Week+3+assignment

Giordano Bruno is not a man whose legacy has survived the centuries. Even in his day, I do not get the impression that anyone really knew or cared about Bruno or his ideas. Bruno came up with the basis of relativity centuries before Einstein, yet we only consider Einstein to be the revolutionary genius who changed our understanding of the universe. Why don’t we consider Bruno to be among the great philosophers of all time? Because nobody liked him. It is odd that someone who was persecuted for his ideals the way Bruno was is not more of an idol of standing up for your beliefs. The reason for this probably has a lot to do with who he stood up to: the Church. For over a millennium, the Church was the most powerful influence on society in Italy. If the Church condemned Bruno, then Bruno was condemned. Period. Nobody could then come along and pardon Bruno, at least not without a huge conflict. So after Bruno was burned at the stake, his life, work, and legacy were all forgotten at the behest of the Grand Inquisitor. Even though Bruno was not a particularly good experimental scientist, his philosophical ideas could have added a lot to society and to future scientists who could have tested his theories. All of this was lost when Bruno decided to be so overtly contrarian in the face of the Church. Bruno’s story is an example of how science is affected by society. To further highlight this point, we can look at Bruno’s contemporary, Galileo. Galileo’s ideas were not quite as overtly opposed to the Church as Bruno’s, and nor were they as amazingly revolutionary. Despite these things, Galileo still could have been tried as a heretic had he not handled his situation properly. Galileo did handle his situation well for the most part. Up until he started specifically criticizing the Church, Galileo’s life was not specifically difficult. Once Galileo did start fervently pushing the Copernican model of the solar system, the Church decided to put a stop to him. By that point, however, Galileo had affected enough people with his ideas that his legacy could not be lost to time. It could be said that Galileo’s legacy lives on because he played the game, as opposed to Bruno who decided not to kowtow to anyone. Bruno and Galileo show that the merit of a scientist can only be judge in the context of the society in which they worked. In another society, Bruno could have been a philosopher as influential as Aristotle, but because Bruno lived and worked the way he did in Europe in the 16th century nobody remembers him. Galileo on the other hand is remembered because he knew how the society worked, and was thus able, for the most part, to not provoke the wrath of the Church. Regardless of how either scientist worked, Galileo and Bruno both had ideas about how the universe worked that were factually based. Their stories, and particularly Bruno’s, show that an individual can come up with revolutionary science even in the most stifling environment, but whether or not that science is contributed to the institution of science is dependent on the society and the particular scientist.