February 17

Today marks the death of Giordano Bruno, in 1600, who was burned at the stake for heresy. He was a polymath, philosopher, and pantheist who theorized, among other things, that stars were distant suns and may have planets around them. He was brilliant and eccentric, but his belief in the “plurality of worlds” put him at odds with Roman Catholic authorities. 

Today also marks the death-in-exile, in 1849, of María de las Mercedes Barbudo, an early independence activist of Puerto Rico. After her arrest and exile, she met Simón Bolivar and continued working for a unified Latin America. 

Today is the birthday, in 1864, of Joseph Murgas (or Jozef Murgaš), a Slovak priest-scientist who pioneered the use of radio. He was also a polymath: a botanist, naturalist, and painter, and during his time in America was an organizer of the Slovakian Catholic community. While Marconi and Edison get much recognition for the development of radio technology, Murgas deserves some share of the credit. There is a public domain biography of him available here. 

Reflection: 

Bruno had a high opinion of himself, and it may be his arrogance that helped lead to his conviction and death. Some have argued that his cosmology was informed more by his mystical and astrological beliefs than by science.

But he was also right. There are other worlds.

A personal story: many years ago, in a Tai Chi class, another classmate who was more “vibrationally attuned” than I was talked about how, as she did Tai Chi in the woods, she felt the trees talking to each other. I didn’t say anything out loud, but I rolled my eyes and dismissed it as woo-woo aura-and-crystals New Agey stuff.

Of course, twenty years later, the world learned that trees do talk to each other through the mycelial network under our feet and through emitting aerosolized chemicals that are breathed by animals and received by other plants. Though I’m still skeptical of non-scientific claims, I know that there are many paths of knowledge, some intuitive, some beyond our five senses. I know that we even smell more than our consciousness recognizes, and, although we lack the senses birds have, our bodies also emit and respond to electromagnetic fields. I was wrong. My classmate was right.

Not all knowledge is cognitive knowledge. Those of us committed to the truth must remember the limits of conventional wisdom.

Prayer: Author of Knowledge, let us be open to imagination and to knowledge that may come from beyond our five senses. Amplify our intuition and heart-knowledge, and give us the courage to stand for our convictions. Amen.