Hermetism Category
“Religion” as a Modern Invention
Posted on July 29, 2014 1 Comment
Upon returning from my trip to England, I was delighted to find Amazon’s trademark smiling boxes waiting for me. I had ordered a number books before my trip, and among them was Brent Nongbri’s Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (2013). I first came across Nongbri’s book in a footnote in Peter Harrison’s […]
The “Scientific Revolution” as Narratology (Part 2)
Posted on October 29, 2013 Leave a Comment
In 1948 English historian Herbert Butterfield presented a series of lectures for the History of Science Committee at the University of Cambridge. There he argued that historians have overlooked an episode of profound intellectual transformation—one apparently comparable in magnitude to the rise of Christianity and that was deeply implicated in the very formation of the […]
Myths about Science and Religion: That Giordano Bruno was the First Martyr of Modern Science
Posted on April 4, 2013 3 Comments
In 1600, on the seventeenth of February, Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer, was ceremoniously burned at the stake in Rome’s Flower Market by the Roman Inquisition. His end is brutal to modern sensibility but not exceptional in the early modern period. But Bruno’s death stands out, mentioned in passing […]