ROSIE’S POST: Giordano Bruno: the first man who envisioned universe’s infinity… and died for it.

Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was born near Naples (Italy) and went to Naples to be educated. At the age of 17 he joint the monastery at San Domenico Maggiore in Naples and changed his name from Filippo to Giordano after his tutor Giordano Crispo.

He started working on how to expand the forces of the mind via a method called ‘the art of memory’ that originated from the Pythagoreans or even the ancient Egyptians. This method organised the memory and helped innovation, thinking unconventionally. In his first years he wondered and got the favor and protection of many patrons who were fascinated by his memory abilities which were obtained by organized knowledge and methodical training.

Giordano Bruno took the theory of Copernicus to a higher level. He went further than accepting that the earth was not the center of the universe and that it was revolving around the Sun just like as all the other planets. Giordano envisioned the stars as being more planets, infinite in number. He believed the center of the universe was steady and all planets revolved around it.

The universe is then one, infinite, immobile…. It is not capable of comprehension and therefore is endless and limitless, and to that extent infinite and indeterminable, and consequently immobile” Giordano Bruno teaches.

He traveled almost in whole of Europe, and he was accepted in the circles of John Dee in London. He also talked in Oxford, a few years before I was born, but the professors were not really listening. His ideas of infinite universe were (in their mind) contradicting the Roman-Catholic church too much. He traveled to Prague and Rudolf II and applied for a position with no luck. He also traveled to Padua where he taught briefly and applied for a mathematics teaching position but he did not get it. It was given a year later to Galileo Galilei.

Giordano Bruno believed that God was infinite, so how could He have created a finite cosmos? How could the whole universe be measured, thought comprehended in simple methods and models described till that moment. Unfortunately his scientific competence couldn’t give him proof of his ideas, although one could doubt how this would have prevented his fate.

Giordano traveled in many countries trying to convince for his ideas, which turned out to be true to a great extend. He was not able to convince. He was tried by the Roman Inquisition for heresy and blasphemy and after eight years in prison, and after his denial to reform his ideas, he was burned at the stake in Rome’s Campo di Fiori in 1600. He is considered a martyr of science. His lived, fought and died for the freedom of thought, for everyone’s right to state his belief. Many others followed, unfortunately, my father as well.

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