The legacy of Giordano Bruno for the junglenautical program

"Underneath the construction of civilization you can find many arches, those of religion, politics, economy and of revolutionary politics. Between these catacombs there is an ongoing communication. In this underground, utopia's move and split up in many directions. Sometimes they form close bonds. Sometimes they struggle. But nothing can stop these forces that are climbing up to their destination. Human civilization is hardly aware of these movements which don't touch the top soil but do their work in the depth. Which work? they are the future."

Victor Hugo, Les Miserable, 1862

The book for which we know Copernicus today appeared shortly after his dead in 1543. In "De Revolutionibus" he proves mathematically that it's not the earth but the sun that stood in the middle of the planetary system revolving around it. Even though there had been within the scientific community much debate about the truth of the geocentrist dogma it was Copernicus who took the trouble to write it all down in a book thatw a sonly to be published after he had died. Copernicus had correctly sensed that publishing such a book would be dangerous. As soon as itw as published Catholic Church reacted with scorn, labelled the book heresy & banned it immediately.

While Copernicus was a catholic in good standing, doing astronomical research for the Vatican & his publisher, the mathematician Rheticus, was a Lutherian. In times of religious discord both men worked together for the cause of scientific truth.

The heliocentric worldview was not accepted by the Catholic church until the half of the 18th century. The Jesuits specifically kept hunting down everybody defending the profane idea to remove the earth & therefore mankind from the centre of the universe. In his 1953 play 'Life of Galilei' Bertolt Brecht writes about the famous trial against Galileo's astronomical system which was gaining in theoretical strength & popular support everyday. The Brecht book shows in a delicate way the internal struggle within the Vatican ranks which surrounded the process which brought Galileo in front of his judges. Having good connections with tolerant forces within the Vatican who recognized that the heliocentric worldview worked & couldn't ignore the wishes of the sea towns Padua & Venice for the more reliable star maps which were made possible with it on the one hand & the social disarray orthodox papal forces feared from dislocating the earth out of the centre of gods creation. In the end they found a solution wherein Galileo could work without being bothered, at the condition that he kept his astronomical work strictly written down in mathematics. It is interesting to know that Brecht wrote the first version of his Galileo play in favour of Galileo as the saviour of reason over the dark forces of dogma. After the second world war he rewrote it. Brecht now saw Galileo as the main scientist responsible for the division of science & civil life. A process which led, according to Brecht, to a situation where it was possible for the best minds of a generation to work together on a mass destruction weapon in the genuine belief that they would have a say in how it was going to be used. From Galileo to Hiroshima in 300 years.

Perhaps things would have gone different if the world had paid more attention to the stubbornness of Giordano Bruno, an Italian radical who was burned at the stake in 1600. His 'crimes' were not only the usual reasons for people getting the dead penalty in those days. The denial of the bible as being sacred & the debunking of the sacraments for instance but also, on a more practical level, the criticizing of the roman church for her worldly politics, the commercialisation of sin redemption of which the huge profits were being used by a serial of corrupt popes to fight wars & build preposterous churches . Opinions, in short, which have cost thousands of peoples their lives. The reason why Giordano Bruno is so interesting for the junglenautical praxis is that there were no others who so openly defended the Copernican system in the late 16th century. What's more, Bruno radicalised Copernican facts with the notion that the universe has no middle point at all, that the sun is a star between millions of others. For Bruno the universe was infinite, a dangerous opinion, which Copernicus, and many others, carefully avoided. Bruno was an unconventional thinker who stopped seeing god as a 'person' but rather as some sort cosmic DNA inhibiting everything as a divine spirit. He also believed that there was intelligent life on other planets, making him the acclaimed godfather of SETI. There is even a Giordano Bruno Award for those who have committed worthy acts in the field of alien discovery.

While Galileo bow down for the inquisition & started to hide the social implication of his science by mathematizing it, thus making it incomprehensible for the laity. For Bruno, as a philosopher, the new astronomical system was a tool in his overall attack against the way the world was organized.

Bruno integrated the new science into his worldview, a worldview which became a way of life he refused to surrender under any circumstance. Bruno was truly a radical. From the divinity of the universe he explained God as not somebody who can be contacted when needed, but as something synonyms with nature itself. In a time in which the representation of god on earth was the justification of authority & a constant cause of war, Bruno was sweeping the power base under the asses of catholic & protestant leaders by stating that there personified god did not exist. A maverick opinion, which laid the foundation for the teachings from Spinoza & the sub-cultural atheism at the end of the 19th century.

His life threatend in Italy, Bruno travelled for more than 30 years throughout protestant Europe. Easygoing as he was, a fluent debater who was able to make admirers wherever he introduced himself & being on the run for the 'heretics of Rome' he was easily seen as a friend by the protestants he encountered. He managed to get appointments at royal courts & universities without much trouble, but as soon as the initial enthusiasm for his person fainted it turned out that his personality as well as his strange theories were to uncompromising to root under protection of any worldly power. At the end he was lured back to Italy by a certain Mocenigo who wanted Bruno to teach him, but eventually handed him over to the inquisition. Why Bruno excepted this offer to come back in the first place is a question which have never been fully explained, home-sickness has been suggested. Bruno was put into prison & for the rest of his live, 9 years, he was to remain there. But his power of will was unbroken, time after time he refused to withdraw anything he had said. He accepted his death penalty with as he said: "Less fear than you my judges lay it on me". Legend has it that Bruno's last act of resistance while dying on the stake was to push away a crucifix which was showed him. This might be true coming from a man who collected a triple heresy bill. The Catholics of Rome, the protestants of Geneva & the Anglican Church in Britain all convicted him as a heretic.

Galilei, Kepler. Brahe & other eminent scientist of those days were certainly aware of the books written by Bruno, but for their own safety Galileo for instance never acknowledged Bruno's existence. Bruno's work being connotated with sinner's fire soon went down in obscurity.

This were the circumstances which made Copernicus & Galilei became the great scientists which 'invented' modern astronomy, while Bruno remained a footnote in the history of the late renaissance. But we should not forget that Bruno was not an scientist, he was a philosopher in a time that this was an all compassing profession. He regarded Copernicus as just a mathematician & as such not being able to understand fully what his disoveries meant. It was differentiation of science into different fields of specialisation which began with the 'new science' that Bruno distrusted more than everythinge else.

Only at the end of the 19th century Bruno was rediscovered by freethinkers and even gained so much popularity that Bruno statues in Naples & Rome were erected. His statue in Rome is located at the Campo di Fiore, at the same square he was burned, a footstone away from the Vatican. The unveiling of the monument (June the 9th, 1889) turned out to be a great event, more then 10.000 people from al parts of Italy showed up to celebrate Giordano Bruno & to demonstrate against pope Leo XIII in the process. Fearing riots the Vatican was closed for 3 days while the Swiss Guard was armed & ready. When this Bruno revival faded, he disappeared again from stage, but Bruno was not totally forgotten. Theosophists, Psychogeographers, freemasons, people interested in the art of memory or hermetical philosophy all studied Bruno's work in the limelight, working out different theories & explanations without ever coming close towards a unified theory of Bruno's work.

It's a sour history; only in 1992 the Vatican rehabilitated Galileo & with that renounced the geocentric worldview officially. Today the Vatican Observatory is even participating in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

After this it should be clear why the Jungle Association of Autonomous Astronauts declared 17 February 2000, 400 years after Bruno's dead, as the Naked Launch. The Frozen moment everybody sees that we can realize space travel ourselves. We used this day to introduce the Jungle AAA to a larger audience. There were some Jungle acts, who showed why we think drum'n'bass music is such explosive music that it can be used as propulsion for our star ships. Chriet Titulaer, a famous Dutch astronomer, who reported the first moon-landing for the television broadcast was there to give a lecture. Even though we are sad to say that he didn't believe we could make it to the stars we didn't let this come in our way. So on we went; giving people the opportunity to book a seat in our sound system shuttle the SS phOTEK. This will see her maiden voyage when we will leave for our First DJ on the MOON project which was also started at that day. As the name rightfully suggests we want to be the first group to organise a rave on the moon. Our destination will be a crater on the dark side of the moon which is called after Bruno!

The Jungle Association of Autonomous Astronauts is sure of it that the SS phOTEK will be able to bring us on the moon surface, you will hear from us again when we are there.