Wesley R. Elsberry
Posts: 4991
Joined: May 2002
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I found Jaki's translation of Bruno's "The Ash Wednesday Supper" online. It appears to me that Jaki did do good service in annotating the translation with many notes clarifying various of Bruno's allusions. That is useful, for both the classical allusions that are no longer a commonplace of education and the references to current events and personalities from Bruno's time that have failed to be carried forward in general histories. As to whether the work deserves the dismissive assessment that Jaki himself is claimed to have applied to it should be left to the reader. I'm going to excerpt a bit that I found interesting.
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THEME OF THE FIFTH DIALOGUE
The fifth dialogue is attached (I swear) for no other reason than to prevent our supper from being concluded in so sterile a manner. First, there is presented the most convenient arrangement of bodies in the ethereal region, showing that what is called the eighth sphere, the firmament of the fixed stars, is not in fact a firmament, so that those bodies that are seen there through their brightness should be equidistant from the center; but rather, that many [stars] may appear close to one another, though they arc, both in depth and width, farther away from one another than they are from the sun and the earth. Second, that there are not only seven wandering bodies [planets], just because we have recognized only seven as such; rather, there are for the very same reason innumerable others, that the true philosophers of old called, not without good reason, aethera, [17. See note 13 to the Fifth Dialogue.] which means runners, because they are bodies which truly move, and not imaginary spheres. Third, that such motion proceeds necessarily from an internal principle as if from its own nature and soul; with such truth many dreams are dissipated both about the active influence of the moon on waters and other kinds of fluids, and about other natural things that seem to have their principle of motion from an outside cause. Fourth, a stance is taken against those doubts that proceed by most stupid reasoning from the gravity and levity of bodies; and it is proved that all natural motion approaches a circular one, either about its own or about some other center. Fifth, it is shown how necessary it is that this earth and other similar bodies should move not with one but with several different motions. And that those bodies should consist of neither more nor less than the four simple [elements], these being United in one compound. And it is stated what these motions of the earth are. Finally, it is promised to supplement with other dialogues that which seems to be lacking in the completeness of this philosophy. And one concludes with an oath of Prudcnzio.
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It seems apparent that Bruno's conjectures came closer to the mark in astronomy than in chemistry. I'm going to allude to and even quote Charles Darwin:
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False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for everyone takes a salutory pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path toward errors is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened.
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It seems to me that the Roman Catholic Church's enforcement of Aristotelian views of cosmology gave false facts a currency long past when they would have otherwise have been disputed and abandoned.
One of the resources Rosenau pointed to in his article was an exchange between a critic and a "Cosmos" script writer. And one of the most interesting things I found there was, in fact, in the comments on one of the series. A commenter named "West" inverts the common critic tactic of minimizing Bruno's stature as a thinker and asserts that Bruno carried far more influence than many today are willing to credit him for.
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Look, it's not Bruno vs. Digges, but both complimenting one another. And while it's true that Bruno wasn't a lone wolf in theory, in practice, nobody so publicly carried the torch of so-called "Copernicanism" than Bruno.
I might add that...
1) Bruno's great intuition not only greatly influenced Bacon and the experimental method only a couple of decades after his death (per calling upon a reliance on observation of the physical world as a based for further investigation);
2) he singlehandedly resurrected the study of the quantum world for the first time since antiquity and Democritus (note, he was concerned with the cosmic "minimum" and "maximum", and largely devoid of spiritual considerations (albeit written in poetic verse), as we see in his Frankfurt trilogy, written in his latter years;
3) he routinely engaged in what 20th Century quantum theorists would call "thought experiments" (i.e., lacking suitable instruments to explore the smallest constituents of matter, such as quarks or strings and things, just like Bruno, yet nobody care to claim that luminaries such as Heisenberg, Pauli, or Schrodinger are "unscientific");
4) Bruno used his through experiments to generate relativity theory 300 years before Einstein, sans the E=MC2 formula (a critical component, indeed, but Bruno clearly understood a communicated the essence of it);
5) on the whole, Bruno's thinking was clearly driven by the "holographic paradigm" centuries before holograms were discovered, or before Karl Pibram and David Bohm suggested any holonomic theories or notions of an "implicate order" (note that this idea was rife in Bruno's writing, and can be seen in statements he commonly makes, such as "everything is in everything else");
6) Bruno laid out the basis for historical dialectic, which Hegel discussed, albeit in his own way, but he was entirely conscious of Bruno and wrote about him; not to mention the fact that according to leading experts in semiotics and mass media, such as Umberto Eco, rightly identify Bruno as the pioneer in those fields;
7) heck, the guy was even a huge influence on Moliere, and it appears he was a strong influence on Shakespeare (and might have even met young Shakespeare during his stay in England in the early 1580s. Many scholars think the character of Propero in The Tempest is based on Bruno).
So then, why is Bruno so overlooked given the unprecedented scope and scale of his contributions?
Well, aside from the fact that moderns tend to be specialists who think in 'either/or terms vs. both/and sensibilities, history doesn't seem capable of digesting figures such as Bruno, who wasn't a master of any given area of thought, but rather, he functioned as a masterful sewer of the seeds of great thought. We tend to hand out the blue ribbons of historic recognition to the guys and gals who cross the finish line with their theories, whereas guys like Bruno--the people who made the race possible in the first place, get overlooked.
I'd like to think this is changing, and perhaps we'll see a long-overdue reassessment of Bruno per objective studies of "The Nolan" and his work/influence by capable historians such as Hilary Gati (vs. fanciful, speculative and highly distorted works by historians such as Francis Yates, who mostly betrayed her own orientation in her outdated works on Bruno, or even worse, the apologists for religious polemics, who continue to burn Bruno with errant scholarship more than 400 years after they literally burned him at the stake).
In any case, the most amusing thing about the obsessive need to insist that Bruno wasn't "scientific" just because he didn't have telescopes at his disposal is that nobody ever even bothers to discuss whether or not Copernicus was "scientific," yet what instruments was he using?
In fact, unlike Bruno, Copernicus waited until he was on his deathbed before daring to suggest that the Earth revolves around the sun. Moreover, he made this suggestion on briefly in his final book--giving his scant attention--and underscored the fact that this was merely an idea or theory and thus, he wanted to make it clear that he was not actually claiming that this was literally the case. In addition, even as he timidly suggested that the earth might revolved around the sun, he preserved the idea of celestial spheres--the notion that the planets swirled around us in some sort of crystalline layers.
Well, Bruno not only had the good sense to say this was all preposterous, but he criticized Copernicus for not having the courage to say so because, unlike those who still fail to give Bruno his due credit. Bruno gave Copernicus credit for knowing better, yet fearing to tell the truth. Bruno never lacked for such courage, just as he never lacked for vision.
Therefore, isn’t it high time he gets the credit he deserves No, not as some sort of be all and end all of science, but certainly as the greatest "sewer of the seeds" of the modern world--no more or less than this, which is quite a statement in itself.
Perhaps the problem is as simple as this: The world has yet to catch up to Bruno’s all encompassing thinking. Until less reductionist writers and thinkers start re-reading Bruno, he very likely will continue to be labeled as "just an atheist," "just an occultist," "just a philosopher," "just a Hermetist," "just a heretic," "just a poet," "just a dramatist," "just a difficult guy," "just a guy with a few good hunches and lucky guesses," etc., etc., etc. Too bad, since there's still so much to learn from this revolutionary thinker.
For that matter, some people might start asking themselves, gee, how exactly does a guy like that make so many correct guesses that turn out to be verified centuries after his death? Plus, if my head head was full of all of a perception of reality that the small-minded people of my own time couldn't remotely understand, might I get a little cranky, too?
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I can't speak to the accuracy of "West"'s contribution here, but many of these points are checkable in principle: where "West" asserts that someone cited or discussed Bruno, we should be able to confirm or deny that claim based on the record. If those scholarly citations check out, it would be a major blow to the story being spread now that Bruno was an insignificant figure in intellectual history, whose current notoriety is entirely meant to foster anti-religious and specifically anti-Catholic sentiment.
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"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker
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