The Geocentric Universe
Mankind still has one foot in the old geocentric model of reality. Humans like to believe we have a special place in the universe: that Earth is at the centre of everything, man is God's ultimate creation and the human race has a glorious destiny. Carl Sagan called it "Earth chauvinism".1
It's natural and intuitive to think this way, but science has disproved the idea of geocentricity. There are an estimated 200-400 billion stars in our home galaxy and it is now thought that most of these have a planetary system of some sort. Multiply this by the 100-200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. "The scale of things is too vast to have a human significance, whence a secret desire to reduce it, to escape the dread infinity...".2
In the 1960's sci-fi classic The Man Who Fell to Earth3 the visiting alien is asked: "Are you from this solar system?". He replies: "Yes. As far as I know, there aren't any others...only suns...no planets." Scientists now believe there could be as many as a billion earth-like planets in our galaxy alone. So it seems that Earth is just another planet, a blue dot of no importance except to us humans.
We may think humans are relevant in the grand scheme of things, but we are not. The notion that mankind is well on the way to understanding and conquering the universe is egocentric and naive. The universe is likely to be infinitely large and infinitely complex. We may never understand much about it or even see very much of it.
1. Read more about Carl Sagan on Wikipedia.
2. V.A. Firsoff, Life Among the Stars, Allan Wingate Publishers UK 1974.
3. Walter Tevis, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Frederick Muller Limited UK 1963.
It's natural and intuitive to think this way, but science has disproved the idea of geocentricity. There are an estimated 200-400 billion stars in our home galaxy and it is now thought that most of these have a planetary system of some sort. Multiply this by the 100-200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. "The scale of things is too vast to have a human significance, whence a secret desire to reduce it, to escape the dread infinity...".2
In the 1960's sci-fi classic The Man Who Fell to Earth3 the visiting alien is asked: "Are you from this solar system?". He replies: "Yes. As far as I know, there aren't any others...only suns...no planets." Scientists now believe there could be as many as a billion earth-like planets in our galaxy alone. So it seems that Earth is just another planet, a blue dot of no importance except to us humans.
We may think humans are relevant in the grand scheme of things, but we are not. The notion that mankind is well on the way to understanding and conquering the universe is egocentric and naive. The universe is likely to be infinitely large and infinitely complex. We may never understand much about it or even see very much of it.
1. Read more about Carl Sagan on Wikipedia.
2. V.A. Firsoff, Life Among the Stars, Allan Wingate Publishers UK 1974.
3. Walter Tevis, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Frederick Muller Limited UK 1963.
posted by Robert Charroux at
9:19 AM
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