The striking achievements of science and philosophy over the last half-millennium are marked by the continuous revision of humanity’s place in the cosmos. Heliocentrism was first conceived by the Greek astronomer and mathematician Aristarchus, suggesting that the earth was not the centre of the universe. Almost two thousand years later this theory became grounded in empirical evidence thanks to astronomers such as Brahe, Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler. Three centuries later in 1859 came the theory of evolution. Darwin discovered that we were not the product of design but the result of millions of years of natural selection. In the 20th Century, psychology and modern cognitive science revealed that unconscious influences and automatic biological mechanisms play a far greater role in behaviour than imagined.
The Strange Order of Things
The Strange Order of Things
The Strange Order of Things
The striking achievements of science and philosophy over the last half-millennium are marked by the continuous revision of humanity’s place in the cosmos. Heliocentrism was first conceived by the Greek astronomer and mathematician Aristarchus, suggesting that the earth was not the centre of the universe. Almost two thousand years later this theory became grounded in empirical evidence thanks to astronomers such as Brahe, Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler. Three centuries later in 1859 came the theory of evolution. Darwin discovered that we were not the product of design but the result of millions of years of natural selection. In the 20th Century, psychology and modern cognitive science revealed that unconscious influences and automatic biological mechanisms play a far greater role in behaviour than imagined.