Cosmos and Christian History

As I watched the first episode of the new Cosmos series March 9, I wondered a number of things in succession: Wait, who’s this Bruno guy? How are the show’s writers going to play the science-and-religion thing? More important, with so much science to explain–and to illustrate with nifty special effects–why are they playing the science-and-religion thing at all?

The all-knowing Internet was able to help me with the first question right away. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was one of several early modern thinkers who combined what we’d now call theology, science, math, literature, and magic into a speculative body of work that eventually got him killed by religious authorities. His abrasive personality and the myriad tensions of 16th-century Europe didn’t help. A fantastic exchange on a Discover magazine blog has since filled in my sketchy knowledge of Bruno and his contributions.

What struck me about the portrayal of science versus religion was the twist on the familiar scientific martyrology. Many cliches were repeated, as the lone truth-seeker chafed against limits on academic freedom and was ultimately slain merely for teaching ideas that were ahead of his time. (The Discover blog deconstructs these cliches as well.) But the money line was cartoon-Bruno’s plea to his examiners, “Your God is too small!” I took this as an argument that religion, rightly understood, is not threatened by, nor does it pose a threat to, scientific inquiry. Of course, it’s more than a little presumptuous for a popular science show to define the right understanding of religion, but the argument is basically what I was taught as an undergrad at Wheaton College, and a far cry from the sneering hostility of Andrew Dickson White or Inherit the Wind.

Still, why go there at all?

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