Child of the RenaissanceGiordano Bruno--His Life and Thought. With Annotated Translation of his Work on theInfinite Universe and Worlds by Dorothea Waley SingerReview by: Marie BoasThe Scientific Monthly, Vol. 72, No. 5 (May, 1951), p. 336Published by: American Association for the Advancement of ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20105 .

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Sequoia National Park-A Geological Album. Fran?ois E. Matthes; edited by Fritiof Fryxell. x + 136 pp., 124 figs. $3.75. University of California Press, Berke- ley. 1950. T HIS is almost a unique book, in that the salient

scenic and geologic features of Sequoia National Park are made known and understandable to lay visitors by means of photographs, each of which has a concise explanatory text. Dr. Matthes was eminently fitted for the task through his intimate knowledge of the region and his matchless interpretive skill. The geological album was first prepared in 1938, in three folios, for the National Park Service, until a geologic monograph, similar to that on the Yosemite region, could be pre- pared. But death intervened; hence Dr. Fryxell has taken the original albums and with slight changes pre- pared them for a wider public.

The features to be illustrated have been chosen with care to comprise the range of striking phenomena in the magnificent Sequoia National Park in the southern part of the Sierra Nevada. They are arranged under eleven geologic topics, each of which has also a short section of general interpretive text. It is unfortunate that the halftones are not as excellent as they might be; in some instances they are so gray that the features they illustrate are not clear even to a geologist. Ap- parently either paper or ink was not of satisfactory quality. They are in marked contrast to the fine half- tones in the companion book also reviewed here.

This pictorial guide used with another one (Along Sierra Trails: Kings Canyon National Park. Joyce and Josef Muench. New York: Hastings House [1947]), prepared by artists rather than geologists, should give visitors to the southern Sierra a deeper interest in, and a clearer understanding of, those superb landscapes.

ARTHUR BEVAN Illinois State Geological Survey Urbana

CHILD OF THE RENAISSANCE

Giordano Bruno-His Life and Thought. With Anno- tated Translation of his Work on the Infinite Universe and Worlds. Dorothea Waley Singer. xi + 378 pp. Illus. $6.00. Schuman, New York. 1950. G IORDANO BRUNO is known primarily for his in-

corporation of the Copernican astronomy into a pantheistic cosmology. However, to consider him as either a popularizer of Copernicanism, or a believer in the new astronomy on naturalistic grounds, grievously falsifies his place in the history of thought; he is rather an early example of that now-familiar phenomenon, the thinker who makes use of the conclusions of science for nonscientific purposes. Child of the Renaissance that he was, Bruno boldly combined an infinite universe, a plurality of worlds (solar systems-for him some visible stars were suns, some moons), motion of all the heavenly bodies, and a monadology with a mystical belief in the divine Oneness of things. His sources were mainly Lucretius, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, scholastic

philosophy, Plato's Timaeus, and Copernicus, whose views had not yet been branded heretical. It is reveal- ing that his cosmological speculations vastly interested Kepler, that Pythagorean mystic, but not Galileo; and that much of his contemporary reputation came from his supposed perfection of an "art of memory," a bit of natural magic derived from Raymond Lull.

Mrs. Singer outlines authoritatively the troubled years of Bruno's life: at seventeen he entered a Domini- can monastery; eleven years later he left, to wander in- cessantly-through Italy, to Paris, to Elizabethan Lon- don where his best work was done, through the Ger- manies, and then, inexplicably rash, back to Venice. There he was denounced to the Venetian Inquisition, which under pressure handed him over to the Roman Inquisition. After seven years' imprisonment he was burned at the stake, in 1600: his views on the Trinity were heretical, he had left the monastery and his vows, and his pantheistic concept of God and the universe was outside the framework of orthodox Catholicism.

Bruno's travels and acquaintances-many and in- fluential, both friends and enemies-are here recounted in thorough and clear detail, though one could wish for more interpretation; a biography that merely states events and ideas fails to satisfy the legitimate demands of the reader. The most useful and enlightening sections are those that illuminatingly outline the content and method of Bruno's cosmological and ethical writings. Most valuable of all is the excellent translation of the Italian treatise On the Infinite Universe and Worlds.

There is much that is still inexplicable about Bruno's relations with his contemporaries and with the In- quisition, but this book gives us an opportunity to under- stand his aims and method. Startlingly sincere and audacious is his firm proclamation: "It is Unity that doth enchant me. By her power I am free though thrall, happy in sorrow, rich in poverty, and quick even in death."

MARIE BOAS

Department of History University of Massachusetts

INVERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY The Invertebrates: Platyhelminthes and Rhynchocoela.

The Acoelomate Bilateria, Vol. II. Libbie Henrietta Hyman. vii + 550 pp., 208 figures. $9.00. McGraw- Hill, New York. 1951.

T-HE second volume in the treatise on "Invertebrate Zoology" will reach an expectant public which

has long eagerly anticipated its appearance. The first volume has already taken its place as an indispensable reference work in the field. There is no up-to-date comparable work available in English, the nearest equivalent treatises being the much more detailed pre- sentations in the Kiukenthal-Krumbach Handbuch der Zoologie and the Grasse Traite' de Zoologie.

The Bilateria as a group are discussed in an introduc- tory chapter, and phylogenetic considerations on each of the two phyla treated in detail are taken up as topics in the discussion outline in the succeeding chapters.

336 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

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