Also interesting is how he reconciles his ideas of God, what he sees as disproven concepts of the cosmos, and the scientific principles that he sees operating in the cosmos. It reminds me very much of Christian scientists (not Christian Scientists mind you) I know who could go to work every day, researching human muscle cells, go home to bible study, and reconcile and even merge the two worlds. You would think that "science" and religion would be mutually exclusive in cases like Bruno, especially faced with religious persecution.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Bruno - In Praise of Reason
Bruno's praise of Copernicus and his discussion of cosmology, I noticed, is prefaced by a fairly involved praising of "reason". His reasoning, and dismissal of what he sees as clouding or preventing development of cosmology seems to presage ideas you see in the Enlightenment. However, I'm not well versed in much of the period, so I can't say exactly how Bruno fits in between it and the Renaissance. I just found the rhetoric, profoundly interesting, it being a refutation of what had come before.
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The support of reason is a theme that runs throughout Galileo's work as well. Specifically, Galileo is interested in using reason to uncover the truth about man and the universe. He places human experience and observation above the Bible and the written word in terms of their authority to produce knowledge. When you look at Galileo and Bruno's defense of reason, their voices seem contemporary. they both speak with a clarity and tone that could echo modern arguments.
I found Galileo's debate regarding observation and metaphor quite fascinating. What's radical about his argument at the time is not the assertion that we should found our opinions on observation rather than metaphor but rather his declaration that much of the Bible is metaphor. In a time period where the Bible was read as an objective, unarguable text--science so to speak--how radical is it to suggest that the Bible has metaphors much the same as poetry or prose? Even so it seems as if his argument influenced the way many Christians read the Bible today.
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