alchemy and the calculation of the date of the Apocalypse than on anything for which he is celebrated today.  So, it’s argued, is Bruno really any different to these giants of early science in his acceptance of mysticism ?

Unfortunately, the answer is “yes”.    

The difference is that while these others certainly accepted ideas that we consider totally unscientific and were even motivated by them to do empirical science, they actually did do empirical science as we know it.  And Bruno did not.  Kepler’s animating belief in the intrinsic importance of the Platonic Solids was completely wrong, but his drive to establish this idea through observation and mathematics led to his Three Laws of Planetary Motion and these were not vague mystical intuitions, they were observed, measured and repeatable real world constants.  They were real science.  Newton may have spent long hours coming up with his theological calculation that, according to his readings of the books of Daniel and Revelation, the world could not end before 2060.  But he also set down the principles of celestial mechanics and gravitation in his Principia which revolutionised science and can be confirmed and utilised to this day.  Bruno did nothing like these things.

On the contrary, Bruno scorned empiricism and rejected mathematics as a way of understanding the world.  As Hilary Gatti puts it, he had “a well-known and clearly expressed distaste for the new mathematics, which he saw as a schematic abstraction attempting to imprison the vital vicissitudes of matter into static formulae of universal validity.” (Hilary Gatti, Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science, Cornell, 2002, p. 3)   Far from joining his contemporaries in adopting what was to become the classic scientific method, Bruno used mystical intuition, coming to findings “reached through a process of logical-philosophical reasoning with a marked bias toward vizualization through images and symbols rather than through experiment or observation.” (Gatti, p. 3)

This meant not only did he not join what we can call the Scientific Revolution of his period, he actively rejected its methods, even though he accepted a few of its findings.  This acceptance was not based on any deep understanding of science – his treatment of Copernicanism in his Ash Wednesday Supper dialogue (1584) shows that his grasp of the actual details ranged from shaky to dead wrong  – but on the fact some of them fitted his mystical cosmology.  He accepted science only when it suited his non-scientific ideas.

So in the Ash Wednesday Supper he has his surrogate figure “Theophilus” begin by praising Copernicus for being “possessed of a grave, elaborate, careful, and mature mind; a man who was not inferior, except by succession of place and time, to any astronomer who had been before him”.  But he then quickly turns to downplaying Copernicus’ status, adding “[b]ut for all that he did not move too much beyond [earlier astronomers]; being more intent on the study of mathematics than of nature” and then damning with faint praise Copernicus’ “more mathematical than physical discourse”.  All this is simply a prologue for Theophilus’ lengthy praise of “the Nolan” (i.e. Bruno himself) as, among many other great things “the one who found again the way to scale the skies, to make a tour of the spheres, of the planets, and leave behind the convex surface of the firmament” and who “set free the human spirit and cognition which was retained in the narrow prison of the turbulent [earthly] air, from where as if through some holes it could contemplate the most distant stars”.  And who did so without being constrained by mere observation, mathematics and actual science.

So because Copernicus’ idea that the earth was not the centre of the cosmos suited his mystical view of an unbounded universe, he accepted the scientific conclusion while scorning the science that underpinned it.  But when science didn’t fit his views, he rejected it wholesale.  In his De immenso he came up against the problem that the planets did not actually move the way his mystical vision said they should.  But he just brushed this aside with a blithe assurance to his readers that “the geometers” would eventually realise that he was right.  They didn’t.

So this is not someone like Kepler or Newton, who believed and practised mysticism while also doing science.  This is someone who accepted scientific ideas when they suited his mysticism, rejected them when they didn’t and who did no science at all.  Frances Yates in her influential Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (University of Chicago, 1964)
dismissed the idea that Bruno had any connection to the “new science” of his day at all, placing his mystical philosophy firmly in the context of the writings of “Hermes Trismegistus” and garbled ideas about ancient Egyptian religion based on them.  More recent writers like Hilary Gatti believe this goes too far and that Bruno was at least tangentially related to the science of his day.  But that he was not, in any sense, a scientist:

In Bruno’s time, the word “science” was not yet common coin, and it would start to be used in the restricted sense we know today only by later figures such as Galileo. Bruno would still have thought of himself as a natural philosopher and of sciences as scienza, knowledge of any kind. Even so, natural philosophers of the period such as Paracelsus, Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, William Gilbert, William Harvey, and later Galileo and Francis Bacon, can be thought of as also practitioners of the new science, actively involved in more or less methodical research into natural causes and effects. Not everybody would agree that Bacon fits into that category. Certainly Bruno does not. He never made an astronomical observation of his own.” (Gatti,  pp. 2-3.)

 If there is a modern figure who can be said to be analogous to Bruno, the one who fits best would be someone like Deepak Chopra. Chopra infuriates actual scientists when he invokes ideas like quantum mechanics and genetics to prop up his mystical ideas about how consciousness “creates reality”.  Like Bruno, Chopra and his ilk praise science up to the point where it can be made to fit their mysticism, but then reject it when it does not. And they talk down to scientists, depicting them as “limited” by their devotion to empiricism and experiment. The gap between true science and the kind of intuitive opining of mystics like Bruno and Chopra was not as defined in the late sixteenth century as it is now, but even then it was becoming clear enough – Galileo had no time for Bruno’s woolly conjectures.  What is deeply ironic, however, is atheists and sceptics today who would regard Chopra as an unscientific idiot holding Bruno up as some kind of scientific martyr.


What Were the Charges Exactly?

Despite the fact that he can’t be called a scientist and nothing he did was remotely like science (even by sixteenth century standards), New Atheist pseudo history desperately needs Bruno to be a martyr for science, because without him the whole “Christianity suppressed science” dogma has no martyrs at all.  If Bruno was not a scientist executed for doing science or holding scientific views, then all the New Atheist version of the Conflict Thesis has is the Galileo Affair, and just a little bit of exploration of that quickly indicates that it was not the “science versus religion” fable of popular belief.

So when the Neil deGrasse Tyson TV reboot of Cosmos went to air in 2014 and began with a highly garbled version of the Bruno story, many New Atheist luminaries were not happy at those pesky historians who noted its errors and misrepresentations.  As I detail at length elsewhere (see “Cartoons and Fables – How Cosmos Got the Story of Bruno Wrong“), the new Cosmos series went out of its way to present Bruno as a brave innovator who was crushed by fundamentalists.  Its writers were careful to note that he was not a scientist, but their version of the story was still riddled with mistakes and distortions of history and this was noted by many historians and commentators at the time.  And people like PZ Myers, one of the grumpiest uncles of New Atheism, were not going to let things like objective historical analysis get in the way of their belief in pseudo historical myths. When both Peter Hess and Josh Rosenau of the National Center for Science and Education took issue with the program’s depiction of Bruno, Myers rent his garments and howled “Apologism!” (which is the New Atheist equivalent of “Heretic!”).  In a rant that displayed a spectacularly weak grasp of any relevant history, Myers thundered to the choir:

“Whenever I see one of these guys throw out noise like ‘a nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the long, rich, and complex relationship between religion and the sciences’, I want to ask…what was nuanced and sophisticated about setting a human being on fire?”(“Missing the point of Giordano Bruno“)


Which kind of “misses the point” that, as discussed above, the mystic Bruno his ideas and therefore his execution had nothing at all to do with science in the first place.

The “martyr for science” myth depends on the idea that Bruno was condemned and burned for holding scientific ideas about the cosmos: namely, that the earth went around the sun and that there was an infinite number of worlds, with the stars as other suns possibly circled by inhabited worlds.  Since we know both these things to be correct and to be wholly scientifically based, it seems to follow for many people that, therefore, Bruno was persecuted and killed for science.

Part of the problem here is that we don’t actually have the charges made against Bruno, because they were among the many Vatican documents lost when Napoleon carted most of the Papal archives to Paris between 1810 and 1813.  What we do have are records of what Bruno was questioned about in his earlier trials before the Venetian Inquisition in 1591. And we have a summary of his trial in Rome, which also indicates what he was questioned about. These topics include a grab bag of heretical theological ideas, including denying the virginity of the Virgin Mary, declaring Jesus to have been a magician, denying the Trinity and denying Transubstantiation.  He was certainly questioned about his heliocentric cosmology and his ideas about the infinity of worlds, but we don’t have the final charges against him or the final eight statements that he was ordered to reject in his trial in Rome.  

Grumpy uncle PZ Myers, however, seems to think we do.  With great fanfare in yet another rant about the Cosmos episode he declares this in no uncertain terms:

 “But also, I’m getting a little annoyed with these people claiming that Bruno wasn’t killed for that one specific belief about the movement of the earth. He was! We have the list of eight charges for which Bruno was condemned. Note especially number 5.

(“Still picking nits over Giordano Bruno“)

So if we do have this perfectly clear list of beliefs that Bruno refused to abjure, why do competent historians like Hilary Gatti and Joel Shackelford keep saying we don’t know exactly what ideas he was condemned over?  Are they just incompetent idiots?  Or has PZ Myers, an associate professor of biology at a public liberal arts college, made a remarkable discovery of a document unknown to all historians of science?

Well, it’s neither.  Myers, in his total historical incompetence, simply did a Google search and turned up this rather amateurish website of resources on the trial of Bruno.  It was put together by one Lawrence MacLachlan, who apparently is or was “Director of Research & Instructional Services” at the University of Missouri-Kansas’ law library.  Exactly where MacLachlan got this list is unclear.  It contains quotes and commentary, but where the quotes come from and who the commentary is by is unknown. The quotes don’t seem to be from Bruno’s works and searches on the commentary or even on the commentary and quotes simply leads back to the University of Missouri-Kansas page or to blogs and forum posts that are clearly cutting and pasting from it.  So Myers simply found something that suited him, didn’t bother to check it and presented it as historical evidence. Which is yet more evidence that, when it comes to history, most scientists should just stick to science.

Of course, the reason the clueless Myers seized on this dubious list so uncritically is that it seems to confirm the idea that scientific views were among the reasons Bruno was executed.  He garrumphs that the other items on it are “mostly a lot of New Agey sounding bollocks” (which is one way to summarise the whole of Bruno’s cosmology I suppose), but leaps with glee on the claim that “the [idea that] earth rotates around the sun was one of his beliefs” and that he was killed for this according to the unsourced list he found lying around on the internet.

But is there any real evidence for this?  

The records of his trial in Venice show that he was certainly questioned about his heliocentrism.  He was questioned about many things, including where he went and when and even what clothes he was wearing at the time, so it’s hardly surprising that his unusual advocacy of what was then very much a fringe scientific theory rejected by almost all astronomers would have attracted some attention.  But was this one of the eight items that he refused to reject and ultimately got him killed?
It seems it wasn’t.

This is because of the way the Roman Inquisition operated.  As Thomas F. Mayer details in his careful historical analysis of the workings of the Roman Inquisition, (see The Roman Inquisition: A Papal Bureaucracy and Its Laws in the Age of Galileo, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013, p.152, 169 and extensively elsewhere), the Inquisition was a highly rule-bound institution that worked “not just by precedent but also by case law” (p. 162).  This meant that it consulted two sources before going to the (considerable) effort of making a ruling on whether or not something was heretical: (i) it consulted canon law back to its beginnings in the tenth century and (ii) it consulted its own previous rulings.  This means that if Bruno had been condemned for heliocentrism in 1599 it would be because heliocentrism had been ruled as being contrary to scripture and therefore at least formally heretical.

But this poses a problem for anyone wanting to claim Bruno was condemned for proposing a heliocentric cosmos.  If the Roman Inquisition had ruled this was formally heretical in 1599, why did Cardinal Bellarmine put the question to assessment during Galileo’s later trial in 1616?  Not only would the precedent ruling have been there from just 17 years earlier, but Bellarmine himself had prosecuted Bruno’s trial.  After all, this was what happened in 1633 when Galileo came before the Inquisition again – they referred to the 1616 precedent.  So did Bellarmine simply forget all about the Bruno trial?

The only logical conclusion is that Bellarmine put the issue of heliocentrism to assessment in 1616, because there had been no formal ruling on it in 1599.  Bruno had clearly been questioned about it in relation to his many other weird and radical ideas, but it was obviously not one of the things he had been condemned for, or this would have set a legal precedent to be used in 1616.

So, despite what PZ Myers would like to believe, heliocentrism does not seem to have been among the reasons Bruno was executed.  Then again, Myers seems prepared to believe any number of pseudo historical myths about science being persecuted by religion and in his “Missing the Point” post manages to rehearse some classic New Atheist bad history.  This includes the myth that Copernicus delayed publication of his book “out of fear [of the Church]”, despite the fact that he had been patronised and encouraged by his local bishop, a prominent Cardinal and Pope Clement VII himself.  Myers also dismisses Tycho Brahe as “a geocentrist”, ignoring the fact that his geoheliocentrism was a purely scientific position that had nothing to do with religious dogma.  And, bizarrely, he throws in the fact that Kepler’s mother was accused of witchcraft, though without explaining how this is relevant to anything at all.  Yet again, we find a New Atheist who, as a historian, makes a great biologist.


Multiple Worlds

So not only did Bruno not hold a heliocentric view for any scientific reason, but his heliocentrism was not even one of the reasons he was condemned and executed.  Denial of the doctrine of Transubstantiation in the Catholic Mass was a repeated accusation made against him in both his Venetian and Roman trials, though he can’t be said to have denied that idea for any scientific reasons either; that was a purely theological position.  Similarly we find repeated accusations that he denied the virginity of Mary, denied the Incarnation of Jesus and doubted the doctrine of the Trinity – all heretical positions for any Catholic in 1599.

And we do have what seems to be an eye witness to his condemnation and execution who lists all these accusations as being among the reasons for his death.  Gaspar Schoppe was a twenty-four year old humanist scholar from Germany who had converted from Lutheranism to Catholicism and so became favoured by Pope Clement VIII as a tool in the Counter Reformation.  In February 1600 Schoppe was living in the palace of Cardinal Ludovico Madruzzi, where the final condemnation and sentencing of Bruno took place on February 8 1600.  Schoppe was keen to distance his former Lutheran friends from the ideas of Bruno, who he calls “a monster”, and he includes all the “heretical” theological ideas mentioned above as among the reasons Bruno was executed.  But the first thing he mentions is the idea that “Mundos esse innumerabiles” – i.e. “that worlds are innumerable”.

Bruno’s idea of an infinite universe with the stars as suns and multiple worlds is, after his heliocentrism, the one that gets New Atheists most excited and leads them to pretend that he was a scientist burned for this very scientific conception.  Historians, on the other hand, have long been unconvinced that this “multiplicity of worlds” was a reason for his condemnation at all.

In her seminal work on Bruno as a Hermetical magician, Frances Yates wrote “the legend that Bruno was prosecuted as a philosophical thinker, was burned for his daring views on innumerable worlds or on the movement of the Earth, can no longer stand.” (Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, p. 355).  Likewise,  Steven J. Dick writes: “It is true that he [Bruno] was burned at the stake in Rome in 1600, but the church authorities were almost certainly more distressed at his denial of Christ’s divinity and alleged diabolism than his cosmological doctrines.” (Plurality of Words: The Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to Kant, Cambridge University Press, 1982, p. 10 – though Dick seems to have modified his view since).  And Michael J. Crowe comes to the same conclusion that it is a myth “that Giordano Bruno was martyred for his pluralistic convictions’ about many worlds.” (The Extraterrestrial Life Debate 1750-1900: The Idea of a Plurality of Worlds from Kant to Lowell, Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 8).  

And this has been seen as a reasonable conclusion.  As Yates notes the surviving summary of his trial “shows how little attention was paid to philosophical or scientific questions in the interrogations” (p.355) and the whole idea of the stars as suns and multiple worlds that may even be inhabited was not even one Bruno came up with.  As he himself says, just as he got the idea of heliocentrism from Copernicus and blended that into his pantheist mystical cosmology, so he tells us got the idea of multiple inhabited worlds from “the Divine Cusanus”.

That was Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1454), who published his speculations about an infinite, unbounded universe with multiple worlds and possible alien inhabitants in them in his  De Docta Ignorantia (Of Learned Ignorance) in 1440.  Like Bruno, Cusanus’ cosmology was speculative and intuitive rather than scientific and even the Catholic Encyclopaedia doesn’t bother to try to claim otherwise, noting it was “based on symbolism of numbers, on combinations of letters, and on abstract speculations rather than observation”.  But Cusanus’ writings had a clear and acknowledged impact on Bruno.  Here is Cusanus on extraterrestrial life:

“Life, as it exists on Earth in the form of men, animals and plants, is to be found, let us suppose in a high form in the solar and stellar regions. Rather than think that so many stars and parts of the heavens are uninhabited and that this earth of ours alone is peopled   – and that with beings perhaps of an inferior type – we will suppose that in every region there are inhabitants, differing in nature by rank and all owing their origin to God, who is the centre and circumference of all stellar regions.”


So was Cusanus burned at the stake for this heresy?  No, he wasn’t.  As Michael J. Crowe comments wryly:

“A superficial knowledge of the plurality of worlds debate …. might lead one to suspect that these claims of Cusanus reveal a person with little sense of the politically acceptable, if not a man destined for imprisonment or burning at the stake …. (yet) eight years after his Of Learned Ignorance he was made a cardinal of the Catholic church.” (p. 8)


Cusanus was not simply a cardinal, but also a Papal Legate, second only in authority to the Pope himself.  He was also a respected and renowned scholar and theologian and considered one of the great intellects of his day.  

And he was far from the only medieval thinker to ponder at least the possibility of “other worlds”.  While the scientist and philosopher Nicole Oresme (c. 1320-1382) was of the view that there is only one “corporeal world”, he insisted that God’s omnipotence meant that the possibility of other worlds could not be ruled out, noting “God can and could in his omnipotence make another world besides this one or several like or unlike it” (Orseme, Livre du ciel, I.24).  Another medieval philosopher, John Major (1467-1550), a Scot working at the University of Paris, went much further, citing Democritus and declaring “naturally speaking there are infinite worlds [and] no argument can convince one of the opposite” (See Edward Grant, Planets, Stars, and Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200-1687, Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 166-7 and notes).  Finally, around the same time as Cusanus, the French theologian William of Vorilong was pondering the implications of multiple inhabited worlds:

“If it be inquired whether men exist on that [other] world, and whether they have sinned as Adam sinned I would answer no, for they would not exist in sin and did not spring from Adam. …. As to the question whether Christ, by dying on this earth could redeem the inhabitants of another world, I would answer that he is able to do this even if the worlds were infinite, but it would not be fitting for him to go into another world that he must die again.” (quoted in Grant, p.158)


So given all this medieval speculation about possible multiple worlds, possible extraterrestrial inhabitants and even pondering on the soteriology of aliens, it is reasonable to conclude that ideas that Bruno tells us he got from an esteemed cardinal of the Catholic Church would be low on the list of things that would bother the Inquisition.

This was certainly my personal view until last year, when Alberto A. Martinez of the University of Texas published a paper arguing that the “multiple worlds” issue was not only part of the problem, but was the central accusation made against Bruno.  In “Giordano Bruno and the heresy of many worlds” (Annals of Science, Volume 73, 2016, Issue 4, pp. 345-374) Martinez details the strong tradition of theological opposition to the idea of a multiplicity of worlds and then presents detailed evidence, including the account of the condemnation of Bruno by Gaspar Schoppe, that Bruno’s claim “that worlds are innumerable” was the central accusation against Bruno.  While Martinez makes a strong case for the latter point, he fails to take account of the other tradition that was in favour of possible or actual multiple worlds, characterised by Oresme, Major, Vorilong and Cusanus.  But perhaps a case could be made that these speculations could be tolerable in the comparatively free-wheeling theological atmosphere of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in a way they could not be in the far more paranoid and censorious context of the Counter Reformation.  Especially if they are being espoused by a (to them) recalcitrant Pantheistic contrarian who also seems to have believed a whole grab-bag of other heretical theological ideas.



Bruno, Science and “Woo”

Martinez is less convincing in his arguments that the multiplicity of worlds issue was the central charge against Bruno, but his argument makes it fairly clear that it was one of the charges that led to his execution and that it was most likely one of the lost “eight propositions” put to Bruno by Bellarmine.  The key point to remember here, however, is that Bruno’s multiple worlds ideas was, like the rest of his cosmology, wholly mystical and totally non-scientific.

It was part of a whole world view that depended on ideas that the defenders of the “martyr for science” myth would regard as ridiculous “woo”: planets and stars inhabited by souls and moved by spirits, the transmigration of souls and reincarnation and a Pantheism that would be not out of place in the rambling lectures of the aforementioned Deepak Chopra.  As with heliocentrism, Bruno did not originate the idea of multiple worlds.  And as with heliocentrism, he adopted it for mystical reasons while rejecting and even scorning any attempt at proving it empirically.  The fact that, purely by chance, he stumbled into accepting two ideas that, much later, proved to be scientifically correct, while promulgating a crackpot mystical, Hermetic and magical universe that was a philosophical dead-end does not make him a martyr for science.

At best, Bruno could be considered a martyr for untrammelled free speech and ideas – two concepts that were essentially unknown in the sixteenth century.  We can look at the way sixteenth century people thought, their subservience to hierarchy and traditions of authority and their acceptance of social structures that we would consider oppressive and find all this rather alien and wholly unpleasant.  But to judge the past by the values of the present is a basic historiographical fallacy.  At best, anti-theists can use the Bruno case as a stick with which to beat churches which make claims to universal authority and transcendent wisdom, but since those same churches also plead human fallibility, it’s unlikely to be a beating that has much effect.  Such a tactic usually has no purpose other than making the beater feel smug.

However you look at it, a detailed examination of Bruno’s life and work makes it quite clear that he was no martyr for science.  The idea that his execution somehow set back science or even that it demonstrates some antipathy toward science by the Church is patent nonsense.

Edit 19.05.17: I have been able to get a full English translation of Gaspar Schoppe’s eye-witness account of the condemnation and execution of Bruno, which has useful implications for the question of the charges made against him.  See my new post “Giordano Bruno – Gaspar Schoppe’s Account of his Condemnation” for the translation and commentary.


Edit 23.05.17: Not to be outdone, the so-called “Philosophical Atheism” group on Facebook posted the meme above on May 4 2017.  When I and others drew their attention to this article and responded in detail to members there who tried to defend the idea that Bruno was a scientist and/or killed for holding scientific beliefs, I was banned from the group and all my comments on this and other addle-headed pseudo historical memes there were erased.  Thus another great victory was struck for “rationalism” and “free thought”.

91 thoughts on “The Great Myths 3: Giordano Bruno was a Martyr for Science

    1. Tim I saw a very weak critique of you and Adam’s work God’s philosophers author lejefferson

      10y ago
      They make important points that there was indeed some scientific advancement but the political, religious and economic factors prevented deep philosophical inquiry. People like O’neil essentially try to say that because there was some rational inquiry there was no regression or decline in scientific and technological advancement. It’s like trying to say that just because some economic success that took place in the post 2008 economic recession there was no recession. It’s an easily discoverable fact if you read an array of historical accounts instead of picking up on the hot topics.

      Here’s just one of many critiques by academic scholars of the theory.

      http://rationalist.org.uk/articles/2416/why-gods-philosophers-did-not-deserve-to-be-shortlisted-for-the-royal-society-prize

      Particularly inciteful is this counter argument to the critique O’neil and OP made of Cosmos and the case of Giordano Bruno.

      Hannam has an obsession with the point that Giordano Bruno (who was burned to death in Rome in 1600) was not burned to death for his science (pp. 306-10). This was a period when it was impossible to distinguish ‘science’ from the full range of intellectual activities that ranged over astrology and alchemy and into mysticism so the point hardly makes much sense. Why not concentrate on the fact that the Church could burn to death those whom it considered , for whatever, often arbitrary, reasons, it considered heretical. Of course, in Hannam’s typical style, it was all Bruno’s fault for challenging an essentially benign church. “His combination of new fangled and absurd theology with an unerring ability to rub people the wrong way meant that he could rarely stay put for long.” When a Venetian patrician took Bruno in, his ultimate fate was sealed . . . “the experience of having Bruno in his house was quite sufficient to cause any sensible Catholic to hand him over to the authorities”. Can’t Hannam see how crass this statement is, and how offensive it must be to his fellow Catholics? The Church, as Hannam appears to suggest, really could not have done much else with this recalcitrant figure than burn him and get him down to hell as soon as possible, although Hannam is prepared to criticize the Inquisition for taking this “renegade” seriously at all

    1. I wrote the article in question.
      Since writers and historians did not know that belief in many worlds was officially a heresy, they naturally didn’t realize that Schoppe’s letter confirms it. Consider the following reasons:
      (1) Schoppe says that the Lutherans “neither teach nor believe” things such as that many worlds exist, “and therefore, precisely no Lutherans do we burn.” This means that Bruno was killed for such beliefs. Nobody had previously pointed out the importance of this claim.
      (2) In books on philosophy, there were several ways in Latin to refer to the belief in many worlds, e.g., “multos mundos,” “mundos alios,” “pluribus mundis,” etc., yet Schoppe referred to it precisely in a way in which it was often cited as a heresy: “mundos esse innumerabiles.”
      (3) Schoppe lived as a guest in the Palace of the Supreme Inquisitor, Cardinal Madruzzi, so he was in a position to know why Bruno died, especially since he was present right there when Bruno was condemned, and was also present at the Campo de’ Fiori when Bruno was executed.
      (4) Schoppe was a friend and fan of Cardinal Baronio (the Pope’s confessor), who at the time wrote that indeed it is a heresy to believe in many worlds.
      (5) Schoppe also knew Cardinal Bellarmine and the Pope, who both participated in Bruno’s trial; and they both became Schoppe’s sponsors (e.g., later Bellarmine granted Schoppe a license to read forbidden books).

      7
      1
  1. I mean, I hope that he has more to say than that the plurality of worlds is the first error listed by Schoppe… The list is clearly not in order of importance.

  2. Well said Tim. I have been unable to convince fellow atheists of even the fact that most (learned) Christians didn’t believe in the flat earth, to my great dismay.

    One question, however. When you say that to judge the past by present standards, does that mean people cannot condemn, say, the burning of heretics at the stake? I’d agree historians should try to accurately show history neutrally. People simply criticizing past practices though seems to be different. Or have I misunderstood?

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    1. I suppose it depends what someone was saying when they condemned something like the burning of heretics. It would be perfectly valid, for example, to note that we don’t think doing so would be right now, for example (even if that is pretty obvious). Or they could note that some people are still killing others over supposed religious transgressions (e.g. ISIS) and that this is something that may have been accepted in the past but was not accepted now. Otherwise, I see condemning sixteenth century people for not acting according to twenty-first century norms about as pointless as condemning them for not having driver’s licences or not using Excel – it doesn’t really make much sense.

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  3. If we look back, burning as a form of execution is recorded in the Code of Hammurabi, as a punishment for arson. The last person executed by burning in England, if I recall correctly, was in the late 18th century for the crime of counterfeiting.

    Although the church of the day might have adopted burning as a punishment for heresy, the sentence was carried out by civil authorities who were already experienced with the practice.

    By their standards execution of a heretic with burning was not much different than executing any other traitor with burning. Even in the modern era some people believe certain crimes deserve death. They just believed in one more.

    Jason

    1. While it was perfectly normal in context, it’s still a nasty way to go. But horrible forms of execution were the norm in this period. Henry VIII boiled people in oil and he and various other kings had people hanged, drawn and quartered. In April 1535 he had four Carthusian monks of London’s Charterhouse chained to stakes in a square and left to die of hunger and exposure over many days. This was for the crime of refusing to accept him as the head of the Church in England. t’s interesting that the barbarisms of the Catholic Church are used against it today but I’ve never heard anyone bringing up this kind of barbarity as a criticism of the modern Anglican Church. Or of the modern British monarchy for that matter. Selective indignation.

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      1. Indeed.

        I’ve observed in the past that human beings can be horribly inventive when coming up with ways of killing each other.

  4. “Denial of the doctrine of Transubstantiation in the Catholic Mass was a repeated accusation made against him in both his Venetian and Roman trials, though he can’t be said to have denied that idea for any scientific reasons either”

    Bruno revived ancient idea of atomism, theory of matter, and on this ground he could oppose to Transubstantiation. The idea that Jesus body is composed of finite number of atoms, that was indeed huge heresy.

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    1. Please provide evidence that Bruno made anything that could be called a “scientific” argument against Transubstantiation using his support of atomism. Good luck.

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      1. Atomism in itself is heretical. It is incompatible with transubstantiation, main christian mystery, witch is in the very core of religion, and in middle age, they understand this perfectly well. They taught atomism as example of wrong philosophy.
        By the way, real accusation against Galileo were likely not heliocentrism, but atomism. With time Galileo also became an atomist, and that was absolute no no from the church point of view.
        Bruno was one of the first in Europe, who attempted (successfully ) to revive atomism. As far as I know, there were some alchemist, who also return to atomistic ideas.

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        1. (i) Again, please provide evidence that Bruno made anything that could be called a “scientific” argument against Transubstantiation using his support of atomism.
          (ii) Please provide evidence that the “real” accusation against Galileo was not heliocentrism, but atomism. Please cite the relevant documents from his trial.

          Good luck.

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          1. There is work of Pietro Redondi about Galileo and some following research.

            Anyway, since theology is “queen of the sciences” 🙂 , Bruno and all other heretics were martyrs for science. Elementary logic.

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          2. Thanks, but I’m familiar with Redondi’s claims and also with why virtually no other historians of science find them convincing. See Vincenzo Ferrone and Massimo Firpo, “From Inquisitors to Microhistorians: A Critique of Pietro Redondi’s Galileo eretico“, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 58, No. 2 (Jun., 1986), pp. 485-524. You see, objective historical analysis consists of looking carefully at all arguments and weighing them accordingly. Not clutching at any that happens to confirm your a priori assumptions and emotionally-based prejudices. Even if Redondi was correct, that would only lead to the idea that the Inquisition persecuted him for a metaphysical idea, since “atomism” had no empirically scientific basis in the early seventeenth century. So there goes the only actual “martyr for science” the Conflict Thesis has. Congratulations – you just debunked your own position.

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          3. Gotta love all those downvotes from people angry when you ask them to provide EVIDENCE.

            I can only think some people here are against asking for evidence of their BELIEFS. What kind of skeptical atheists are these?

  5. As far as I understand there was another document, besides G3, EE 291 discovered by Mariano Artigas in 1999.
    I am physicist, not historian.
    There may be involved personal matter, matter of personal revenge of somebody against Galileo, which did not come in trial documents.
    Copernicanism wasn’t heresy, atomism, as far as I understand, was.

    “Lanfrac had used Aristotle’s theory of substance and accident to explain transubstantiation. This linked natural philosophy closely to the Eucharistic miracle when bread and wine turned into body and blood of Christ. In 1215, transubstantiation had become the official dogma of Catholic Church. From then on, an attack on Aristotle’s theory of matter looked like an attack on a key Christian doctrine”
    James Hannam

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    1. This still doesn’t matter. Neither G3 nor EE 291 have the significance you’re trying to claim. This is because G3 is most likely dated to sometime around 1624 and EE 291 to 1631-32. Galileo had already been instructed not to teach heliocentrism as fact after the first Inquisitional inquiry back in 1616 and from that point onward doing so WAS heresy. So the idea that his trials were “really” about atomism is nonsense, because these documents date to after his first trial (1616) and are not mentioned in his second (1632). See M. Artigas, Rafael Martinez and William Shea, “New Light in the Galileo Affair”, in Religious Values and the Rise of Science in Europe, J. Brooke and E. Ihsanoglu, ed.s, (2005), pp. 145-66. Any concerns about atomism were peripheral to his 1632 case and not even considered in the earlier 1616 trial. You simply don’t understand the material and haven’t bothered reading the relevant scholarship.

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      1. There are different opinions of scholars even in physics, not mentioning history, which is inherently more subjective.

        McMullen, Emerson Thomas “Galileo’s condemnation: the real and complex story.”
        So atomism is one of valid hypothesis, not a complete nonsense, and luckily for Galileo he indeed wasn’t officially accused in atomism.

        But the article is about Bruno.

        For example article about his atomistic views.
        Hillary Gatti, Giordano Bruno’s soul-powered atoms: from ancient sources toward modern science.

        Do you really think that Bruno had not reason to reject transubstantiation on the basis of his atomistic philosophy? And in Bruno case, rejection of transubstantiation do mentioned in verdict.
        Besides he was heretic par excellence on many other questions. In fact, it is likely, that he already wasn’t christian.

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        1. McMullen simply notes that “the atomism charge was one of many factors that led to Galileo’s condemnation”. I would not disagree with that, though the fact remains that it was mostly a side issue. The claim of yours that I’m taking issue with, however, was that “the **real** accusation against Galileo [was] not heliocentrism, but atomism”. This is nonsense, as the Artigas, Martinez and Shea article I cited in my last reply to you clearly shows. If the Inquisition wanted to condemn Galileo for atomism, it would have. But it didn’t.

          And the problem with your claims about Bruno and Transubstantiation are twofold. One, there is no evidence that Bruno made any argument against Transubstantiation based on his atomist ideas. Two, atomism was a purely abstract, metaphyical concept in the sixteenth century. It was not a scientific theory and could not be and *was* not part of the science of the day. So even if he had used atomist arguments against Transubstantiation, this would still have nothing at all to do with science. You’re just muddling up a metaphysical idea with a much later scientific one. They have no connection other than etymologically.

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          1. You’re just muddling up a metaphysical idea with a much later scientific one. They have no connection other than etymologically.

            So poor philosophers are at rest, philosophy means nothing to science, since philosophy is metaphysical. All this people (Democritus, Leucippus, Epicurus, Descartes, Hobbes, Newton … ) have nothing to do with atomic theory which appeared in 20-th century, and molecular-kinetic theory. Philosophical atomistic ideas do not influence at all on later scientific ideas.
            Does this also mean that burning at stake scientists is bad, but philosophers is OK?

            In Bruno time there was not such thing as modern scientists. What we now call scientific method was in its infantry state. All that old scientists were quite metaphysical.

            Bruno also had quite scientific contributions.
            arXiv:1504.01604
            The contribution of Giordano Bruno to the principle of relativity, Alesandro De Angelis, Catarina Espirito Santo

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          2. “All this people (Democritus, Leucippus, Epicurus, Descartes, Hobbes, Newton … ) have nothing to do with atomic theory which appeared in 20-th century”

            As I said, the connection is largely one of etymology. You;’re confusing “philosophical atomism” with modern scientific atomic theory and you seem to be doing so because they both use the word “atom” to refer to a fundamental entity. What the people you mention examined was a metaphysical idea of a fundamental, indivisible entity. This was a purely abstract, philosophical concept – none of them sought to measure atoms, determine their make up through experiment or extrapolate from them to the nature or behaviour of compounds. It was not until 1803 that John Dalton managed to resolve several empirical phenomena in chemistry by reference to fundamental particles that actual scientific atomic theory was born. The fact that nineteenth century chemists gave the name “atoms” to these particles is the only real connection between the metaphysical concept and the scientific reality.

            “Does this also mean that burning at stake scientists is bad, but philosophers is OK?”

            Historians tend not to make value judgments on what is “okay” about actions in the distant past. I certainly don’t think killing anyone for their ideas is okay, but people in the sixteenth century thought very differently to us. Condemning them for not thinking like twenty-first century post-Enlightenment liberals is like condemning them for not driving cars – it makes no sense. The point that you are repeatedly missing, however, is that Bruno’s atomism was purely philosophical – it doesn’t make him a scientist.

            “In Bruno time there was not such thing as modern scientists.”

            Total nonsense. This is the very time when modern science begins to appear – a form of analysis based on measurement, experiment and empirical observation. Galileo, Kepler, Brahe and Newtown were all scientists because they embraced this methodology. Bruno actively and overtly rejected it.

            “Bruno also had quite scientific contributions.”

            A single argument which may have influenced Galileo does not make the guy a scientist. Again, Galileo was a scientist. He used empiricism and measurement and careful observation, not just this kind of philosophical thought experiment. Stop clutching at straws and stop wasting my time.

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  6. You;’re confusing “philosophical atomism” with modern scientific atomic theory and you seem to be doing so because they both use the word “atom” to refer to a fundamental entity.

    I don’t confuse philosophical atomism with physical, it is you do not understand that physical atomism become possible because there was before philosophical. Bruno deserve credit in history of science, because he was one of the first in Europe who revived atomistic ideas.

    “If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis that all things are made of atoms…”
    Richard Feynman

    This is the very time when modern science begins to appear

    Galileo was the founder of experimental physics, and he lived after Bruno. So, beside astronomy, there was not such thing as experimental science in Bruno time. Do not confuse 16 and 17-18 centuries.

    A single argument which may have influenced Galileo does not make the guy a scientist.
    🙂
    This single argument is relativity principle and principle of inertia, the discoveries, for which Galileo credited the most. From this two arguments, which contradicted erroneous Aristotelian view which was held for centuries, modern physics began. And Bruno argued exactly on the basis of observations.

    You dedicate your writing to atheists. Typical atheist do not believe in transubstantiation because it contradicts physical laws of Nature, he exactly do not believe because transubstantiation contradict science and observations. Believe me, he will be on Bruno side, when it comes to believing in Jesus virgin birth. It contradicts observations.

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    1. “you do not understand that physical atomism become possible because there was before philosophical.”

      This is nonsense. John Dalton came to his conclusions working purely from scientific first principles, extrapolating from previous recent empirical work in chemistry, particularly from principles discovered a few decades earlier by Antoine Lavoisier and by Joseph Louis Proust. He would have come to the conclusion he came to from their ideas and his own experiments if Democritus et. al. had never existed – all his idea owed to theirs was the name.

      “Galileo was the founder of experimental physics”

      More nonsense. Galileo took up and utilised methods used by people who had been doing empirical science long before him. He was initially not even the most renowned practicioner of the “new philosophy” in his day and he joined the ranks of Thomas Harriot, Christoph Scheiner, William Gilbert, Christoph Clavius, Francoise Vieta, Isaac Beeckman, Simon Stevin and many others in pursuing the examination of the natural world using measurement and mathematics. Bruno did not. These people and others, including Kepler, corresponded with about about each other, discussion their work and comparing results. Bruno was not part of that conversation. Kepler’s only mentions of Bruno was comparing one idea of Galileo’s to Bruno style of reasoning, which was not a compliment, and a note that Bruno had been executed, calling him “a monster”.

      “Typical atheist do not believe in transubstantiation because it contradicts physical laws of Nature, he exactly do not believe because transubstantiation contradict science and observations. Believe me, he will be on Bruno side, when it comes to believing in Jesus virgin birth. It contradicts observations.”

      Typical modern atheists do. There is no evidence Bruno did. And he wasn’t an atheist anyway. However you try to twist things, Bruno was not a scientist and was not executed for anything to do with science.

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      1. John Dalton came to his conclusions working purely from scientific first principles…

        Nonsense. Atomism in physics do not reduce to atomism in chemistry. For example: Newton theory of light or particle explanations of gases and heat, explanations of crystal structure, there were even particle theories of gravity. And all this was done without explicit proof of atoms existence, which were not available until 20-th century. Scientists simply were fascinated with explanatory power of atomic hypothesis. Scientist got idea from philosophers.

        More nonsense. Galileo took up and utilised methods used by people who had been doing empirical science long before him. .. pursuing the examination of the natural world using measurement and mathematics

        Look. Galileo did not really do much of empirical science, it was impossible at that time, at least in physics, to really measure something, because your must have instruments. There wasn’t even decent watch to measure time. You gave a list of astronomers, mathematicians, and inventors. Astronomy was quantitative science from the time of Hipparchus, yet astronomy up until Kepler wasn’t that scientific as your think, it was really hard for Kepler to denounce “harmony of spheres”. And suggesting possibility of infinite universe without center with million of stars was probably the greatest contribution of Bruno to science. This broke old paradeigma which stiffened thought.

        Bruno was not a scientist

        He was a co-author (Buridan, Oresme, Copernicus, Bruno, Galileo, Descartes) of the greatest discovery of the 16-th century, Galileo relativity principle and concept of inertia.
        He was scientist wether you like it or not.

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        1. “Nonsense. Atomism in physics do not reduce to atomism in chemistry.”

          What the hell are you talking about now? Try to focus – Dalton developed his ideas from pure scientific principles, drawing from the earlier work in chemistry by Lavoisier and Proust. He would have come to his conclusions if philosophical atomism never even existed. He didn’t even refer to his fundamental particles as “atoms” – that name was given later in the nineteenth century. The only connection between scientific atomic theory and the metaphysical concept of “atoms” is etymology.

          “Scientist got idea from philosophers.”

          Bullshit. They got the name from the philosophical concept. They got their idea from their actual scientific experiment, measurements and observations.

          “Look. Galileo did not really do much of empirical science”

          Galileo did do empirical science. As did Kepler, Harriot, Scheiner, Gilbert, Clavius, Vieta, Beeckman, Stevin and many others of the time. Bruno did not. Galileo also did some of the inductive non-empirical “natural philosophical” speculation and thought experiment that Bruno mixed in with his mysticism, but unlike Bruno he also did empirical science. He was a scientist. Bruno was not.

          “He was a co-author (Buridan, Oresme, Copernicus, Bruno, Galileo, Descartes) of the greatest discovery of the 16-th century, Galileo relativity principle and concept of inertia.”

          This too is bullshit. He was not “co-author” and he simply used an argument that had been around for centuries. It was a non-empircal argument and the fact that others later used a better developed version of it in actual empirical science does not make Bruno into a scientist. Orseme and Buridan were not modern-style scientist either.

          And I’ve wasted enough time on you. If you just keep repeating your same failed arguments as you have been so far, your comments will go into the spam file. Go away.

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      2. I wish I’d noticed this discussion three years ago; I’d have recommended Alan Chalmers’s _The Scientists’ Atom and the Philosophers’ Stone_, which traces the historical story from Democritus to the 20th century, and comes to the same conclusion as Tim gives (Tim may have his own opinion on the book).

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  7. Recently Alberto A. Martínez was at it again with an article on Scientific American, arguing not just that the plurality of worlds played a role in the condemnation (which would hardly surprise me, since it came in the same pack with a rather un-Christian cosmology in which these worlds were all divine entities), but that it was also ” the Inquisition’s strongest case against Bruno” (emph. mine).

    What bothers me is that as an amateur I haven’t got the necessary mastery of the subject to confirm or refute his arguments, which taken as true seem decisive. However, three points strike me:

    1) After painting an unanimous consensus among professional historians that Bruno wasn’t killed for his support of the plurality of worlds, the rebuff is “Not everyone agrees: In 2014, millions of people watched the first episode of the updated version of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, in which Neil deGrasse Tyson declares that Bruno courted danger when he insisted on the existence of innumerable planets.” For real, deGrasse Tyson and his followers?! Might as well quote Dawkins and the New Atheists on Scholasticism!

    2) I’m not really sure of what the “new evidence” would be, though I imagine it’s the one from 2 years ago. I suppose that Bruno’s is in the top 3 of the most studied Inquisition’s trials, didn’t really anybody before Martinez realize the apparent huge prominence of the many worlds accusation or that the hypothesis was listed as heresy on the “Corpus of Canon Law”? I never read of these before.

    3) Most importantly, despite my meager grasp of the history involved I can tell that even in the Scientific American article Martínez is presenting a rather disingenuous cherry picking when he “demonstrates” the unbroken condemnation of the plurality of the worlds by the Church. Where’s Paris condemnation of the idea that God couldn’t make as many as He wanted, position refuted also by William of Ockham? Where’s the usual Nicholas of Cusa, that Bruno himself lauded as inspiration? John Major (1467-1550) not only rejected Aristotle’s argument against plural worlds but even affirmed that they were infinite! (In the form of the usual geocentric Solar Systems.) The sentence provided as the only opinion on the matter, “we cannot assert that two or many worlds exist, since neither do we assert two or many Christs”, flies in the face of William Vorilong’s writings.

    In particular, 3) makes me doubt of Martínez’s reliability and bias, given that he also off-handedly evoke bloggers’ ire at Tyson but doesn’t seem to account for this popular objection. However, he is a tenured professor of History of Science, one who wrote on the argument. If he’s really wrong, this and his article on the popularly respected Scientific American will single-handedly be a pain to deal with in online discussions about Bruno.

    1. The fact that Martinez neglects to account for Cusanus, Vorilong and Major is a flaw in his peer-reviewed paper on the topic as well. I think he makes a good case that the plurality of worlds was indeed part of the problem, but I think he overstates things by saying it was the main issue – that seems to have been Bruno’s denial of Transubstantiation. And he really needs to show how those who proposed multiple worlds before Bruno fits into the context he gives. Otherwise, as you say, he seems to be cherry picking. And yes, the invoking of viewers of a TV documentary as a counter view is simply … bizarre.

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    2. I’m Alberto A. Martinez, I wrote the article in question.
      Journal articles and even scholarly books suffer the limitation that naturally readers may ask: “Why did you not also write about X? Since you did not, then what you say about Y sounds wrong.” Regarding individuals who pondered the existence of many worlds, certainly there were several such writers before Bruno. It is well known, yes, that the issue of many worlds had been considered in Catholic theology especially in connection with God’s omnipotence. Could God create many worlds if He wanted to? Catholics answered: Yes.
      But the subject I analyzed in my article was different: namely, was it a heresy to assert that in fact many worlds exist? I gave abundant evidence that indeed it was a heresy. Such evidence, e.g., Pope Gregory XIII’s Corpus of Canon Law, the Directorium Inquisitorum of Francisco Peña, the treatise of heresies by Philater, etc., was absent from every previous book and article about Bruno in any language. Moreover, some of those canonical restrictions did not yet exist at the time when others such as Cusanus wrote. Thus what I brought to light is evidence that Bruno’s belief in innumerably many worlds was a heresy in the 1590s and was “totally condemned by the Holy Roman Church.”
      I didn’t invoke “viewers of a TV documentary as a counter view” to the old claim that Bruno’s belief in many worlds was irrelevant to his condemnation. To the contrary, I alluded to such viewers’ complaints to show that viewers too agreed with Frances Yates, the Catholic Encyclopedia, my friends the historians Steven J. Dick and Michael J. Crowe, and other writers in the impression that Bruno’s cosmology was not a factor in his condemnation. (However, Dick and Crowe now agree with me.)
      In other words, I didn’t write that all the people who watched deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos agreed with what he said, but instead, that writers promptly criticized him.
      Did nobody previously notice “the apparent huge prominence of the many worlds accusation”? Strictly speaking (in terms of collecting the actual evidence), no, and that’s why you never read about it. Still, there were writers who surmised or guessed that it was important, which is why Steven Soter and Ann Druyan conveyed this impression too in their narration for Cosmos. In short, even though the academic world was mostly convinced that the accusation of many worlds was not important, there were certainly writers who occasionally said it was. Thus in this case it just turned out that the experts were wrong, because they had just assumed that belief in many worlds was not a heresy, when in fact it was.

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  8. “Some who are at least partially aware of all this have tried to argue that no-one in this period was a pure scientist”
    This is a somewhat clumsy formulation, because nobody in the 21st Century is a pure scientist either. The God Delusion is not exactly scientific. Problem with Bruno is that, unlike Dawkins, is only a “scientist” in the same way a creationist is when explaining Ohm’s Law.

    “two concepts that were essentially unknown in the sixteenth century”
    And in the 17th Century. So when atheist me wants to bully annoying christian apologists I rather mention the brothers Koerbagh (they have lemmas on Wikipedia), who were punished for their radical ideas in the most liberal country of that century. They provide a much more effective example of christian intolerance than that shatterbrain and provocateur Bruno.

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    1. “This is a somewhat clumsy formulation, because nobody in the 21st Century is a pure scientist either.”

      It’s not clumsy and you know exactly what I was saying.

      “And in the 17th Century. “

      Yes, but I was talking about someone in the sixteenth century. I’m happy for you to make your own commentary on my stuff, but could you dial back the nitpicking as you do it. Thanks.

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    2. “The God Delusion is not exactly scientific.”

      It doesn’t have any pretensions of being a book of th natural sciences. Nor really of the social sciences.

      It’s just Richard Dawkins having a rant. *yawn*

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    3. Yes, but Adriann Koerbagh was persecuted by Reformed Churchmen, not Catholics. Not quite as colourful conspiracy theories about them.

  9. Looks like someone published something about a year after Tim posted tis blog and on the blog for the popular periodical Scientific American:
    https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/was-giordano-bruno-burned-at-the-stake-for-believing-in-exoplanets/

    I can’t help but laugh about how his blurb says: “new evidence suggests otherwise”, but then only interprets evidence that is long established and not “new” by anyone’s description. I also cannot help but feel that this very lightweight piece from a “professor of history of science” comes across more like a high school essay.

    1. Martinez is a good historian, his work is based on evidence that is “new” in the sense that it has not been considered in this context before and I agree with his conclusions. In fact, cite Martinez’s original paper in my article above and credit him and it with changing my mind on the issue of whether Bruno was condemned for his belief in multiple worlds:

      “This was certainly my personal view until last year, when Alberto A. Martinez of the University of Texas published a paper arguing that the “multiple worlds” issue was not only part of the problem, but was the central accusation made against Bruno. In “Giordano Bruno and the heresy of many worlds” (Annals of Science, Volume 73, 2016, Issue 4, pp. 345-374) Martinez details the strong tradition of theological opposition to the idea of a multiplicity of worlds and then presents detailed evidence, including the account of the condemnation of Bruno by Gaspar Schoppe, that Bruno’s claim “that worlds are innumerable” was the central accusation against Bruno.”

      I’ve since had a very useful exchange on Twitter with him – he is an excellent scholar. So I think you need to ease back on the scorn. And read what I say more carefully.

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  10. If I may ask, as a lay person I’d like to read a systematic account on Bruno, which books do you suggest?

    From my limited understanding, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition is the seminal work that rewrote our understanding of the guy, but has also been superseded by more recent research in some places.

    1. Yates is still worth reading, but perhaps supplemented by Hilary Gatti’s Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science.

  11. I checked out that PZ Meyers link and man, one of the only ones with half a clue what he was on about was that John guy. The rest spewed some heavy nonsense. I would have posted there telling them this if comments were enabled.

  12. When it comes to historical fact, this is fine. When it comes to polemics and normative moral philosophizing — which there is, unfortunately too much of, particularly at the end — this essay leaves much to be desired.

    I could go in detail (and perhaps will at another time) but in brief, it makes me wonder if the real motive for this isn’t merely to point out the complexity of the evolving relationship between science and religious institutions throughout the Middle Ages (and Reformation and Counter-Reformation), which is already well-known (or should be). Smuggled into the “is” seems to be an “ought” of promoting simplistic moral relativism, condemning any one for daring to question the morality or political wisdom of burning people to death for having different theological beliefs, or for practicing magic.

    That is, it moves from a critique of factual claims (what happened and what people did ) and interpretation (why it happened) to a moral evaluation (which goes beyond historiography itself).

    Basically, the “grumpy” P.Z. Myers is somehow wrong to see it as bad that these things occurred, not just because it misreads history, but because any moral sentiments we might have in reaction to it are merely historically contingent fads with no valid basis beyond some modern cultural zeitgeist. (Is it possible any one before our time could have find this “unpleasant” or in any way questionable or even morally objectionable?). In other words, he and other “New Atheists” aren’t merely wrong to have a moral opinion, they have the wrong moral opinions (even though you’re not supposed to have those – itself a normative statement!).

    At points he even implies this politics might have been justified! After Bruno was a “crack pot” with “radical” ideas who promoted nonsense and “dead-end” philosophy (just like those horrible New Atheists).

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    1. Smuggled into the “is” seems to be an “ought” of promoting simplistic moral relativism, condemning any one for daring to question the morality or political wisdom of burning people to death for having different theological beliefs, or for practicing magic.

      No, the problem is the historiographical fallacy of “presentism” – applying the moral norms of the present to condemn a past that did not share those norms. This is something historians try to avoid, since it warps our analysis and it actually makes no sense. How could sixteenth century people share our twenty-first century ideas and values? So what sense does it make to condemn them for not doing so?

      P.Z. Myers is somehow wrong to see it as bad that these things occurred, not just because it misreads history, but because any moral sentiments we might have in reaction to it are merely historically contingent fads with no valid basis beyond some modern cultural zeitgeist.

      No, see above. Though yes, there is also a problem with seeing our twenty-first century ideas and values as universal and objective absolutes, but that’s only a secondary problem with presentist moral judgements. The main problem is that we are condemning the past by the values of the present that those in the past simply did not share. Historians recognise that this is nonsensical and try to put our modern distaste aside and look at the past on its own terms so we can understand it. Presentist value judgements have the added disadvantage of getting in the way of that understanding.

      (Is it possible any one before our time could have find this “unpleasant” or in any way questionable or even morally objectionable?

      It is. But polemicists like Myers don’t even bother to go that far. The fact that they find it objectionable now is enough and there they stop. In fact, there is no indication that anyone considered the particular case of Bruno and his execution “questionable or even morally objectionable”. Kepler approved, calling Bruno “a monster”. Schoppe also makes no objection to the execution, and only tries to distance Bruno from Lutheranism. But even if anyone had objected to this particular execution, the idea that an institution at the top of the early modern hierarchy of authority simply didn’t have the right to execute someone for “wrong” ideas would not have occured to any of these people. That concept was yet to develop. So to judge the executioners for not holding an idea that did not exist is patently silly.

      At points he even implies this politics might have been justified! After Bruno was a “crack pot” with “radical” ideas who promoted nonsense and “dead-end” philosophy (just like those horrible New Atheists).

      No, here you’re getting confused. Firstly, I’m noting that he was considered “crackpot” etc by the standards of those at the time. So I’m debunking the idea that he was some great “scientist” who was some radical “rationalist”, when he was nothing of the sort and was not recognised as a fellow sixteenth century scientist by the other sixteenth century scientists. They considered him a mystical oddity. This has nothing at all to do with any thought of mine as to whether he somehow “deserved” to be executed. I happen to find the idea of anyone being executed repugnant. Secondly, I have no idea why you added “just like those horrible New Atheists” after your references to “crack pot”, “radical” and “dead end philosophy”. You do realise that I’m an atheist myself, don’t you?

      I think you need to re-read my article.

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      1. ‘How could sixteenth century people share our twenty-first century ideas and values?’

        Stated in that simple form, surely the answer is ‘very easily’?

        For example, many people in the twenty-first century value honesty. How could sixteenth-century people share that value? Why, very easily.

        Many people in the twenty-first century value strength. How could sixteenth-century people share that value? Again, very easily.

        Liberty? Success? Courage? Intelligence? Prosperity? In no case, I think, is the fact that something is valued by many people in the twenty-first century grounds for doubting that it could have been valued also by people in the sixteenth century.

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        1. For example, many people in the twenty-first century value honesty. How could sixteenth-century people share that value? Why, very easily.

          Many people in the twenty-first century value strength. How could sixteenth-century people share that value? Again, very easily.

          Liberty? Success? Courage? Intelligence? Prosperity?

          You’ve completely misunderstood what I said. I was talking about particular values that we have and that they did not share with us – the idea of freedom of expression and the right of people to hold any idea they like. We accept these things as normal. They lived in a very different culture and so they did not. To judge them for not holding values that did not exist at that time makes about as much sense as condemning them for not being able to drive a car: it makes no sense.

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          1. You’ve completely misunderstood what I said.

            Possibly. I’m still not sure that I’ve understood you properly, and the only way I can check is by probing further, which I hope is not objectionable.

            I was talking about particular values that we have and that they did not share with us – the idea of freedom of expression and the right of people to hold any idea they like. We accept these things as normal. They lived in a very different culture and so they did not. To judge them for not holding values that did not exist at that time makes about as much sense as condemning them for not being able to drive a car: it makes no sense.

            I find that a helpful analogy to explore. That cars did not exist at all in the sixteenth century is easily established. It was therefore impossible for anybody in the sixteenth-century to learn how to drive one: not merely unlikely, not merely difficult, but strictly impossible. In the twenty-first century, obviously, learning to drive a car is not strictly impossible: for many people it’s easy, but for some people, even in the twenty-first century, it’s still difficult (without being strictly impossible). To me, it would make no sense to condemn anybody in the twenty-first century who didn’t learn to drive a car because it was difficult; indeed, I wouldn’t even condemn anybody who didn’t learn to drive a car even though it would have been easy. Still, condemnation or no, and difficulty or not, it would be wrong to say that learning to drive is impossible.

            It’s easily established that the idea of freedom of expression exists in the twenty-first century. The fact that there are people in the twenty-first century who affirm the freedom of expression demonstrates that in the twenty-first century it is possible to do so: whatever is actual must be possible.

            What I’m not clear on is how it could be established that the idea of freedom of expression did not exist in the sixteenth century or that nobody in the sixteenth century affirmed freedom of expression. How can that conclusion be confidently drawn?

            There is a further point, which is that obviously it must be possible for the idea of freedom of expression to be developed by somebody not previously familiar with it, because that’s how it must have originated, and it must have have had an origination, although I have no idea how to figure out when (or where, or how) that happened. Again, I wouldn’t condemn a previously unfamiliar person for not originating the idea independently; but I can’t figure how it would make sense to describe it as impossible.

            There is a problem with saying (as some people do say) that people should only be judged by the values of their own time and their own culture (or society), and it’s not a purely academic issue. I know that in my own time and my own culture/society people don’t all share all the same values. There are serious disagreements about values in the twenty-first century, and not just between different cultures but between people who belong to the same culture/society. I don’t believe that there is now or ever has been a culture or society which lasted for any significant period of time without disagreements over values. My observations suggest that in practice when people say (as they do) ‘We should judge people by the standards of their own culture’, the effective meaning is ‘We should judge people by the standards which are dominant in their own culture’. However, by definition, the ideas about values which are dominant in a culture/society are the ideas about values which are held by the powerful and privileged within that society, not the ideas about values (which may be radically different) held by the disempowered and marginalised.

            To illustrate with a specific example, there are recent instances of societies in which slave-owning was common and in which the known ideas about slavery that were typical of the slaves were drastically different from the known ideas about slavery that were typical of the slave-owners. Naturally, in those societies slave-owners were dominant over slaves and the ideas of slave-owners were dominant over slaves. There are many other less recent examples of societies in which slave-owning was common but in which there are no records of what the slaves thought about it: the natural hypothesis is that in those societies, too, what the slaves thought about slavery was drastically different from what the slave-owners thought. In practice, even if this has not been thought through explicitly, what it means when people say that slave-owners should be judged by the values of their own times/cultures/societies is that they should be judged by their (the slave-owners’) own values and not by the values of the slaves. The slaves were people of the same times, the same cultures, the same societies as the slave-owners, and their values were just as much values of the time/culture/society as the values of the slave-owners. I question, therefore, what good reason there could be for siding with the slave-owners (and their values) over the slaves (and their values).

            More generally, when judging a society or a culture, I can find no good reason to side with the powerful and the privileged against the disempowered and the disadvantaged. It’s terribly easy, though, to be led into doing so by not carefully thinking through the potential implications of saying ‘We should judge them by their own values’. That’s why I think it’s important to think it through carefully.

          2. What I’m not clear on is how it could be established that the idea of freedom of expression did not exist in the sixteenth century or that nobody in the sixteenth century affirmed freedom of expression. How can that conclusion be confidently drawn?

            Yes. And it is drawn from the fact that consistent and persuasive claims to absolute freedom of expression all date from much later. Our modern ideas of academic freedom and freedom of conscience evolved out of the aftermath of the Wars of Religion and the intellectual debates of the eighteenth century philosophes. That was all in the future in Bruno’s time.

            There is a further point, which is that obviously it must be possible for the idea of freedom of expression to be developed by somebody not previously familiar with it,

            That’s irrelevant. The fact is that even if someone conceived of this idea in Bruno’s time, it did not become an accepted cultural and societal norm until centuries later. So to judge the sixteenth century by a standard that did not become a standard until about 200 years later is absurd. Again, it’s like judging them for not driving cars.

          3. Obviously it’s true that there’s an important difference between ‘ideas which are widely accepted by most people’ and ‘ideas which are endorsed by only a few people and which are are generally rejected’. That’s true in our own times and it was also true in past historical times: but which ideas fall into which category can change. However, the merits of the idea don’t change as it changes from being generally accepted to being generally rejected, or the reverse. The answer to the question ‘Is anti-Semitism justified?’ is not ‘It isn’t justified if it’s generally rejected, but it’s justified if it’s generally accepted’. The answer to the question ‘Is democracy justified?’ is not ‘Only when it’s generally accepted, not when it isn’t’. The campaign for the abolition of slavery began with only a very few supporters, their opinions widely rejected, but those campaigners were right, and their opponents wrong, from the very beginning of their campaign. Justification didn’t switch from the pro-slavery side to the anti-slavery side at the point when the majority passed from one side to the other: it was with the abolitionists from the beginning. If freedom of expression is a good idea now, and opposing it wrong, then that was also true from whenever the idea was first conceived: it’s not the case that it only became right after it was generally accepted as right.

          4. However, the merits of the idea don’t change as it changes from being generally accepted to being generally rejected, or the reverse.

            You’re now changing the subject. The issue is not whether the principle that we value has merit – obviously, to us, it does. The issue is whether it makes sense to condemn people who generally did not value it the way we do. And it clearly does not. I certainly thinking holding someone down and cutting out their heart is evil. But the Aztecs thought, in at least some circumstances, it was good. It makes no sense to condemn them for not sharing an modern idea they simply did not and could not hold. Ditto with the sixteenth century Church and full freedom of belief.

            I’m running out of ways to explain this to you over and over again. I’m also running out of patience with you generally. Try to finally get it or just go away.

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          5. I am sorry to learn that my comments have vexed you. I have been striving to avoid being vexatious, but perhaps I haven’t tried hard enough.

            I don’t suppose you need me to tell you that it’s entirely your choice whether you publish my comments, and rightly so. If you decide not to publish this comment, I will feel regret, but no grievance, because I would have no just cause for grievance.

            In your most recent comment, you write that you think it is evil to hold people down and cut their hearts out. Perhaps you would distinguish between describing an action as evil and condemning that action, but I can’t figure how: to me, describing an action as evil counts as condemning that action. Perhaps you would distinguish between condemning an action as evil and condemning the people who carried out that action as evil. If we make that distinction, it’s possible to condemn as evil the denial of freedom of expression by the sixteenth-century church without condemning any people as evil for their part in it. I do distinguish between judging actions and judging people; and I insist that judging actions is more important than judging people, that it’s more important to know what is right than it is to know who is right. Judging people who are now dead can make no difference to them, whether we judge them as good or as evil; but judging actions of the past is a guide to action in the future, and that’s what makes it important, and the point worth pursuing.

          6. In your most recent comment, you write that you think it is evil to hold people down and cut their hearts out.

            I do. I think if you held someone down and cut out their heart I would definitely say that was evil.

            to me, describing an action as evil counts as condemning that action.

            Yes. I think holding people down and cutting out their hearts is evil and, as such, it’s an action I condemn completely.

            Perhaps you would distinguish between condemning an action as evil and condemning the people who carried out that action as evil.

            If those people lived now and shared my general social and cultural context, I would have no problem with condemning them. But the Aztecs lived 500 years ago in a social and cultural context that is totally alien to mine. They simply did not share the way I see the world and so to condemn them for not doing so makes no sense. It’s like saying they were stupid because they couldn’t drive cars. That makes no sense – they couldn’t drive cars because … cars did not exist in their world. Ditto for the ethical ideas that lead me to condemn cutting out people’s hearts. I’ve explained this several times, so I have no idea why you’re finding it so hard to grasp. I think cutting out people’s hearts is evil. They thought that doing so (in at least some circumstances) was good. Condemning them for not holding ethical values that simply did not exist in their context makes no sense. So I don’t say that it was “evil” for them to cut out hearts, even though I think cutting out hearts, per se, is pretty evil.

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          7. @J-D: historical research is not about judging the values of people who lived in completely different times and had different cultures. Exactly because they did it’s to be expected that they have some values I think terrible. I think crucifixion evil; the Romans thought it acceptable for things they saw as crimes. However what I think and think not evil contributes exactly zilch to our understanding of those Romans.
            You were wrong when you wrote that it would have been easy for 16th Century people to share our 20th Century ideas. Worse, it prevents you from properly understanding them. It means you impose your own opinions on them and that’s bad methodology.

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        2. @J-D: “Liberty? Success?”
          Interesting examples. Even today people, even within the same culture, hardly agree what these things mean, so let alone that people several centuries ago meant the same as we. These two examples rather demonstrate exactly the opposite of what you try to argue.

          1. In his biography of Tiberius Caesar, Suetonius wrote that the emperor ‘remained unmoved at all the aspersions, scandalous reports, and lampoons, which were spread against him or his relations; declaring, “In a free state, both the tongue and the mind ought to be free.”‘ It may be that Tiberius said this insincerely; it may be, if Suetonius’s sources were unreliable, that Tiberius never actually said it; but the text shows that Suetonius, writing in the second century, was aware of the concept of freedom of expression, and so must have been anybody who studied his work. Writing in the sixteenth century, Erasmus cited this passage from Suetonius in The Education Of A Christian Prince; so he was also aware of, and praised, the idea of freedom of expression. It is possible to say that when Erasmus advocated freedom of expression he was doing a good thing; it is possible to say that when freedom of expression was repressed in the sixteenth century, that was a bad thing. If people in the sixteenth century were repressed for trying to express themselves freely, I expect that they thought it was a bad thing. It may have been routine in the sixteenth century for freedom of expression to be repressed, but the merits of a course of action are not determined by whether it is routine.

          2. That some had some idea of freedom of expression as a good thing in certain circumstances does not change the fact that it was by no means an accepted norm then the way it is now. So to judge them for not regarding it as an accepted norm the way we do is absurd. This really isn’t difficult to grasp. And if you think Erasmus, of all people, was happy for there to be total freedom of belief and expression then I suggest you need to do a lot more reading up on Erasmus.

          3. @J-D: Erasmus, a famous compatriot of mine (he has a university named after him), was also an antisemite (religiously speaking). So it’s safe to conclude that his ideas on freedom were not the same as ours. Again you manage to bring up an example that shows the opposite of what you are trying to argue.

            A few quotes: “jews are a pestering plague”, “a danger for the church of Christ”, “arrogant, uncooperative, corrupt and totally blind”. That’s not what we Dutch prefer to remember and admire regarding the great man from Rotterdam.

  13. The article is blindly anti-Bruno.

    Bruno certainly was an extreme synchretic thinker with many ideas now called un/scientific. But his thinking was certainly more coherent than depicted here.

    He didn’t invent scientific things as Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, Newton did. True. But at least, opposed to them, his world view was not based on the Bible, a wildly unscientific worldview.

    As much as the name “scientist” is wrong for Bruno, so is the name “mysticist.” (And the “New Age” is also a bad metaphor for him.) The best one-word name is “philosopher”.

    As for “science” of yore: Copernicus was afraid not of the Church, but of the contemporary “science” / astronomers.

    All of Bruno’s “theological” heresies were based on his materialistic theories, including heavy (and brave) “miracle”-debunking (pretty rare phenomena in those days and even later), which, however speculative and blended with unscientific beliefs, are in itself more scientific than thinking based on the Bible. Overall, Bruno’s views are much closer to modern science (methodological materialism) than those of the age average.

    And if he wasn’t a martyr of “science” in the modern sense, he was much more, undoubtedly: a martyr of free thinking. He was a guy of integrity who didn’t give in to the false authority, who didn’t repeat the Inquisitors’ (unscientific) bullshit — as poor, old, ill Galileo did on his knees after he made them ban heliocentrism.

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    1. The article is blindly anti-Bruno.

      Not, it’s just anti- the mythic, romantic caricature of Bruno found in too much popular literature and in almost all atheist references to him.

      his thinking was certainly more coherent than depicted here.

      Where did I say it was incoherent? Or imply that? The point is that it was not scientific. Not by our standards or (more importantly) by the standards of his own time.

      As much as the name “scientist” is wrong for Bruno, so is the name “mysticist.” (And the “New Age” is also a bad metaphor for him.) The best one-word name is “philosopher”.

      Given he lived in a different world, few modern labels are going to fit him. Even “philosopher”, while accurate for his time, has very different implications today. That’s why I used the analogy of a New Age guru to show how he stood in relation to the natural philosophers of his time. Like any analogy, it’s not perfect, but serves its illustrative purpose.

      As for “science” of yore: Copernicus was afraid not of the Church, but of the contemporary “science” / astronomers.

      If you look a bit further on my site, you’ll find I have a whole article on that. I’m not sure what that observation has to do with anything I’ve said about Bruno.

      All of Bruno’s “theological” heresies were based on his materialistic theories, including heavy (and brave) “miracle”-debunking (pretty rare phenomena in those days and even later), which, however speculative and blended with unscientific beliefs, are in itself more scientific than thinking based on the Bible. Overall, Bruno’s views are much closer to modern science (methodological materialism) than those of the age average.

      You mean the guy who believed firmly in magic and sacred numbers? Sorry, but that is nonsense. His ideas were (to us) every bit as kooky as anything his opponents believed.

      he was much more, undoubtedly: a martyr of free thinking. He was a guy of integrity who didn’t give in to the false authority, who didn’t repeat the Inquisitors’ (unscientific) bullshit

      He was, but his free thinking ideas were also “unscientific bullshit”. Just because some of the ideas he rejected correlate with yours doesn’t mean you can pretend he was some kind of rationalist. He was not.

      as poor, old, ill Galileo did on his knees after he made them ban heliocentrism.

      It seems we can add the Galileo Affair to the list of historical events you don’t seem to understand.

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  14. “Just because some of the ideas he rejected correlate with yours doesn’t mean you can pretend he was some kind of rationalist.”

    “some of the [harshly unscientific] ideas he rejected [like the whole Christianity] correlate with yours [you bet, I also don’t believe that Jesus walked on the water] doesn’t mean you can pretend he was some kind of rationalist.”

    No way I pretended that. I’d rather emphasize that his wholesale criticism on Christianity was coherent in many respects however eclectic late Renaissance man he was. And in some respects, he is on the side of modern, more secular views, like systematic (though pantheist) materialism or disbelief in miracles.

    I also have a guess: you are neither atheist, nor pantheist 🙂

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    1. My article is countering the common myth that he was some kind of modern-style sceptic and scientific rationalist. He wasn’t.

      I also have a guess: you are neither atheist, nor pantheist

      Wrong. I make it pretty clear that I am an atheist. Try reading the the “About the Author and an FAQ” page, which can be found on every page of the site.

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  15. I came to this page after reading the one on this site about Hypatia, where I learned a lot of (narrative) history.

    However, there is not even the briefest account of Giordano Bruno’s career on this page. That would very easily explain why he was condemned and burned. As Isaac Asimov said of him, Bruno worked harder than anyone since Socrates to secure his own conviction.

    Bruno was expelled from the monastery where he was a novice, or at least left under a cloud. He went to Geneva and became a Protestant monk, but pissed off Calvin. So he went to Elizabethan England, which is where he wrote the “Cena Ceneri” (sounds better in Italian).

    Bizarrely, he then chose to return to Italy. His prosecution by the Inquisition was inevitable, however many extraterrestrial worlds he might have thought existed.

    Campo di Fiori was the culmination of his career.

    The guy was a nutter, by the standards of any century.

  16. I am thoroughly enjoying your posts and working my way through THE GREAT MYTHS after stumbling on to your post CATS, THE BLACK DEATH AND A POPE. The use of biased, erroneous or distorted pseudo knowledge of any form be it history or science or other is an ongoing human tragedy. The modern Information Age has created exponential growth in disinformation or if you prefer, information overload. Your attempts to focus on the most relevant sources and search for a consensus among generally recognized experts in their fields is both admirable and appreciated. Enjoyable and at times entertaining reads.
    Thank you for doing the legwork of wading through the erroneous and superficial.

    That said- “At best, Bruno could be considered a martyr for untrammeled free speech and ideas- two concepts that were essentially unknown in the sixteenth century.” Do you mean unknown to scholars and the upper estates only? Are you extrapolating the historical knowledge of the Upper estates to the masses because we have little or no sources to tell us what the masses knew or thought? Certainly “untrammeled free speech and ideas” have been the fervent desire of adolescent human beings since the dawn of our species. Medieval teens/young adults were as familiar with these concepts as modern teens. They also would have found it oppressive and wholly unpleasant to accept ” their subservience to hierarchy and traditions of authority and acceptance of social structures.”
    The primary social structure requiring 1.) subservience to hierarchy; 2.) traditions of authority; 3.) And absolute acceptance of that social structure; has always been the family unit. The limited options available to medieval youth and their parents for expressing those concepts most certainly contrast with our modern world but the concepts were not unknown to them or their parents.
    “But to judge the past by the values of the present is a basic historiographical fallacy.” Absolutely. Judging the past is evidence of the fallacy that we are somehow smarter than mankind who have come before us. Arrogance and conceit of the present age.

    1. ” Do you mean unknown to scholars and the upper estates only? “

      I mean unknown in the intellectual culture of the time. So yes, that means the scholars and the upper estates.

      “Are you extrapolating the historical knowledge of the Upper estates to the masses “

      No, because “the masses” had other things on their mind and I’m talking about the intellectual culture of the time.

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  17. The MacLachlan list of the “eight propositions that Bruno refused to renounce” is almost certainly a heavily redacted translation of the list on pages 80ff of “Il processo di Giordano Bruno” (Luigi Firpo; Diego Quaglioni, 1993) in a chapter that covers 1597 . I don’t have the language skills to put this in any kind of context but it doesn’t seem to draw on sources that aren’t cited by other Bruno scholars. It also consists of 12 propositions, but the last four items have been omitted, presumably to make it accord with the eight propositions Bruno was actually confronted with in 1599.

  18. It seems to me that part of modern atheists fully bought an anti-catholic smearing campaign started by protestants.

    Like the Catholic Church believing in the flat Earth and Columbus proving it wrong. Urban myth created in the 19th century by Washington Irving in his historic fiction book about Columbus.

    Despite being atheists, most people are still inserted in some way in their cultural context. People from mostly protestant countries still despise more the Catholic Church and buy any myth against it, despite almost all Christian Young Earth Creationists and the ID movement coming from neopentecostal evangelical protestants.

    But well… that also happens with atheist jews and atheist catholics. There IS an element of culture that goes beyond only religion.

    1. It even happens to unbelievers like me, who never belonged to any religious organization. It’s impossible to get rid of 1200 years of christian culture when brought up in The Netherlands. Also it’s utterly unskeptical to get rid of all christian influences just because they’re christian.

  19. Though I wonder, what does make Bruno so special to the anti-theistic activists?

    As he wasn’t a scientist, why for them is he so worthy of recognition compared to people like the Cathars? What makes the burning of Bruno a bigger tragedy than what is considered by some as the first genocide in history?

    It’s like they have to prop up a mythical version of Bruno because otherwise he wouldn’t appear as respectable enough to be a focus of their activism.
    Though as you said without him the Conflict Thesis has no martyrs at all and the historical Bruno wouldn’t be exceptional in terms of persecution of heretics.

    1. “what does make Bruno so special”
      That he was burned and thus demonstrates the cruelty of the RCC. That makes him suitable as a martyr. That again makes your case (here atheism and antitheism) admirably heroic. You end up with “they are evil, so we are good”.

        1. Because Bruno was a person they can identify with as a victim. The Cathars were a nameless bunch of people who can’t be related to science, no matter how twisted.

    2. “Though I wonder, what does make Bruno so special to the anti-theistic activists?”

      It’s because Bruno can be distorted into a protoscientist. It takes effort and the result is ugly, but he took ideas from astronomers and ran with it. You can’t do that with the Cathars. They’re too obviously religious.

  20. Origin of the Bruno is Martyr for science Smith I believe comes from 19th century Victorian England the actual scholarship on the guy was not burned for science the guy was burning for pushing kooky ass theories like denying The virginity of Mary or denying the deity of Christ it’s incredible new atheist make this guy into a martyr some kooky ass New age mystic it’s incredible

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