Giordano Bruno: Mystic, Heretic, Philosopher

In the Campo di Fiori market in Rome, a statue of Giordano Bruno of Nola, Napoli, stands in perpetual shadow. Located roughly on the spot where he was burned at the stake in 1600 for his heretical ideas on religion, culture, science and philosophy, the statue marks not so much a prescient scientist, although it is partly that, or even a modernist, since even modernists and post-modernists forms schools and can think and believe in lockstep. Bruno was an independent thinker and philosopher who was not afraid to explore the texts and myths of the past, or conceptualize possible futures, despite the risks imposed by institutions or canons.

A great recent book "Giordano Bruno: Philosopher, Heretic" by Ingrid D. Rowland, published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, in 2008, explores this fascinating figure and the creative -- and dangerous -- times in which he lived.


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