ⓜ Diary for February 25, 2019
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Back home in Tucson (and about to leave for another trip!)...
The usual daily task is answering emails. But my emails tend to lead me down interesting rabbit holes: Giordano Bruno (I got two questions about him this week), what it's like to attend a science fiction convention, and updates on book chapters both newly published and overdue...
Two emails about book chapters, in fact:
On behalf of Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. and Graham Oppy, I am pleased to announce the publication of Theism and Atheism: Opposing Arguments in Philosophyin both print and as an eBook. Citation information for the title is as follows: Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. and Graham Oppy, eds. Theism and Atheism: Opposing Arguments in Philosophy. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2019. I finally got to read the atheists' arguments based on science. Um... I'm not convinced.
At the same time I got another email reminding me that back in 2017 I had promised a chapter for a book about the science at the Vatican Observatory, due at that fabulously mythical date of February 2019. Urp!
Fr. Stanley Jaki wrote a booklet on “Bruno: A Martyr of Science?” or something like that. As I recall, he argued, that Bruno was more magician than scientist. He also wrote an Intro to a translation of Bruno’s “Ash Wednesday Supper,” in which relied heavily on Frances Yates’s 1964 biography of Bruno to drive home the point that Bruno was burned – not for his acceptance of Copernicanism – but for his devotion to the “dark arts.” Not sure the reason mattered that much to old Giordano, but . . .
Bruno is not my area of expertise, but I have read works from that time as part of my research, and my experience is along the same line as Br. Guy’s: I have not encountered a lot of talk about Bruno. Where I have encountered talk, such as in work by Kepler, it is about how Bruno is just wrong (and remember that Kepler was a Copernican). And what I definitely have not encountered is anyone thinking that certain ideas were “too scandalous to mention” — and my work has focused on those opposed to Copernicus (just the ones who supposedly would be scandalized). I make no absolute claims here, and reading up on Bruno is on my “to-do” list — I am just sharing my experience.