Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3127

Photocopy of lengthy article, “Giordano Bruno,” by Lawrence S. Lerner and Edward A. Gosselin, in a journal unidentified by either name or date. Paragraphs marked by pencil are reproduced here.

 

 

 

 

     Bruno’s real interest in heliocentrism was that it implies that the earth is not the only center of the universe. The implication allowed him to put forth his own views that the universe is infinite in extent, and that it contains an infinite number of worlds, each one of which can be considered as much the center of the universe as any other. Bruno’s belief in a centerless or multicentered universe was derived from the 15^th– century Platonist Nicholas of Cusa, who had spoken philosophically of a universe of indeterminate dimensions whose “center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” Indeed, this slogan embraced the Hermetic (and hence the Brunian) definition of man. According to Bruno, the universe exhibits the same infinitude physically as the human mind does intellectually. The universe is therefore a fitting creation of an infinite God who is All in All. It is also a fitting object of contemplation for the infinite receptacle that is man’s mind. The mystical element in all of this is perfectly obvious. According to Aristotelian-Neoplatonic psychology, the mind becomes what it contemplates. Thus man-microcosm becomes universe-macrocosm and as a result is brought closer to the Creator.

     . . He reflected the holistic approach of the Renaissance in that he believed all knowledge is interesting because all knowledge is interrelated. The aim of and the key to this interrelation is understanding the place of man in the universe, that is, the relationship between man and God. Knowledge is useful insofar as it elucidates that essential relationship.     . . .

 

. . Even though he was neither a scientific nor a methodological precursor of Galileo, we believe that for two reasons his influence on the birth of the scientific revolution was profound.

 

     First, Bruno was supremely confident that man was at least in part a divine being and not merely the detestable product of the original sin, destined to fall lower and lower in the absence of some more or less capricious divine intervention in human affairs. Such a belief was heretical from the standpoint of both orthodox Catholicism and orthodox Protestantism, which were pessimistic concerning natural man. Bruno’s advocacy of the Neoplatonic view made him a leading figure in the rebirth of man’s confidence in himself, the like of which had not existed since classical antiquity. That confidence came to its greatest flowering in the 18th and 19th centuries, when serious men could believe that an earthly paradise was in prospect. . .

    

     Second, Bruno believed the path to perfection is the path of knowledge. . .

 

     Furthermore, Bruno believed in the ability of the human mind to comprehend the universe. He asserted that with such knowledge the savant can operate fruitfully on the world of nature in order to improve the human condition.  . .