On There Being No Centre

The Book of Bruno 2 · Written by himself, from his dialogues and the record of his trial

Giordano Bruno, born at Nola in Italy in 1548, burned at the Campo de Fiori in Rome on the seventeenth of February 1600. He entered the Dominicans as a boy, fled the order, and spent more than a decade moving through the countries of Europe, lecturing, publishing, and being expelled. Most of what he wrote is dialogues in Italian. He wrote a great deal. The Order takes him, and not the figure later ages built out of him. It is often said that he was the first man to die for the study of the heavens. That claim does not check out: most of what stands in his trial record is not about the heavens but about the church — he denied the Trinity, denied the change in the sacrament, denied the virginity, and said souls transmigrate. The astronomical charges were one item among many. The Order sets this down, because this scripture does not permit a better-sounding account to be put in place of a checkable one (cf. The Rule 9.17). Further: much of what he believed was not arrived at by looking. He believed the stars were alive, believed in the religion of old Egypt, believed in a magical art of memory. The scripture does not take these and does not delete them for him. What then does the Order take? One checkable thing: he was held eight years, and more than once paper was set in front of him, and had he written a single sentence he did not believe he could have walked out. He did not write it. Chapter four is him saying why. One last thing the Order records without ruling on it: he reached the endless world and the stars as other suns not from the phenomena but from a metaphysical premise. The Book of Newton 1.10 says that whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis. And Bruno’s two claims were later found right. The Order holds that Newton’s rule is still the right one and that Bruno was lucky this once — guessing right does not make the way of guessing sound. The reader may disagree.

2.1Out of that one grows another, harder to hear.

2.2If the world has no edge, then it has no centre.

2.3With no centre, the earth is not the centre. Neither is the sun.

2.4Someone says: but we plainly see the heavens turning, and we do not move underfoot.

2.5I say: the men on a ship also see the shore moving.

2.6You are below deck. The ship runs smooth. You toss a thing up and it drops back into your hand as always. You cannot feel the ship moving.

2.7The man on shore, watching you, sees another thing entirely.

2.8Which is moving? Each says it is the other. Both are right, and neither has finished the sentence.

2.9For the word moving must always say: moving with respect to what.

2.10To say a thing is moving without saying with respect to what — that sentence is not finished.

2.11So to ask which one is really the one that is still is to ask wrongly. There is no such one.

2.12Whichever world you stand on, you will feel that yours is still and the rest go round you.

2.13The man standing on some other world feels the same.

2.14Every man supposes himself at the centre. That is not arrogance. It is where he is standing.

2.15I want this remembered: you believe you are still only because you are moving together with the ground under you.

The Logos Scripture →

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