Your relationship with the past, the significant maker of your present, is worth examining. And I don’t mean just your personal past. As the inheritor of what preceded you, you are even more than you might think. You are a ball of philosophical threads, the center of which lies so deeply buried that you could spend a lifetime unraveling to get to the core, only to find that as you unraveled, you raveled. More threads accumulate, threads such as the current little essay.
The ball of threads began to grow in diameter before you reached the age of reason—an age different for each of us. By the time you consciously chose a strand or set of strands, your intellectual twine was already intertwined, and the colors of the individual threads were often hues so close that they were indistinguishable in the light of your retrospection.
Intertwining thoughts have always made many of us ask about the originality of our own thinking. Surely, somewhere along that long string of humanity, someone thought what you now think; someone foreshadowed your insights and maybe, through connections you’ll never discover, indirectly led to your synthesis of ideas. The threads of thought parallel the threads of time. We are connected to ancient thinking even when we are unaware of the influence.
One of the most controversial figures of the Renaissance, Giordano Bruno, posed the question about our link to past thinking. He recognized a connection to the thought of ancient Greeks and the religions practiced in ancient Egypt in his search for understanding. He was so controversial that the Inquisition burned him at the stake as a heretic for holding views antithetical to the Ptolemaic, geocentric, universe and the belief in a young Earth. Bruno, like Galileo, thought Copernicus was largely correct, and he also thought the universe was infinitely old, making Giordano the first in a thread of thinkers that includes the late Stephen Hawking. It was Bruno who in going beyond the Sun-centered cosmos of Copernicus, speculated that the universe had no center and was older than the people of his times believed.
Giordano Bruno would tell us that our ties to the past are worth examining if we want to be original thinkers. He would by the lesson of his life’s end, probably warn that original thinking can be dangerous. There are only a few acceptable threads of thought in the surface of any ball of string. Whatever the thread du jour is, that’s what dictates whether or not one finds acceptance. Adding a new thread, possibly even one made of never used materials, can be hazardous to one’s acceptance in societies of supposed "intellects."
It might behoove us all to ask a question that Bruno in the sixteenth century posed about our relationship to past thought. He wrote, “Do we…who begin to renew the ancient philosophy, stand in the morning to put an end to the night, or in the evening to put an end to the day? *
Yes, I’m aware that in using Bruno’s words, I’m mixing metaphors in this little piece, but the point is worth pursuing in light of his life and works and your life and works. Your tie to the past like Bruno’s tie is undeniable. If you are to seek original insights, do you sever the strings of ineffective philosophies that run like night to the morning you create, or do you cut those threads of enlightenment in favor of frayed thoughts that like the end of daylight lead into darkness?
Whether or not you choose to see your connections to the past as interwoven and accumulated threads or as moments during which you chose to continue or discontinue a philosophy, you might be wise to examine the history of influences that made you what you currently are. With some persistence, you’ll be able to determine if you are currently putting an end to night or an end to day, severing some useless string or spinning a new thread.
*Rowland, Ingrid D., Giordano Bruno: Philosopher and Heretic. New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008., p. 161.
The ball of threads began to grow in diameter before you reached the age of reason—an age different for each of us. By the time you consciously chose a strand or set of strands, your intellectual twine was already intertwined, and the colors of the individual threads were often hues so close that they were indistinguishable in the light of your retrospection.
Intertwining thoughts have always made many of us ask about the originality of our own thinking. Surely, somewhere along that long string of humanity, someone thought what you now think; someone foreshadowed your insights and maybe, through connections you’ll never discover, indirectly led to your synthesis of ideas. The threads of thought parallel the threads of time. We are connected to ancient thinking even when we are unaware of the influence.
One of the most controversial figures of the Renaissance, Giordano Bruno, posed the question about our link to past thinking. He recognized a connection to the thought of ancient Greeks and the religions practiced in ancient Egypt in his search for understanding. He was so controversial that the Inquisition burned him at the stake as a heretic for holding views antithetical to the Ptolemaic, geocentric, universe and the belief in a young Earth. Bruno, like Galileo, thought Copernicus was largely correct, and he also thought the universe was infinitely old, making Giordano the first in a thread of thinkers that includes the late Stephen Hawking. It was Bruno who in going beyond the Sun-centered cosmos of Copernicus, speculated that the universe had no center and was older than the people of his times believed.
Giordano Bruno would tell us that our ties to the past are worth examining if we want to be original thinkers. He would by the lesson of his life’s end, probably warn that original thinking can be dangerous. There are only a few acceptable threads of thought in the surface of any ball of string. Whatever the thread du jour is, that’s what dictates whether or not one finds acceptance. Adding a new thread, possibly even one made of never used materials, can be hazardous to one’s acceptance in societies of supposed "intellects."
It might behoove us all to ask a question that Bruno in the sixteenth century posed about our relationship to past thought. He wrote, “Do we…who begin to renew the ancient philosophy, stand in the morning to put an end to the night, or in the evening to put an end to the day? *
Yes, I’m aware that in using Bruno’s words, I’m mixing metaphors in this little piece, but the point is worth pursuing in light of his life and works and your life and works. Your tie to the past like Bruno’s tie is undeniable. If you are to seek original insights, do you sever the strings of ineffective philosophies that run like night to the morning you create, or do you cut those threads of enlightenment in favor of frayed thoughts that like the end of daylight lead into darkness?
Whether or not you choose to see your connections to the past as interwoven and accumulated threads or as moments during which you chose to continue or discontinue a philosophy, you might be wise to examine the history of influences that made you what you currently are. With some persistence, you’ll be able to determine if you are currently putting an end to night or an end to day, severing some useless string or spinning a new thread.
*Rowland, Ingrid D., Giordano Bruno: Philosopher and Heretic. New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008., p. 161.
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