Copernican Revolution

This is the most meaningful revolution in understanding of anything.

The only thing equivalent would have been the Copernican Revolution.

where we understood, oh my gosh, we're not the center of the universe.

It's like, okay, that was a very big deal.

This is as big a deal.

And just as the Copernican revolution was so disturbing to the status quo, it was unbelievably threatening to the church.

The next revolution of this magnitude was Darwin.

and god knows darwin is still being fought you know i mean people still have very difficult problems with darwin even highly intelligent people you know i mean still have problems with darwin uh that's because they don't understand okay and then even among people that understand and and are no longer fighting the notion of human beings as products of evolution Which, incidentally, the Catholic Church finally choked down in like 1992, for God's sakes.

It's not a new idea necessarily to Harry, but he does make it very fundamental to, uh, many of the writings that are in this volume.

It really kinda comes from, uh, something that the Italian autonomous Marxist Mario Tronti wrote about decades earlier, uh, that he called the Copernican Revolution.

And Tronti's point is that we need to start from the working class rather than from capital.

And Harry coins this term the inversion of class perspective.

He thought it was a rich and marvelous work.

And then more theologically in Lewis's Christian life, he said that the greatest Psalm in the Psalter was Psalm 19. the greatest poem in the book of psalms and one of the greatest lyrics in the world and of course it's that song that begins the heavens are telling the glory of god the firmament proclaims his handiwork so all these things show that lewis was absolutely steeped in in this uh old cosmology he didn't believe it was literally true of course you know he he accepted the copernican revolution that the sun is actually at the center of our solar system and the sun does not go around the earth even though it looks like it does we go around the sun um so he was he was content to accept the scientific advance brought about by copernicus of course um but he nonetheless thought that the pre-copernican cosmos um because of its of its spiritual interpretation of material reality conveyed an attitude to the universe which was worth retaining and which in some ways we have lost as science has progressed.

Science has in some measure spiritualized or disenchanted the universe.

And we now tend to think much more purely in materialistic terms, in terms of quantity.

I'm reminded of that, but there's value in those early probings.

And there was certainly inspiration and revelation coming from the divine that was guiding us through that early childhood, if you will, of civilization.

prior to the Copernican Revolution.

These were just some of the thoughts I was having as you were talking.

and when they start looking at kings as sons.

Now, the most obvious example is Louis XIV in the 17th century, but by then we have the Copernican Revolution, and heliocentrism, which makes this metaphor much more powerful.

Because now the Sun is the focal point of the universe, basically.

We're still looking at a relatively small, compact universe in which first the Earth and now the Sun is the center.

And I notice that every answer I reach for, that we'll find some new source of purpose, that AI itself might help provide it, that maybe we will just get used to it, or that a different way of living will emerge, is still, I think, speaking the language of the wound.

So rather than attempt an answer, I will leave you with two pictures that I think beautifully illustrate the change the Copernican Revolution set in motion.

From the center of the universe to a mote of dust in a sunbeam.

There's an image here.