Cosmology Bus

The Life and Trial of Giordano Bruno

In my last post I mentioned the philosophy and political skills of Nicholas of Cusa, or Casunus, who in the mid-15th Century carefully introduced the idea of beings living on other worlds in the extraterrestrial life debate and later became a Roman Catholic cardinal.

Not all who followed Cusanus and linked cosmology with life beyond Earth had the same political savvy or were so highly regarded by the Latin Church.

Campo de' Fiori. Photograph by Ralph Gross. Used with permission

This plaza, the Campo de' Fiori (Field of Flowers) in Rome, was the site where a Dominican priest and philosopher named Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for heresy, blashphemy, and other crimes on February 17, 1600. From his ordainment at age 24 in Naples to his execution at age 52, his life provides insights into the Holy See's limits of tolerance during a critical time in human history.

Bruno (1548-1600), whose cast bronze figure these days looks down on carts of fruits and vegetables, happened to live his most creative years while Western cosmology began its gradual and transforming shift from a geocentric (Earth-centered) view of the heavens to a heliocentric (Sun-centered) one. This change in perspective, and particularly the astronomy and mathematics behind it, took about 1,800 yearsto develop. Until then, most people who thought the Earth was the center of everything seen and unseen in the Universe were quite comfortable about what they believed they understood. Including the governing heirarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.

As a young theology student in Naples, Giordanno upset the Dominican brothers by (among other things) reading forbidden philosophical works. At age 28 he left the city to avoid charges of heresy, and then wandered around Europe for more than a decade. His reputation grew as an outspoken philosopher, mathematician, and an expert on memorization techniques and the hidden wisdom of the occult. Henry III of France was so impressed by him that he helped arrange a lecturship for Bruno. By the time he was 44 he'd published about 20 philosophical works and plays and met Elizabeth I. Eventually he returned to Italy, and that's when the trouble started.

Interestingly, it wasn't Bruno's legacy in print and his generally unrepentent attitudes about his own personal philosophy that first caught the attention of church authorities. It was a complaint from his then patron and host in Venice, an aristocrat named Zuane Mocenigo, whom Bruno was turoring. Apparently Mocenigo thought Bruno was going to share some juicy details of the occult. When he didn't the two had a falling out and Mocenigo got even by referring Bruno to the Venitian Inquisition. Eight months later he was transferred to Rome.

The Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition was established a few years before Bruno was born. Its purpose in all of its local variants, Rome included, was to combat heresy, or the promoting of ideas that conflicted with official Church dogma. With time in its favor the Roman Inquisition poured through Bruno's published works and discovered many passages that directly and indirectly challenged accepted beliefs. Sample excerpts from his writings in English translation appear below: 

There is no absolute up or down, as Aristotle taught; no absolute position in space; but the position of a body is relative to that of other bodies. Everywhere there is incessent relative change in position throughout the universe, and the observer is always at the center of things.

There is a single general space, a single vast immensity which we may freely call void: in it are unnumerable globes like this on which we live and grow, this space we declare to be infinite, since neither reason, convenience, sense perception nor nature assign to it a limit. 

God is infinite, so His universe must be too. Thus is the excellence of God magnified and the greatness of His kingdom made manifest; He is glorified not in one, but in countless suns; not in a single earth, a single world, but in a thousand thousand, I say in an infinity of worlds.

Three excerpts out of context do not a heretic make, but his cosmological writings and statements on the plurality of inhabited worlds almost certainly worked against him. Bruno's imprisonment and trial lasted seven years, during which he was frequently interrogated and tortured in order to obtain a full recantation of his ideas. He steadfastly refused to do this but in the end offered to recant some of what he had written. Anticipating a death sentence he appealed directly to Pope Clement VIII, but the Holy Father pronounced him guilty of heresy and other charges. All of his writings were added to the Index of Forbidden Books. One account of his execution reports his mouth was filled with an iron gag made with spikes to pierce his tongue and palate. The flames came next.

Today Bruno is usually remembered as a martyr of modern science and less often as the person he truly was: a fiercely independent and creative early champion of Copernican cosmology who, wisely or not, cared little about political correctness.

Fortunately for us all, his ideas about astronomy and the nature of the cosmos were known to varying degrees by Kepler, Galileo, and others who could appreciate their innovative qualities.

Next stop: tbd

The portrait above is often assumed to be of Giordano Bruno, but its authenticity is unclear. It was engraved by C. Meyer in Paris and dates to the first quarter of the 19th Century. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Banner bus photo credit: Dorothy Delina Porter

 

The Solarians

Last week, before heading downstairs to inventory more Carte du Ciel charts, I revisited the Adler's new exhibit on the history and profound impact of telescopes, which was featured in my last post. Not surprisingly, I saw some things I hadn't seen the week before.

One of my discoveries was a quotation attributed to Galileo, which I decided on the spot would become the quote of the Week here, but reading it also reminded me that a number of figures in the extraterrestrial life debate believed the sun was undoubtedly inhabited, too; over a period of several centuries, the plurality of worlds included solar beings.

Detailed closeup of magnetic structures on the Sun's surface (H-alpha wavelength) on August 22, 2003. Credit: Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope (SST) operated by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (Oddbjorn Engvold, Jun Elin Wiik, Luc Rouppe van der Voort).

Today it takes a special kind of imagination to consider life on our sun or any other star. After all, these are off-the-charts dynamic hostile places where nuclear fusion and superheated gas in the form of plasma reign, producing both electromagnetic radiation (visible light and heat are examples) and particle radiation (protons and electrons) with such force and in such quantities at such high temperatures for so long that the human mind can scarecly take it in.

But in the mid-15th Century, some 200 years after Western Christian scholars began studying Ancient Greek texts, a Roman Catholic philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer named Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), also known as Cusanus, published a work that discussed solar beings -- and other extraterrestrials -- for the first time in the context of the extraterrestrial life debate. His De docta ignorantia (Of Learned Ignorance) was essentially a theological and philosophical exploration of the limits of human rational thought and science. Today it is widely regarded as a masterpiece of the Middle Ages.

For Nicholas of Cusa, imagination and speculation were essential tools for moving beyond these limits. Only through them could human beings approach a more complete (but always imperfect) understanding of God and the cosmos. When applied to the subject of life beyond Earth this is what he said:

Life, as it exists on earth in the form of men, animals and plants, is to be found, let us suppose, in a higher form in the solar and stellar regions. Rather than think that so many stars and parts of the heavens are unihabited and that this earth of ours alone is peopled -- and that with beings, perhaps of an inferior type -- we will suppose that in every region there are inhabitants, differing in nature by rank and all owing their origin to God, who is the center and circumference of all stellar regions . . . Of the inhabitants then of worlds other than our own we can know still less, having no standards by which to appraise them. It may be conjectured that in the area of the sun there exist solar beings, bright and enlightened denizens, and by nature more spiritual than such as may inhabit the moon . . .

Image of an erupting solar filament above Active Region 9077 on July 19, 2000. Filaments are concentrated bundles of magnetic field filled with relatively cool gas, suspended in the solar corona. Credit: Dick Shine, NASA/TRACE

More spiritual or not, these possibly "bright and enlightened denizens" were part of a visible universe populated with creatures created by God.

Casanus knew this idea would be sensitive to Church leaders because of the difficulties other inhabited worlds presented for Christian beliefs about divine incarnation and redemption. But by presenting them within the context of a philosophy that included speculation and clear qualifications -- not to mention employing his own considerable political skills -- he managed to avoid serious trouble for himself.

In fact, apparently there was no trouble at all. Within a decade of publishing De docta ignorantia Casanus was installed as a cardinal of the church. Others interested in the subject of life beyond Earth at this time would not be so fortunate (see Next stop, below).

Interestingly, the existence of life on the sun was an idea that persisted even into the early 20th Century. Fewer and fewer persons trained in astronomy made the suggestion as time passed, but as Michael Crowe writes in The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750-1900, no less than the eminent British astronomer John Herschel (1792-1871) thought the sun might be the home of "organisms of some peculiar and amazing kind." This was in 1861.

BTW, if you're fascinated by the images above as much as I am, there are 19 more to be found here. And more here.

It's remarkable how a few minutes of wandering can lead to so many places.

Next stop: The Life and Trial of Giordano Bruno

Banner bus photo credit: Dorothy Delina Porter

 

eBay and Life beyond Earth

I rarely visit eBay, but right after Christmas I got caught-up in a high stakes bid for an out-of-print book written more than thirty years ago by an assistant pastor at a church in Fall River, Massachusetts. This was my first excursion into the world of online auctions, but I was confident because my entrepreurial nephew, John, was back on break from school. I knew John had bought and sold on eBay before, so I didn't hesitate to ask his advice on how to improve my chances for nailing a winning bid.

I also felt confident because it seemed more than lucky that the book was available at all. Right after learning about it I checked my usual online sources in hopes of finding a copy, but not one bookseller had the title. Then somehow I got the idea to look on eBay and, well, there it was. Just one copy. Just one bid submitted. And just a little more than twenty-four hours left in the auction. I didn't speculate much about karma or destiny. Instead I quietly acknowledged the good opportunity and did what any self-respecting consumer would do: I joined eBay, signed-up for PayPal, and plotted strategy.

The work in question is Many Worlds, One God, by Kenneth J. Delano. It was published in 1977 by Exposition Press in Hicksville, New York, and runs 141 pages. The ISBN 13 number is 978-0682486442. As far as I was able to determine, Exposition, a small vanity press, ceased operations sometime in 1984.

Details of publication are usually of zero interest to readers (being a former publishing house GM, they always interest me), but in this case there's an added feature on the copyright page that makes the work and its contents special: the page includes a nihil obstat and an imprimatur. A nihil obstat is an official approval granted by a designated censor in the Roman Catholic Church. Its presence certifies a work does not contradict Catholic teachings on matters of faith and morals. An imprimatur is the final approval and official declaration by the bishop in the diocese where the work is to be published, indicating the content is free from errors concerning Catholic doctrine.

Rev. Delano undoubtedly knew the value of obtaining an imprimatur when writing about controversial subjects. Many Worlds, One God is described on its dust jacket as "An intelligent discussion of the existence of extraterrestrial life and its impact upon mankind."

When Many Worlds, One God was published, Kenneth Delano was an active amateur astronomer and member in both the Astronomical League and the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers. Before Many Worlds, One God, he wrote Astrology: Fact or Fiction?, which was published as a mass market paperback. I know little more about his first book, except that it was favorably reviewed in Homiletic & Pastoral Review, a well-known Catholic pastoral magazine. I have no idea if it also bears an imprimatur.

I find it interesting that in Many Worlds, One God Delano suggests that churches should raise questions "in anticipation of the discovery that we are not alone in the material universe." Questions like:

"How many people have premised their religious beliefs on the uniqueness of man?

How many would be capable of conceiving a relationship between themseves and God as being founded on anything else but the belief that the one God finds only one being, the human being, worthy of His attention?

Would the people say with David, 'What is man that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou visiteth him,' not with the psalmist's devout wonder, but rather with enervating skepticism about God's concern for humanity? 

How many would survive the incomparable revolution in thinking that may be forthcoming with the discovery of alien intelligences?"

These questions are good ones that have yet to be addressed either informally on local levels or through official Catholic or Protestant positions. That said, I doubt anyone's surprised about this, including Rev. Delano, who is now retired.

For me, the value of this very readable book lies in its official sanction, its unique mention of the role churches can play in assisting believers with the presumed future discovery of life beyond Earth, and its thoughtful non-technical presentation (circa 1977) of a broad range of relevant topics. The latter includes evolution, the nature of life in space, extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI), communicating with sentient beings, UFO phenomena, cultural impacts of the discovery, and "astrotheology." Delano's bibliography contains an equally wide range of sources, not exhaustive by any means, but helpful to general readers.

I also appreciate that Delano wrote his book with a concern for people. His Introduction makes this clear:

"Now is the time for all of us to start making the necessary mental preparations for the revelation that we are not alone in thge universe. If our minds have not been prepared beforehand for the detection of or an encounter with ETI  we will suffer the shock of having to adjust too rapidly to a fact about which the world's religions have had little or nothing to say. The agitations experienced in the past over the theories of Copernicus and Darwin will seem to have been, by comparison, tempests in a teapot."

Whether he is correct about this or not (I can picture scenarios that suggest he is), it seems to me that Rev. Delano deserves credit for emphasizing the need for people of all faiths to take a confident approach in matters concerning the prospect of intelligent life outside our solar system:

"Any person possessing a religious faith that conveys an adequate idea of the greatness of God's creative ability, of humanity's humble position in the universe, and of the limitless love and care God has for all His intelligent creatures, should not be afraid to look at the evidence. . .that indicates that we humans are not the only ones in the universe having intellects and wills capable of knowing and loving God."

Confidence on eBay has its rewards, too.

At 1:30 am on December 27, just minutes before bidding closed, I increased the existing bid by $.25 and soon after received confirmation that I won the item.

Many Worlds, One God, and twelve dollars US. 

Next stop: "Billions of Earths" and a 2000-Year-Old Computer

Kenneth J. Delano, dust jacket photo for Many Worlds, One God (1977). For editorial use only.

Banner bus photo credit: Dorothy Delina Porter.