Is there nothing new?

The monk and philosopher Giordano Bruno was born in Naples in 1548. His thoughts, far in advance of his time, resulted in his persecution by the Church. He was condemned by the Inquisition to be burned at the stake in Rome (1504.) His thoughts show his conception that the Earth was not the only possible habitat of life, or of advanced beings.

Accordingly we must rid ourselves of the paltry thought that it is for us that all things are created. "Only one bereft of his reason could believe that those infinite spaces, tenanted by vast and magnificent bodies, are designed only to give us light, or to receive the clear shining of the earth." "If in the eyes of God there is but one starry globe, if the sun and moon and all creation are made for the good of the earth and for the welfare of man, humanity may be exalted, but is not the Godhead abased? Is this not to straiten and confine his providence? What! is a feeble human creature the only object worthy of the care of God? No, the earth is but a planet, the rank she holds among the stars is but by usurpation; it is time to dethrone her. The ruler of our earth is not man, but the sun, with the life which breathes in common through the universe."

GIORDANO BRUNO