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MIGUEL ÁNGEL GRANADA De immenso et innumerabilibus, I, 3 and the Concept of Planetary Systems in the Infinite Universe. A Commentary Dispositio synodorum ex mundis in universo. Distinctio inter astra lucentia per se et per aliud. Cur planetae, qui sunt circa alios soles, non videntur. Ut solem hunc circa Tellus, Luna, aliger Hermes, Saturnus, Venus, et Mavors, et Juppiter errant, et numerus fasso major, nam caetera turba partim pro vicibus, partim non cernitur unquam, sic circum fit quemque alium: nam lege necesse est naturae, flammas fomentum sumere ab undis. Maximu’ quando hic vult circum undique multa minora mutuum, ut vires immittant, atque remittant proficuas; ubi conveniens distantia pacem conciliat; nam de adversis vita atque nutrimen devenit, harmonicis quia seposita intervallis concurrunt, motusque vagos contemperat aestus. Sic circum unumquemque Phoebum cytharoedum plures discurrunt Nymphae choreasque frequentant, quas vegeto sensu, ac clara ratione videmus, quando unam ad normam venit abstans atque propinquum nec variat numerus primorum principiorum conformem in speciem ut nequeant coalescere ubique. De immenso et innumerabilibus, book I, chapter 3.1 Published in Frankfurt in 1591, Giordano Bruno’s De immenso et innumerabilibus is the last and the most mature and complete exposition of his cosmological ideas. However, the significance of this work does not concern only the cosmological and physical domain, since it contains also a lucid presentation of Bruno’s vindication of philosophy as the proper path to human perfection and intellectual happiness through the scientific 92 Experience and Vision of a New Cosmic Order knowledge of nature and, thereby, to the union with God. This theological dimension results from nature being the necessary and infinite expression of God, from which it follows that true knowledge of the foundations of nature allows man to know God and to ‘communicate’ with Him. Thus, Bruno liberates philosophy from subordination to religion, restores its dimension as a path to the divinity proper to the ‘perfect man,’ and proceeds to a criticism and denunciation of the imposture and subversion of values introduced by Christian religion. This theological and anthropological dimension of philosophy is presented in full in the two initial chapters (I, 1–2) of De immenso and in the conclusion.2 Given the character of these preliminary chapters, the importance of the third chapter of the first book, on which I will now comment, becomes even more evident. When Bruno presents his cosmological conception, it is with the verses I have chosen that he starts. This means that the points established in these verses are, in large measure, the fundamental tenets of his cosmology. Of course, the infinity of the universe as a necessary product of God and the expression of God’s infinity has already been established in the first chapter.3 Now, with our verses, Bruno begins to present the structure of the infinite universe and affirms that it consists in an (infinite) repetition of “synodi ex mundis”, which we have translated as “planetary systems .” Each synodus is formed by a central star or sun and a set of planets (also called ‘waters,’ ‘earths,’ and, in our verses, ‘nymphs’), including also comets as a kind of ‘planet rarely visible.’4 This is the information provided in the title of the chapter (“Disposition of planetary systems in the universe ”), which adds that the two components of the synodus5 (or system) differ in the sense that the central sun or star shines by itself (its principal element being fire) and the planets (composed mainly of earth and water) shine in so far as they reflect the light of their sun from the surface of their seas, i.e., they shine “by another agent.” The title includes one further point—a point that is not considered in depth here, but is, nevertheless, important enough to be mentioned here in these preliminary remarks: “why planets around other suns are not visible.” In the course of this chapter , Bruno says the reasons for this are the following: firstly, the smallness of the planets and, secondly, the fact that their light is reflected6 (he adds later in the work a third reason: their immense distance from us).7 Of course, it could be observed that all these points had already been established in the Italian dialogues (La cena de le Ceneri or De l’infinito universo e mondi) or in his cosmological works published previously in Germany in 1588 (the Camoeracensis acrotismus or the Articuli adversus mathematicos). Nevertheless, the formulation in De...

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