Has Giordano Bruno supplanted Galileo?

[williamtheday]

Galileo recanted to save his life. Giordano Bruno stuck to his guns and was burned at the stake. So it seems, at least to Seth Mcfarlane and Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Bruno is the true martyr for science.

[MajorHoy]

Galileo recanted to save his life. Giordano Bruno stuck to his guns and was burned at the stake. So it seems, at least to Seth Mcfarlane and Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Bruno is the true martyr for science.

But did Queen or the Indigo Girls ever include Bruno in their song lyrics?

[Zelena]

Actually, Giordano Bruno hasn’t just said that the Earth rotates around the Sun…

After his death, he gained considerable fame, being particularly celebrated by 19th- and early 20th-century commentators who regarded him as a martyr for science, although most historians agree that his heresy trial was not a response to his cosmological views but rather a response to his religious and afterlife views. (Wikipedia)

[Mister Mets]

So it seems that he's more respected as an atheist than for scientific contributions.

[Vakanai]

So it seems that he's more respected as an atheist than for scientific contributions.

To be fair, there are those who think the two are one and the same.

[Kirby101]

We don't talk about Bruno.

[williamtheday]

But Giordano was a terrific comics artist.

[Zelena]

But Giordano was a terrific comics artist.

You mean Giardino…

[MajorHoy]

You mean Giardino…

I assume Dick Giordano was who williamtheday was referring to . . .

[achilles]

To be fair, there are those who think the two are one and the same.

There are those then who are wrong.

[achilles]

We don't talk about Bruno.

That's because Bruno has no neck and eats live Burmese Pythons for breakfast, along with barbed wire and crushed glass---and he doesn't like people to talk about him. He's sort of like Fight Club...

[MRP]

In my grad school days studying ancient/medieval/early modern history, I did a lot of research and writing on the influence of the Hermetic Tradition on the early scientific revolution and folks like Bacon, Newton, etc. One of the cornerstone reads on that subject matter was Dame Frances Yates Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, which examines Bruno and his actual beliefs, how they fit in the context of the early modern world's philosophical zeitgeist, his role and or possible influence on the likes of Copernicus, Gallileo, Kepler and others, and his conflict with religious authorities which ended up with him burnt as a heretic.



If you are looking for a solid foundational read free of crackpot theories, wild speculation, and internet wingdings, one that is based on available evidence and hypothesis based on such, this is perhaps the best place to start on the subject. If you want to put Bruno's beliefs in perspective of his times, also look at the writings of Marsilio Ficino (his neo-Platonic ideas) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (On the Oration of the Dignity of Man) and how they treat man's place in the universe, which is at the heart of a lot of Bruno's writings, which were more philosophical than scientific, as were his heliocentric views.

I haven't kept up with the field in the last decade or so, so I am unsure what kind of fringe theories have crept up around Bruno and his beliefs, but I am pretty sure no new cache of his writing have been discovered to discount Dame Yates research foundation.

-M

[williamtheday]

I assume Dick Giordano was who williamtheday was referring to . . .

Yep, Dick Giordano. Giardino looks great as well.