Humanity's Changing Position in the Cosmos

1. Our Place in the Universe

1.1 The Legacy of Giordano Bruno

The words attributed to Galileo, whether spoken or not, have become the symbol of the strength of scientific reason against the injustice of prejudice. But he was not the first who suffered for his scientific ideas, nor the last; others, such as Giordano Bruno, were his predecessors. Find information on Giordano Bruno and the circumstances that surrounded him.

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) was born in Nola, Italy. At 15, he entered the Dominican order and was a professor at Naples. Accused of heterodoxy, he had to flee. He achieved great success as a teacher of philosophy in Paris and Oxford. Returning to Italy in 1592, he was denounced to the Inquisition, tried, and sentenced to death for heresy at the stake. An advocate of the heliocentric model of Copernicus, his most important works are The Dinner of the Ashes, which uses the heliocentric theory as a metaphor for the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, in which he defends the plurality of inhabited worlds.

1.2 The Heliocentric System and Modern Science

In the heliocentric system, the Sun is stationary and occupies the center of the universe; the Earth and other planets revolve around it, and the Moon revolves around the Earth, while the stars are fixed in a remote, stationary area. Indicate which of these ideas are now considered correct and which are not.

• Correct: The Earth and other planets revolve around the Sun; the Moon revolves around the Earth.
• Incorrect: The Sun is stationary and occupies the center of the universe; the stars are fixed to a distant stationary dome.

1.3 Deep Time and the Copernican Revolution

It is sometimes claimed that the discovery of deep time was a change in our conception of the world as important as the Copernican revolution. On what do you think that statement can be based?

The discovery of deep time implied knowing not only that the age of the Earth was immensely large (4.56 billion years), but that most of that time had elapsed without the presence of the human species. Therefore, the world existed without Homo sapiens for the vast majority of its history and could not be seen as something created specifically for this species, which would thus lose its central position.