YLIKOSKI@FINFUN.BITNET (Antti Ylikoski tel +358 0 457 2704) (08/30/88)
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 88 07:03 EDT From: Antti Ylikoski tel +358 0 457 2704 <YLIKOSKI%FINFUN.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU> Subject: Giordano Bruno To: AIList@AI.AI.MIT.EDU X-VMS-To: @AILIST1,YLIKOSKI The case of Giordiano Bruno has occurred several times in AIList. I hope that the readers of AIList forgive me that I give some information involving Bruno and his philosophy even if this is outside the real scope of AIList. Giordano Bruno lived from 1548 to 1600. According to him, the space is infinite and contains innumerable solar systems where there can be various kinds of beings, possibly even more developed than humans. The boundless, eternal and immutable universe is the only thing that exists; its soul, the force which has an effect in everything that there is, is the god. Its elementary parts, which can be combined and separated but not come into existence or vanish, are monads, which are simultaneously spiritual and material. Even the human soul is an indestructible monad. Studying the laws of the universe is the most valuable kind of service of the god that there is. It is easy to understand that the contemporaries of Bruno formed the opinion that from the point of view of Christianity, Bruno was a heretic. They believed, and they believed that they had very good reasons to believe, that the soul of a heretic is condemned to the hell, which means eternal torture; which is even worse, a heretic tends to make others to commit heresy. (Bruno taught in universities in France, Germany and Great Britain.) With the abovementioned background in mind, the very strong reaction of those who condemned Bruno might be more understandable. Moreover, I would estimate that very few readers of the AIList would accept Bruno's theories - pantheism and the monad theory are probably not very popular nowadays. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Antti Ylikoski Helsinki University of Technology Digital Systems Laboratory Otakaari 5 A SF-02150 Espoo, Finland tel : +358 0 451 2176 YLIKOSKI@FINFUN (BITNET) OPMVAX::YLIKOSKI (DECnet) mcvax!hutds!ayl (UUCP) This sentence is false with probability 0.5. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
joe@modcomp.UUCP (Joe Korty) (09/03/88)
To: comp-ai-digest@uunet.UU.NET
Path: uunet!modcomp!joe
From: Joe Korty <modcomp!joe@uunet.UU.NET>
Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest
Subject: Re: Giordano Bruno
Summary: Giordano Bruno's heresy
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 88 13:32 EDT
References: <19880830031823.6.NICK@HOWARD-JOHNSONS.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Lines: 60
--
It has been interesting to read (although not particularly relevant to this
newsgroup) the differing views readers have on the role that Giordano Bruno
has played in history. Perhaps some quotes from L. Lerner and E. Gosselin
("Galileo and the Specter of Bruno", Scientific American, November 1986) can
shed some light on the issue. E. Gosselin, it should be noted, is a professor
of history whose major research interest focuses on the intellectual and
cultural history of the Renaissance and Reformation.
All quotes are w/o permission. Editorial changes on my part are indicated
by brackets.
"The two men are often honored as martyrs to science, but for Bruno
astronomy was a vehicle for politics and theology. Galileo was tried
partly because his aims were mistakenly identified with those of Bruno.
"[...] Bruno has the Copernican model of the solar system wrong. He
demonstrates total ignorance of the most elementary ideas of geometry
[...]. He throws in scraps of pseudoscientific argument, mostly garbled,
and proceeds to high flying speculations [...].
"[...] If Bruno had merely been a fool, he might have met with laughter
and derision [instead of being burned at the stake]. Bruno repeatedly
makes it clear that the "Supper" [his most important work on the Copernican
system] is really not about the Copernican system at all: it is only
peripherally a work on natural science and it is emphatically not to be
taken literally. In accordance with the title, its central subject is
[instead] the nature of the Eucharist.
"For Bruno, the value of the Copernican system lies not in its astronomical
details but instead in its scope as a poetic and metaphoric vehicle for
much wider philosophical speculation. The Copernican replacement of the
earth by the sun [...] is for Bruno a symbolic restoration of what he
calls "the ancient true philosophy"; according to him, it is this philosophy
one must turn in order to understand the true meaning of the Eucharist.
"It is important to understand that Bruno's adoption of natural science
to foster broader theological, ethical, social and political purposes
was entirely characteristic of the Renaissance world view. For the people
of the Renaissance, science was literally a branch of philosophy, often
called upon to illuminate or illustrate a nonscientific issue. Intelligent
and well-educated people often saw explicit and highly anthropocentric
parallels between scientific knowledge and other aspects of life. Bruno is
typical of [his contemporaries] in leaping to conclusions about the relation
of human beings to God based on theories about the workings [of nature].
In short, Bruno was condemned as a heretic because he really WAS a heretic.
He was not interested in whether or not the Copernican system was correct
or not, nor whether the his own Copernican speculations were correct. He
was interested only in how to use it to further his own religious and
political agenda.
For these reasons, I feel that the net discussions over Bruno have missed
the target by focusing excessively on his views of the physical world. These
views were not important to Bruno, so I don't think they should be important
to us.
--
Joe Korty "flames, flames, go away
uunet!modcomp!joe come back again, some other day"