The View
The View from the Center of the Universe;
We are central to the universe. This belief has been the foundation of all centering cosmologies in the past, but today it is no longer merely an assumption. Now we have evidence. During the centuries between Newton and the current cosmological revolution, however, people could find no such evidence and abandoned centrality as wishful thinking. Instead, they embraced the notion that humans are insignificant, isolated beings in a vast, mostly empty space, and made the best of it by finding a kind of nobility in self-deprecation. This has led to the cultural result that the phrase “I’m human” now means basically “I make mistakes,” “I have my limits,” “Don’t expect too much of me.” Admitting our own imperfections and apologizing for our mistakes is a worthy purpose for invoking this phrase, but thinking of being human essentially as a limitation is a self-fulfilling prophecy and denies us our cosmic potential.
by Joel R. Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams
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