Giordano Bruno and the Dream of Humanism

by D.R. Khashaba

It is not my intention to give an exposition of Bruno’s thought. That is a task that I willingly leave to those who are better equipped to perform it. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was a lover of myth, allegory, and symbol, and knew fully well the power of those magical wands to reveal and illumine where discursive thought hid and obscured. In this short note I treat of Bruno himself as an emblem of the mystic paths that lead to the inner reality of our being.

Bruno was the epitome of his age, an age of intellectual and spiritual ferment, an age when science and mysticism walked hand in hand, an age which saw the birth of humanism. He is a true paradigm of the whole human being that our contemporary fractured and fragmented humanity stands badly in need of — a fractured and fragmented humanity where religion is indissolubly wedded to dogmatism and superstition and where rationality is blindly bound to soulless physicalism.

Yet Bruno has not yet received the attention that his profundity and originality make his rightful due; the reason being that he is in the unenviable position of his thought being opposed simultaneously to religious dogmatism and scientistic materialism — the two dominant trends that polarize modern culture and condemn it to one-sidedness and insularity.

This is compounded by the difficulties of Bruno’s style of writing. Giorgio de Santillana, who gives a balanced and sympathetic outline of Bruno’s thought in The Age of Adventure (1956), writes, ‘He is not one of those minds which shed a pure and equable light to reveal a new landscape of ideas; with the fire of his temperament there went a good deal of smoke’ (p.244).

In my view, what might be seen as the lack of clear-cut distinctness in Bruno’s thought should be appreciated as a merit rather than denigrated as a defect. The fecund nebulosity of his thought poses a wholesome challenge and offers a corrective to the shallowness and insipidity of our thoughtless religiosity and our insightless scientism at once. Plato found that the profoundest philosophical insights are essentially ineffable and can only be expressed in myth and allegory. Our learned scholars mutilate Plato’s best insights when they exert themselves to force his thought into well-defined theories and fixed doctrines. In the myth of Actaeon in Bruno’s Heroici Furori (Heroic Exaltations) we have a profounder and more truthful insight into the living substance of Platonism expressed symbolically and allegorically.

Giordano Bruno was a living incarnation of the pristine ideal of humanism — which, alas!, through various metamorphoses, has been drained of its true essence by being splintered into the diverse, mutually contradictory present-day ‘humanisms’ that reflect the fragmentation of modern humanity. Today Secular Humanism murders the soul of humanism while its antithesis, Christian Humanism, drags the mind back into the stranglehold of unquestioning dogmatism and superstition. It is this split that lends credence to the spurious opposition of faith and reason which is nowadays regarded as an irreconcilable Either-Or, while the reconciliation is ready to hand if only we are willing to go back to the wholeness of the perennial philosophy of which Bruno’s philosophy — as much as Plato’s or Plotinus’s or Spinoza’s — is an original, creative expression.

Bruno’s humanism is evident equally in his siding with Erasmus in his defence of free will and in his opposition to Martin Luther’s ‘pecca fortiter’. Bruno would certainly have supported Pelagius against Augustine.

In his exchanges with the Inquisition during his long drawn-out trial, he did not hedge, dissemble, or prevaricate. While hoping to vindicate his position as consistent with faith in the divinity (goodness and intelligence) of ultimate Reality, he was not intimidated by the imminent threat of death into redacting his views to conform to accepted doctrine. He was trying to make the Inquisition appreciate that his position was rational and religiously sound, not to convince them that he conformed to established doctrine. This was as honest as Socrates’ attempt to make his judges understand that he believed in God according to his lights. Throughout the proceedings, he sought to vindicate himself without compromising his integrity. But when it came to the brunt, he refused to submit. He chose to die rather than be false to his inner light.

Bruno’s insistence that the views he expounded were meant ’strictly on the philosophical plane’ implies that the doctrines formulated by the Church were no more than a ‘popular’ version that did no harm when taken as such but that should not preclude a profounder philosophical understanding.

De Santillana writes, ‘One cannot but respect the scrupulousness of the Inquisition, which took eight years to make up its mind that the doctrine, however acceptable its religious content, could not be reconciled with dogma’ (op. cit., p.250). But then, that is just the point. Bruno had no desire to disturb the belief of simple folk in dogma which gave them comfort. But he would not allow such dogma to block philosophical probing for a profounder understanding. The Inquisition could not accept such a live-and-let-live policy. Can we? Unless at least the more intelligent members of society understand and acknowledge unequivocally that such dogma is no more than myth and must in no way be taken as literal truth and that intelligent persons are not only allowed to, but are required to, criticize and disclose the error of such dogma and introduce new formulations making for a better understanding — unless the intelligent sector of society openly and firmly adopt that attitude, then such dogma will be an instrument of bondage and a means of exploitation and extortion. We hardly need any explication or illustration of the truth of this. Our world is boiling and seething with the collision of opposed creeds and dogmata.

Yet, we cannot simply shove aside all myth and live in a world governed by cold calculations of expediency and utility, a world void of ultimate principles and absolute values. We need the symbolism, the inspirational whisperings of myth and allegory, of poetry and fiction, to keep us alive to the reality of the inner fount of our true being and true worth, and we need the free untrammelled speculative activity of intelligence without which those life-giving myths turn into fossilized and fossilizing superstitions. That is why we need the spirit and the message of Giordano Bruno to help us retrieve our lost human integrity.

In the dialogue de l’Infinito Universo e Mondi (of the Infinity of the Universe and of the Worlds) we read of ‘the earth, our divine mother who has borne us and nourished us and at last will take us back into her bosom.’ Would we not be less likely to pollute and damage our environment if we could think in those terms?

The ignorance, prejudice, and hatred that Bruno had to confront in his lifetime are still hounding his memory. It seems that there are many quarters where it is felt that Bruno’s call for humans to look for truth and reality within their own souls still threatens empires of dogmatic creeds and fossilized doctrines. As evidence of this, I will here review briefly an article, ‘The Folly of Giordano Bruno’, by Professor W. Pogge of Ohio State University, (http://www.setileague.org/editor/brunoalt.htm), which sadly shows little interest in and no understanding of Bruno’s seminal ideas and enlightening approach, but concentrates instead on denigrating the man and absolving the Church of blame! That Pogge is an Astronomer may perhaps explain the curious slant of his article but it cannot excuse the vituperative ire with which he handles his subject — as if Professor Pogge were convinced that Bruno deserved to be burned for failing to make much of a contribution to Astronomy!

Professor Pogge chooses as motto for his article the following words of Paul Valery: ‘The folly of mistaking paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.’ This is revealing. Those who seek understanding outside their own minds, whether in the evidence of the senses or in the dictates of extraneous authority do not have eyes for the inner realities of the soul. It is no wonder that Professor Pogge finds Bruno’s writings are ‘of only academic interest to us today’. Eternal realities and perennial insights that can only spring from the founts of the creative mind and can only be conveyed in myth and symbol cannot be beheld by those who do not have eyes for the invisible.

Professor Pogge is keen on ‘correcting’ the ‘popular accounts’ which say that Bruno was condemned for his Copernicanism and portray him ‘as a martyr to free thought’. He affirms that ‘we do not actually know the exact grounds of his conviction on charges of heresy.’ Further on he suggests that ‘the Church’s complaint with Bruno was theological not astronomical.’ In other words, he was condemned because he held views different from those held by the Church and considered it his duty to stand by what he saw as the truth. If that doesn’t make one ‘a martyr to free thought’, what does?

Pogge goes to great lengths to argue that Bruno’s work ‘had little to do with astronomy’; that he was not condemned for his Copernicanism; that the Church did not express an official opinion on Copernicanism until after Bruno’s death. Which is all beside the point!

Pogge’s principal objection to Bruno is directed to his Pantheism, which Pogge construes as opposing ‘the Church’s emphasis on spiritualism with an unapologetic and all-encompassing materialism.’ Pogge thus equates Pantheism with Materialism! I only wish it were so: we could then perhaps hope that materialists would see the spiritual reality underlying and upholding all matter.

The bulk of the rest of Pogge’s article is devoted to maintaining that Bruno’s ‘peregrinations around Europe… had less to do with his being hounded by the Inquisition as it did with his rather difficult personality.’ He exerts himself to blacken Bruno’s character and concludes: ‘In many ways, Bruno thrust himself into the flames that rose into the winter skies of the Campo di Fiori on the 17th day of February in 1600.’ I cannot help sensing in the tone of this sentence a touch of malicious glee.

(This article first appeared in the Giordano Bruno site http://www.giordanobruno.info in February 2005)

© D.R. Khashaba 2005

Giordano Bruno-Biography

 

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BRUNO, GIORDANO- Biography

 

EARLY LIFE

 

Bruno was the son of a professional soldier. He was named Filippo at his baptism and was later called “il Nolano,” after the place of his birth. In 1562 Bruno went to Naples to study the humanities, logic, and dialectics (argumentation). He was impressed by the lectures of G.V. de Colle, who was known for his tendencies toward Averroism–i.e., the thought of a number of Western Christian philosophers who drew their inspiration from the interpretation of Aristotle put forward by the Muslim philosopher Averroes–and by his own reading of works on memory devices and the arts of memory (mnemotechnical works). In 1565 he entered the Dominican convent of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples and assumed the name Giordano. Because of his unorthodox attitudes, he was soon suspected of heresy. Nevertheless, in 1572 he was ordained as a priest. During the same year he was sent back to the Neapolitan convent to continue his study of theology. In July 1575 Bruno completed the prescribed course, which generated in him an annoyance at theological subtleties. He had read two forbidden commentaries by Erasmus and freely discussed the Arian heresy, which denied the divinity of Christ; as a result, a trial for heresy was prepared against him by the provincial father of the order, and he fled to Rome in February 1576. There he found himself unjustly accused of a murder. A second excommunication process was started, and in April 1576 he fled again. He abandoned the Dominican Order, and, after wandering in northern Italy, he went in 1578 to Geneva, where he earned his living by proofreading. Bruno formally embraced Calvinism; after publishing a broadsheet against a Calvinist professor, however, he discovered that the Reformed Church was no less intolerant than the Catholic. He was arrested, excommunicated, rehabilitated after retraction, and finally allowed to leave the city. He moved to France, first to Toulouse–where he unsuccessfully sought to be absolved by the Catholic Church but was nevertheless appointed to a lectureship in philosophy–and then in 1581 to Paris. In Paris Bruno at last found a congenial place to work and teach. Despite the strife between the Catholics and the Huguenots (French Protestants), the court of Henry III was then dominated by the tolerant faction of the Politiques (moderate Catholics, sympathizers of the Protestant king of Navarre, Henry of Bourbon, who became the heir apparent to the throne of France in 1584). Bruno’s religious attitude was compatible with this group, and he received the protection of the French king, who appointed him one of his temporary lecteurs royaux. In 1582 Bruno published three mnemotechnical works, in which he explored new means to attain an intimate knowledge of reality. He also published a vernacular comedy, Il candelaio (1582; “The Candlemaker”), which, through a vivid representation of contemporary Neapolitan society, constituted a protest against the moral and social corruption of the time.

 

In the spring of 1583 Bruno moved to London with an introductory letter from Henry III for his ambassador Michel de Castelnau. He was soon attracted to Oxford, where, during the summer, he started a series of lectures in which he expounded the Copernican theory maintaining the reality of the movement of the Earth. Because of the hostile reception of the Oxonians, however, he went back to London as the guest of the French ambassador. He frequented the court of Elizabeth I and became associated with such influential figures as Sir Philip Sidney and Robert Dudley, the earl of Leicester.

 

WORKS

 

In February 1584 he was invited by Fulke Greville, a member of Sidney’s circle, to discuss his theory of the movement of the Earth with some Oxonian doctors; but the discussion degenerated into a quarrel. A few days later he started writing his Italian dialogues, which constitute the first systematic exposition of his philosophy. There are six dialogues, three cosmological–on the theory of the universe–and three moral. In the Cena de le Ceneri (1584; “The Ash Wednesday Supper”), he not only reaffirmed the reality of the heliocentric theory but also suggested that the universe is infinite, constituted of innumerable worlds substantially similar to those of the solar system. In the same dialogue he anticipated his fellow Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei by maintaining that the Bible should be followed for its moral teaching but not for its astronomical implications. He also strongly criticized the manners of English society and the pedantry of the Oxonian doctors. In the De la causa, principio e uno (1584; Concerning the Cause, Principle, and One) he elaborated the physical theory on which his conception of the universe was based: “form” and “matter” are intimately united and constitute the “one.” Thus, the traditional dualism of the Aristotelian physics was reduced by him to a monistic conception of the world, implying the basic unity of all substances and the coincidence of opposites in the infinite unity of Being. In the De l’infinito universo e mondi (1584; On the Infinite Universe and Worlds), he developed his cosmological theory by systematically criticizing Aristotelian physics; he also formulated his Averroistic view of the relation between philosophy and religion, according to which religion is considered as a means to instruct and govern ignorant people, philosophy as the discipline of the elect who are able to behave themselves and govern others. The Spaccio de la bestia trionfante (1584; The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast), the first dialogue of his moral trilogy, is a satire on contemporary superstitions and vices, embodying a strong criticism of Christian ethics–particularly the Calvinistic principle of salvation by faith alone, to which Bruno opposes an exalted view of the dignity of all human activities. The Cabala del cavallo Pegaseo (1585; “Cabal of the Horse Pegasus”), similar to but more pessimistic than the previous work, includes a discussion of the relationship between the human soul and the universal soul, concluding with the negation of the absolute individuality of the former. In the De gli eroici furori (1585; The Heroic Frenzies), Bruno, making use of Neoplatonic imagery, treats the attainment of union with the infinite One by the human soul and exhorts man to the conquest of virtue and truth.

 

In October 1585 Bruno returned to Paris, where he found a changed political atmosphere. Henry III had abrogated the edict of pacification with the Protestants, and the King of Navarre had been excommunicated. Far from adopting a cautious line of behaviour, however, Bruno entered into a polemic with a protigi of the Catholic party, the mathematician Fabrizio Mordente, whom he ridiculed in four Dialogi, and in May 1586 he dared to attack Aristotle publicly in his Centum et viginti articuli de natura et mundo adversus Peripateticos (“120 Articles on Nature and the World Against the Peripatetics”). The Politiques disavowed him, and Bruno left Paris.

 

He went to Germany, where he wandered from one university city to another, lecturing and publishing a variety of minor works, including the Articuli centum et sexaginta (1588; “160 Articles”) against contemporary mathematicians and philosophers, in which he expounded his conception of religion–a theory of the peaceful coexistence of all religions based upon mutual understanding and the freedom of reciprocal discussion. At Helmstedt, however, in January 1589 he was excommunicated by the local Lutheran Church. He remained in Helmstedt until the spring, completing works on natural and mathematical magic (posthumously published) and working on three Latin poems–De triplici minimo et mensura (“On the Threefold Minimum and Measure”), De monade, numero et figura (“On the Monad, Number, and Figure”), and De immenso, innumerabilibus et infigurabilibus (“On the Immeasurable and Innumerable”)–which reelaborate the theories expounded in the Italian dialogues and develop Bruno’s concept of an atomic basis of matter and being. To publish these, he went in 1590 to Frankfurt am Main, where the senate rejected his application to stay. Nevertheless, he took up residence in the Carmelite convent, lecturing to Protestant doctors and acquiring a reputation of being a “universal man” who, the Prior thought, “did not possess a trace of religion” and who “was chiefly occupied in writing and in the vain and chimerical imagining of novelties.”

 

FINAL YEARS

 

In August 1591, at the invitation of the Venetian patrician Giovanni Mocenigo, Bruno made the fatal move of returning to Italy. At the time such a move did not seem to be too much of a risk: Venice was by far the most liberal of the Italian states; the European tension had been temporarily eased after the death of the intransigent pope Sixtus V in 1590; the Protestant Henry of Bourbon was now on the throne of France, and a religious pacification seemed to be imminent. Furthermore, Bruno was still looking for an academic platform from which to expound his theories, and he must have known that the chair of mathematics at the University of Padua was then vacant. Indeed, he went almost immediately to Padua and, during the late summer of 1591, started a private course of lectures for German students and composed the Praelectiones geometricae (“Lectures on Geometry”) and Ars deformationum (“Art of Deformation”). At the beginning of the winter, when it appeared that he was not going to receive the chair (it was offered to Galileo in 1592), he returned to Venice, as the guest of Mocenigo, and took part in the discussions of progressive Venetian aristocrats who, like Bruno, favoured philosophical investigation irrespective of its theological implications. Bruno’s liberty came to an end when Mocenigo–disappointed by his private lessons from Bruno on the art of memory and resentful of Bruno’s intention to go back to Frankfurt to have a new work published–denounced him to the Venetian Inquisition in May 1592 for his heretical theories. Bruno was arrested and tried. He defended himself by admitting minor theological errors, emphasizing, however, the philosophical rather than the theological character of his basic tenets. The Venetian stage of the trial seemed to be proceeding in a way that was favourable to Bruno; then, however, the Roman Inquisition demanded his extradition, and on Jan. 27, 1593, Bruno entered the jail of the Roman palace of the Sant’Uffizio (Holy Office). During the seven-year Roman period of the trial, Bruno at first developed his previous defensive line, disclaiming any particular interest in theological matters and reaffirming the philosophical character of his speculation. This distinction did not satisfy the inquisitors, who demanded an unconditional retraction of his theories. Bruno then made a desperate attempt to demonstrate that his views were not incompatible with the Christian conception of God and creation. The inquisitors rejected his arguments and pressed him for a formal retraction. Bruno finally declared that he had nothing to retract and that he did not even know what he was expected to retract. At that point, Pope Clement VIII ordered that he be sentenced as an impenitent and pertinacious heretic. On Feb. 8, 1600, when the death sentence was formally read to him, he addressed his judges, saying: “Perhaps your fear in passing judgment on me is greater than mine in receiving it.” Not long after, he was brought to the Campo de’ Fiori, his tongue in a gag, and burned alive.

 

INFLUENCE

 

Bruno’s theories influenced 17th-century scientific and philosophical thought and, since the 18th century, have been absorbed by many modern philosophers. As a symbol of the freedom of thought, Bruno inspired the European liberal movements of the 19th century, particularly the Italian Risorgimento (the movement for national political unity). Because of the variety of his interests, modern scholars are divided as to the chief significance of his work. Bruno’s cosmological vision certainly anticipates some fundamental aspects of the modern conception of the universe; his ethical ideas, in contrast with religious ascetical ethics, appeal to modern humanistic activism; and his ideal of religious and philosophical tolerance has influenced liberal thinkers. On the other hand, his emphasis on the magical and the occult has been the source of criticism as has his impetuous personality. Bruno stands, however, as one of the important figures in the history of Western thought, a precursor of modern civilization.

 

Encyclopaedia Britannica

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=17040&tocid=0&query=bruno

Giordano Bruno

Giordano Bruno

by H. James Birx
Visiting Scholar, Harvard University, 1997-1998

Source: The Harbinger
http://www.theharbinger.org/xvi/971111/birx.html

“The universe comprises all being in a totality; for nothing that exists is
outside or beyond infinite being, as the latter has no outside or beyond.”
Giordano Bruno, On the Cause, Principle, and Unity (fifth dialogue).

Introduction

I was an independent child, ever curious and always asking questions about
things in nature. Although born in Canandaigua, my early years were spent
living on a large farm in nearby Holcomb, Western New York. I was always
surrounded by birth and change and death. My developing mind was fascinated
by those distant twinkling stars and pictures of prehistoric life forms
(especially dinosaurs). I often went to the movies, being particularly
attracted to epic, fantasy and science fiction films, e.g., Quo Vadis
(1951), Mighty Joe Young (1949) and Unknown Island (1948), respectively.
Consequently, even as a youngster, my emerging worldview was both cosmic and
evolutionary in orientation.

When at Bloomfield Central High School, I pursued studies in science (my
favorite subject was biology) and enjoyed writing and public speaking. After
buying a telescope, my interest in astronomy was greatly intensified. I was
amazed and delighted to experience that, through the aid of several lenses,
my eyes could see some points of light in the night sky turn into several
planets and moons of our solar system. Furthermore, hundreds of remote stars
invisible to the naked human eye could now be clearly seen through my
telescope. How insignificant the earth and life upon it (including our own
species) now seemed to me.

As a student at SUNY College at Geneseo, I was interested in both science
and philosophy. Those bold ideas of great thinkers from Aristotle to
Einstein, particularly Darwin’s theory of organic evolution, excited me. My
academic studies at that time focused on biology and anthropology. Actually,
these two areas of science are interrelated within the framework of a
dynamic planet in evolution. And although I was aware of those contributions
that had been made by Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo to modern astronomy,
the name “Giordano Bruno” was still unfamiliar to me. However, my mind was
always open to new concepts and new perspectives.

As a physical anthropology major in graduate school at SUNY at Buffalo, I
was more and more concerned about the true place humankind occupies within
organic history and this evolving cosmos. Later in philosophy, I was
introduced to Bruno’s iconoclastic ideas as a result of my readings in the
history of both science and philosophy. For me, discovering the Brunian
worldview was a liberating experience, indeed. It freed my mind from the
blind faith and dogmatic beliefs of an outmoded theology and myopic
philosophies.

As a direct consequence of my extensive studies in the special sciences,
particularly paleoanthropology, I slowly developed grave doubts about the
truth value of traditional beliefs in Christian teaching as well as other
religions. Having always been urged to think for myself, my own ideas found
an intellectual home in Bruno’s remarkable conceptual framework. I was
greatly inspired by his bold vision of an eternal and infinite universe free
from those narrow confinements of Thomism and Aristotelianism. In addition,
I was challenged by Bruno’s open-ended cosmology: no longer did this planet,
life on earth, or even our own species hold a privileged or central place in
this changing universe.

I found it utterly incredible that, during the Italian Renaissance, Bruno as
a natural philosopher had developed a cosmology grounded in the concept of
infinity. In fact, Bruno’s worldview far surpasses those ideas of Cusa,
Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo: it argues for an infinite number of
stars, planets, and galaxies! Likewise, Bruno was an early spokesman for the
emerging science of exobiology. He boldly held that life forms, including
intelligent beings, exist on a plurality of worlds elsewhere in this
infinite universe.

Greatly influenced by Bruno as well as Feuerbach, Darwin, Nietzsche, and
Haeckel (among other scientists and philosophers), I became committed to
naturalism and humanism. My five years of doctoral studies in philosophy
under the late Marvin Farber and Paul Kurtz even strengthened my cosmic
perspective and evolutionary framework. Overcoming years of theistic
indoctrination, I finally became a pervasive materialist and secular
humanist.

In January 1971, I visited for the first time that place in Rome where Bruno
was burned to death at the stake for his pantheistic stance and cosmic
perspective. Today, as a scientist and philosopher in the field of
anthropology, my own worldview is essentially Brunian in orientation. This
is clearly reflected in my teaching, writing, and lecturing.

Finally, in my professional judgment, the human world has yet to come to
grips with Bruno’s awesome perspective and its ramifications for science,
philosophy, religion and theology. To me, Bruno is the supreme martyr for
both free thought and critical inquiry.

Bruno: The Man

The great Italian philosopher Giordano Filippo Bruno (1548-1600) was born in
Nola, in the Campania. As a young scholar, he studied philosophy and
literature in Naples, and later theology at the Monastery of San Domenico
Maggione. He had a tenacious memory and extraordinary intellect. In 1572
Bruno took the vows of priesthood. Yet in 1576, doubting many of the
teachings of Christianity and therefore suspected of heresy, this Dominican
monk with unorthodox opinions abandoned his religious order and subsequently
was forced to flee to the more secular Northern Italy in order to escape
both the Neapolitan Inquisition and the Holy Office of Rome. Fearing for his
safety and seeking freedom of expression, the restless Bruno wandered as a
solitary figure through Switzerland, France, England, Germany, and
Czechoslovakia. These were years of study, reflection, speculation, writing
and lecturing.

With steadfast determination, creative thoughts and controversial books,
Bruno challenged those entrenched beliefs of the Roman Catholic faith, the
Peripatetic biases of his contemporary astronomers and physicists, and that
unrelenting authority given to the Aristotelian worldview. Unfortunately,
Bruno as ingenious freethinker had a personality that aggravated both the
general populace and serious scholars to such a degree that he could never
claim a permanent home anywhere during his lifetime; nevertheless, he no
doubt saw himself as a citizen of the entire universe.

During a two-year period in London (1583-1585), the autodidactic Bruno
lectured at Oxford University and both wrote and published six strikingly
brilliant Italian dialogues: On the Cause, Principle, and Unity; On the
Infinite, the Universe, and Worlds; The Ash Wednesday Supper; The Cabala of
the Horse Pegasus; The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast; and The Heroic
Frenzies. These volumes contain the essential elements of his daring
cosmology, new epistemology, and bold statements on ethics, religion and
theology. He had rigorously rejected the geostatic, geocentric,
anthropocentric, and finite-because-spherical model of the cosmos found in
those Aristotelian writings of antiquity that were still supported by the
Roman Catholic Church.

Bruno also wrote poems in which he ridiculed, with caustic sarcasm and
bitter satire, both the dogmatic clergymen and superstitious beliefs of his
age. In 1591, his last books and Latin poems were published at Frankfurt in
Germany. They include On the Monad, On the Immense, and On the Triple
Minimum.

After many years of solitary wandering through Europe and with reckless
abandon, the courageous Bruno returned to Italy in optimistic hope of
convincing the new Pope, Clement VIII, of at least some of his controversial
ideas. As a consequence of entrapment by the young nobleman Giovani
Mocenigo, the self-unfrocked monk was tried and condemned twice (first by
the Venetian Holy Inquisition in 1592, and then by the Roman Holy
Inquisition in 1593). Bruno’s critical writings, which pointed out the
hypocrisy and bigotry within the Church, along with his tempestuous
personality and undisciplined behavior, easily made him a victim of the
religious and philosophical intolerance of the 16th century. Bruno was
excommunicated by the Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist Churches for his
heretical beliefs. The Catholic hierarchy found him guilty of infidelity and
many errors, as well as serious crimes of heresy. However, Bruno stubbornly
refused to recant his lofty vision. He was subsequently handed over to the
Italian state, which determined his final fate. The philosopher was
imprisoned in the dungeons of the Holy Inquisition in Rome for seven years,
denied pen and paper as well as books and visitors, relentlessly
interrogated and probably tortured. After enduring this living tomb, he was
eventually sentenced to death under the influence of the Jesuit Cardinal
Robert Bellarmine. Obstinate to the end, Bruno never recanted his heretical
position.

At Rome on February 17, 1600, at the age of 52, the contemptuous and
rebellious Giordano Bruno was bound, gagged and publicly burned alive at the
stake in the center of the Campo dei Fiori, not far from the Vatican, while
priests chanted their litanies. His wind-blown ashes mixed with the very
earth that had sustained his life and thought. Three years later, the
writings of the apostate monk and intrepid thinker were placed on the Index.
In June 1889, during the reign of Pope Leo XIII, contributions from
anticlerical groups around the world enabled an impressive bronze statue of
Bruno, by Ettori Ferrari, to be erected by the public on the very spot where
he had been executed (the great German evolutionist Ernst Haeckel, himself a
monist and pantheist, wrote a hard- hitting address for this auspicious
event).

With a profound imagination, Bruno had ushered in a new cosmology. Boldly,
he held this universe to be eternal in time, infinite in space, and
endlessly changing. In the history of Western philosophy, his speculations
are a lasting and significant contribution to our modern conceptualization
of a dynamic universe. The awesome Brunian worldview is a remarkable
interpretation of reality which, in its vision, far surpasses the closed
cosmological frameworks presented by Cusa, Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, and
Galileo. Bruno’s creativity was a result of his freedom from the traditional
thought-system grounded in the Aristotelian view of nature and the dogmatic
belief-system of the Roman Catholic Church.

In fact, Bruno stood utterly alone in foreshadowing our present
understanding of and appreciation for space, time, matter, and life itself
(particularly the place of humankind within the cosmic flux of all things).
No longer did the heavens and earth represent two separate but different
realms in terms of matter and motion.

During the tumultuous period of the Italian Renaissance, it was Bruno who
critically reflected upon the heavens and, as a result, seriously considered
the far-reaching implications and inevitable consequences that his unique
vision held for considering the true position of our own species within this
universe. Because he was neither a scientist nor a mathematician, Bruno
relied upon rational speculations and the extensive use of analogies, along
with magic and mysticism (he had developed an intense fascination for
Renaissance hermeticism), to support his cosmic model. His daring worldview
undermined the split, finite, and closed conceptual framework of the
physicists, astronomers, philosophers and theologians during his time.

Bruno was especially indebted to the cosmic visions of Titus Lucretius Carus
(ca. 99-ca. 55 B.C.E.) and Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464): Lucretius is
remembered for his remarkable book On the Nature of Things, while Cusa is
known primarily for his insightful volume Of Learned Ignorance. Their
interpretations of this dynamic universe went far beyond those conceptual
limits of all earth-bound and human-centered views of the cosmos. It should
be stressed, however, that Bruno was not greatly influenced by the
Copernican model of a heliocentric universe. In sharp contrast to
Copernicus, Bruno was aware of those limitations that result from a strictly
mathematical approach in attempting to comprehend the characteristics of
this universe. Instead, he emphasized that the use of symbolic logic and
discrete geometry merely supplements the findings of rational speculations
grounded in intuition and imagination. Reminiscent of those natural
cosmologists of the pre-Socratic period, Bruno gladly extrapolated his new
ideas and vast vision from his own critical observations of nature and a
rigorous use of his powerful imagination. His interests in the art, magic,
and numerology of ancient Egypt were essentially a reflection of his own
fascination with change and memory (increased by the thoughts of the Catalan
monk, Raymond Lully) as well as his view of the cosmos as a divine and
living universe.

Eternity and Infinity

Breaking new ground in cosmology, Bruno’s philosophy of nature depends upon
the metaphysical concepts of plurality, uniformity, and cosmic unity along
with the logical principle of sufficient reason. He ruthlessly criticized
all geocentric, zoocentric, anthropocentric, and heliocentric views of
reality. His new philosophy repudiated the Peripatetic terrestrial/celestial
dichotomy and, instead, maintained that the same physical laws and natural
elements of the earth exist throughout this eternal and infinite universe.
In doing so, Bruno was able to correct and surpass the planetary perspective
expounded by Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Aquinas. He even advanced beyond the
sun-centered astronomy advocated by some of his contemporaries. His own
model of the world is free from any fixed point of reference. In retrospect,
it may be claimed that his pioneering thought actually fathered modern
cosmology.

Bruno’s vision replaced a finite cosmos with an infinite universe. His
insights are free from the erroneous assumptions, moribund scholastic
prejudices, and restrictive beliefs of the established religion of his time.
Without ignoring the value or limitations of reason (mathematics and logic),
he took intuitive leaps that synthesized both perceptual experience and the
critical intellect into a daring worldview that grasps the basic features of
cosmic reality. For him, such rigorous reflection also led to humanistic
action. Because Bruno was unable to demonstrate his metaphysical claims
scientifically, he relied upon thought-experiments to glimpse the
ramifications of his sweeping vision. (In this century, Einstein would use
the same imaginative method to fathom both the extraordinary implications
and startling consequences of his special and general theories of
relativity.) Bruno also taught that there are an infinite number of
perspectives (recall Nietzsche’s perspectivism), with there being no
privileged or fixed frame of reference: human experience can be unified in
religious, scientific, or philosophical concepts. Nevertheless, he realized
that religious formulations are inevitably doomed in the face of the
scientific method and ongoing empirical discovery.

Not restricting himself to the concept of finitude, Bruno was thrilled by
the idea of infinity. He was not willing to set limits to those
possibilities and probabilities that are inherent in this universe (as he
saw it). His imagination thrived on the plausibility of extending the
concept of infinity to embrace all aspects of cosmic reality: this universe
is infinite in both potentiality and actuality, and its creative power is
both endless and infinite. As such, no fixed ceiling of a finite number of
stars sets a spherical boundary to the physical cosmos and, moreover, no
dogmatic system of thoughts and values should imprison that free inquiry
that is so necessary for human progress and fulfillment.

For Bruno, there are no real separations (only logical distinctions) within
the harmony and unity of dynamic nature. He overcame the myopic
earth-centered framework of his time with a challenging but liberating
sidereal view of things: in the cosmos, there are an infinite number of
stars and planets (as well as comets and moons) more or less analogous to
our sun and earth, respectively. He even envisioned an infinite number of
solar systems, cosmic galaxies, and island universes strewn throughout this
boundless reality.

Clearly, Bruno was in step with progressive science and natural philosophy
in his attempt to overcome all those belief-systems preoccupied with this
planet and our species. He affirmed the essential homogeneity of this
cosmos, teaching an atomistic philosophy that maintains all things both
inorganic and organic to be composed of monads as the ultimate units of
process reality (an idea later expanded by Leibniz): the physical unit is
the atom, the mathematical unit is the point, and the metaphysical unit is
the monad. The infinitesimal and irreducible monads mirror this dynamic and
infinite universe in accordance with the dialectical principle of the unity
of the microcosm with the macrocosm. In addition, Bruno claimed that this
continuous universe had no beginning and will have no end in either space or
time, and that there is life (including intelligent beings) on countless
other worlds.

Bruno’s sweeping vision also considered the human animal with its endless
potentialities. Our own species is a critically thinking animal. It must not
be ashamed of doubts, problems, limitations, and curiosity. Nevertheless,
humankind is merely a fleeting fragment of our earth, which in turn is only
a temporary speck within cosmic history. This dynamic philosophy emphasizes
that, in this best of all possible worlds (a position later defended by
Leibniz), the human animal is a product of, dependent upon, and totally
within the flux of nature.

Bruno taught that there are no a priori limits to human thoughts, feelings,
and actions; through its intellect, the human organism is capable of living
in harmony with this universe. He also stressed that both reason and emotion
are necessary for the total human being. In fact, in this eternal and
infinite universe, Bruno held that the uniqueness of each person is actually
heightened within a community of individuals that mirrors the plurality of
worlds. Although from the cosmic perspective the human animal appears to be
insignificant, it is nevertheless of great importance within a planetary
framework.

Bruno argued for an infinite number of inhabited worlds. Hence, he conceived
of life forms and intelligent beings existing on other planets throughout
this universe. As such, his cosmology anticipated the emerging science of
exobiology in modern astronomy: neither this planet nor our species is
unique in the incomprehensible vastness of cosmic reality.

Not until 1609, nine years after Bruno’s death, did the astronomer/physicist
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) first use the telescope to discover that the
heavenly bodies do in fact resemble our earth; in this same year, Kepler
mathematically demonstrated the elliptical orbits of the planets. The
Aristotelian dichotomy between our imperfect terrestrial world and the
seemingly perfect celestial realm was finally abolished, thereby making the
idea of life forms and intelligent beings elsewhere in this universe a
plausible hypothesis in modern science and natural philosophy.

Also as an outgrowth of his new cosmology, Bruno rejected all fixed value
systems; And he advocated the relativity of ethics. No object, relation, or
event could be absolutely good or absolutely evil. Likewise, no thought or
action could be absolutely right or absolutely wrong. As such, Bruno
pioneered a naturalistic ethics far removed from Kant’s moral philosophy
with its categorical imperative grounded in a cryptic theology. Bruno saw
that values, experiences, and cosmic reality are interrelated within a
dynamic unity; he also taught the ultimate unity of truth, beauty, and
goodness. Perfection resides only in taking this eternal and infinite
universe as a dynamic and unfolding whole (thus accounting for Bruno’s
pantheistic stance).

Relativity and Evolution

Bruno offered a cosmology that anticipated Einstein’s theory of relativity
and perhaps even Darwin’s theory of evolution. In an infinite universe,
Bruno argued that space, time, size, weight, motion, change, events,
relationships, and perspectives are always relative to any particular frame
of reference. For him, from the village of Nola, Mount Vesuvius looked like
a barren volcano devoid of life. Yet, from the slopes of Vesuvius, it was
Mount Cala that now looked like a lifeless volcano. In fact, both geological
formations support life. This experience impressed upon Bruno the relativity
of perspectives and the crucial distinction between appearance and reality;
Aristotle had been wrong in maintaining that appearance is reality.
Consequently, in the reach for knowledge and wisdom, our limited senses need
to be supplemented by mathematics and especially rational speculations.

Furthermore, in a thought-experiment, Bruno imagined himself floating above
and beyond the earth. As he drifted closer and closer to the moon, it got
larger while our planet got smaller. From the lunar surface, it was now the
earth that seemed to be a satellite while the moon itself looked as if it
were the size of our planet. If Bruno had drifted far beyond the moon, then
he would eventually see both the earth and its only satellite first become
merely specks of light and then, eventually, they would disappear into the
blackness of deep space. Using his powerful imagination, the philosopher
once again demonstrated the principle of relativity and emphasized the
crucial difference between the appearance of things and their true reality.

Bruno’s model of this universe disclaimed any dogmatic judgments: the center
of this universe is everywhere and its circumference is nowhere. In sharp
contrast to an Aristotelian framework, the Brunian viewpoint gives an
open-ended perspective free from any absolutes in science or philosophy or
theology.

It may be said that Bruno at least glimpsed in a speculative fashion the
scientific theory of organic evolution. Although he claimed that decay and
generation continuously occur everywhere, he held that this unfolding
universe is always striving for novelty and perfection. In maintaining the
essential unity of nature as well as suggesting the development of lower or
simple life forms into higher or complex living things, Bruno apparently
recognized the historical transformation of all organisms on earth. In fact,
he perceived this entire universe as an organic entity manifesting a
pervasive world-soul. (Leonardo da Vinci, Alexander von Humboldt, and Lewis
Thomas have all viewed this planet as being more or less like an organism or
cell.) Bruno’s dynamic view of all things foreshadowed the process
philosophies of Leibniz, Hegel, and Whitehead. His mysticism reminds one of
the visions of Ernest Renan, Miguel de Unamuno, and Pierre Teilhard de
Chardin.

Bruno: The Pantheist

Bruno maintained that the multiplicity of natural things originates out of a
single substance, which is both eternal in time and infinite in space. The
essential unity of this dynamic cosmos is ultimately grounded in the
identity of contraries or the coincidence of opposites (a doctrine first
conceived by Cusa and later developed by Hegel). The straight and the curved
in mathematics, the center and the circumference of this universe, and the
spirited matter or materialized spirit throughout reality are each claimed
to be, in the final analysis, identical in Bruno’s monistic and mystical
interpretation of the creative process of cosmic development.

Rejecting both theism and deism, the wise Bruno professed a pantheistic view
of reality. He espoused the idea that the supreme single necessary substance
is God or nature, which encompasses every particular object, relation, and
event that exists potentially or actually in this universe. God is the
cause, principle, and unity of all existence. Since God is totally immanent
for Bruno, his pantheism both challenged and superseded the medieval belief
in a personal God who transcends the world as well as all later beliefs in
deism. In fact, Bruno the infidel became the greatest philosopher of the
Italian Renaissance; he had left the gloom of the monastery and the dogma of
the Church for the joy and lifelong inspiration that lay in contemplating
the endless wonders of this infinite universe. Throughout his life, he never
wavered from his cosmic perspective, pantheistic orientation and passion for
infinity.

Bruno’s conception of God as nature had been first proposed by Xenophanes in
Greek antiquity. After Bruno’s death, pantheism was advocated by Spinoza,
Goethe, Ernst Haeckel, Samuel Alexander, and Albert Einstein (among others).

As a mystic, Bruno grasped the essential unity of this infinite universe and
severely criticized the religious belief-system for its dualistic
metaphysics. He experienced God as the world itself, an idea that transcends
the empirical sciences and traditional theology. Therefore, it is not
surprising that Brunian mysticism seriously threatened the rigid and closed
politico-religious establishment of his time (this same dogmatic outlook by
the Church would later force Galileo to recant all his discoveries in
descriptive astronomy).

Conclusion

In the history of Western philosophy, Bruno’s iconoclastic ideas and
unorthodox perspectives remain a symbol of creative thought and free
inquiry. He advocated religious and moral reforms, and heralded the modern
cosmology through his emphasis on an infinite universe and an infinite
number of inhabited worlds. During the past four centuries, advances in
descriptive astronomy and theoretical physics have given empirical and
conceptual support to the Brunian philosophy. No longer is there a split
between the terrestrial world and the celestial realm. Moreover, the
principles of relativity and uniformity pervade the modern interpretation of
this cosmos. The more our space-age technology probes reality, the larger we
discover this universe to be. Scientists and philosophers now take seriously
a cosmic perspective that includes billions of galaxies, each with billions
of stars. Furthermore, it is highly probable that other solar systems fill
this universe and also very likely that life forms (including intelligent
beings) inhabit and evolve on other planets similar to our earth.

Certainly, Bruno would have scoffed at the anthropic principle while
extending the Gaia hypothesis to encompass the entire universe. He would
have been pleased to see his cosmic perspective visually presented in the
film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1969). Likewise, he would have been thrilled by
the glorious photographs of celestial objects taken by the Hubble Space
Telescope mission as well as the gigantic radio telescope at the Arecibo
Observatory, Puerto Rico, that searches for signals from intelligent beings
in outer space. And no doubt, Bruno would have enjoyed discussing this
universe with Stephen Hawking and the late Carl Sagan. Surely, the cosmic
reality of deep space is filled with star clusters and cosmic objects far
beyond the myopic comprehension of those dogmatic religionists of the
Italian Renaissance who silenced the greatest philosopher of their age.
Suffice it to say that Bruno would be excited about quasars, pulsars,
superstrings, supernovas and black holes; he would have easily incorporated
these objects as well as hyperspace and other universes into his own cosmic
perspective of dynamic reality.

Having rejected any ontological separation of the superlunary and sublunary
realms, Bruno would be delighted with the modern scientific quest for a
unified-field-theory to explain everything throughout this physical universe
in terms of several equations; especially since such an undertaking is in
step with his own cosmic monism. Also, he would be thrilled by the present
Pathfinder mission with its Sojourner rover examining the surface of the red
planet Mars for any signs of life before it is inhabited by human beings.

In general, Giordano Bruno paved the way for the cosmology of our time. To
his lasting credit, the most recent empirical discoveries in astronomy and
rational speculations in cosmology (including the emerging science of
exobiology) support many of his brilliant insights and fascinating
intuitions. This is an appropriate legacy from a daring and profound
thinker, who presented an inspiring vision which still remains relevant and
significant for our modern scientific and philosophical framework.

—————————————————————————-

Dr. H. James Birx, Professor of Anthropology at Canisius College, is the
author of Interpreting Evolution (Prometheus Books, 1991), an invited
Visiting Research Scholar at the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, New York,
for 1997-1998 and a Contributing Editor for Free Inquiry.