The New Adventures of Giordano Bruno

[merkavah12]

According to a poster on Tim's blog:

It is clear that much of the recent scholarship about Bruno has not reached the internet. Even though Frances Yates has been dead forty years, her version of Bruno is still prevalent. Hilary Gatti takes apart her version of Bruno by showing that Yates neglected many important texts of Bruno and fudged others to make her case. Ultimately any version of Bruno that is likely to convince is going to be based on an analysis of what he wrote and the thoughtful study by Gatti makes him a very interesting character who was deeply involved in the intellectual currents of his time.

[humphreyclarke]

Yes, bookworm (Charles Freeman I suspect) has come across a modern defender of Bruno - Hillary Gatti who has attempted to rehabilitate him and make him sound more modern. Having skin-read a few essays it seems she has two contributions 1) Bruno was more of a Pythagorean than a Hermeticist and his natural philosophy was more coherent than has been argued and 2) Bruno was a forerunner of modern science. I think academics would tend to find the first interesting - though arguable - and reject the second. I certainly don't think Yates's interpretation has been overturned - aside from her over-emphases on the hermetic aspects of Bruno's thought.

James it seems you might have looked at this ? - The Genesis of Science - Chapter 19 - footnote 29

[merkavah12]

I think Bookworm is being a bit pessimistic about Hilary Gatti. She is recognised as the scholar who has set the agenda for contemporary Bruno studies and this is filtering through even on the internet. It is one of those cases where someone has spent so much of their life working on a single subject and knows the texts so well that it is hard for anyone else to challenge them.

"Contemporary Bruno Studies"? Wow, and I thought "Creation Science" was a laughable term.

[turoldus]

The heretic
Giordano Bruno has been called a martyr to science and an occultist, but a new book argues that the brilliant philosopher's unconventional behavior did him in.
By Laura Miller

Aug. 25, 2008 | The bronze figure of Giordano Bruno that stands at the center of Rome's Campo de' Fiori may be the most successful commemorative monument in the world. The average statue in a park or square usually rates no more than a glance: Either you already know who the guy is, or you don't care. But the hooded and manacled effigy of Bruno, with its haunted stare, immediately catches the eye, and the gruesome story attached to it -- Bruno was burned at the stake in that very spot, for the crime of heresy -- cements him in memory. Practically every tourist who comes to Rome tromps through the Campo and hears that story, even if they've never heard of Bruno before. The students who commissioned the statue in the 1880s, as an emblem for freedom of thought and the division of church from state, really got their money's worth.

But who was Giordano Bruno, and why was he executed in the Campo de' Fiori in 1600? A common misperception mixes him up with Galileo, who ran into trouble with the church 16 years later for embracing the Copernican model of the solar system instead of endorsing the Aristotelian belief that the sun revolves around the Earth. (In fact, the two men shared an Inquisitor, the implacable Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, canonized by the Catholic Church in 1930.) Bruno, too, thought that the Earth circled the sun, and subscribed to many other than heterodox ideas as well: that the universe is infinite and that everything in it is made up of tiny particles (i.e., atoms), and that it is immeasurably old. But as Ingrid Rowland demonstrates in her new biography of the renegade thinker, "Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic," Bruno was no martyr for science. What got him killed was a murky mixture of spiritual transgression and personal foibles, combined with a large dose of bad luck.

[James Hannam]

Thank Humphrey,

Gatti wrote a book called Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science which I've read. She also an edited collection of essays I used for my book.

There was a spectrum of occult thinking in the sixteenth century. For instance, William Gilbert did good science on the magnet but had occult ideas like the earth's magnetic soul. Gatti tends to concertina the spectrum so she can claim that Bruno was being scientific because some of his interests overlap with Gilbert's. Worse, she makes weird comparisons between Bruno's thought and quantum mechanics. She openly admits that Bruno's thought isn't scientific according to wicked positivists (like me) who think science was something invented in the 19th century. But you only need to read the Fludd/Kepler correspondence to see that the bright line between science and the occult was fully recognised in the seventeenth century, at least by those on the right side of it.

Of course Yates overstated her case and her wider point that Hermetism is a key to unlock the rise of modern science never stood a chance. But Gatti is just as wrong in her own way.

Anyway, if Bruno had been a priest of good standing rather than a heretic, like Ficino or even Patrizi, Freeman wouldn't even give him the time of day. His appeal is he was burnt at the stake and that makes some people desperate for him to be a proto-scientist.

Best wishes

James

[James Hannam]

I saw the statue of Bruno just a weeks ago on a break in Rome.

It is impressive.

J

[joel]

That's odd - Bookworm also mentions Ingrid Rowland and suggests that she basically agrees with Gatti, while Turoldus's link suggests the opposite. Is Bookworm accurately representing her?

So has Gatti's work had any significant impact in academic circles, or has the consensus basically remained unchanged?

[fortigurn]

I haven't read Gatti yet, but from what I can see it's fairly clear that Bruno isn't commonly considered a true martyr for science.

(Nancy Pearcey and Charles B. Thaxton, The Soul of Science : Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy (Turning point Christian worldview seriesWheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1994), 44") Eventually, in the Inquisition Bruno was burned at the stake—not because he courageously promulgated a better scientific theory, as is often maintained, but because he claimed to offer a better religion. He argued that the Egyptian pantheism described in the hermetic writings was superior to Christianity.

(Lerner, Lawrence S, Gosselin, Edward A, 'Was Giordano Bruno a Scientist?: A Scientist's View', American Journal of Physics -- January 1973 -- Volume 41, Issue 1, pp. 24-38) But even when correct in their conclusions, Bruno's "scientific" arguments do not exhibit any understanding of scientific reasoning or purpose. Rather they serve the totally unrelated function of allegorical descriptions of a metaphysical relationship between Man and God as well as Catholic and Protestant.

(John Kessler, 'Giordano Bruno: The Forgotten Philosopher') He had written of an infinite universe which had left no room for that greater infinite conception which is called God. He could not conceive that God and nature could be separate and distinct entities as taught by Genesis, as taught by the Church and as even taught by Aristotle.

He preached a philosophy which made the mysteries of the virginity of Mary, of the crucifixion and the mass, meaningless. He was so naive that he could not think of his own mental pictures as being really heresies.

(John Kessler, 'Giordano Bruno: The Forgotten Philosopher') Bruno began to be a symbol to represent the forward- looking free-thinking type of philosopher and scientist, and has become a symbol of scientific martyrdom. Bruno was a truant, a philosophical tramp, a poetic vagrant, but has no claims to the name of scientist.

Despite the fact that he managed to overturn much of the Aristotelian cosmology and came to scientific conclusions about the solar system and the cosmos which were around 200 years ahead of his time (following in the footsteps of the great 5th century Christian philosopher John Philoponus), modern scientists and science historians are typically eager to disown him because of his religious beliefs and mysticism (I actually think this is a shortsighted mistake), and point out that he was executed for religious heresy, not for his scientific views (which is true).