Decaflon

Oh, that was a good quote. If I'm not mistaken the meddling of the Church had something to do with the entire idea of the Earth being in the centre of the solar system - 'since Man is God's greatest invention, the planet on which they live should rightfully be the centre.'

Watching that video now. Great find, Hrafn, great find.

Yeah, I think the 'naturalness' in most societies was a philosophical thing.

Other people were equally as sold on the sun being the centre, for both mathematical and religious grounds; the Greeks, ancient India, the Middle East... actually pretty much any civilization with mathematicians 'discovered' this notion at least once (generally by calculating that the sun was bigger than the earth). The idea's been around since at least the eighth century BC.

Geocentricism also got ingrained as common sense; the best predictive model of astronomy for a thousand years and change had the heavens going around the earth. People might have used mathematics to speculate the sun being the center, but it wasn't until Copernicus produced a predictive model on this assumption that people started to really take it seriously. So it's not as irrational as it's sometimes made out to be; the sun going round the Earth really was the best science available for a very long time. Turns out it was wrong. Science is funny like that.

Yeah. Perceptions of 'alotted' importance of humans certainly disagreed with the Earth being just one-of-the-bunch. On mathematics & Geocentrism, I'm sure that we could find a wide range of reasons for why mindsets of old defaulted to Geocentricism, and many of them could probably be identified as an unscientific, inhibiting influences on the development of alternative scientific models. I believe this was part of the context in which Dawkins cited the quote, and perhaps one of the most interesting.

[...] the sun going round the Earth really was the best science available for a very long time. Turns out it was wrong. Science is funny like that.

Science is exciting like that :)

Because we're selfish.

No, seriously. Think about it: when you're a baby all you think about is "me": "my" needs, "my" discomfort, "my" hunger, "my" wet diapers. As we get older we begin to associate with the world outside, but not without appending "my" to the way we see the world: "this affects me," "this is how that makes me feel." After that, we begin to see how we interact with the world outside: "How do I affect that?" "How does it affect me?" We don't think about those things which have nothing to do with us until later, when we begin to see that it's not all necessarily about us.

As a species, we're a pretty selfish bunch at the most basic level. So given that mentality it's safe to assume that the first assumption we make when we look at the skies and see things moving is not "hey, we're moving!" (especially since we can't feel it), but rather "Hey, it's moving (especially since we can't feel it)." Then language developed in such a way as to make that belief more ingrained: sunrise/sunset (instead of earthrise/earthset) for example.

@Gnorb
Excellent point Gnorb. A kind of Piagetian Egocentric phase in the development of individual cognition reflected in the development of collective intelligence and knowledge of humanity? :)

Just as a matter of biology, I don't think it is possible for use to ever get completely away from egocentricity. Perhaps as we evolve further and discover new ways to connect, new inputs to use. Right now we've only got our senses to go on. We can abstract a wealth of great stuff from those, but when it comes down to it your universe is defined by what you can perceive and imagine. That's egocentricity at it's core.

So our first take is observing things in relation to us, that makes sense. It doesn't take much time or though to start exploring things from different perspectives (abstractly,) but if someone presents you an idea that seems to work... well only a few of us will immediately challenge and question it.

Maybe it also has something to do with preconceptions clouding our perceptions as we grow up (apart from inevitable egocentricity and the failure to see what's right in front of us).

I saw something on TV the other day I thought was funny.

In Holland they asked little girls the same age of the now four-year old crown princess there, what would the princess become in the future.

Instead of thinking years and possible societal upheavals ahead - and replying "queen" - one of the little girls answered quite rightly: five.

We boring grown-ups don't think like that anymore.

A kind of Piagetian Egocentric phase in the development of individual cognition reflected in the development of collective intelligence and knowledge of humanity?

Why not? Developmentally, wouldn't it stand to figure that our collective development would in some way mirror our personal development? Perhaps not exactly. In fact, definitely not exactly. But the major points would probably be reflected in a macro level as they are in the micro.

Hell, you're into AI. What do you think? I know this moves more towards the realm of psychology, but I would think that to be in your line of study anyway.

Science is exciting like that :)

Hear hear. :D

In a very broad sense it's not unfair to assume some aspects are reflected. We can, for example, point out that a human being builds knowledge as it grows; which modifies or amplifies its ability to think about the world.

A community of such humans essentially does the same thing after a point; the shared body of knowledge of the group — its memory — exhibits itself in books and other external, shareable objects, etc. (passing between generations) gradually increasing and in turn amplifying the group's capacity to think about the world. With our egocentric tendencies already in place (as Ozone points out, we're embodied agents); it's not unlikely that the initial knowledge pool (or lack of it) would be tainted by unbalanced egocentrism.

@Nils
Funny quote. It reminds me of a similar child-question/answer I heard once ... but for the life of me can't remember.

Well When you think about it the earth circles the sun and the sun circles the earth.

Well When you think about it the earth circles the sun and the sun circles the earth.