“Giordano Bruno asserted that in the end even the devils would be pardoned and that religious strife, with its human claim to see through God's eyes, was the most misguided strife of all. Despite the optimism of the Roman students who erected his monument in Campo de' Fiori, in many respects the generation he foresaw still belongs to the future. <!-- Bruno poses no less formidable a challenge to historians of science. Working without instrumentation, posing thought problems that reflected both ancient and modern ideas about natural philosophy, he fits uncomfortably into any scheme that aims to trace scientific thought in a neat line from Copernicus through Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein. He was, perhaps, more of a poet than an empirical observer. Yet his intellectual contradictions, his blind spots, and his insights serve as a reminder that scientific investigation has always depended on inspiration as well as investigation, on mistakes as well as triumphs. Above all, --> ... Giordano Bruno defies any kind of summary judgment; his life, his ideas, and his personality are as complex as his times are distant from our own. He could be charming or infuriating, charismatic or repellent. For all his faults, however, he was brave and brilliant, and <!-- , as these pages aim to show, --> ... he was a splendid writer.”

Giordano Bruno

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