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| Neil deGrasse Tyson, host of Cosmos. |
DeGrasse Tyson is an engaging speaker and scientist, one of the most accessible personalities to grace popular science in recent years, and his public remarks on science and religion have been generally sensitive. Unfortunately, he’s not a historian and he (and/or the producers and writers) chose to kick off Cosmos with a history lesson. His characterization of 16th century monk Giordano Bruno as a martyr to science was pretty unfair to Giordano Bruno and to history.[1]
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| The grand inquisitor in the 2014 Cosmos. |
Granted, the boogeyman is not Christianity, but the old standby baddie, the Catholic church (as likely nowadays as Nazis to appear as villains); and Bruno does remain a sympathetic religious figure suffering as much for his faith as his science (he rises cruciform into the sky in one sequence). But spending 30 animated minutes on his life and execution was too much too soon. PBS, maybe, but not FOX.
I’ll listen to and watch deGrasse Tyson anytime I can, but I’m hoping Cosmos moves along now and focuses on science.
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FWIW, Bruno was executed primarily for heresies on traditional Christian doctrines (the Trinity, divinity of Jesus, virginity of Mary, etc), and not his science.
Does that make it okay? Of course not. Neither does it make him a martyr for science.
I don’t want anyone to whitewash the past, but if you’re going to tell it, tell it like it was.
[2014-03-09]
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| Pope John Paul II with a crosier. |
[1]
Crosses are plentiful in Cosmos’s animated version of Bruno’s life, and at one point, the inquisitor shoves his crosier into Bruno’s face before he’s executed. The symbols are unmistakably Catholic and most Protestants will likely take no offense, though they should. The relatively new Reformation denominations denounced Bruno too, and weren't unknown to burn a heretic or two (Michael Servetus >).
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