GIORDINO BRUNO
Giardino Bruno was born in Italy, but he spent the greater part of his life in foreign countries. By the time he returned home he had written nearly 20 books. He went to school at the Monastery of Saint Domenico and within a few years he became a priest. He was frank, outspoken and lacking in reticence. Not long before he got himself into trouble. He ran away from school and from his country. Bruno was interested in the nature of ideas. He could be dubbed as an epistomologist or Semantics. We can say that, at the close of 16th. Century he made a philosophical survey of the world. He lived in a period when philosophy became divorced from science. In 1581 he gave lectures on philosophy in Paris. In his books he held that ideas are only shadows of truth. Bruno claimed that Christianity was entirely irrational, contrary to philosophy. Bruno stated that what we accept throuh faith has no scientific basis. In his work The Ash Wednesday Supper, Bruno spread the Copernican doctrine. That was the new astronomy at which people were laughing, because it was at variance with the teachings of Aristo. A little later on Galileo took his work. Galileo does not mention him. (Galiee has been criticised for playing for personal safety) He lived in France, Switzerland, England and Germany. He translated books, read proofs, gave lectures. It is said that, he can be thought of mending his clothes, often cold and hungry. After 20 years of exile he became homesick. He said "There is no absolute up or down, as Aristotle thought; no absolute position in space; but the position of a body is relative to that of other bodies" in his book DeLa Causa, Principio et Uno. In his another book we find discussions which will be handled in a later century by Descartes. He said: " Who so itcheth to Philosophy must set to work by putting all things to the doubt". He thought of the Bible as a book which only the ignorant could take literally. He wrote: "Everything, however men may deem it assured and evident, proves, when it is brought under discussion, to be no less doubtful than are extravagant and absurd beliefs" After 14 years abroad, being homescik, he returned to Italy. He was invited to Venice by a man named Mocenigo. This man offered him a home and later brought charges against him before the Inquisition. Between 1593 and 1600 he lay in a Papal prison. Historical records of those years have not been published by the authorities. After 2 years in the custody of the Inquisitor he was sentenced to death. His answer was " Perhaps you , my judges, pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive".. He was taken out to a blazing fire at the market place and roasted to death by fire. As he was dying a crucifix was presented to him, but he pushed it away with fierce scorn. Bruno began to be a symbol to represent the forward-looking, free-thinking type of philosopher and scientist and has become a symbol of scientific martyrdom. He was a sensitive, imaginative poet fired with the enthusiasm of a larger universe .. he fell into the error of heretical belief.