One thought on “But we like to think of ourselves as unique”
There’s certainly a nice book in the history of thought to be written. Up until about the Renaissance, it was more or less assumed that the Earth was a unique thing in the center of the universe. Post Galileo or so, educated people assumed other stars were like the Sun, and the seemingly nice order of our solar system was assumed to be typical. Then the exoplanet surveys turned up nothing that looked at all like our solar system, so we became unusual again. Perhaps that’s swinging back.
There’s certainly a nice book in the history of thought to be written. Up until about the Renaissance, it was more or less assumed that the Earth was a unique thing in the center of the universe. Post Galileo or so, educated people assumed other stars were like the Sun, and the seemingly nice order of our solar system was assumed to be typical. Then the exoplanet surveys turned up nothing that looked at all like our solar system, so we became unusual again. Perhaps that’s swinging back.