[Serious] Giordano Bruno

[Belacqua]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno

Did you bother to read this one?

This is from the second paragraph:

After his death, he gained considerable fame, being particularly celebrated by 19th- and early 20th-century commentators who regarded him as a martyr for science,[6] although historians agree that his heresy trial was not a response to his astronomical views but rather a response to his philosophical and religious views.[7][8][9][10][11] Bruno's case is still considered a landmark in the history of free thoughtand the emerging sciences.[12][13]

This agrees with what I've been saying all along. Not a martyr for science. Bad for the church to squelch free thought. 

This is relevant to the discussion, I think:

Few astronomers of Bruno's time accepted Copernicus's heliocentric model. Among those who did were the Germans Michael Maestlin (1550–1631), Christoph Rothmann, Johannes Kepler (1571–1630); the Englishman Thomas Digges, author of A Perfit Description of the Caelestial Orbes; and the Italian  (1564–1642).

When Copernicus first published, serious scientists felt there was so far insufficient evidence to prove his theory. Like all good scientists, they waited for empirical data to be gathered before making up their minds. This included some people in the Vatican who were open-minded and willing to listen. Bruno accepted the model, which turned out to be true, not because of empirical evidence but because it was useful for his wacko mysticism.

This page does cite one recent scholar who agrees with you:

Ingegno writes that Bruno embraced the philosophy of Lucretius, "aimed at liberating man from the fear of death and the gods."[68]Characters in Bruno's Cause, Principle and Unity desire "to improve speculative science and knowledge of natural things," and to achieve a philosophy "which brings about the perfection of the human intellect most easily and eminently, and most closely corresponds to the truth of nature."[69]

But the next paragraph goes on to cite other scholars who disagree with Ingegno. So at best, this shows that people disagree on the subject.

My experience has been that Wikipedia is quite good on non-controversial subjects like names and dates. When there is heated disagreement, its partiality is open to doubt. But the page you link to here shows, at best, that there are people who agree with you. It doesn't settle anything.

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https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/02/brun-f16.html

I'm glad you cite a Socialist web site. I am a passionate left-winger. 

This sentence is a bit misleading, maybe:

To the last, the Church authorities were fearful of the ideas of a man who was known throughout Europe as a bold and brilliant thinker.

It's true that Church authorities didn't trust him all along. It's NOT true that everyone else in Europe considered him brilliant. There are numerous examples of people finding him arrogant and careless, a plagiarist and mystic who embraced fake artifacts and oddball superstitions. 

The article is careful not to say that he was killed for science:

His life stands as a testimony to the drive for knowledge and truth that marked the astonishing period of history known as the Renaissance—from which so much in modern art, thought and science derives.

Again, he may be useful as a martyr for free speech. It would be nice if a martyr for free speech hadn't also been a mystic with wild Hermetic beliefs, but I guess we take who we can get. 

Bruno has long been revered as a martyr to scientific truth.

I have acknowledged that this is true. I have argued that he does not deserve this role. Trump is revered as a great president by some. Jesus is revered as the son of God. That doesn't make it true.

Here is an excellent quote from Bruno himself:

“He who desires to philosophise must first of all doubt all things. He must not assume a position in a debate before he has listened to the various opinions, and considered and compared the reasons for and against. "

I think he is criticizing you here, brewer. 

The rest of the article works hard to associate Bruno with Copernicus, but says nothing at all about the majority of his system. It doesn't mention Hermes Trismegistus, Hermeticism, the Smaragdine Tablet, or any of the other wild stuff that, if he were to post about it on this forum, you would ridicule him for talking about. (Had you ever heard of Hermes Trismegistus before today?)

So I think in the four sources you link us to, Wikipedia has given one name of one scholar who agrees with you that Bruno was a scientist. The first blog post you link to argues that the infinite worlds theory was more important in the heresy trial than previously thought, but concludes by saying that Bruno didn't use the scientific method at all. 

I think your declaration of victory on this subject was not warranted.