VMs: [VMS] Bruno Theory, and www.ic.unicamp.br downtime

[Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

  > [Rene:] What one may read in reliable literature is that [Giordano
  > Bruno] stated that the Sun is not unique in the universe, but that
  > all stars are like our Sun; furthermore that the universe is
  > infinite. This was seen by the church as an insult to God, for
  > which he was burnt. Rather, it was not so much his thesis, as
  > [his] polemic stance ... Now why did [the fixedness of the Earth]
  > matter to the people in the 15th-17th Century?
  
My recollection, from an (Ahem!) Scientific American article of many
years ago, is that it was not so much the cosmology, but the political
implications of it.

Namely, in an infinite Universe, with infinitely many worlds, each
with its own Redemption, the Church in Rome would not be *the* single
legitimate supreme authority for all Christians, but only one among an
infinitude of equally legitimate Churches. Hence, why could there not
be more than one sovereign Church on the same world --- on *this*
world, in particular?

As another example, the article cited Bruno's claim that, when a light
source moves farther and farther away from a sphere, it illuminates a
larger and larger fraction of it -- *so that, when the light is
infinitely removed, it illuminates the whole globe.* As a physics
statement, this last part is a rather stupid mistake; but, according
to the article, it was actually a metaphor or "justification" for the
thesis that the Pope, if he wished to be the spiritual leader of the
whole world, had to keep himself as removed as possible from it -- in
particular, he had to renounce his temporal power.

According to that article, these implications were quite intentional
on Bruno's part, and were a major reason for him and his views being
so popular in European courts. If that account is correct, then
Giordano's fate is no more surprising than that of countless other
political subversives, before and after him.

That may have been just the author's imagination, of course. However,
contemporary accounts of Galileo's trials *do* say that the Church was
much worried that he may be a new Bruno.

I presume that the theory of Bruno being the VMS author is entirely
based on the vague argument that an encrypted book must have a
dangerous contents. However I do not see anything in the VMS that would
square with my image of Bruno or his concerns.
  
  > Jim Reeds' bibliography, which I cannot access right now (I tried
  > Stolfi's mirror copy)
  
Ahem, indeed our WWW server is often unavailable. It is an old Sun
machine that is also the sysadmin's workstation; since the machine is
located in his private office, when it happens to crash outside
working hours, it usually stays down until the next morning.
We have been planning to move the server to a better base for
years, but somehow that has not happened yet. 

On top of that, the rainy season is starting, and that means frequent
network/power outages. A particularly severe storm last tuesday, which
toppled several trees in the campus, left us without power for six
hours or so.

All the best,

--stolfi


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