Copernican Moment

“The earth is flat” held firm for tens of thousands of years, until Aristotle, during a lunar eclipse, noticed circular shadows and thought differently: the Earth must be round.  But still, all thought, the Earth must be at the center of the universe: “geocentrism” was a given.  

And then, in 1543, a Renaissance polymath spoke truth to power, publishing De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), the defining and pioneering moment in the Scientific Revolution.  Nicolaus Copernicus changed the world.

Johannes Kepler, the German mathematician and musical theorist, followed suit, between 1608 and 1621, with the three laws of planetary motion, a much needed defense of Copernicanism.  Rene Descartes, in 1641, sealed the deal with his Meditations on First Philosophy;  “Cogito, ergo sum” and Cartesian coordinates became the law of the rational mind.  

From Copernicus to Descartes, in 98 years, the modern world was conceived, a conceptual shift so profound that life on planet Earth irrevocably changed.  Rational science is so central to our age that it is hard to fathom how bold and pioneering were these men who challenged the Pope, Emperors and Kings, the entrenched orthodoxy, and the learned guardians of Medieval culture.  

Martin Luther, no wallflower, reportedly said, “This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.”  Calvin wrote, “Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?” 

Descartes, in fact, replaced the God-centered with the human-centered universe, and then separated the mind from the physical body and world, a duality that reigns still.  But now, we are at a “Copernican moment of redefinition” of what it means to be human, argues Michael Pollan, the widely read author, journalist and professor, in his new book “A World Appears.”

The science of consciousness emerged in the 1960s as a niche fringe among eccentrics, then became mainstream by the 1990s, as Nobel-laureates Francis Crick (the DNA double-helix) and Gerald Edelman (unlocking antibody structures) published papers on neuroscience and consciousness.  With the advent of AI, consciousness has become a high priority scientific field.  Science empirically proves the physical world has stunning and myriad examples of intelligence, consciousness even, so the question pertains: what if the world is not the cartesian 2 or 3-dimensions, but multi-dimensional, not either-or but both-and?

Darwin, Pollan writes, “suggested that we think of the plant as a kind of upside down animal, with its main sensory organs and ‘brain’ on the bottom, underground, and its sexual organs on top, aboveground.”  Man was the measure of all things, but in 2012, at Cambridge University, esteemed scientists gathered to issue the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, “the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness.”  

Pollan describes Mimosa pudica, a tropical plant that can be taught to ignore a stressor, and remember what it has learned for more than twenty-eight days.  “Plants can send and receive signals from other plants and alter their behavior in response to those signals.  They can distinguish kin from competitors and both from their own selves.”

Intelligence is basically “the ability to solve problems,” so Stefano Mancuso, a plant scientist at the University of Florence, developed an experiment in which the root of a corn plant navigates its way through a maze, to locate and feast upon a quantity of ammonium nitrate – a cheese equivalent – which is to say, a great reward to a plant.  The experiment has been repeated many times, with the exact same results.  

Pollan continues, “In addition to sensing gravity, moisture, light, pressure, and hardness, root tips can also sense volume, nitrogen, phosphorus, salt, microbes, various toxins, and chemical signals from neighboring plants and fungi.  Roots about to encounter an impenetrable obstacle or a toxic substance change course before they make contact with it.”

The intelligence of plants leads to the work of Suzanne Simard, the forest ecologist, whose work on the Mother Trees is empirically proven: fungi and roots facilitate communication and interaction between trees and plants, by exchanging carbon, water, nutrients and defense signals.  Rather than competition, nature is cooperative.  Which changes forever the Darwinian model of rational self interest. 

In the “year of our lord 2026” artificial intelligence is being used to decode the communication among whales, crows, dolphins, elephants, primates and rodents.  And so it might be that not “we the people” but all life “is created equal,” which means this “Copernican moment” brings the realization that intelligence – perhaps consciousness – is empirically found to be widespread, neither narrow nor limited to humankind.  

So let’s revisit Descartes’ duality, the mind body split, in a world where men, since the advent of agriculture, have held the dominant role.  Antonio Damasio, a Professor of Psychology, Philosophy, and Neurology, at the University of Southern California, and, additionally, an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute, believes that male scientists long considered feeling too “feminine” to seriously study.  “It is one of the paradoxes of computer science,” he writes, “that the ‘higher’ capabilities we once thought of as uniquely human—reason, language, intelligence—have proved easier for machines to master than the more elemental capabilities we share with animals, including feelings and emotions.”

Pundits would have us believe the scepter of AI hangs overhead, but prudence urges that we remember AI has been modeled by and upon the narrow confines of logic, algorithms and statistical probability, not the elemental array of emotions that make up the extraordinary depth and breadth of life, among all species.  I am not downplaying the serious risks of AI but pointing to emotional vitality as a largely under explored and resilient domain.  AI is a tool, and every tradesperson knows we need be smarter than our tools.  Once we accept that intelligence is pervasive far beyond mere humans, even gender fluidity seems but one small step for humankind.  It is a wild time in which my children come of age.  

Rumors of social decay are not exaggerated, but they may be an early indicator of a more fundamental flowering that begs to emerge.  Multi-dimensional consciousness may be to the mono-rational what monotheism is to panentheism; an expanded consciousness neither makes science moot, nor does it push God aside, but expands dynamically the potential for understanding and embracing all of life, which could bring new solutions to today’s ever increasing problems.  

Annaka Harris, author of “Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind,” explains why consciousness is foundational and ubiquitous:

We’ve done all our science with the assumption that consciousness emerges at a certain level of information processing. But what if we started from the opposite assumption — that consciousness is fundamental and everywhere? Instead of treating conscious experience as a byproduct, we’d treat it as the foundation. That might help us understand phenomena we’ve struggled with.

There’s something exciting about realizing that something you felt 99% sure about wasn’t quite right — or was entirely wrong. It paves the way for new questions and better understanding. If we’re willing to admit we have made incorrect assumptions and apply our tools more creatively, we might finally get somewhere. We might start seeing the Universe for what it is — maybe even as conscious.