The Copernican Model: A Sun-Centered Solar System

The Earth-centered Universe of Aristotle and Ptolemy held sway on Western thinking for almost 2000 years. Then, in the 16th century a new idea was proposed by the Polish astronomer Nicolai Copernicus (1473-1543).

The Heliocentric System

In a book called On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies (that was published as Copernicus lay on his deathbed), Copernicus proposed that the Sun, not the Earth, was the center of the Solar System. Such a model is called a heliocentric system. The ordering of the planets known to Copernicus in this new system is illustrated in the following figure, which we recognize as the modern ordering of those planets.

Hermetic Tradition

The Hermetic tradition represents a non-Christian lineage of Hellenistic Gnosticism. The tradition and its writings date to at least the first century B.C.E., and the texts we possess were all written prior to the second century C.E. The surviving writings of the tradition, known as the Corpus Hermeticum (the "Hermetic body of writings") were lost to the Latin West after classical times, but survived in eastern Byzantine libraries. Their rediscovery and translation into Latin during the late-fifteenth century by the Italian Renaissance court of Cosimo de Medici, provided a seminal force in the development of Renaissance thought and culture. These eighteen tracts of the Corpus Hermeticum, along with the Perfect Sermon (also called the Asclepius), are the foundational documents of the Hermetic tradition.

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Thrice Greatest Hermes: Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis, Volume 2 (London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1906); they are reproduced completely, with Mead's original footnotes. (The entire three volume text of Mead's Thrice Greatest Hermes, along with a full-text search function, is available in our online G.R.S. Mead Collection.)

In supplement to the Corpus Hermeticum, we have appended to this collection the important Hermetic texts discovered in 1945 within the Nag Hammadi Library.

Though written over a century ago, Mead's Thrice Greatest Hermes provides an excellent compendium and reference to the Hermetic literature. His commentary on the texts is unequalled. However for a modern reader there is a problem with Mead's translations: he translates using an outmoded and pompous-sounding Victorian English. But then, it must be understood the original Greek texts of the surviving Hermetic literature have a rather outmoded and pompose tone, and their Greek syntax is often obscure.

With his choice of language, Mead tries to convey both the ambiguity and the the elevated, visionary intensity of the material. He correctly understood the Hermetic writings as the distillations of profound spiritual and psychological experiences -- experiences the texts themselves call "Gnosis". These are not philosophical tracts. Their core impetus was communication of a visionary reality. The tradition that produced the Corpus Hermeticum embrased an imaginative, prophetic voice common in Gnostic scriptures; and the insights this "Gnosis" produced are not easily expresssed in Greek, or Latin, or any pedestrian dialect of English. But they can by understood, if one has an ear for the core experience. It is the desire to communicate their experience of interior reality that motivated these ancient authors.

Moors in Europe

Similarly, England's King Henry VII and Henry VIII's courts had African employees. The most famous was John Blanke (1500s), a musician who was paid on a daily basis, as noted in the Treasurer of the Chamber's accounts. His image can be seen on the UK National Archives' "Westminster Tournament Scroll" of Henry VIII (shown at right). The Archives asserts that it was perhaps one of the most important royal galas, suggesting the high regard for John Blanke, "the blacke".

Moors in Renaissance Europe

When many Africans, commonly known as "Moors," (as well as other Muslims and Jews) were expelled from the Iberian peninsula (by Manuel I of Portugal in 1496 Ferdinad V and Isabella I of Spain in 1502), some of them migrated to Northern and Central Europe where they became important figures. At the same time, Western European nations, beginning with Portugal, began regularly sailing long distances to trade directly with Western and Southern Africans. This trade included African slaves, just as the trading of slaves had existed in much of the world for centuries. Although there were many European slaves in Europe (and Africa), it had become quite fashionable for nobles to have African rather than Europeans as servants. And as more Africans were servants in noble households, they were increasingly the subject of scorn in European society.

Nevertheless, Europeans had held Africans in high regard for centuries prior, (from the Catholic patron saint, Maurice, to the legendary black knights). Therefore it was possible for many Africans to move to the highest eschelons of society, particularly in England, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Russia and Germany. Some became nobles, military leaders, and other respectable professionals in royal courts throughout Europe (excluding the Iberian peninsula). They became so numerous in England that Queen Elizabeth I issued a warrant (July 1596) and a proclamation (January 1601) by which she expelled all "Blackmoores" from England:

The Queen is highly discontented to understand the great number of Negroes and black a moors which are [in England]; who are fostered here, to the great annoyance of her own people who are unhappy at the help these people receive, as also most of them are infidels having no understanding of Christ...

After Elizabeth's reign, however, Africans were once again present and active in England and elsewhere in Western Europe.

Bruno Giordano

Born in Nola (in Campania, then part of the Kingdom of Naples) in 1548, he was originally named Filippo Bruno. His father was Giovanni Bruno, a soldier. At the age of eleven he traveled to Naples to study the Trivium. At 15, Bruno entered the Dominican Order, taking the name of Giordano from Giordano Crispo, his metaphysics tutor. He continued his studies, completing his novitiate, and becoming an ordained priest in 1572.

He was interested in philosophy, and was an expert on the art of memory; he wrote books on mnemonic technique, which Frances Yates contends may have been disguised Hermetic tracts. The writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus had played an important role in the Renaissance Neoplatonic revival. At that time they were thought to date uniformly to the earliest days of ancient Egypt and to encode a form of "pristine wisdom" ("prisca philosophia").

They are now believed to date mostly from about 300 A.D. and are associated with Neoplatonism.

In Rome he was imprisoned for seven years during his lengthy trial, lastly in the Tower of Nona.

Some important documents about the trial are lost, but others have been preserved, among them a summary of the proceedings that was rediscovered in 1940. [2] The numerous charges against Bruno, based on some of his books as well as on witness accounts, included blasphemy, immoral conduct, and heresy in matters of dogmatic theology, and involved some of the basic doctrines of his philosophy and cosmology.

Luigi Firpo lists them as follows: [3]

Holding opinions contrary to the Catholic Faith and speaking against it and its ministers.

Holding erroneous opinions about the Trinity, about Christ's divinity and Incarnation.

Holding erroneous opinions about Christ.

Holding erroneous opinions about Transubstantiation and Mass.

Claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity.

Believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes.

Dealing in magics and divination.

Denying the Virginity of Mary.

Bruno continued his Venetian defensive strategy, which consisted in bowing to the Church's dogmatic teachings, while trying to preserve the basis of his philosophy. In particular Bruno held firm to his belief in the plurality of worlds, although he was admonished to abandon it. His trial was overseen by the inquisitor, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, who demanded a full recantation, which Bruno eventually refused. Instead he appealed in vain to Pope Clement VIII, hoping to save his life through a partial recantation.

The Pope expressed himself in favor of a guilty verdict. Consequently, Bruno was declared a heretic, handed over to secular authorities on February 8, 1600. At his trial he listened to the verdict on his knees, then stood up and said:

"Perhaps you, my judges, pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it."

A month or so later he was brought to the Campo de' Fiori, a central Roman market square, his tongue in a gag, tied to a pole naked and burned at the stake, on February 17, 1600.

Steam takes on Twitch with new games streaming service

The immensely popular PC gaming service Steam is launching its own live streaming service so that users can easily share their game playing footage.

Named Steam Broadcasting, the feature will be a direct rival to Twitch, currently the favorite platform for live game streaming.

Via a freely available client, currently in beta, Steam users will be able to watch the games their friends are playing or automatically broadcast their own gaming sessions across the service.

Steam is the largest PC games distribution service in the world, with over 100m users. It is effectively a digital store, selling PC gamers, which users download and store on their computers. However, like console services such as Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, it also has a social element, with friends lists and chat forums.

According to Valve, there is a range of privacy settings allowing broadcasters to restrict viewership to specific friends or to a whole friends list. Selecting “Anyone can watch my games” will place the stream on the game’s hub area on Steam. Users will even have the option to broadcast their desktop.

Live streaming is becoming an increasingly popular element of games culture. Formed in 2011, Twitch TV is the dominant platform, streaming content over the internet to around 45m regular viewers. Anyone can use the service to share footage of themselves playing games, but the site also hosts and promotes top channels, which show major eSports events and tutorials by the top professional players. In august, the site was purchased by Amazon for $1bn.

Currently the Steam Broadcasting service is more limited than Twitch. Users can watch footage on a variety of browsers but can only currently stream content from a Windows 7 or 8 PC, though support for Linux and Mac platforms is promised.

New eSports Conference to feature Ubisoft, Twitch and more

September event for the competitive gaming scene

There's a new industry event in town and it's the eSports Conference. It will take place in September in San Francisco.

Todd Harris, COO and Co-Founder of Hi-Rez Studios, ESL's Ralf Reichert, Kevin Lin of Twitch and Robb Chiarini of Ubisoft are just some of the speakers scheduled to attend.

"I'm very excited to learn, compare notes, and collaborate with the leaders and innovators in eSports and where they see the future of eSports going," said Cinco Barnes of Spacetime Studios, who will also be attending.

The eSports Conference will take place from September 9-10, 2015 at the JW Marriott Union Square in San Francisco.