Undreamed Shores - Ocean Worlds: The Story of Seas on Earth and Other Planets - page 245

There is a single general space, a single vast immensity which we may
freely call void: in it are innumerable globes like this on which we live
and grow, this space we declare to be infinite, since neither reason,
convenience, our perceptions nor nature assign a limit to it. In it is an
infinity of worlds of the same kind as our own.
Bruno's imagination and free thinking led him down many paths,
such as contemplation of pantheism and questioning of the Christian
Holy Trinity (rather worse crimes than his astronomical heresies, in
the view of the Inquisition). He considered the nature of memory, and
developed a sophisticated mnemonic system for enhancing it (his
subsequent feats of memory winning him considerable celebrity). His
intuitions were not always on target (for instance he considered that
the atoms that made up matter were alive, and possessed intelligence).
Nevertheless, he was probably a genius, or close to it.
He was, too, his own worst enemy. Tactless, stubborn, and abra-
sive, throughout his life Bruno managed to alienate a good many
people who were aware of his talents and who might otherwise have
helped him. At Oxford, the dons soon put a stop to his lectures,
partly because of their subject matter and partly because of his com-
bative style. 151 The then Master of college later drily wrote of 'that
Italian Didapper' 152 who 'more boldly than wisely got up into the
higher place of our best and most renowned school, stripping up his
sleeves like some juggler, and . . . undertook among very many other
matters to set on foot the opinion of Copernicus that the earth did go
round and the heavens did stand still'. So Bruno moved on, and on,
until his fateful appointment with the Inquisition.
Since Bruno's time, understanding of the universe has grown
apace. His central vision of the immensity of space, with its count-
less stars, has come to be the one we hold today. However, while
stars and distant galaxies have long been observed, the presence—
or absence—of distant worlds around those stars has remained a