Overview

The Renaissance philosopher Giordano Bruno was a notable supporter of the new science that arose during his lifetime; his role in its development has been debated ever since the early seventeenth century. Hilary Gatti here reevaluates Bruno's contribution to the scientific revolution, in the process challenging the view that now dominates Bruno criticism among English-language scholars. This argument, associated with the work of Frances Yates, holds that early modern science was impregnated with and shaped by Hermetic and occult traditions, and has led scholars to view Bruno primarily as a magus. Gatti reinstates Bruno as a scientific thinker and occasional investigator of considerable significance and power whose work participates in the excitement aroused by the new science and its methods at the end of the sixteenth century. Her original research emphasizes the importance of Bruno's links to the magnetic philosophers, from Ficino to Gilbert; Bruno's reading and extension of Copernicus's work on the motions of the earth; the importance of Bruno's mathematics; and his work on the art of memory seen as a picture logic, which she examines in the light of the crises of visualization in present-day science. She concludes by emphasizing Bruno's ethics of scientific discovery.

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9780801487859

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Reviews

The author of this balanced and well documented volume, an already experienced scholar in Bruno studies (especially on those aspects of his thought which link him to the birth and early development of modern science) deserves above all to be praised for declaring in her Preface with great clarity and determination what she means to do, and then doing it in very coherent terms. Arcangelo Rossi, University of Leece. Brunianae e Campanelliana, 2000

Now, with persuasive force, a new book by the historian of science Hilary Gatti, Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science, presents a bold argument for Bruno's inclusion not only within the sphere of Renaissance sciences but also within the sphere of science as it is practiced at the present time. -Ingrid D. Rowland, The New York Review of Books, February 2001

Author Information

Hilary Gatti is Associate Professor at the Universit'di Roma'La Sapienza.'Her books include The Renaissance Drama of Knowledge: Giordano Bruno in England and The Natural Philosophy of Thomas Harriot.

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