CHAPTER 1

      The Subject of Nature

      The Trend Away from the Egocentric View

      Throughout the history of human thought, especially in Western civilization, there has been a clear trend. That trend has been away from human egocentrism, the tendency to view humanity’s position in the world as primary. The trend has been led by science.

      A review of the highlights of the trend could begin with the ancient Greek, Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.), who organized the Universe with the Earth at the center and the celestial bodies revolving around it. The terrestrial world was divided into ranks ordered by degrees of perfection. The ranks placed people superior to animals and animals above plants. Each level had specific characteristics. Thus, people were rational while animals were instinctive.

      About 250 B.C.E. Aristarchos of Samos proposed the heliocentric concept of the Universe with the Earth revolving around the Sun. Although, the heliocentric view was adopted by some astronomers like Seleukos of Seleukia, Aristotle’s geocentric version prevailed and was preeminent into ancient Rome. After the end of the Roman Empire, Aristotle’s work was lost to European knowledge. However, the civilizations of North Africa retained Aristotle’s ideas, which were especially promulgated by the astronomer, Ptolemy of Alexandria, in the second century C.E. Ptolemy developed a geometric model of Aristotle’s view of the central Earth and the Sun, Moon, Planets, and Stars revolving about the Earth in circular orbits. The model was cumbersome, but allowed calculation of planetary positions. Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon, 1135–1204 C.E.) incorporated Aristotelian ideas into Hebrew theology and from there they spread into Islamic doctrine. In the middle 1200’s C.E. Ibn Daud translated Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic science, philosophy, and theology into Latin. The Latin translations returned the geocentric ideas of Aristotle to European civilizations, which were emerging from the dark ages. Aquinas (1225–1274 C.E.) read Maimonides and brought the thinking of Aristotle into Christian theology. He converted the linear levels into a system topped by absolute perfection, God. The next level was occupied by beings still too perfect to commit sin, angels. The following level held rational organisms, people. In the fourth level were instinctive creatures, animals. Finally, at the bottom of the order is vegetative life, plants. Modern Hebrew, Islamic, and Christian theology retain the image of rational people separate from instinctive animals.

      However, Aristotelian geocentric views were questioned when Hasdai Crescas (1340–1410 C.E.) employed logic to refute them. Copernicus (Nikolai Kopernik, 1473–1543 C.E.) postulated and Galileo (1564–1642 C.E.) proved that the Earth was not the center of the universe or even the solar system, but actually orbited the sun. These discoveries, now elemental, were vehemently attacked. They were a challenge to the egocentric view of humanity as the center of the universe that had been incorporated