The View from the Center of the Universe: Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos

  • Joel R. Primack &
  • Nancy Ellen Abrams
Riverhead Books: 2006. 400 pp. $25.95 1594489149 | ISBN: 1-594-48914-9

The married couple of philosopher Nancy Ellen Abrams and cosmologist Joel R. Primack are uniquely placed to discuss how our understanding of the Universe affects how we perceive our role in it. The ancient creation myths provide comfort and meaning, but they are fantasies. In contrast, modern cosmology offers a glimpse of reality but leaves many people cold. In View from the Center of the Universe, Abrams and Primack challenge themselves to try and get the best of both world views.

Lost in space: artists' impressions of space can give a sense of why we feel isolated in the Universe. Credit: NASA/JPL-CALTECH

In the distant past, we convinced ourselves that we had a special place in the Universe. Geographically we were at the centre of space, with everything revolving around us, and biologically we thought that humans were an exceptional creation. But as each century passed, we realized that we are less and less special. Today, we see ourselves as insignificant in the context of the whole Universe. The copernican revolution relegated and redefined Earth as just another planet, and made the Sun the hub of the Universe. Then astronomers showed that the Sun is not even at the centre of the Milky Way, and eventually it became clear that there are billions of other galaxies, which made Earth seem trivial.

The problem with becoming increasingly insignificant was appreciated as far back as the seventeenth century by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal: “I feel engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing and which know nothing of me. I am terrified...The eternal silence of these infinite spaces alarms me.”

The existence of dark matter only further relegated humanity, as Primack pointed out in 1984: “Yet another blow to anthropocentricity: not only is man not the center of the universe physically (as Copernicus showed) or biologically (as Darwin showed), it now appears that we and all that we see are not even made of the predominant variety of matter in the universe!”

But Abrams and Primack argue that humans still hold a central and special position in the Universe, perhaps not geographically but in many other ways. For example, we are special because we are made of the rarest material in the Universe, namely large atoms. Also, we live at a central time, because most nearby galaxies are past their violent youths but are not yet senescent. And we live at the midpoint of our planet's life, which is a few billion years old, and which has a few billion more years before it will be roasted by our Sun swelling into a red giant. And humans have a reasonably central size, roughly halfway between the smallest length scales (10−33 cm) and the distance to the cosmic horizon (1028 cm).

The book builds a good case as to why science should make us feel special, but sometimes the language, which wallows in mysticism, is irritating. We encounter the Pyramid of All Visible Matter, topped by the all-seeing eye, and parallels are drawn between cosmology and the Kabbalistic Order of Creation. There are also strange links made between physics and politics, such as the section that uses the laws of gravity and circular motion to explore the question of wealth distribution.

Abrams and Primack work hard to craft a view of science that might allow us to connect with the Universe, but it is risky to mix science with New Age jargon, particularly when there is a risk of confusing non-scientists. Films such as What the Bleep Do We Know!? and dozens of pseudoscience books twist the bizarre laws of quantum physics to support all sorts of unscientific nonsense, and readers intrigued by such wacky notions will only have their ideas consolidated if they read about the Sovereign Eye, Abrams and Primack's mystical label for the conditions that give rise to intelligent life.

Although I have doubts about some of the language that the authors use to try and reconcile science and mysticism, I respect their efforts and some of their ideas. It is admirable that they have considered this problem worthy of discussion, even if they do not yet have all the answers. As Abrams and Primack point out, Einstein supposedly said: “Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.”