Humankind Has Been Decentered

Goodbye to all that.

Once upon a time - certainly by the time of the Athenian civilisation - humans thought they were the centre of the universe. Protagoras believed that man was the measure of all things, and there was no doubt in the minds of most of the Greek philosophers that we were pretty special as animals go. We alone among earth’s creatures had godlike reason, self-awareness and concepts like justice and art. We were, to use technical language, the bee’s knees. Furthermore we were obviously at the centre of the universe with all the planets and the sun revolving around us, encased in overlapping crystal spheres that produced heavenly music.

It must have felt pretty good to be human in those days, or at least pretty special. Later, with the coming of Christianity, we had a loving god and a saviour put on earth to forgive us for our sins, so we were heading for heaven. Life was still hard for most, full of disease and hardship, but our sense of self was pretty rock sold.

All this began to unravel with the rise of science, specifically astronomers like Copernicus and Galileo, revealing that far from being at the centre of the universe, we were just another planet amongst many, revolving around a sun that was also one of many. So our self image took a knock. But it got worse from there.