Gonzalez and Richards Chapter Twelve

Assumptions and implications are not the same thing

You can also tell some things about the political persuasion of the editors and thus the authors. For instance, Astronomy magazine is not generally favorable to the President’s space program. And so they print things that seem to discount the president. They have said: “An American president with no previous interest in space, along with a NASA administrator with no space-program experience, crafted a policy that space supporters had awaited for nearly four decades.”[1]  The sole purpose of such mindless diatribe is to tell the world that even if the president does the right thing, he has done the wrong thing. In the first place, the president, despite the attempted defamation of the leftist media, was a real veteran with a known history as a fighter pilot (F-102s). Fact: nobody that has turned on the afterburners has never thought about going “all the way up.”  So, just because he never came right out and dreamed in public, means precisely nothing about whether or not he had a vision for the space program. Secondly, he was governor of what state?  Texas. I believe Houston is in that state, no?  It seems to me that some important effects of the space program are housed there. My guess is that in all his trips around the state, he probably went to Houston and looked at some of the facilities. Perhaps he also talked with NASA administrators that according to the author’s rather restrictive definitions had “no space-program experienced.”  Perhaps, he also discovered something that armchair scientists and pseudo-elite authors would be well to remember: administrators are paid to get things done!  Maybe the president found one he could trust to move things forward – whether or not Canadian critics approved.

Next, in the September 2005 issue of Astronomy, Julius Wroblewski of Vancouver, BCCanada says the following:

Buzz Aldrin’s vision of future space travel was captivating (“Space Buzz,” May 2005). I think Aldrin is too optimistic about manned space flight, however. The gap between the vision of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the real 2001 couldn’t have been more jarring. There are no regular Pan Am flights to the Moon, no lunar space stations or colonies. Space travel has turned out to be more expensive and dangerous than we thought. Maybe we should throttle back on plans for manned space flight and concentrate on what is the modern equivalent to the problem of determining longitude: how to get anything into orbit safely and cheaply. Until that problem is solved, we should depend more on our ever-evolving fleet of robotic probes to explore the cosmos. As technology evolves, we shouldn’t be obsessed with an antiquated model of needing to put a human boot print on every landscape in order to know it.[2]

In the first place, the editors are trying to do everything to get us to believe in evolution – including subliminal notion (e.g., the books reviewed on page 92). Repetition is the mother of brain-washedness. . . . So the real reason the letter to the editor was published was because of the repetition of the concept of technological evolution. But you can tell a lot about an argument by how it is constructed and the emotional nomenclature used to develop it. The old joke was that the louder a preacher yelled at you, the less he had to back up his claims. My dad used to say that pre-war radio sound-bites of Hitler had him “screaming like a madman.”  The title, “Flights of Fancy” is used to prejudice the discussion from the outset. Secondly, the mention of 2001, would require the mention of 1984, wouldn’t it?  I think the dissonance of both would be somewhat “jarring,” to use the author’s word. Or, maybe he suffers from some paranoia and believes big brother is watching him now. Perhaps that is true in British Columbia. . . . Thirdly, just because Pan Am doesn’t exist anymore, means precisely nothing about the vision. That was exactly what was behind those, like American, Paul Allen, that bankrolled the recent private-enterprise space conquest competitions. And they are working on “how to get anything into orbit safely and cheaply.”  In a classic case of false disjunction, the author says: “Until that problem is solved, we should depend more on our ever-evolving fleet of robotic probes to explore the cosmos.”  There is no compelling argument as to why we should not do both: manned space flight and robotic probes. Nobody says that manned flight is not dangerous or expensive. However, nobody has had the audacity to say that it is not valuable either. The author’s final argument is the one that is most rhetorical (relay teams usually save their fastest runner for anchor). “As technology evolves [love that word!], we shouldn’t be obsessed with an antiquated model [?] of needing to put a human boot print on every landscape in order to know it.”  How manifestly absurd!  In  what sense of the prejudiced discussion is manned space flight and exploration “an antiquated model”?!  As though technology is the answer to every question. Since I’ve offended the Canadians (minus, of course, those noble citizens of Alberta, whence came my ancestors – and we certainly sympathize with them as they try desperately to liberate themselves from their overlords in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver [London, Sydney, Bulawayo . . . ]), I might as well rip on the Boomers. It was the Builders that did the pioneer work in space flight. It was the Boomers that rode on their shoulders. We might note test pilot mortality as over against astronaut mortality. Wroblewski’s letter reads like Boomer diatribe: “It might be expensive; it might hurt; it might not do anything for me personally, now.”  Thankfully, the Busters are coming to full power and will eventually take over and rectify or eradicate the trappings of Boomerism.

Finally, the editors of Astronomy are interested in Astronomy – what a surprise!  They want research dollars and technological advancement in the area of the remote acquisition of data. So do the universities. Frankly, I do not want the universities controlling all the information flow in the same way they have for the last 100 years. They cannot be trusted. They are cloistered, out of touch, imperious and prejudiced. They are so controlled by their theories that they cannot see reality. As I said in a previous one of these articles, they ought to have read Thomas Kuhn. I think that a lot of data acquired by telescope and robot, etc., and analyzed by the university clerics needs to be cross-checked by the engineers and pilots of the military and NASA. My solution?  Cut off all economic aid to Canada, repeal NAFTA (except with Mexico) close a hostile border, extradite illegal Canadians from the United States and put the money into technology to put a woman’s “boot print” safely on Mars and bring her home to a heroine’s welcome, her husband and children.

Every month seemingly (e.g., today [9/1/05]), I get propaganda from The Planetary Society. They want my money, they want me to join . . . along with my money, and they want me to fill out a questionnaire regarding priorities of space exploration . . . thus giving them the right in the future to ask me for my money. Since I’ve got a pretty good line on my wallet, I always fill out the questionnaire and send it to them in the postage paid envelope. (They always remind me: “Your own stamp means an extra donation to planetary exploration.” – which may prove that they are a bit full of themselves.)  This time they want me to vote on the second generation of their failed Solar Sail project, Privatization, Missions to Mars, the Space Shuttle, Outer Planet exploration, Near-Earth Asteroids, SETI projects, Space Advocacy and their value as a society. Because of the cult-like fervor over the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence I recognize that there isn’t much intelligence here on earth and so, am torn between looking for it and wondering what the collateral damage/benefits from funding it might be. One, I do not want university religious nut-jobs getting money for looking for ET. Two, they have stumbled upon some other interesting discoveries using the technology, e.g., pulsars (see G & R p. 295).

Right now?  Mars first – and whatever intermediary steps absolutely necessary to get us there. Privatization is okay with me. I have no interest in international cooperation. International cooperation is grossly overrated (“With my brains and your money, we could go far.”)  I’ve just been thrilled beyond belief at the international cooperation lately in helping out with the flooding in the gulf and the Hiroshima-like devastation of New Orleans. The international community seems to have universally agreed to do nothing. Very cooperative. Oh, Israel I guess pledged to do all they can . . . but then, they’ve been rejected from the international community. . . . What about our friends, the French?  What about the Canadians?  What about the French-Canadians? 

Perhaps you’re wondering at the tart feelings toward our neighbor nation to the north. A couple of years ago, I had a Canadian student that was spouting off about the various atrocities of the people of the United States. I came to the realization that day that, after nearly half a century on this planet, I’d never heard a Canadian say anything good about the United States. Sad commentary . . . I’ve known several. I know people who have heard Canadians say nice things about the United States; I just never have heard them. Like New England liberals, they just seem to complain about the host off of which they parasitically thrive.

Well, enough religion and politics for the day; let’s get on to Gonzalez and Richards chapter 12 entitled “The Copernican Principle.”  The authors begin the chapter with the centered heading quote of Carl Sagan’s denigration of “the pale blue dot” – that picture taken by a probe some one billion miles from earth and nicely reproduced in the plates of Gonzalez and Richards. The point that the authors are attempting to make is that the Copernican Principle has been prostituted to the following, and somewhat overly dramatic lengths: “Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light” (Sagan, quoted, p. 247). Never has there been a greater non sequitur. But then, it goes with the territory. The idea behind science (“knowledge” in Latin), is that you test theories. Well, there is an antecedent: you have to have a theory to test!  That means that you stay up late at night, and in there case probably consume a certain amount of otherwise controlled substances, and come up with ideas. These ideas become theories and then you have to figure out a way to test them. Sometimes you don’t come up with much. To quote Mark Twain: “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact” (quoted, p. 247). Words you can go to the bank on . . . just read the October issue of Astronomy on multiple dimensions and string theory . . . and then go read Hawking for a reality check (A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nut Shell).

Many physicists, and all astronomers and cosmologists, deal with very large-scale phenomena, at times even considering the history of the entire universe over billions of years. As a result, they must use certain guiding rules that have wide-ranging scope and generality. Because these rules exceed what we can observe, they are difficult if not impossible to establish and often rely on explanatory power, aesthetic sensibility, intuition, and speculation. This doesn’t mean scientists should disavow the rules. It just means they have to beware of the dangers of their profession (pp. 247-8).

Great minds have stepped off the pier doing this. Even Einstein used his version of the “cosmological principle” to “expand the reach of his General Theory of Relativity. The principle was simply this: We should assume that at very large scales, the universe is homogeneous and isotropic – that is, that matter is evenly distributed and that the universe looks the same in every direction (p. 248). There was nothing in General Relativity that suggested that the universe conformed to the principle; but it allowed Relativity to be applied to the universe as a whole. By and large, it was right; but, it has needed periodic modifications as new discoveries have complicated that which was once simple and pristine.

However, this notion was folded into the Copernican principle.

In its modest form, the Copernican Principle states that we should assume that there’s nothing special or exceptional about the time or place of Earth in the cosmos. This assertion has a certain plausibility, since without any other information, it’s reasonable to suppose that our location is a random sample of the universe as a whole. . . . Besides, it need not be merely an assumption, since one can formulate it as a scientific hypothesis, make predictions, and compare those predictions with the evidence (p. 248).

This was then telescoped into a metaphysical idea that is a little less palatable: “We’re not here for a purpose, and the cosmos isn’t arranged with us in mind. Our metaphysical status is as insignificant as our astronomical location” (p. 248). By and large, we’ve spent the whole book disproving that particular metaphysical notion. We can observe – and be astounded! – at how the universe seems to put us right here, right now and had it done otherwise, we not only likely wouldn’t have been here, we couldn’t have been here at all. The authors go on to tell us that this is usually accompanied by the metaphysical notion of naturalism “. . . the view that the (impersonal) material world is all there is and that it exists for no purpose” (p. 248).

. . . this view has had adherents from the very beginning. In its early pre-Socratic form among Epicureans and others, it amounted to a conviction that the apparent order of the universe emerged from an infinite and eternal chaos, without purpose or design. Given enough time, space, and matter, these thinkers supposed, anything that can happen, will.
…Still, only in the modern age has such a denial of design and purpose in nature enjoyed official majority status among the cultural elite. To question it publicly is virtually to guarantee an end to cocktail party conversations – and invitations, for that matter (pp. 248-9).

I wish this didn’t sound so much like the words of bitter experience. However, I know that winning an argument in my own circles, means exactly nothing – except that the circle won’t be unbroken and it will be smaller in the by and by. People who believe that God created an orderly, physical law abiding universe are ostracized – especially if they cannot be made to look like fools. As Dr. Gleason Archer once said to me personally, “The only way to win an argument with liberals is to know more than they do.”  I doubt that any one will ever accuse me of knowing more about math, physics or astronomy than those that are card-carrying specialists in these respective fields; however, when cosmology spills over into metaphysics, they are babes in the woods and need a philosopher to help them divest their theory-laden ideas of flawed thinking. This is a place where I can help . . . another place is in finding guild thinkers that dissent from the party line.

The authors then go on to talk about researcher bias. They talk about scientists being guided by their philosophical presuppositions.

Any definition of science that rules out all scientists isn’t worth the trouble. Besides, the history of science is filled with examples . . . in which philosophical predilections led scientists to new discoveries. The problem is not when scientists express their points of view in their scientific work, but when their points of view blind or distort their perception of the evidence. There is an important difference between allowing one’s philosophical beliefs to guide one’s research or suggest lines of inquiry, and imposing those beliefs on the evidence or ignoring contradictory evidence altogether (p. 249, emphasis mine).

It would also be wise if the atheistic-existentialists realized that they have the same predilection to superimpose their irreligious beliefs upon the paradigm of science. In view of the fact that they must have preconceived metaphysical notions of the God, whose existence they deny, they are just as guilty of “imposing those beliefs on the evidence or ignoring contradictory evidence altogether” for the sake of their metaphysic.

One of the more interesting discussions I have heard lately (“interesting” in the sense of sand in the teeth and salt in the eyes), was last week on evening talk radio in the Seattle area (KVI). The host, although politically conservative, follows the liberal, university led evolutionary paradigm and does not believe that Intelligent Design should be taught in the schools. This is because he believes that any mention of the word “God” is a theological discussion and not a scientific discussion. Historically, the guy is a moron in any case. The discussion of God belonged to the philosophers long before it belonged to the Christians . . . although the same cannot be said of the Jews. Socrates drank the hemlock for desacralization of the gods in the view of the magistrates, perhaps . . . but his discussion of God in the Republic and other works is seminal. Regardless, Aristotle’s Prime-Mover has always been the point of departure for Thomist Catholic theology since the high middle ages. Be all that as it may, and more to our point, the talk-show host told one of his callers – just before cutting him off, as he did all that disagreed with him – that inductive logic is fraught with metaphysical baggage with which deductive logic is not encumbered. Oy!  How about this piece of metaphysical baggage: the whole notion of deductive logic presupposes that you live in a universe with levels of predictability that even allow the whole deductive enterprise. No, that is not empirical. You cannot prove it in every case; you must take it on faith or deduction is bogged down and stalled and never finally succeeds in reasoning through to a logical conclusion. Sometimes it’s probability; sometimes it’s equations; sometimes it’s inference; etc., but, to link the data requires metaphysics.

The authors then go on to tell us about how the system is laudable in that it allows us to test the hypotheses under public scrutiny (p. 249). My thought is that when this becomes the exclusive domain of a cloistered few, things go awry. I do not have as much problem with all these folks getting together in their little colloquies, as I do not having outsiders there to interpret their mad wranglings to the masses. In short, there needs to be a set of checks and balances upon letting theoreticians running amok. Unfortunately, it seems to be attorneys elected to office. In the case of the former vice president . . . well, next to the bottom is next to the bottom of the barrel. And so we have special interest groups ad nauseam . . . . If the scientific community would just come out of the closet and get out with the masses more often, perhaps they would not have so much enmity developed against them . . . and perhaps some folks with some common sense could dissuade them from making idiots of themselves. In the case of the Copernican Principle, we have to ask ourselves how we can isolate the variables and test the theory. “To insist that nothing could because it’s simply a fundamental, commonsense understanding of modern science is to reduce the principle from scientific hypothesis to untestable dogma” (p. 249). It would effectively reduce the theory to a religion. It would then fall to the fallacy of non-falsifiability. Any theory should be testable. However:

It’s fairly easy to imagine what observations would count against it: If human beings, Earth, or our immediate environment were highly unusual or unique in some important ways, then we would have reason to doubt it. If the cosmos seemed specially fitted for our existence, or the existence of life, then that would also count against it. Conversely, evidence that confirmed the mediocrity of our surroundings, or the cosmos itself, would count in its favor (p. 249).

The authors then go on to evaluate the opinion of astronomer Mario Livio. He believes that all ideas in scientific theory should be evaluated against the notion of beauty (sounds Platonic to me). He uses what he calls the “cosmological aesthetic principle.”  By using this, things should be reduced to symmetry or simplicity. Although he arrives, unnecessarily, at the generalized Copernican principle, that we are not in any way exceptional, it seems to me that he is at least looking at the evidence and looking for symmetry. Symmetry is, if nothing else, orderly. How you define the terms counts for everything and although beauty is nice, “. . . we shouldn’t arbitrarily protect our assumptions with definition games. In any case, the important issue is not whether the Copernican Principle is beautiful but whether it is true” (p. 250).

And so, what predictions might it be fair to expect of the Copernican Principle?  The authors list a series of six predictions that would be in line with the generally accepted definition of the Copernican Principle and then show how observations, math, theory, science and time have washed the bad ideas away. We take for granted the laws of physics, gravity, for instance; we know that there are lots of places in the universe, it is only reasonable that some of them might be habitable. But let’s look at the predictions:

1.         Earth, while it has a number of life-permitting properties, isn’t exceptionally suited for life in our Solar System. Other planets in the Solar System probably harbor life as well (p. 251, emphasis here and 2-6 below, mine).

We can see how this artifact of history quickly washed away; but people at the turn of the 20^th century held that the “channels” on Mars were proof of civilization (Schiaparelli, d. 1910; Lowell, d. 1916). Well, we know better now, huh?  Lowell turned it against anthropocentrism and toward mediocrity. Sagan said that Lowell’s enthusiasm “turned on all the eight-year-olds who came after him, and who eventually turned into the present generation of astronomers” (quoted, p. 251).  Sagan was half right: it also turned on a generation of astronauts that have had to waste 40 years of their lives waiting for the universities to get off their duffs and allow congress to fund the space program (see above). Be that as it may, the probes (Mariner, Viking, Sojourner) dampened enthusiasm and so, non-falsifiably, the pseudo-scientific community resorts to “extinct cultures on Mars” theories. All the more need to send someone there to demythologize. . . . The new enthusiasm is, of course, based upon the discovery of water on Mars – and on the outlying moons of Jupiter and Saturn. I suppose, water being as common as it is in the universe, that there are a lot of boiling and frozen worlds that have water on them somewhere. But the point made in this book, chapters 2-6, is that it is rare to find a place where there is so much of it available in all three states (ice, water, steam) at the same time.

The basic pattern is worth repeating, because it’s so often forgotten or ignored. From the seventeenth to the twentieth century, many expected to find intelligent, even superior life on the Moon, Mars, and other planets in the Solar System. This expectation required direct contrary evidence to suppress it. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, despite PR blitzes from Martian-life enthusiasts, the search has moved from the planets to a few obscure outlying moons. At the same time, the aspirations have been substantially downgraded. No one today expects to find advanced or intelligent life elsewhere in the Solar System. ET advocates now argue that finding the Europan equivalent of slime mold would be just as significant as finding intelligent Martians (p. 253).

2.         Our Sun is a fairly ordinary and typical star (p. 253).

Well, since we probably cannot find ET in the neighborhood, we must look over other neighborhoods, right?  This “ordinariness” is so prevalent in the literature that we take it at face value.

. . . however, we now know that our Sun has a number of important and anomalous, life-permitting properties that simultaneously contribute to its measurability. These include its luminosity, variability, metallicity, and galactic orbit. So our Sun doesn’t fit this prediction well at all. Even among the minority of stars in the same class as our Sun, it seems to be exceptional in several important ways, again in contrast to the expectations nurtured by the Copernican Principle (p. 253).

3.         Our Solar System is typical; we should expect other Solar Systems to mirror our

            own (p. 254).

So when we finally discovered (not by direct observation, but by wobble of a star) another planet, the prediction was that it would be a solar system similar to ours. As the data have accrued, we find that there aren’t any yet that are like ours. A gas giant half the mass of Jupiter whips around Pegasi B every 4.2 days at an eighth the distance from the star that Mercury is from the Sun.

It’s not what the theorists expected. After the discovery, Mayor noted, “It was very strange to consider the attitude of people facing something completely in disagreement with theory.”  According to Mayor, some astronomers even said things like “Oh, this is not a planet, because you cannot form Jupiter-like planets close to their stars.”  The discoveries of other extrasolar planets since then have continued to contradict conventional wisdom. In particular, most have highly eccentric orbits, quite in contrast to the planets in our Solar System (pp. 254-5).         

So we still don’t know: there are a lot of other solar systems out there to muck about in. . . . When the data come in, the non-falsifiable crowd has a back-up plan. . . .

4.         Even if our Solar System is not typical, there are lots of planetary configurations

            that are consistent with the presence of biological organisms. Variables like the

            number and types of planets and moons are mainly contingencies that have little to

            do with the existence of life in a planetary system (p. 256).

When a touchdown is impossible go for the field goal or punt for field position. As the authors correctly note: “This proposition has the endearing quality of being impossible to falsify, since it’s always possible that an unknown organism exists in some bizarre, far-flung system. More important, it provides an escape hatch if the previous prediction turns out to be false, thus protecting the Copernican Principle from an otherwise embarrassing contradiction” (p. 256). It would seem that basic planetary physics weigh against them: the position of the orbits, the ability to shield the planet from radiation and space-junk, and a moon to keep the rotation from synchronizing with the orbit of the planet around the Sun.

Ironically, despite the positive claims made for the Copernican Principle, this prediction actually may have slowed the progress of science, by leading astronomers to underestimate the importance for life of seemingly trivial details like comets, asteroids, moons, and outlying planets. Similarly, it may have discouraged astronomers from giving the concept of our Solar System’s habitable zone due credit (p. 256).

I wanted that note in there because it has always seemed to me that when theory laden ideas drive science, we always end up backing up and picking up where the observation and math left us. My suspicion is that along with Darwinian thought the Copernican Principle is going to have to go back to something that Copernicus would have recognized. That could set theory back about three hundred years, no? 

5.         Our Solar System’s location in the Milky Way is relatively unimportant (p. 257).

If mediocrity is presupposed, it will be concluded, it seems. We will have more to say about Frank Drake later; but for now and with prediction 5 in mind, the authors remind us of the attempt to reach M13, the great cluster in Hercules by radio telescope transmission in 1974.

With perhaps 300,000 old, densely packed stars, this was a very unlikely place for planets in general, let alone habitable ones. While they may not have stated it explicitly, Drake and his colleagues were clearly assuming this prediction of the Copernican Principle. For that reason, they aimed their telescope at a small target with lots of stars, to maximize their chances of contacting an intelligent race. But the number of stars is irrelevant if the stars aren’t compatible with life (p. 257).

Quoting Croswell, we are reminded that “Just as Copernicus had removed the Earth from the center of the Solar System, so Shapley would yank the Sun from the center of the Milky Way and put it in the celestial equivalent of a suburb” (quoted, p. 257). Whereas the authors compare life in the center of the galaxy to Dante’s Inferno, I cite this as proof that it is better to live in the suburbs. However, since the solar system has too much metal in it to have originated here, it is quite possible that “yank” is the appropriate word for our positioning. “Our Solar System is located within what may be a quite narrow Galactic Habitable Zone, and far from dusty, light-polluted regions, permitting an excellent overall view of both nearby stars and the distant universe (p. 257). This again confirms the authors’ thesis that there is a correlation between habitability and measurability. And finally . . .

6.         Our galaxy is not particularly exceptional or important. Life could just as easily

            exist in old, small, elliptical, and irregular galaxies (p. 258).

We are reminded that our galaxy is smaller than the Andromeda galaxy (M31) and probably, compared with what we know of other galaxies, we are about an average sized galaxy. This, of course, gets awkward in the definitions: what constitutes a galaxy?  Are all the spherical and oblong clusters of 100’s of thousands of stars that infest galactic clusters independent?  Which are independent groupings in our own galactic cluster?  Andromeda M31 seems to be the big dog and will eventually absorb all the pups in the neighborhood. When it crashes through us, we will lose more than we gain. . . .

They concluded that their finding provides further support for the “principle of terrestrial mediocrity” (aka the Copernican Principle), by which they mean “that there is nothing special about where and when we live and observe from. We seem to live on an ordinary planet orbiting an ordinary star, and it is natural to infer that the Solar System resides in an ordinary galaxy (p. 258).

Sometimes a view to the endnotes is helpful in pointing out the flawed logic in the “bigger is better” thesis: “Since Goodwin et al. consider the Milky Way’s smaller size as confirming the Copernican Principle, then, to be consistent with their ‘logic,’ they should consider its larger mass as contradicting the Copernican Principle” (p. 403, n. 16). You don’t want a big sun for a habitable solar system; so why would you want a big galaxy for a habitable island universe?  The bigger a galaxy is the more of it is dense-packed and the more radiation and space-junk you have to deal with.

. . . age and galactic Hubble type are also important. All galaxies in the early history of the universe, and low-mass galaxies forming now, are metal-poor [!], making them unlikely habitats for life. Similar problems attach to globular clusters and irregular galaxies.  We now have reason to suppose that large spiral galaxies like the Milky Way that formed at about the same time are substantially more habitable than galaxies of different ages and types. The metal content of a galaxy is highly dependent not just on its age but also on its mass. Without enough metals, there aren’t enough materials for building terrestrial planets. And without terrestrial planets, there are no environments suitable for life. Our very massive, spiral galaxy, then, is an especially suitable home for a habitable planet and Solar System, while providing an optimal position for viewing and discovering both our own galaxy and the wider universe (p. 258, emphasis mine).

Game, set, match?  No, like oil on water there is still one place for the modern incarnation of the Copernican Principle to run. So our next trek will be to the ends of the universe . . . which makes it difficult to check the theory against observation. . . . Theory is best in a vacuum, no?

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