On the Infinite Universe and Worlds

Introduction

One of six dialogues in Italian that Bruno published while living in London in 1584–1585, at the house of the French ambassador; the title pages falsely name Venice as the place of printing. It has five dialogues, with Filoteo as Bruno’s spokesman. He argues against Aristotle’s closed, finite cosmos: an infinite cause must produce an infinite effect, and space has neither centre nor edge, so the stars are suns with planets of their own. The work goes beyond Copernicus, who still assumed a bounded sphere of fixed stars. Bruno’s cosmology was part of the charges brought against him in his trial by the Roman Inquisition.

Connections

Builds on

• De rerum naturac. 55 BCE · Lucretius
• On Learned Ignorance1440 · Nicholas of Cusa
• On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres1543 · Nicolaus Copernicus