I'm sure you all know that there was a widespread belief prior to Nicolaus Copernicus's proposal of the heliocentric model that the Earth was at the center of the universe, with everything up to and including the stars traveling in perfect circles around us. Part of this came from observation, given that the Sun and stars and all appear to be circling us; but a large part of this misapprehension was motivated by religion. Not only was there at least some passing mentions in the Bible that suggested geocentrism was correct (such as "Sun, stand thou still over Gibeon" from Joshua chapter 10), it seemed that as the site of the Garden of Eden and the Incarnation and Crucifixion, of course God would put us at the center of the universe.
Then, along came Copernicus, followed by Galileo (who, upon discovering four of the moons of Jupiter, demonstrated that at least some celestial bodies didn't revolve around us), Kepler, and Tycho Brahe, the latter two of whom showed that astronomical objects don't even demonstrate heavenly perfection by traveling in circles, but move in "imperfect" ellipses.
Since then, we've been pushed farther and farther from the center of things. In 1924 astronomer Edwin Hubble proved that not only was the Milky Way not the only galaxy, but many of the "nebulae" (the Latin word for "cloud," since prior to that there were no telescopes powerful enough to resolve individual stars in them) were "island universes" themselves, with the nearest -- Andromeda -- at an astonishing 2.5 million light years away.
Hubble also used the strange red shift of light from these distant objects to conjecture that the universe was expanding, the first step toward establishing the Big Bang model of the origin of the universe. Oddly, though, almost everything Hubble looked at was red-shifted; it appeared that the whole universe was rushing away from us, as if we -- once again -- were at the center of things. But a bit of three-dimensional geometry showed that this is exactly what we'd expect if space itself were expanding, carrying objects along with it. No matter where you are, whether here on Earth or on a planet in the Whirlpool Galaxy over thirty million light years away, it looks like everything is moving away from you.
The Whirlpool Galaxy (Messier 51) [Image is in the Public Domain courtesy of NASA and the ESA]
Most of the data we have suggests that the universe is largely homogeneous (any given volume of space is likely to have on average the same amount of matter in it) and isotropic (every direction you aim your telescope looks approximately the same). Not even the region of space we sit in is remarkable in any way.
The Copernican principle is sometimes called the principle of mediocrity; we don't occupy a privileged place in the cosmos. And this same principle has cropped up elsewhere. Genetics and evolution have shown us humans to be part of the Great Continuum of Life, just one branch of the extensive tree that includes all living things. (And our nearest relatives, the great apes, share something like 98-99% of our genetic makeup.) We may be the smartest animals -- although events of the last year have made me question that -- but animals we most certainly are.
And a lot of people really don't like this. I'm not just talking about the creationists, who have a doctrine-based reason for disbelieving all of the above; but there's a certain brand of woo-woo that rebels against the Copernican principle just as hard, only in a different way. And even if they come to different conclusions than the biblical literalists, I find myself wondering if they're not, at their cores, motivated by the same drive.
"We are too special, really we are!"
This attitude is best exemplified by one Alex Collier, who "claims to have worked in military service as a helicopter pilot in the United States" (the equivocal language was the article writer's, not mine). I first ran into Collier fifteen years ago, when he said the Earth was being "bombarded by demonic hyperdimensional entities who have engineered our current space-time continuum," that an "extraterrestrial war" in the 1930s propelled us into the wrong timeline, and that NASA is covering up evidence that we're about to be attacked by the Borg Cube. So Collier wasn't exactly a reliable witness even back then, but if anything, his grasp on reality has gone downhill in the intervening fifteen years.
Because he's back at it, even bigger and better. Now, he's telling us that the human species was created in a lab by superpowerful aliens from the Andromeda Galaxy, who pulled together and melded the DNA from twenty-two diverse alien species to produce us. (I guess the fact of our having a near-perfect genetic overlap with other primates here on Earth is just a strange coincidence.) He also has some insights about what to expect now that this astonishing information has been revealed:
[A] “dimensional collapse” [has] already begun, marked by changes in sound and color. [Collier] mentioned that people would soon start hearing about “rods” — streaks of light captured on video. According to him, these were etheric, fourth- and fifth-dimensional craft moving through space, unaware that they were passing right through our dimension. He explained this as a sign of an ongoing implosion between dimensions...
[M]ore ghosts and apparitions would become visible because souls trapped between the third and fourth densities would appear more frequently as Earth’s frequency rose. Many of these souls, unless healed, would eventually transition out of this plane.
He also apparently said that we should "be cautious about anyone claiming to be an angel," which is good advice, but not for the reason he thinks.
What struck me about all this is not that some wingnut has a crazy idea -- after all, that's what wingnuts do -- but that this is really nothing more than a modern iteration of the "We are too special!" mental set that has been plaguing us pretty much forever. A lot of pseudoscience works this way, doesn't it? Astrology posits that the (apparent) arrangements and movements of astronomical bodies somehow shapes the courses of human lives. Numerology suggests that the chance occurrence of patterns of numbers is because the universe is set up to send us information. Even practices like Tarot divination presuppose that your own life's path is important enough to influence magically what comes up from shuffling and dealing a deck of cards.
I mean, I get that life (way) off-center is a little scary and disorienting sometimes. Bill Watterson's brilliant Calvin & Hobbes captured it perfectly:
It's enough that we have, against all odds, begun to take our first tentative steps into understanding how everything works. That's all the self-aggrandizement I need as a human. I'll end with the short but mind-blowing quote from Carl Sagan: "The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself."
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