Lafcadio

Pagan philosophy faded out in the West before Christianity could properly take over their place. Who exactly would preserve this philosophy? What scholars? What schools? Byzantine ones? The Germanic West started to disregard Roman heritage - vae victis! How could the Byzantines caught between Bulgars, Arabs and Turks spread some education in a reluctanct West? They are no longer the succesful Roman Empire - and Romans couldn't spread Greek philosophy too far from the Mediteranean space, would Byzantines succeed?

Only you if you talk of early Europe. Which also makes the Barbarian Arianism incomplete and not convincing as a specific cultural feature.

Not quite. Byzantines fell eventually to these pressures from East

If you can prove that a hypothetic secular/pagan society could develop nuclear technology in 6th century with Graeco-Roman heritage you'd have a point.

So Justinian caused desurbanization in Britannia, Gaul, Germania, Visigothic Spain, northern Italy, northern Africa (which was lost in 3 years since the conquest), Pannonia etc.? On contrary and "amazingly" the Byzantine-ruled territories kept their large cities. Until the Arab invasion the large cities of Orient were the main pawns in Empire's fiscal policies.

spin

While Copernicus advocated a restructuring the solar system, Bruno was far beyond this. Copernicus didn't have much to say about what was beyond the solar system, though he did so through philosophical thought based on classical Greek philosophy. He was a theorist not a practical scientist. He staunchly advocated an infinite universe that was filled with a vast multiplicity of solar systems, theorising life on planets elsewhere. This is while even the most famous astronomers were still of the idea that the universe ended at the edge of the solar system with a wall of lights. Kepler was still of the idea that there were planetary spheres.

I think it is quite unfair to simply say that in 1590 he coincidentally backed the right horse. For 1590 he was quite revolutionary. And he spread his theories of the universe wherever he went throughout Europe, which is why he is mentioned in this thread. His execution was shutting a mouth that was advocating a Copernican solar system. (This was one of the charges levelled against Galileo as well.)

His views of the universe were involved in his trial under the popes. He was prepared to lose his more jettisonable views and renounce them, but when pressed for a full recanting of all his views, he wasn't prepared to give up his views regarding the universe. So they cooked his umm,... goose.


spin

Buridan

I think the case very much is that it was Bruno who used "philosophical thought" (the Mystical views of Hermeticism) to maintain that the world was infinite. His view of the universe as a pantheistic organism led him to dismiss rigid geometric analysis, ref. the comments in Cena annotated, note 40ff.

Bruno was a mystical theorist, not a practical scientist. As shown in note 65 in the annotated Cena, his animistic account of celestial motions was worlds removed from the spirit of a purely mechanistic explanation of motion which increasingly marked the progress of science from the mid-fourteenth century on (ref. Orestes and, ahem, Buridan).

Se also note 55:

55. Bruno's eagerness to tie the infinity of the world and the relativity of motion to the absence of perfectly circular orbits derives from his animistic, stellar pantheism, in which there can be no strict laws of motion because these would set a constraint on the freedom of stars and planets permeated by divine attributes. For this reason, Bruno would also have rejected the idea of an elliptic orbit for planets as worked out painstakingly by Kepler. Nor could Bruno have been pleased with the closed space-time continuum of relativistic cosmology with its emphasis on a finite number of stars or galaxies. While science moved with Kepler and Galileo toward exactness and precision, Bruno advocated a trend in the opposite direction.

Until you document otherwise, my conclusion cannot be other than that Bruno coincidentally backed parts of a somewhat right horse, by a process that looks like the opposite of quantifiable science. The Church was shutting a mouth that insisted on Occult Pantheism rather than Orthodox Theism (as well as for political treason, it seems). His cosmological statements, of which he had no proof - geometrical or experimental - seem to have been viewed as a "symptom" of his occult core beliefs

Had Bruno lived today, his "scientific arguments" would have been a clear target for scorn by people like Dawkins and Shermer.

spin

This seems very hard for so many people to get: Bruno wasn't a scientist. I have never claimed that he was and have indicate that I have never claimed that he was, but people still insist on telling me that Bruno wasn't a scientist. The only response necessary is DOH!

Why he gets the position is simply irrelevant. It is just people trying to cloud the issue: Bruno advocated a scientific position that the earth was not the centre of the universe and he trumpeted it all over Europe. He also argued on theoretical grounds that the universe was infinite. He also argued that there were multiple star systems and therefore multiple worlds. As to his general concept of the universe he was more correct than Kepler.

What is at issue is that he was fried substantially for pushing a view that the church didn't like, a view that he wouldn't recant. The church shut him up by forcing him into maintaining heresy. By shutting him up, they stifled the loudest voice for science at the time. Galileo recanted. The church attacked science indirectly, by attacking the people who advocated it, not for their science itself, but for the implications. They weren't burnt because they supported scientific ideas, but because they were heretics.

Arguments about Bruno not being a scientist and that he derived his positions partly through philosophy change nothing. Bruno's advocacy of scientific views caused him to be burnt.


spin

Buridan

Fine, then we agree. The next logical step would be to stop including Bruno in future discussions on Religion and Science as he was a deeply religious man, though no scientist.

And he convinced few people as he advocated his position (which included a lot of erronous things) on religious grounds, not by demonstrably scientific arguments. Anyone can advocate almost anything, as long as it supports their deepest held views.

He argued all this on religious grounds, he failed to convince scientifically. If I for some religious reason insist that Betelgeuse really has 7 planets, and someone confirms this on scientific grounds in fifty years, it does not make me advocate a scientific position, just a correct one only.

Sorry to say, what they did stifle was one of the loudest voices for mysticism at the time.

So this all ends with saying that the reason why there seemingly is no "warfare between religion and science" is that there has been a coverup through the centuries to keep it a "warfare between the religion in power and other religious views".

Then I would like to see which "they" it is you believe that were burnt for their "indirect" scientific "implications"? I mean, this "conspiracy theory" (or what one should call it) is a bold statement. It does need some name and numbers and references to solid sources to be more than an assertion.

I notice you keep saying this. And I am also still waiting (after several weeks in this thread) for evidence that do show that it was his "scientific views" (e.g. the views of his that later were discovered to be "more right than Kepler") and not his religious (which led him to speculate - and insist - on some scientific subjects) that caused this.

spin

You still miss the whole point. Who gives a shit if he was a religious man? He advocated new science from one end of Europe to another. This advocacy of new science is the subject and why he was fried.

This explains why his works were put on the ban list.

He argued on philosophical grounds.

Broken record.

If we consider Bruno in his context, he was taking scientific positions. He was arguing with philosophers and scientists in England on the matter.

All you keep doing is repeating the same refrain which we have dealt with: he is not a scientist. He is not a scientist. He is not a scientist. Does it sink in yet? No. He advocated a scientific view point. No, he needed be scientist to do so. You have extreme difficulty understanding the difference between advocacy of science and being a scientist.

SOrry to say it, but I'm stifling a yawn with this irrelevance.

This ends with religious power stifling dissenting voices which advocate science.

[QUOTE=Buridan]Then I would like to see which "they" it is you believe that were burnt for their "indirect" scientific "implications"?





How did Servetus die?

Yup. He died advicating his views about the structure of the universe. Do you have problems with the fact that he believed in a heliocentric solar system? Do you have problems with the fact that he did not believe that the planets moved in spheres (though Kepler thought to the contrary)? Do you have problems with the fact that he believed that there were multiple systems like the solar system (unlike Kepler)? What is your problem? You don't believe he held these views? Is it that you don't like the way he arrived at the views? Is it that you don't like the way a theorist arrives at views that need observation to verify? What exactly is your problem?


spin

Bede

Spin,

Servetus's anatomical ideas had nothing whatsoever to do with his execution. To even bring him up here is dishonest. Likewise, Bruno's heliocentricism and espousal of an infinite universe was at best marginal to his death. It was certainly NOT the reason he was fried. To quote Frances Yates after her examination of the evidence:

---Giordano Bruno p 390.

It is not to condone Bruno's killing to resist you trying to squeeze him into a box into which he cannot be fitted. He never in his life took a single position that anyone could call scientific. I think Buridan's problem is you are sticking to a position that everyone here now realises is untenable. I suggest that he simply ignores you as will I.

Best wishes

Bede

Lafcadio

If one wears a caricatured Einstein T-shirt with an "E=mc^2" painted on the back is he a staunch advocate of Einstein's scientific view (for the sake of the argument, let's assume his knowledge of maths and physics is quasi-null)?

spin

I have already dealt with the ostensible reasons for death, and what the religious institutions could actually deal with. Churches get people for heresy. You stifle a person's work through making the person a heretic.

So that's why he insisted on these things when before the Venetian part of his trial.

From "Il processo di Giordano Bruno", Luigi Firpo, Salerno Editrice, Rome, 1993, pp. 167-169.

The worst you can say is that he is verbose, but that was a thing of the time.

For the sixteenth century, this is profound.

Everyone here is not a good sample. I haven't seen any of you indicate that you know much about Bruno at all. Buridan has found a translation of La Cena dei Ceneri, but it is incomplete, and Bruno wrote six Italian works, which elucidate his views.

By comparisons with others of his era such as Kepler, I have tried to show that his thought contained numerous ideas worthy of note because of their fundamental scientific correctness. He advocated those views, which is what is of essence to me. People so far have tried to poo-poo the man because he was from the sixteenth century and not now, from which point many seem to be judging him. He is not being viewed in his context, so the judgments being made seem irrelevant.


spin

spin

Here's another choice citation from Bruno (the fourth dialogue of De l'infinito universo et mondi):

• As soon as we have recognized that the apparent world-motion is caused by the real diurnal motion of our earth (which happeneth similarly to other similar stars), no argument will constrain us to accept the vulgar opinion that the stars are equidistant from us, that they are as though nailed and fixed in an eighth sphere; and no persuasion will hinder us from knowing that the differences are innumerable in the distances from us of these innumerable stars. We shall understand that the orbs and spheres of the universe are not disposed one beyond another, each smaller unit being contained within a greater -- as, for example, the infoldings of an onion. But throughout the ethereal field, heat and cold, diffused from the bodies wherein they predominate, gradually mingle and temper one another to varied degree, so as to become the proximate origin of the innumerable forms and species of being.

Another clearly correct view that Bruno advocated (from the same source):

• Again, even as our earth, moving naturally in accord with the whole universal frame, hath none but circular-like motion, whereby she doth spin around her own centre, and revolveth about the sun, so also must it be with those other bodies of the same nature as hers.

How about some thought on gravity?

• Elpino: If a rock were in mid-air, equidistant from two earths, how may we believe that it would remain fixed, and how would it determine to approach one rather than another of the containing bodies?
  
  Philotheo. I maintain that since the form of the rock is such that it is no more turned toward the one than to the other, so that each is equally affected thereby, it followeth from the doubtful upshot and the equal cause for motion toward either of the opposite limits that the rock would remain unmoved, being unable to resolve on motion toward the one rather than toward the other, neither one attracting it more than the other, and it being no more impelled toward the one than toward the other.

There is much more of scientific and historical interest in his works.

Bruno published his numerous volumes of his dialogues in Italian and in Latin in his own lifetime as he traveled around Europe.


spin

One smiles at the superficiality of Lacfadio's T-shirt. Parodies tend to reflect badly on the parodist, as is the case here. Lacfadio simply shows an inability to read Bruno.