ABSTRACT
Supposing that philosophy means a set of teachings which is typical for that particular philosopher, we are really at a loss with the Nolan, if we want to give him a place in the modern world. Of course he taught the infinity of the world, but he evidently overslept the big bang. He taught the movement of the earth around the sun, and even the existence of infinite systems of suns. But this infinity according to modern astrophysics is only a virtual one and, above all, wherever from and however he had come upon that theory, the scientific evidence has been provided by others. Whatever portion of Bruno’s teaching proved to be true, the proofs thereof depended on methods alien to him.2 Modern
1 Regarding Bruno see my ‘Istoriar la figura: Theoriensynkretismus bei Frances A. Yates und Giordano Bruno als philosophisches Modell’, in Zeitsprünge – Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit, 3, 1999, pp. 130-54.
