Giordano Bruno should also be remembered as a hero of science. He was burnt at the stake by the Inquisition in Rome because he upheld the heliocentric model and cosmic pluralism, a mere 13 years before Galileo wrote this re-discovered letter.
[added in response to multiple skeptic comments about Bruno's heroic role for science]
The Inquisition jailed and tried him for 7 years before burning him; of course they had time to question him about religious, doctrinal issues so they could damn him without referring to any of the philosophical and scientific principles he held. Promoting the Inquisition's recorded accusations against him, and pretending that he was no friend of science, is not very... inspiring (to be polite). And if you are going to denounce him because of his interests in the magical, what is your opinion of Isaac Newton and his lasting interest in alchemy? scientific genius and admirable hero, or somehow a buffoon not worth a footnote in the epochal battle between science and religion?
Bruno was a proud defender of free-thought, freedom of inquiry, and freedom of expression -- all central keys to the development of modern science. He wrote scientific works arguing for the Copernican model, published in 1584, years before Tycho Brahe for instance. He anticipated some of the arguments of Galilei on the relativity principle, as well as using the example now known as Galileo's ship. He was the first person to grasp that stars are other suns with their own planets.
It's terrible what happened to Bruno, but he was a mystic that engaged in rank speculation and did approximately zero science. It seems much more likely that he was killed for claiming that the devil won't be condemned and that Jesus was just a magician than for affirming a kind of heliocentrism. Sad story, yes. Hero of science, no.
While what you're saying is strictly speaking true, Scott Alexander had a thesis on this:
He noticed that the scientists of the day often ended up in trouble with the inquisition. And while, strictly speaking, it was for reasons not related to their scientific ideas, there is an insight: the sort of people who were curious about science were also curious and questioning about religion.
In conclusion:
- free thinkers are going to think freely
- whether or not the church back then was anti-science is similar to the question of whether stop-and-search is racist today.
Good point. The difference between science, occult, and alchemy was not as clear at it is today. Science did not necessarily have any better methodology. Many great men spent their life studying stuff that didn't lead to anything in both science and other stuff.
Galileo 1632:
>Among the great men who have philosophized about the action of the tides, the one who surprised me most is Kepler. He was a person of independent genius, but he became interested in the action of the moon on the water, and in other occult phenomena, and similar childishness.
"Did Giordano Bruno die for his astronomical discoveries or his atheism? False dichotomy: you can’t have a mind that questions the stars but never thinks to question the Bible. The best you can do is have a Bruno who questions both, but is savvy enough to know which questions he can get away with saying out loud. And the real Bruno wasn’t that savvy."
[...]
"The Church didn’t lift a finger against science. It just accidentally created a honeytrap that attracted and destroyed scientifically curious people."
> Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake by the Inquisition in Rome because he upheld the heliocentric model and cosmic pluralism
Yates argued in Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964) that Bruno was burnt for espousing the Hermetic tradition rather than his affirmation of heliocentricity.
There is a difference between the "evidence" invoked by the Inquisition, and the actual reasons they felt they needed to torture and murder a loud defender of free thought, free inquiry, free speech, and the Copernican model.
Why would Inquisition lie about that one and not wanted to really kill him for his religious ideas?
Non scientists would be killed for those other ideas too. Inquisition had not reason to lie about free speech as they never considered it good thing or something valuable.
These ideas were considered dangerous. The Inquisitors knew about the Streisand Effect. If they killed him for praying incorrectly they wouldn't be publicizing his physics theories. Besides authority is enhanced when it kills people for arbitrary senseless reasons.
> He was burnt at the stake by the Inquisition in Rome because he upheld the heliocentric model and cosmic pluralism
More than half the points raised in his trial were considering statements about Jesus, Mass, the Trinity, .... . Did he have at least proof of his scientific claims that wasn't contradicted by other scientists of the time?
Should we rely on the Inquisition's records as reference to judge Giordano Bruno, or on his works and public discourse before he was imprisoned for 7 years then murdered?
His arguments for the Copernican model were better than the ones made by Copernicus. He offered several lines of reasoning that Galileo later also resorted to -- you know, the very similar arguments for which Galileo was persecuted by the Inquisition during 20 years. More importantly than all of that, Bruno relentlessly argued that thinkers should be free to inquire, reason, and speak regardless of what the Bible and Church said -- all the way to the day of his public murder.
> Should we rely on the Inquisition's records as reference to judge Giordano Bruno
Internal records of an organization with little opposition and little reason to falsify them at the time? Do you have other sources that paint a different picture? The church certainly did not have a monopoly on paper.
> you know, the very similar arguments for which Galileo was persecuted by the Inquisition during 20 years.
So arguments for which Galileo was never executed? Arguments for which Galileo was merely put under house arrest after years of disputes and insults exchanged between him an the highest offices of the church? Your example doesn't help to prove your point.
> Bruno relentlessly argued that thinkers should be free to inquire, reason, and speak
From which you get such things like "vaccines cause autism", there is a need for someone to keep an eye on self proclaimed "thinkers", especially the ones spouting nonsense. It doesn't help that (afaik) the Copernican model was too simple to account for various observations and could be shown to be worse than the complex models used for the geocentric model, which caused even Galileo some trouble.
Calling Bruno a scientist, or saying he was killed for doing science, is quite a fantastic stretch. And where this article is concerned, the Galileo affair stretched something like 20 years and his house arrest in the papal apartments, overlooking the Vatican gardens, was largely the result of decades of political intrigue and him having accrued enemies.
Sadly, these Protestant and Enlightenment myths persist to this day. Ignorance at best, bigotry and intellectual laziness at worst.
Bruno was killed for freely inquiring into the nature of our universe. In a time such as it was that included religious and philosophical speculation as religious and philosophical ideas formed much of the foundation of how people understood the world. I think it is fair to view him as a hero of science however since he lived in an unscientific time it does not make sense to call him a scientist.
>And where this article is concerned, the Galileo affair stretched something like 20 years and his house arrest in the papal apartments, overlooking the Vatican gardens, was largely the result of decades of political intrigue and him having accrued enemies.
That Galileo's enemies were able to use his scientific views against him is not evidence that he was not persecuted for his scientific views. It is merely evidence that it is possible a more nimble or charismatic political player may have avoided such persecution.
Galileo didn't really have to "fool" the Inquisition.
By producing a softer version of the letter and claiming it was the original, Galileo was bowing to the authority of the Church. He knew it, they knew it, and everyone important watching knew it. That was the important thing for the Church, and by accepting the softer version as the original, whether or not they believed it, the Church sent the message to everyone watching in return: don't challenge our authority, and we'll leave you alone.
> Galileo didn't really have to "fool" the Inquisition.
> ..
> producing a softer version ... Church sent the message we'll leave you alone
No. Because even after he produced the "softer" version and claiming that the other harsher version was "fake" he was in 1633 officially "sentenced to formal imprisonment at the pleasure of the Inquisition." The relevant quote from the very sentence, written addressing Galileo Galilei:
"We order that by a public edict the book of DIALOGUES OF GALILEO GALILEI be prohibited, and We condemn thee to the prison of this Holy Office during Our will and pleasure"
He remained in the house arrest for the next 9 years, until he died in 1642. Yes, he actually died while still being in the house arrest. The book remained officially banned for the next 200 years (the Church published the list of banned books which it regularly updated, but it took that much for his uncensored book to be removed from that list).
And that is after he "bowed." Do investigate what would have happened had he not. So he personally surely had to do "fool" them: the alternative outcome for him was much worse.
Edit: a typo corrected, thanks astine. Also added a quote from the original sentence.
Galileo was friends with the pope, but then called him an idiot in one of his books (named a character "the idiot" that used the Pope's arguments). That is why he got imprisoned.
> Galileo was friends with the pope, but then called him an idiot in one of his books (named a character "the idiot" that used the Pope's arguments). That is why he got imprisoned.
No. That would be just blaming the victim.
1) The character was named "Simplicio" as "simple", but it didn't really represent the pope:
"Simplicio is modeled on two contemporary conservative philosophers, Lodovico delle Colombe (1565–1616?), Galileo's opponent, and Cesare Cremonini"
2) Being friend with the Pope earlier just protected him from Inquisition between 1616 and 1632. But even as Galileo was in better relations he was already in danger. In 1632 the trial depended on the statement that Galileo was already "ordered" in 1616, that is, 16 years earlier:
"... to abandon completely... the opinion that the sun stands still at the center of the world and the earth moves, and henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatever, either orally or in writing"
So once Galileo lost the support at the highest level the Church did what it did.
I don't understand why there are even today so much people trying to defend the Catholic Church of these times. The facts are plain and clear. To compare with more modern times, the leader on Nazi Germany also intervened to protect one Jew from Holocaust (Ernest Hess) but it doesn't make any argument that Nazism or the "Leader" were otherwise not mass killing Jews by a clear policy. Or that those who were killed somehow caused it themselves by lacking social skills.
How is this defending the church? It was clearly a totalitarian organization where if you pissed off the wrong person they would find an excuse to imprison or torture you.
>the Church sent the message to everyone watching in return: don't challenge our authority, and we'll leave you alone.
Galileo walking back his words and being under house arrest for the rest of his life would certainly send a message for other people to keep their heads down and mouths shut.
Galileo was trying to save his own life, that fact that he was still punished, although mildly compared the worst case scenario doesn't really change anything. No one rally claimed differently either.
It's not a "perfect" essay — the author seems to be a bit confused about the nature of parallax — but I think it's quite interesting and helpful nonetheless.
The Nautilus article is really helpful, seems everything we work out as humans is a discourse between writer and readers, getting there in the end. But we need our heroes and, here as well as with Darwin, there are precedents that don't make it into the history books.
You see this all the time. People will write stuff like "Crispr/cas9 is really, really awesome so dont think we're saying its not but we found out its toxic in this new way"
Or "Global warming is a huge problem and we need to do something about it for sure but..."
Absolutely. I wonder if we will ever live in a time when these sort of games are not necessary. There's the old saying that "Science progresses one funeral at a time." The problem is that scientists are even more receptive to 'less than popular' ideas than the masses are. And by 'old' that statement was from Max Planck, who died in 1947.
If anything I think it's gotten/will get worse. Because people have to specialize so much these days they get VERY wedded to their ideas, and much more resistant to change.
Back when you could know all of science, someone could change one part or another and it was just one more thing - not the core of what you do.
For example say "there is no dark matter" - every single person who studies dark matter (and nothing else) is going to be virtually impossible to convince - and yet those are EXACTLY the people who have the expertise to verify such a claim.
I am very sorry, but not mention or discussion of Galileo on this site is complete without a mention of the great ptolemaic smackdown [1]. If you have about 4 hours worth of your time (even in installments) it is deeply recommended.
"the above-mentioned Galileo, because of the things deduced in the trial and confessed by you as above, have rendered yourself according to this Holy Office vehemently suspected of heresy, namely of having held and believed a doctrine which is false and contrary to the divine and Holy Scripture: that the sun is the center of the world and does not move from east to west, and the earth moves and is not the center of the world, and that one may hold and defend as probable an opinion after it has been declared and defined contrary to Holy Scripture."
"after having been judicially instructed with injunction by the Holy Office to abandon completely the false opinion that the sun is the center of the world and does not move and the earth is not the center of the world and moves, and not to hold defend, or teach this false doctrine in any way whatever, orally or in writing; and after having been notified that this doctrine is contrary to Holy Scripture; I wrote and published a book in which I treat of this already condemned doctrine and adduce very effective reasons in its favor, without refuting them in any way."
The premise of the whole "4 hour" series by that author is also wrong, approximately, that because the parallax of the stars wasn't observed until around 1750 Galileo "couldn't prove" in 1633 that the Earth is not standing still, therefore the Church was "right" and it wasn't a matter of faith but "a personal thing." It's obviously a completely invalid argument. Because the reason why Galileo was convinced about the wrongness of the heliocentric theory was the simple fact that he was really the first human in the world who saw the moons around other planet, not accidentally called "Galilean moons":
He didn't have to "prove." He was really sentenced only for "having held and believed a doctrine which is false and contrary to the divine and Holy Scripture." It's explicitly stated in the official document.
That something like that is a reason enough for a condemnation by the religious authorities, even in much more recent times, can be obvious to anybody who tried to read the source text of the condemnation to murder of the author "along with all the editors and publishers aware of its content" of the book "The Satanic Verses" in 1989. I won't link to that, intentionally, but there's enough details to... check the original sources!
Additionally, not only Galileo's but the Copernicus' book too remained banned by the Church for the next 200 years after Galileo was sentenced, in spite of all the scientific discoveries in these 200 years that made these texts less unique. And the discoveries... there were many of them. Starting with the publication of Newton's "Principia" in 1687, only 50 years after the sentence. Newton was, of course, out of the reach of the Catholic Church, thanks to the lucky coincidence of him being born in "a political system found on the family values of Henry VIII."
It's always more worth checking the original sources instead of believing in 4 hours of text of somebody who intentionally avoids quoting and discussing these very sources. A lot of false claims can be constructed by omitting the evidence, the original sources and inventing the interpretations of the actual events. It's a very dishonest approach and should not be supported.
People make a great deal about these "science martyrs". But, from a more disinterested perspective, one cannot entirely blame the Catholic Church's approach.
None of the martyrs had clear evidence they were correct, and were often pursuing a larger agenda of undermining the Church's authority and the general spiritual worldview.
Was the Church right to imprison and kill these people? Probably not. But, was the Church wrong in its concerns? Considering the untold millions of killings of the past couple centuries that resulted from scientism and naturalism, the Church's concerns about the so called heretical scientists may not have been entirely unfounded.
Well, the Church was killing people for doing nothing but failing to believe whatever fables it spoke. One can, and should blame them for that.
And if you want to throw morals out and do a cold analysis of their acts, no mature empire ever survived after it started persecuting people just because they disagreed with the leadership. (Yes, way too many did it, and yes, there is a huge sampling bias.) So, no, even on purely practical judgment, the Church was wrong.
About none of them having evidence, Galileo was the first to get some good evidence of heliocentrism:
> Considering the untold millions of killings of the past couple centuries that resulted from scientism and naturalism, the Church's concerns about the so called heretical scientists may not have been entirely unfounded.
But the Church of the day had no problem with killing - in fact, they were quite enthusiastically into it, when it came to heathens, Muslims and Jews. And eventually Protestants.
I mean, it's only because of scientism and naturalism that mass murder in the name of God is even considered immoral nowadays, much less illegal.
There were certainly wars during that time, but is it true the Church engaged in the mass genocides like the atheist regimes of the past couple centuries? I'd like to see proof of this.
> but is it true the Church engaged in the mass genocides like the atheist regimes of the past couple centuries?
Surely, mass murder is mass murder, regardless of the label you apply to it. You're dismissing things like the Crusades and the Church's attempts to convert the New World by force.
One could possibly claim that modern "atheist" regimes were capable of mass murder at a greater scale than the Church due to the effect of industrialization ... certainly the Holocaust might not have been as effective as it was had the Nazis been limited to pen and paper, horseback and swords.
But, I don't see evidence for the implication that non-theocratic governments or societies are inherently more violent than theocratic ones, rather I see a lot of evidence to the contrary, that unchecked religion permits unchecked violence, because you can argue with a secular authority, but if you believe in God, you can't argue with God.
I mean, you can, but if your government claims authority by divine right, then doing so is a threat to the state and it probably won't end well for you.
But my point was that, whatever concerns the Church might have had about the effect of heretical ideas, the possibility of violence was not one of them.
They of course did not foresee the French Terror, Communist revolution, Pol Pot's killing fields, Mao's Great Leap Forward, and the Holocaust. But, they did realize the implications of believing man was only matter and that there was no moral order. Christianity was formed in the midst of societies that had very little regard for human life, and stood out for protesting the oppression of their day.
The Inquisition was evil. The people running it tortured and murdered countless individuals simply because they wanted to think and speak freely. An agnostic-sounding perspective does not reduce that evil in any way.
Reading about these people who were persecuted and murdered for advancing human knowledge, and seeing the current state of the world where even our leaders still rail against vaccination, climate change, human rights, the moon landing and other facts, is anyone else bemused by what a self-defeating species we are?
If you placed humanity next to other hypothetical species and looked at us from a detached point of view, what would be our defining characteristic?
That is very interesting, because I don't think the constraints of natural selection and competition for resources are going to be the same in every environment on every planet. Most of what we are is determined by our biology.
Take ants or bees or termites. They have conflict between different colonies, but cooperation within a colony is guaranteed.
[added in response to multiple skeptic comments about Bruno's heroic role for science]
The Inquisition jailed and tried him for 7 years before burning him; of course they had time to question him about religious, doctrinal issues so they could damn him without referring to any of the philosophical and scientific principles he held. Promoting the Inquisition's recorded accusations against him, and pretending that he was no friend of science, is not very... inspiring (to be polite). And if you are going to denounce him because of his interests in the magical, what is your opinion of Isaac Newton and his lasting interest in alchemy? scientific genius and admirable hero, or somehow a buffoon not worth a footnote in the epochal battle between science and religion?
Bruno was a proud defender of free-thought, freedom of inquiry, and freedom of expression -- all central keys to the development of modern science. He wrote scientific works arguing for the Copernican model, published in 1584, years before Tycho Brahe for instance. He anticipated some of the arguments of Galilei on the relativity principle, as well as using the example now known as Galileo's ship. He was the first person to grasp that stars are other suns with their own planets.