Geoscience Reference
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10
Undreamed Shores
A cause more promising
Than a wild dedication of yourselves
To unpath'd waters, undream'd shores
William Shakespeare,
A Winter's Tale
Giordano Bruno came to Oxford University in 1583 hoping to gain a
position there—alas unsuccessfully. Had he succeeded, then he would
certainly have livened debate at a seat of learning that was 'celebrious',
even then. Perhaps he would have escaped, 17 years later, a terrible
death at the hands of the Italian Inquisition. He was burned at the
stake at the incongruously named Campo de Fiore ('field of flowers')
in Rome for holding, and not recanting, a whole range of heresies.
Among these was a vision of an infinite universe with many stars
around which circled many planets. In Bruno's infinity of worlds, the
Earth was neither alone nor special.
Bruno's vision is developed in
On the Infinite Universe and Worlds
,
written in 1584, which is certainly not a work of science, but rather
one of polemic and philosophy set out as a series of dialogues between
Philotheo—a lightly disguised Bruno—and his admiring questioners
Elpino, Fracastoro, and Burchio. It is (be warned) heavy going. But his
intuition of a universe 'with neither Centre nor Circumference' is
clear, and strikingly modern:
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