The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities

by Caleb Scharf

Longlisted for the 2015 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
Short-listed for Physics World 's Book of the Year
The Sunday Times (UK) Best Science Book of 2014
A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Science Book of Fall 2014
An NBC News Top Science and Tech Book of 2014
A Politics & Prose 2014 Staff Pick In the sixteenth century, Nicolaus Copernicus dared to go against the establishment by proposing that Earth rotates around the Sun. Having demoted Earth from its unique position in the cosmos to one of mediocrity, Copernicus set in motion a revolution in scientific thought. This perspective has influenced our thinking for centuries. However, recent evidence challenges the Copernican Principle, hinting that we do in fact live in a special place, at a special time, as the product of a chain of unlikely events. But can we be significant if the Sun is still just one of a billion trillion stars in the observable universe? And what if our universe is just one of a multitude of others-a single slice of an infinity of parallel realities? In The Copernicus Complex , the renowned astrophysicist Caleb Scharf takes us on a scientific adventure, from tiny microbes within the Earth to distant exoplanets, probability theory, and beyond, arguing that there is a solution to this contradiction, a third way of viewing our place in the cosmos, if we weigh the evidence properly. As Scharf explains, we do occupy an unusual time in a 14-billion-year-old universe, in a somewhat unusual type of solar system surrounded by an ocean of unimaginable planetary hot Jupiters with orbits of less than a day, planet-size rocks spinning around dead stars, and a wealth of alien super-Earths. Yet life here is built from the most common chemistry in the universe, and we are a snapshot taken from billions of years of biological evolution. Bringing us to the cutting edge of scientific discovery, Scharf shows how the answers to fundamental questions of existence will come from embracing the peculiarity of our circumstance without denying the Copernican vision. With characteristic verve, Scharf uses the latest scientific findings to reconsider where we stand in the balance between cosmic significance and mediocrity, order and chaos. Presenting a compelling and bold view of our true status, The Copernicus Complex proposes a way forward in the ultimate determining life's abundance, not just across this universe but across all realities.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Astronomy, Physics, Space, Audiobook

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Caleb Scharf is a scientist, writer, and speaker. His research career has spanned cosmology, astrophysics, and astrobiology. He is Director of Astrobiology at Columbia University in New York where he pursues fundamental questions about the nature of life in the universe. He is a prolific, critically acclaimed, writer and scientific explainer, with several popular science books and hundreds of articles appearing in publications such as Scientific American, Nautilus, Aeon, and The New Yorker. His public lectures and events have taken him around the globe and he is a frequent consultant for a variety of TV and media science productions. His mantra is: Imagine. Think. Discuss. Repeat.

Reviews

[Clif Hostetler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Are we special? Just how unique is the occurrence of life in our universe? This book is an attempt to answer those questions. The Copernican principle has long insisted that the laws of physics and chemistry were universal and humans cannot claim a "special" time and place for our location in the universe. This book offers no definitive answers to these questions, but it does suggest that, “Our place in the universe is special but not significant, unique but not exceptional.”

To begin with, of all the planetary systems detected thus far orbiting neighboring stars it has been determined that only two percent have conditions that would permit life to exist. (Per Wikipedia, as of March 1, 2017, there have been 3,586 exoplanets in 2,691 planetary systems and 603 multiple planetary systems confirmed.) When it comes to predicting the likelihood of life to evolve given the proper conditions, we simply don't know.

In the process of addressing the question of the probability of life elsewhere in the universe the author ends up providing a summary overview of current scientific knowledge spanning all the way from the quantum world of elementary particles, to the microscopic biological world of DNA and RNA, and on beyond planets and exoplanets to the grandest scales of space and time encompassing all the stars and galaxies, matter, dark matter, and cosmic radiation. Through these discussions the author alternates between the case for uniqueness and the other extreme of mediocre or common. He also explores the tools of probability that can be utilized to find a middle ground between the two extremes of rare and common. In the following quotation he suggests that humans are closing in on the answer:

So are we unusual or not? Our powerful tools of mathematical probability and the objective truths about the bias and retrospective interpretation of events clearly indicate that neither side is yet a winner. But we are much much closer to an answer than we've ever been in the history of the human species. We are on the cusp of knowing.

Humans have assumed for many years that they were God's special project. It was a bit of a blow to our egos when scientists said we were mere star dust that just happened to end up in a life form. This book says we can be somewhat comforted by knowing there is indeed a degree of specialness in our existence. And there is reason to expect human knowledge regarding our uniqueness to continue to expand in the future.

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scharf examines whether we have a special place in an isotropic and homogenous universe. He starts with the concepts of Copernicus and Kepler that removed us from the center. He continues on to the anthropic principle, “fine tuning” and other ideas that while not putting us back at the center do support our uniqueness. He then looks at astrophysical and biological influences to assess whether life is rare or prolific in the universe. Below are some snippets of his thoughts.

Scharf gives us a helpful primer on the structure and formation of our solar system. He then discusses what we have learned about exoplanets and their solar systems. What we find is tremendous diversity in the orbits, sizes, and compositions of these planets and their stars. Still he posits that there are twenty to forty billion planets in our galaxy that have one half to four times the earth’s diameter with moderate surface temperatures. He calculates a 95% chance one of these is within 16 light years of earth. The next generation of technology may be able to find and examine such planets for life.

The upshot is that our solar system is not typical. 75% of stars in our galaxy have less mass than our sun and last much longer. Most planetary systems have planets far bigger than earth but smaller than our ice giants, Uranus and Neptune. Our solar system has none in that range. 75% of solar systems have gone through periods of great instability after their formation with planets ejected or colliding or falling into their star. Ours has not although computer simulations show our solar system could yet face similar instability as Mercury’s orbit elongates colliding with Venus, even possibly precipitating a collision with Earth. Chaos theory operates. Many influences too small to measure can add up over millions of years to cause large deviations in planets’ orbits and trajectories. It’s not a clockwork universe.

Next Scharf examines the nature of life. Our earth is dominated by single celled organisms, one million trillion trillion of them. These are mostly bacteria and archaea which have been here four billion years. All lifeforms seem to have come from the same ancestor, thus in all four billion years life arose only once on earth. Intelligent life as we humans refer to ourselves has been here perhaps two hundred thousand years. Since simple life arose quickly after earth’s formation one might assume this has likely been repeated on other planets. Conversely intelligent life seems far less likely. Statistically both assumptions are invalid. We only have one case of each, too little to draw any conclusion.

A popular idea is that lifeforms may be based on a different chemistry than that on earth and perhaps unrecognizable to us. Possible but life as we know it is far more likely. The universe we see is composed of the same elements following the same laws of physics and forming the same compounds. Sugars, alcohols, amino acids and other complex carbon molecules have been identified in protoplanetary systems. Such carbon based molecules would have been abundant on a forming earth as well as other planets. Thus the building blocks for carbon based life are all in place when planets form.

The author assesses many other factors that could impact the prevalence of life in the universe and our galactic neighborhood. But as he adds more and more possible influences, we don’t seem to get closer to a definitive answer. He concludes that, “Our place in the universe is special but not significant, unique but not exceptional.” After closely following his myriad of arguments, I felt let down by this ambiguous conclusion. Still I picked up new ideas and consider Scharf’s book time well spent. Recommended for those who are happy to end up more knowledgeable, but less clear than when they started.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

How special are we? We no longer consider ourselves the center of the universe, but we are in a fortuitous place and time for understanding our place in the universe, and complex life can exist at the nexus of order and chaos at least we have one data point.

Most of the current thought about our place in the universe rest on false premises and incorrect conclusions. This book gently takes the listener through the step by step process necessary in order to think about the problem in the most correct way. We generally make two kinds of a error in thinking about the problem 'a priori' and 'a posteriori' errors, before the fact and after the fact. (Did you know that most biographies on Thomas Bayes start off with the statement "he was probably born in 1701", funny stuff and this book will tell you why that kind of thinking is needed to understand our place in the universe).

There our subtle faults in most fine tuning arguments and purely probabilistic arguments for calculating life such as the Drake's Equation (though, I don't think the author used the eponymous equation by name). The author looks at both the telescopic and microscopic data we have, and for example delves into the Prokaryotic (simple single cell) merging into a Eukarotic (complicated single cell, the building block of complex life) and how unusual such an event really is.

This book is full of cool ways of thinking about the problem. I did not realize how unstable our solar system is and how our current epoch or order within our solar system will almost for sure not last for more than 10 million years or so. The planets orbits aren't stable and the three body problem's solution is always robust (sensitive to initial conditions). The architecture we have to observe leads to how we understand, and the better our tools the better are data becomes.

The author is just a good science writer. His books should be read by a larger audience, because he really does explain science that well. The author doesn't answer the question whether or not we are the only complex life in the universe, but he teaches the listener how to think about the problem so as not to make the common errors in thought while thinking about the problem.

[Μιχάλης Δαγκλής · Rating 5 out of 5]

Λατρεύω την εκλαϊκευμένη επιστήμη και χαίρομαι που υπάρχει μια πρόσφατη άνθηση του είδους από διάφορους εκδοτικούς οίκους.
Η Κληρονομιά του Κοπέρνικου (μην το μπερδέψετε με το εφηβικό ανάγνωσμα ίδιου τίτλου) είναι από αυτά τα βιβλία που είναι ικανά να σε κάνουν να αναρωτηθείς για την θέση σου στο σύμπαν. Ακολουθεί τις τελευταίες ανακαλύψεις και θεωρίες των επιστημόνων, ενώ ο λόγος του συγγραφέα θα σας ταξιδέψει στις εσχατιές του σύμπαντος.. και ακόμα παραπέρα.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

My second book by Scharf, as brilliant and engaging as his "Extrasolar Planets..." Less of a textbook; fewer difficult formula (of 100, I could only solve one.) Lots of info here, like lunar reflectivity, very deceptive; it seems bright to us, but the Moon reflects only about 10% of th light that hits it, "about the same as a lump of coal" (71). Of the Sun, he says: "Thus ends the ten-billion year spree of this one star that we decided to take an interest in" (66).
Scharf's book questions the "rarity" of the habitable conditions of Earth.
Scharf notes that astronomical time is not human time, and he writes of "a few hundred million years" as if brief--and after a chapter, you agree. "The cosmos ticks to the beat of a different clock" (48)--why, humans arose over only a couple hundred million years. Back 4 billion years, our favorite star produced 30% less energy, but there's evidence the world held water even then. Not clear how.
He calls the Newtonian clockwork solar system "The Grand Delusion," title of his second chapter. We can tell from the myriad planetary systems that have been identified since the first in 1992, and the 2nd a in '95.
There is a stochastic, random or "chaotic" (mathematically) element in our solar system; and, until the invention of computers, the n-body problem was, as Newton concluded, insoluble. Now hundreds of millions of variables in millions of computations can approximate, say, our solar system in 500 million years. Doesn't look that good. Possible Mercury (most elliptical except Pluto) into Venus, possible Venus into Earth, etc. Besides the revealing cosmology, Scharf writes well: note the gerund in the first quotation, the verb in the second here: "Our planet ..[includes] a later 'veneer' of asteroid impacts. In that explosive peppering...."(61); and 2) "even the length of time our entire species has staggered around on the surface of the Earth..."(105)

[John Gribbin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities (Hardcover)
by Caleb Scharf

Nicolaus Copernicus is credited with the realisation that the Earth is not at the centre of the Universe, but orbits around the Sun. This was a key step in the development of the idea that we do not occupy a special place in the Universe, and that, by implication, there may be nothing special about us, cosmically speaking. In the late twentieth century, this led to the so-called “principle of terrestrial mediocrity”, which says that our place in the Universe is so ordinary as to be typical -- that we live on an ordinary planet, orbiting an ordinary star, in an ordinary galaxy. Caleb Scharf argues that this approach, what he calls the “Copernicus complex”, has gone too far. The Earth, he says, is a rather unusual planet situated in a rather unusual location; this gives a different perspective on the likelihood of other life forms like us existing across the Universe, which he puts in context by comparing our Solar System with the hundreds of other planetary systems that have now been discovered.
In order to get to the meat of his argument, Scharf runs through a breezy historical introduction, name-checking all the usual suspects from Aristarchus to Newton, via Copernicus, Tycho, Kepler and Galileo. The story of the discovery of our place in the Universe is a familiar one, but neatly summed up in a sentence: “The Sun with all its worlds is like a single raindrop on a particular hour of a particular day in a specific cloud somewhere in the skies of Earth.” [ED: Quote from p 52, please check that it is in final book] It is by making a comparison with other “raindrops” -- other planetary systems -- that Scharf reaches a conclusion that would have surprised previous generations of astronomers.
Our Solar System is a relatively orderly place, with widely spaced planets following roughly circular orbits around the Sun. This has allowed the Earth to be undisturbed for billions of years while life has evolved on its surface. While ours was the only planetary system known, it was natural to think that this is a typical example. But with many other planetary systems now known, it is clear that this is not the case. In most other systems, orbits are more elliptical and planets are closer together, allowing interactions which make chaotic disorder common and make it impossible for a planet to stay in a stable orbit with the right conditions for life for billions of years. Scharf calculates that we are in a 2 or 3 per cent “club”. In other words, that 97 planetary systems out of every hundred do not allow for the existence of Earth-like planets in stable orbits, providing suitable homes for life forms like us. “Our solar system is at least somewhat unusual, and we have the numbers to back that up.” [ED quote page 125]
He then goes on to consider the chances of complex life forms like us evolving even on those planets in the 2 or 3 per cent club. This is a much tricker proposition, since, as with the case of planetary systems a few decades ago, we only have one example to guide us. But in explaining why this is such a tricky problem, Scharf provides the best explanation that I have ever seen for the non-specialist of the statistical technique known as Bayes’ Theorem. It is almost worth reading the book for this alone, for Bayesian techniques underpin much of our everyday lives, including the spell-checker that is correcting my words as I write, and the number plate recognition systems that identify cars caught in speed trtaps.
The key features of life, as other people have observed, are that it involves self-sustaining cycles of activity, feeding off a flow of energy (for example, sunlight) and that it exists on the border between orderly and disorderly extremes -- on the “edge of chaos”, as it is sometimes referred to. One consequence of this is that life drives systems away from chemical equilibrium. The classic example is the difference between the atmosphere of the Earth, rich in highly reactive oxygen, and the atmosphere of Mars, composed of stable, unreactive carbon dioxide. This alone tells us that Mars is a dead planet today, whatever may have happened on its surface in its youth. Scharf discusses these ideas clearly, with a particularly informative account of the role played by bacterial organisms in the story of life on Earth, but, curiously, without mentioning Gaia theory, which is the most powerful presentation of this kind of argument.
Finally, he looks at the Universe at large, which emerged from a Big Bang just under 14 billion years ago and is now expanding ever more rapidly, so that in billions of years time no other galaxies will be visible from the confines of our Milky Way. About 95 per cent of all the stars that will ever exist have already come into being, and for the rest of eternity galaxies will fade away as the stars age. “We exist during what may be the only cosmic period when the universe’s nature can be correctly inferred by observing what is around us.” [ED page 211]
The bottom line of the book is that planets like Earth in systems like our Solar System are rare, but not unique. That the particular kind of complex life forms that we represent may be unique, but that other forms of complex life may have evolved elsewhere along different pathways. “We end up with this: Our place in the universe is special but not significant, unique but not exceptional.” We could, says Scharf, “be special yet surrounded by a universe of other equally complex, equally special life forms that just took a different trajectory.” [ED both from page 221]
Which leaves us with the biggest question of all. If intelligent life is common in the Universe, why can we see no trace of it? In particular, why hasn’t it visited us? Dubbed the “Fermi paradox”, after the physicist Enrico Fermi who first pointed out how easy it would be, given the age of the Milky Way galaxy, for spacefarers to send probes to every Sun-like star, this is still the most powerful argument against the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations. On balance, it seems to me that Scharf is wrong; but I hope he is right!
)

[Brian Clegg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gravity's Engines, Caleb Scharf's first book was one of the best cosmology titles I've ever read. In the way it explored lack holes and their relationship to galaxies and the universe it Unknownwas quite stunning. The only downside was a certain floweriness of style (one reviewer described it as 'rich language', but, no, it was floweriness) and the occasional dip into amateur philosophising. The big problem with The Copernicus Complex is that this philosophising becomes the main backbone of the book, which leaves it without an effective narrative arc.

The good news first. There are chapters where Scharf really delivers the goods. There's a brilliant description of the latest views on the formation of the solar system, for instance. An interesting description of the different types of planets discovered around other solar systems. And even an easy-to-grasp introduction to Bayesian statistics, though this could do with a little more meat.

However, the problem is that the thesis of the book is to explore 'the quest for our cosmic (in)significance.' Scharf interestingly talks about the way the move to the Copernican model, shifting the Earth from the centre of the universe, reduced our sense of self-importance. But the real problem here is that there is simply no data to support all the later conjecture about whether life is unusual or common on other planets, so we end up with much hand waving and little substance. There are pages at a time that come to the conclusion 'so this doesn't tell us anything.' Elsewhere we discover 'If we carefully step through the mental minefield of Bayesian inference, we come to an unsettling conclusion: we can infer relatively little about the statistics of life in the universe from the history of life on Earth.' That doesn't so much seem an 'unsettling conclusion' as the obvious and not at all surprising one.

To make matters worse, Scharf repeatedly vastly over-inflates the significance of the topic to life, the universe and everything, at least as far as non-cosmologists are concerned. He tells us, for instance, that the discovery that the planetary motions of our solar system are unpredictable in the very long term 'is a profoundly disturbing discovery.' [His italics.] No, it really isn't. It's interesting, but it's hardly the kind of thing that's going to make the six o'clock news.

There were minor irritations too. Even if the book is primarily aimed at a US audience, there is no excuse for just giving temperatures in Fahrenheit. And we had yet again the old chestnut rehashed that Giordano Bruno 'paid dearly for his views' [that the Sun was merely a star and there were endless other inhabited worlds]. These views were relatively unusual, but not unique, and certainly not the reason Bruno was burned by the Catholics, which was for common-or-garden religious heresy, not his rather poor scientific theorising.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of worse cosmology books that this, and I would buy it for that description of the formation of the solar system alone. But it's a real let down after its predecessor.

[Nicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reviewed for The Bibliophibian.

Ostensibly, this book is about a simple question: are humans alone in the universe? It has to go the long way around to come to any answers, exploring other arguments by way of figuring out whether the Earth is or isn’t rare in the universe and whether or not life is as tightly constrained as some people say, but the core principle of the book is that we need to find a middle ground between the current main ideas — the Copernican view that we can’t be unique, and the Rare Earth view that says life in the universe must be unusual.

Mostly, my wife got to watch me mutter “yes, obviously”, and I’m tempted to quote Lord Peter on Chief Inspector Parker here — it takes Scharf a desperately long time to someone who already has a somewhat formed opinion to “crawl distantly within sight of a conclusion”. That conclusion, in the end, is basically where I stand: not enough data, come back later (with a side of Scharf being pretty sure that neither extreme is going to turn out to be correct, with which I disagree — I think it’s all up for grabs at this point).

So anyway, if you want to know why I came to the conclusion I’ve written in my science blog recently (i.e. “we don’t know and we can’t know based on the current data we have”), this book has a good roundup of the evidence. Scharf isn’t bad at explaining it.

But if you’re looking for answers, I find it as unconvincing as all the other attempts at answering this question.

[Al Bità · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably the most interesting thing about this book is the journey the author takes his reader upon, rather than the arrival at his conclusion. The trip is fascinating and basically quite mind-boggling, as the amazing discoveries (on the one hand) of the cosmic reality of the physical universe, and (on the other hand) the astonishing complexity and potentiality of life on earth, are presented to us in Scharf’s friendly and accessible prose. These two aspects (one outward, to the stars and beyond; the other inward into the very basics of what is meant by “life”) are here juxtaposed and intertwined in an attempt to come to grips, as it were, with the question of how significant (or not) we human beings are, both in the bigger and in the smaller pictures. That journey alone is worth the price of the ticket.

Coming to terms with understanding the meaning of the title of this book is problematic, however, as it gives the impression that it has something to do with Nicholas Copernicus himself. It doesn’t. In the sixteenth century CE, Copernicus “simply” — but effectively — overturned some fourteen hundred years of belief in the geocentric (earth-centred) nature of the universe, with a heliocentric (sun-centred) one. With the cat out of the bag, the way was opened for science to flourish through the efforts of people like Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, et al.

By the twentieth century, speculation on the nature of the cosmos based on this new awareness became known as the Cosmological Principle (the universe would look the same no matter which planet one stood on, or, for that matter from wherever one stood within it — i.e. that it was homogenous; and (more controversially) also isotropic (i.e. that it would look the same in all directions from any place within it). This “sameness” began to be considered as a kind of mediocrity. We were no longer “special” anymore.

It was not until the early 1950s that the Copernicus name was linked to this understanding, and became known as the “Copernican Cosmological Principle” or simply the “Copernican Principle”, and the “sameness” of the universe as “Copernican mediocrity”. Since that time further speculations (e.g. the “anthropic (man-centred) principle” (to re-establish our “central importance”?) ; more precise “fine-tuning” (to highlight our “uniqueness”?); and concepts of possible multiple universes (to accommodate all of these and more?)) have clouded the issue further. It is the psychological effect of the combination of all these things that create a kind of “Copernican” worldview which Scharf calls the “Copernicus Complex”.

I will leave to Scharf to explain what he is trying to achieve, with a direct quote (pp. 37–8):

“… a Copernican worldview at best suggests that the universe should be teeming with life like that on Earth, and at worst doesn’t really tell us one way or the other. The alternative — anthropic arguments — require only a single instance of life in the universe, which would be us. At best, some fine-tuning studies suggest that the universe could be marginally suitable for heavy-element-based life-forms, rather than being especially fertile. Neither view reveals much about the abundance of life to be expected in our universe, or much about our own more parochial significance or insignificance.
“And we want some answers! So to find the truth, we need to take a good, careful look at the nature of the multifaceted array of matter in the universe around us and within us. We need to navigate a path somewhere between the assumptions of mediocrity and the assumptions of fine-tuning and an anthropic worldview. We need to figure out a way to see around these extremes and to make actual measurements of what we find.
“The story in The Copernicus Complex is about the great adventure and unfolding meaning of that effort to discover the universe within and without. It is also about our past and future — especially the future. But more than anything else, it is about that deep-rooted need, that frustrating yet recurrent itch that each and every one of us gets when we try to think about our place in the grand scheme of creation.”

Whether Scharf succeeds in his aim is a moot point. Personally, I find his “conclusion” (that our place in the universe is special but not significant, unique but not exceptional) hardly world-shattering; and its ambiguities tend to raise more questions than answers. Our “need” to feel important and significant might just be a biological impulse; but the word “significance” is also ambivalent: it is something which we can only usefully appreciate in retrospect, and may have negative connotations as well as positive ones. How significant, for example, were the great dinosaurs? Yet their elimination allowed for mammals (and therefore “us”) to flourish; so the elimination of the dinosaurs was particularly significant for us, but not for them… Things to ponder on.

[jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

nearly a half-millennium ago, polish astronomer and mathematician nicolaus copernicus published his de revolutionibus orbium coelestium, forever changing our view of the universe and our place within it. copernicus famously offered a heliocentric model of our solar system, discarding the long and widely held conception of earth as the orbital center of the known heavens – effectively dethroning us from our exalted standing as celestial centerpiece. the profound implications of copernicus’s insight (“the genesis of a colossal revolution in human thought”) have reverberated ever since.

in his engrossing and accessible new book, the copernicus complex: our cosmic significance in a universe of planets and probabilities, caleb scharf, director of the columbia astrobiology center, challenges the copernican principle, which asserts that our place in the cosmos is neither special nor privileged. leading us through 500 years of astronomical discovery and cosmological inquest (visiting the great scientific minds of bruno, brahe, kepler, galileo, newton, laplace, einstein, and many others along the way), sharf, author of 2012’s gravity’s engines, contends that we must move beyond the limitations of the copernican worldview (which relegates us to a position of unimportance and mediocrity) if we are ever to establish and understand our relevance within the vastness of existence.

one measure of our cosmic worth would be to discover whether life abounds elsewhere in the universe (as the copernican principle suggests it ought to) or whether earth is unique in its harboring of life. in our own galaxy alone, current studies estimate there may well be up to 40 billion earth-sized planets “orbiting their stars at the right distances to allow for moderate surface temperatures and liquid water.” the milky way is but one of several hundred billion galaxies in the known universe, making the sheer number of planets beyond our solar system staggering to consider. “but does the gaping enormity of the visible universe really lead to the inevitable conclusion that there must be someone else out there?”

the anthropic argument, in contrast to the copernican principle, contends that the particular circumstances of both our existence and cosmic address are indications of our singularity. “the fact that we are so manifestly located in a specific place in the universe – around a star, in an outer region of a galaxy, not isolated in the intergalactic void, and at just this time in cosmic history – is simply inconsistent with “perfect” mediocrity.”

scharf aims to move beyond these two conflicting doctrines, in hopes that we will continually strive in our efforts to scratch “that frustrating yet recurrent itch” which arises when we ponder our place in “the grand scheme of creation.” in chapters that explore the convergence of biogeochemistry, cosmology, astrobiology, evolution, probability, and philosophy, the copernicus complex presents a compelling argument for transcending the limitations inherent within each approach.

the queries that must be satisfied to determine our cosmic significance proliferate (as the universe accelerates its expansion). scharf excels not only in posing such questions lucidly, but also in expounding upon how they will likely be answered. it is far too easy to see ourselves as “mere crumbs whizzing around a modest stellar candle in a cavern of space,” yet it would perhaps be as erroneous a proposition to overemphasize our own importance.

the copernicus complex offers an invigorating, absorbing glimpse into the profundities of our very existence. with an engaging style and ample elucidatory prowess, scharf beautifully conveys the latest cosmological insights whilst inspiring both wonder and awe. although our place in the universe may well be “unique but not exceptional,” our ability to parse meaning amidst its massivity is truly extraordinary.

[Andrew Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the better popular science books I have read. Combines both our place in universe and likelihood of life. Its style is engaging and made interesting by presenting a range of views rather than just compiling what is know.
A few notes:
The Sun orbits around a variable point – the centre-of-mass or balance point of all objects in the system. This point is close to the observed surface of the Sun –well offset from its core.
Sun is 1,392,686 km across. It’s equal to 218 times earth’s diameter
Titius-Bode Law helps to calculate distance of each planet from the Sun. First, we need to remember a series 0, 3, 6,12,24, 48,96, 192. Next, we need to add to each number 4 and divide it by 10 to get the mean distance of each planet from the Sun in astronomical units.
Therefore, Mercury is 0.4 of distance of earth from the Sun, Venus is (3+4)/10=0.7, Earth is (6+4)/10=1, Mars is (12+4)/10 = 1.6 AU, Ceres is (24+4)/10=2.8 AU, Jupiter is (48+4)/10=5.2 AU, Saturn is (96+4)/10=10 AU, Uranus is (192+4)/10=19.6, Neptune is (384+4)/10=38.8 AU (actually 30 AU) and Pluto is (768+4)/10=77.2 AU (actually 39.4 AU)
75% of all stars are less than half of the Sun and less than a few percent of its luminosity. Within 20 light-years of us there are 8 stars like the Sun or slightly larger, but there are 101 stars that are smaller.
Every year the Moon recedes from us by almost 4 cm, and the Earth’s day slows by 1.5 microsecond. Some 600 million years ago the Earth’s day was about 21 hours.
There are three domains of Earth’s living organisms:
1. Bacteria – simple single-celled organisms. They can survive as individuals, but more often operate as colonies. Their cells tend not to contain any additional complex internal structures.
2. Archaea (old ones). They have no nucleus, but possess genes.
3. Eukaryotes. Their cells are much larger and more complex and keep their genetic material protectively bound up in a nucleus. They make up plants and animals.
Genetic studies suggest that between 123,000 and 195,000 years ago, the population of biologically modern humans declined dramatically, from more than 10,000 to just a few hundred. A climate change is partially blamed. All of us alive today come from this tiny group of people living somewhere in central or southern Acrica.
Neanderthals drifted to extinction about 28,000 years ago. The genetic code of people from Eurasia contains as much as 1 to 4 percent of the Neanderthal code.
Although most mammalian species alive today can digest milk sugar as infants, they lose that ability as adults. Some 9000 years ago that changes and 80% of people of European descent can digest it. For others, only a third of humans can do it.

[Ed Kohinke sr. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, but the terms overreach, amateurism, and just plain fluffy narrative come to mind. Large portions of the book are very well written and objective, while in other parts of the book the author slips into subjectivity and a philosophizing that is annoying and just doesn't fit. There are nonscientists like me out here who crave good information on the latest in cosmology, evolution, etc. and I had hoped to find it from this author but didn't.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had some good sections and well worth reading but if I'm honest it lost my interest a few times throughout.

[Дмитрий Филоненко · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book provides quite a comprehensive account on how the life on Earth is possible. Starting from stars emerging from interstellar dust and finishing with preconditions required for multicellular life to be able to appear and exist this book covers all aspects essential for life at least in its most primitive forms to exist. It may seem that we are rather lucky exception in the Universe since the array of conditions which made our very existence possible is enormous. And many of these conditions are rather rare and specific. But the author bravely tries to keep balance and argues that life doesn't have to be exactly as we know it, there might be other forms which we even can't imagine. But at the same time he admits that since far scientists haven't managed to come up with at least some potential alternative to terrestrial life form. He claims that interstellar space is actually full of basic molecules which make the ground for biochemistry, even some simplest amino-acids can be found. But it's a big question if any alternative life engineery can be created from this blocks except the one we know. And if we go for that one we know we inevitably fall to that long list of important but very specific conditions.

Ok, it looks like we've got a winning ticket since everything in the Universe somehow managed to coincide to allow life on Earth to show up. But then Scharf reveals how many of the conditions are actually of random nature. Well, yes, our Universe is in general quite a chaotic thing. Even trajectories of the planets in the Solar system can be computed only on a few hundreds millions years ahead, then uncertainty comes into a picture: too many unpredictable factors play their role, it's like with attempts to model a climate on the Earth. So we live on the edge of chaos and order. But instead of using such very low probablity event as a ground for claiming our uniqueness Scharf comes up with quite an opposite idea. What if such a wonderful sequence of pretty random events suggests innate potent of the Universe to emerge a life? If you've got a winning lottery ticket you indeed can start calculating the probablity of such event for YOU and expectedly end up embarassed with an extreamly unlikely chance. But that's not a probability for a lottery to find a winner. It just means that there could have been someone else in your shoes. But either you or he or she or anyone else would have definitely been there with your/his/her own unlikely trajectory leading to that point!

I really liked all contemplated sides of the question. But the book could have been even better if author didn't repeat the same in every chapter. Also there is too much water. And especially I can't stand that quite spread in such books approach when author is so afraid of sharing a single math equation that instead goes into long and complicated explanations on fingers. Equations were invented to make abstract things clear and to avoid hazy verbose explanations.
Sometimes the book lacks a bit structure: speculating some viewpoint where are its pros and where are cons, where is analysis and where is synthesis. Well, maybe it's all clear if you read the book on a single inhale. But if you read a bit today, a bit tomorrow then picture becomes more fragmented.

I would rate the book with 3,5 stars.

[Galen Weitkamp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Copernicus is credited with having permanently knocked Earth from center stage and giving it a minor role as the third planet from the Sun. Since then our significance in the universe has been on a downhill trend. The Sun is not the center of the Milky Way galaxy, the Milky Way is not the biggest galaxy in the Local Cluster. The Local Cluster holds no special position in the Laniakea supercluster and Laniakea is lost within the vast homogeneity of a universe webbed with similar structures. There is no center stage and our presence serves no apparent purpose.

The Copernican principle is a heuristic which holds that we are neither privileged nor significant observers of the universe.

A common argument goes as follows. The universe is so chocked full of stars (by one estimate the observable universe has one hundred octillion stars) there must be a zillion-gadzillion with planetary systems. Among those there must be a gadzillion systems with “Goldilocks Zones” where conditions are similar to those that engendered the development of life on Earth. Among those there must be at least a zillion moons and planets that are homes to intelligent lifeforms––perhaps like us. This is both an appeal to our intuitive sense of probability and to the Copernican principle.

Earthlings discovered their first exoplanet in 1992. Since then more than 1900 have been discovered in nearly 1200 planetary systems. Yet to date, we have found no evidence of extraterrestrial life. If there is intelligent life out there, why haven’t we found it? Why haven’t they found us? If we’re so ordinary, why isn’t there evidence of life all around us? This puzzle is known as Fermi’s paradox.

Caleb Scharf (Director of Astrobiology at Columbia University) thinks our intuitions regarding probability are somewhat askew and that we may be suffering a little from a Copernican complex.

We may be insignificant to the evolution of the cosmos, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t special, rare and in certain ways unique. Our very existence on Earth depends on a unique and long sequence of specific accidents. One was the abiogenesis of life on Earth some 3.6 billion years ago (about a billion years after the Earth’s formation). Another was the accidental symbiotic union of an ancient bacterium with a eukaryotic precursor (some 2 billion years ago) which became an ancestor to the first cells featuring the internal energy sources and metabolic regulators we now call mitochondria. Still another essential accident was the devastating meteor strike some 65 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs opening up niches that mammals soon filled. Modern humans didn’t appear until 200 thousand years ago. Does it aways take 3.6 billion years for intelligent life to evolve from the first organic replicators? With only one data point, who can know?

The structure of our solar system too results from a sequence of lucky accidents. The first stars didn’t have planetary systems as we imagine them. There first had to be a few generations of stars to produce enough of the stuff from which the rocky planets form (carbon, silicon, iron, uranium etc.). So you have to wait until the moment is right (at least a few billion years). Moreover, planetary systems are dynamically unstable. Their planets are always gravitationally tugging and pulling on one another, sometimes sending one of their number into the Sun and sometimes slingshotting fellow planets out into the deep unknown. Planetary systems are provably chaotic. This is a consequence of the fact that the laws of planetary motion are non-linear. The effect of even a small perturbation in the orbit of a planet will be amplified over time and influence the state of the whole system in unpredictable and often catastrophic ways. Our solar system just happens to be in a several billion year period of relative calm. Most of the other 1200 planetary systems under observation now do not have the nicely aligned, nearly circular, co-planar orbits that make our future seem secure and predictable. As the universe expands and its galaxies recede from one another there may be too few stars churning out planetary material; the window for producing planetary systems may pass.

Life is possibly the most complex thing in the universe. Dr. Scharf suggests that life may be distributed throughout the universe (and throughout parameter space) like a complex fractal, because the physical conditions for life are dynamic and the dynamics are non-linear. He calls this the “cosmo-chaotic-principle.” He says, “...life, and specifically life like that we find on Earth, will always inhabit the border or interface between zones defined by such characteristics as energy, location, scale, time, order and disorder. Factors such as the stability or chaos of planetary orbits, or the variations of climate and geophysics on a planet, are direct manifestations of these characteristics. Too far away from such borders, in either direction, and the balance for life tips toward a hostile state. Life like us requires the right mix of ingredients, of calm and chaos––the right yin and yang.”

[Devero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro di scienza, ma anche di filosofia. Il tema che Scharf analizza è quello della nostra "mediocrità" alla luce delle recenti scoperte di esopianeti, nonché, in fondo in fondo, quello del principio antropologico.
In fondo da quando Copernico ha rimesso il Sole al centro del sistema, con la Terra considerata un pianeta ne più ne meno come gli altri del sistema; da quando Galileo ha scoperto che il Sole è solo una delle innumerevoli stelle della Via Lattea; da quando Darwin ha spostato l'umanità a insieme di popolazioni per nulla particolari nell'insieme delle innumerevoli specie della Terra; da quando Hubble ha scoperto che la Via Lattea è solo una delle innumerabili galassie dell'universo osservabile; insomma è passato molto tempo e la scienza è andata avanti.
Così se il principio "copernicano" per cui ne noi ne il nostro mondo siamo qualcosa di particolare non è stato invalidato, abbiamo però scoperto che forse sia noi che il nostro pianeta non siamo comunque "cosa" comune nel vicinato stellare noto.
Ciò che Scharf non evidenzia troppo è che i dati per capire se siamo effettivamente qualcosa di veramente raro, se non unico, sono ancora tremendamente insufficienti e condizionati da errori sistematici.
Siamo comunque sulla via giusta per poter dare qualche intervallo di valori più preciso a molte considerazioni, nonché alla sempre utile "equazione" di Drake.
Per il resto il saggio è decisamente scorrevole e alla portata di chiunque abbia conseguito una licenza di terza media.

[Brie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was good, but it didn't grab me like his previous book - Gravity's Engines: How Bubble-Blowing Black Holes Rule Galaxies, Stars, and Life in the Cosmos

Scharf describes many things, from the size of bacteria to the size of the solar system, Milky Way, etc. While doing this, he compares what we find 'out there' to what we believe to be true right here on Earth. I'm not sure he really came to a conclusion on our cosmic significance. Perhaps more information is needed to do so.

However, there is a great deal of information here and I enjoy Scharf's writing. If you enjoy this book, definitely pick up his previous book.

[Gendou · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is about the rare Earth hypothesis. TL;DR: Earth isn't that rare, and we don't know if life has formed on other planets, or how often simple life evolves into complex life.

The author overuses flowery language and dumbs down topics, inappropriately avoiding scientific jargon.

[the_deepest_black]

Masa konkretnych przydatnych informacji, ale też błędy logiczne i z filozoficznego punktu widzenia, który mnie szczególnie interesuje, jednak niezbyt głębokie.

"Obecnie, w XXI wieku, stoimy w obliczu przełomu, którego skala oddziaływania będzie wszechogarniająca i który radykalnie zakłóci spokój naszej egzystencji: realną możliwością jest odkrycie życia w innych miejscach, poza Ziemią. Możemy odkryć, że jesteśmy zupełnie jak te żyjątka w kropli wody ze stawu Delft [które zobaczył Antonie van Leeuwenhoek] - jednym zamieszkanym światem pośród miliardów innych" (15).

"[...] obecnie uważamy, że z natury błędna jest każda teoria naukowa, która wymaga istnienia wyróżnionego punktu początkowego lub odwołuje się do unikatowego punktu widzenia" (16).

"[...] jeśli chcemy dokonać prawdziwego postępu nauki w zakresie rozpoznania naszej pozycji w kosmosie, musimy znaleźć sposób na wyzwolenie się z okowów własnej przeciętności" (17).

"Gdybym miał wskazać dwie cechy, które trafnie i optymistycznie podsumowują gatunek ludzki, postawiłbym na wyobraźnię i niespokojnego ducha" (198).

"[...] na Księżyc poleciało zaledwie 24 ludzi, a tylko 12 z nich postawiło stopę na jego pokrytej pyłem powierzchni; 12 ludzi, 12 spośród 110 miliardów istot ludzkich, jakie kiedykolwiek istniały - by nadać temu właściwą perspektywę" (220).
No i co z tego...

[Christopher Key · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many authors have tackled the subject of Life, The Universe, and Everything. Scharf is a professor in the relatively new field of astrobiology. Not only is he a brilliant scientist, but he can communicate with us laypeople in understandable English. And he manages to be entertaining while doing it. That said, don't plan to blow through this book in one evening. I found that I needed a day or two between each chapter in order to wrap my liberal arts head around some of the concepts. There's a fair amount of scientific history involved and copious notes for those who want to explore further. No spoilers. You'll have to read it yourself to learn about his conclusions.

[Doctor Moss · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Copernican Principle is a staple in cosmology, astronomy, and in astrobiology and the search for extraterrestrial life. Usually stated in an informal way, the Copernican Principle holds that we, in our time and place, do not occupy a special or privileged position as observers of the universe.

Cosmology and astrobiology are speculative fields. Cosmological theories posit claims about phenomena that are not accessible to direct observation — the beginnings and ultimate fate of the universe, or the nature of distant and unfamiliar objects. The Copernican Principle allows us to speculate within the bounds of known physical laws and assumptions — speculation isn’t completely free and open, but it is enabled by the idea that the rest of the universe isn’t (too) different from the universe we are familiar with. We can use that constraint to bound and enable our speculations — what we observe at great times or distances must accord with what we know about the physics of the familiar universe.

Astrobiology and the search for extraterrestrial life is, for our time anyway, inherently speculative. We know of only one instance where life has developed and evolved in the universe, and we have really detailed knowledge of only one planetary system. As Scharf recounts, in the early days of speculation about life beyond the Earth, the Copernican Principle allowed us to presume that ours was not the only planetary system, that ours is not the only one containing a planet friendly to the development of life. In a sense, the Copernican Principle functioned as a placeholder for knowledge about such things — in the absence of knowledge, it was reasonable to assume that our situation is not unique or even special, that what happened here, to produce Earth and life on Earth, could happen and probably has happened elsewhere.

After an initial introduction to the Copernican Principle, Scharf catches us up on how knowledge has progressed to displace such straight-forward Copernicanism, and, in his view, given us reason to question a strict adherence to it. He looks at both cosmological research on the origins of the universe, galaxies, stars, and planets, the current state of knowledge about exoplanets, our current understanding of the origin of life, and what we know about the specific evolution of our solar system and the planet we live on.

Certainly, in any absolute sense, the Copernican Principle is hard to maintain. There were, and probably will be, huge spans of time during which life in the universe, and in our galaxy, was impossible (at least in any form we could imagine). Planets and stars hadn’t even formed yet. And, as it turns out, when planetary systems did form, as far as we now know, they typically formed violently, with chaotic collisions and gravitational influences training systems into shapes very unlike ours. The Earth itself appears anomalous in size and distance from its star. Our star, the Sun, while common, is not among the most common types of star. Our position in the galaxy is “special” also, in that we are located in a kind of galactic suburb, well away from the intense radiation and gravitational interactions of stars close to the galactic center.

Adherents of the “Rare Earth” hypothesis take those, and additional, special characteristics of our situation as reasons to believe that life is extremely rare in the universe, especially intelligent life of the sort we could detect and potentially communicate with. What has happened here was so unusual and dependent on so many special circumstances that we are likely alone in the universe. The likelihood of what happened here happening at all is so low that we can’t expect it to have happened often enough that we are going to find others like us — if they exist at all, they will be so distant, so sparse, both in space and time, as to be effectively undetectable.

Scharf’s own doubts about Copernicanism do not go that far. In particular he argues that the Rare Earth thinkers bind the possibility of the development of life (and intelligence) too tightly to the conditions that actually produced it on Earth. The Rare Earth thinkers cite such features of life’s development on Earth as plate tectonics, tides from a relatively large moon, protection from asteroid bombardments by a large gravitational guardian (Jupiter), and so on. Sharf’s argument is that there are many ways life can emerge and evolve, and if one path is closed, another may be followed. And there is evidence of a chemical bias towards life — the primitives of life are basic chemistry, and, once started, may take any of an indefinite set of paths forward. Those special circumstances, including the size of our planet and its source of heat and energy much less such specifics as plate tectonics, tides, and the role of Jupiter, may not be so constraining to life after all.

So Scharf argues for a position between the early optimism of broad Copernicanism and the skepticism of the Rare Earth hypothesis. He looks to chaos theory and Bayesian probabilistic thinking as ways to frame the problem of life in the universe. The problem is a “complex” one in the technical sense of an almost overwhelming set of interacting variables producing a very wide array of potential outcomes, without strict, deterministic results. And this complex system is one in which we not only lack knowledge of potential outcomes but have very incomplete knowledge even of the relevant variables and their likely values. As he says, “We’ll have to simulate the conditions produced by a range of cosmic properties, to see how well and how often they generate the complex phenomena out of which life emerges — how many viable trajectories there are. We’ll also have to apply our Bayesian skills to weight the possibilities, to express our honesty about our ignorance of the deeper physics of reality.”

In ordinary terms, there are lots of things that can happen in the universe, and many of them may well produce life, even intelligent life. We don’t know how it all works, but we are unduly skeptical if we think that it must happen as it happened in our case and unduly optimistic if we think that what happened in our case must have happened many times and in many places.

Where does that leave us? In a lot of uncertainty. But that’s core to Scharf’s point — uncertainty is inherent to the problem, given our poor knowledge of the relevant factors and potential paths to outcomes, and given the complexity of the interactions between those variables and the paths that can be produced. But we do have methods — probabilistic reasoning and chaos theory — to help guide us through the problem. Concrete, non-probabilistic answers — e.g., evidence of life elsewhere or increasing evidence of its scarcity — will inform our thinking, but I suspect Scharf believes that, as a complex problem, we will never have a full theory of how life can happen in the universe and how often it can happen.

This is a good book. I hope I’ve conveyed how it both supplies a kind of introduction about how to think about the problem of life in the universe and goes beyond the poles of optimism and pessimism we often meet ithere. Scharf covers the basics as well as you could in a short book (232 pages, not including footnotes, etc.), and he does so in relatively straightforward, non-jargony language. There are succinct introductions to terms and concepts (e.g., Bayesian analysis) where needed.

There is one pet peeve of mine that Scharf does not escape, though. Given the critical role that the Copernican Principle plays, both in speculating about life in the universe and in other fields such as cosmology, I’d love to see a definitive statement of what it is — at least in a particular theorist’s thinking. What exactly is the principle? It isn’t stated. And the terms in which it is talked about — very different terms such as our significance or our position as observers — are not reconciled into a single principle.

Without some stronger definition, even if provisional, I’m unsure what the principle allows and what it disallows. For example, does the principle enable us to think, all other things equal, that there’s nothing so special about the development of (technological) intelligence in our case that it shouldn’t happen elsewhere as well? Or should we instead think that there’s nothing so special about intelligence itself that we think it should be common? We don’t think that everything about our case should be common — e.g., that in some other parts of the universe surely there are beings like us drinking tea and speaking English. Some features of our case are likely to be common and some are just peculiarities. Which side does intelligence fall on? Is it a non-essential peculiarity, or should we expect to find it commonly where we find life? We think highly of it, as an adaptation, but, as Scharf implies, there should be an indefinite array of adaptive strategies that life can take — intelligence might be much more like drinking tea and speaking English than like multicellular biology.

The question of intelligence is just one question I find hard to apply Copernican thinking to, without more definition of the principle. I’m sure I’m not the only one with that problem — I’d love to see a good discussion of what exactly the principle is. I suspect that Scharf might not quarrel too strongly if, In fact, I characterized him as implying that part of the problem of Copernicanism is that we don’t know its bounds — what to expect to be common and what to expect to be peculiar to us. I’d just like to see a head-on discussion of what the Copernican Principle is.

[Mendoza · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two books in one. The middle chapters, factual in nature, are nicely written. They comprise lively introductions to various fascinating topics in astronomy and biology, which move along like an enjoyable tourist trip for "just curious" lay readers such as myself. The common thread between these topics are their relevance to the questions "are humans, living on earth, in any way special? did we benefit from any rare, exceptional, or even unique, set of circumstances?".

Unfortunately, the more philosophical chapters that actually discuss these questions in depth, in the first and last two chapters of the book, are much harder to follow. I fear that what notions and ideas I gathered there are too vaguely conceived and loosely structured to remain in my memory long. The prose feels a little abstract, inferences are made but not explained, and the thread is easily lost; but at the same time those chapters feel redundant, much too long for their content, and I felt that the argument could have been made clearer by being made shorter.

[M.L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this. It was a very good overall book - there were ideas and concepts in it I have either heard of or looked into myself over the years and it was nice to have them all presented in one space. That said there was also plenty I hadn't known - the detail into microbiology and its evolution was particularly fascinating. This book was easy to follow and didn't make the mistake of complicating theories by trying to present it as overly complex prose - the explanations were logical, relatable and accessible. The exploration of how different worlds might have evolved their scientific understanding of the cosmos depending on their surroundings was very engaging - the concept of twin suns or of an 'Earth' being a moon to a larger gas giant really reignited my fascination with the cosmos.

I would recommend this book to anyone with even a fraction of an interest in space, cosmology or the history of science - and also to anyone who wants an engaging and informative read.

[Charlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gravity's Engine made me a Scharf fan for life. I didn't love this book as much but it was still excellent. In particular, he excels at helping the reader understand why humans might be not understanding probability well enough when estimate the likelihood that life or earth-like planets exist elsewhere in the universe. I also enjoyed how much he championed the work of Lane and Martin (though I would have liked for him to give a nod to Margulis). Scharf provides a thoughtful discussion of our place in the cosmos and delves deeper into the anthropic principle than any other book I have read so far.

[György · Rating 2 out of 5]

What is permanently haunting us is the question of our significance or insignificance.Think prof, Jim Al-Khalili best expressed the degree of importance of this dilemma in stating: "...are we divine creatures or just a nuclear waste...?"

Not the best read from cosmology, no sense of life changing euforia. So many gaps, missing bridges and the entire style is reflecting a sort of hyperactive disorder syndrome.
When cosmology is on the table, the first I do is to compare to the: "A Universe from Nothing" from Mr. Lawrence M. Krauss. If given to choose, the Copernicus Complex will lose.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-done bit of science done for the interested layperson. He did not do a lot of "coloring outside the lines" in making sweeping science claims, and in fact castigated fellow scientists for somewhat outlandish claims that did not stand up further scrutiny. And, for example, he explained Bayes Theorem/Bayes Rule, regarding probabilities, well enough that a non-statistician would very likely understand the concept toward which he was driving.

As good the second time as the first.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astrophysics, physics, anthropology, evolutionary biology, microbiology, chemistry- they all explained in this book which tries to answer the question if our planet is mediocre or not.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This made my head hurt, but in a really good way.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Are we truly unique? Or are our most imaginative SF writers on to something showing a universe full of life? Can we break the time barrier and encounter civilizations here and there? Or is it a dark forest out there, full of life, but also of fear? Or are we very truly alone?

Or is “[o]ur place in the universe...special but not significant, unique but not exceptional[?]”

Scharf, Caleb. The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities (p. 219). Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

The safest answer for now at least is a big, fat question mark but that does not mean we can look at the evidence and make educated guesses, which happens to be the crux of The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities. Things are dark out there, things don’t look good for finding intelligent life. Close calls aplenty, but as covered in other books like Planets by Andrew Cohen with Professor Brian Cox, it seems like our earth really did win the cosmological lottery in having everything work out perfectly and long enough for me to sit here to type this.

Of course if that was the gist of the book—we’re unique, the end—it would not make for a great read and The Copernicus Complex *is* a great read. It’s not a difficult book; like First You Build a Cloud: And Other Reflections on Physics as a Way of Life by K.C. Cole, the author seems to treat the reader not as a simpleton, but as a curious human and is more than happy to give them—you--a rather robust account as to why we are unique and why. There’s also some what I assume to be unintentional deadpan humor buried here and there for those who may be bummed this isn’t a book about worlds full of intelligent extraterrestrials:

“The Earth’s orbital future in all such cases will of course be altered as well, pushed into new configurations—and, more likely than not, into utter disaster. These experiments, together with other key findings by Laskar and his colleagues, reveal a number of unappealing possibilities for us. In a few billion years, previously distant worlds like Venus and Mars may become our nemesis, colliding with the Earth in events that could only be described as the end of everything as we know it.”

Scharf, Caleb. The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities (p. 107). Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

And we *are* unique. We *are* special. And no, this I don’t mean in some spiritual nor holistic way, but based on the information Professor Scharf presents. A case of being in the right place at the right time not only to experience complex lifeforms all around us, but to know what we know including knowing why the world is as it is. Really, he nails this in the penultimate chapter and some of that deadpan humor early on may be needed to accept that “...we’re led to the conclusion that we exist during what may be the only cosmic period when the universe’s nature can be correctly inferred by observing what is around us.” (page 208)

This—a far future society trying to look back and seeing nothing but distant nothingness due to the ever-expanding universe—reminds me a lot of Golter--”*poor* Golter!”--if memory of the quote serves me right from Iain M. Banks’s Against a Dark Background (1993, Orbit Books), about humanity on a planet doomed to repeat the rising and falling of increasingly decrepit societies due to truly being alone in the universe without even a star beyond their own in sight.

And while I would normally note this as a footnote in the review, this time it’s importance can not wait as an afterthought: for eReader users, we’ve a problem: reminding me Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind (2018, Harper) by Michael Massing, there a ‘popular’ religious history book and now here with a ‘popular’ science book (quoted to imply it’s not necessarily that these books are popular (though they should be!), but are written for a more general audience), we’ve robust footnotes, but with publishers that have totally dropped the ball. Here, over 30 pages filled with great bits of additional information but with a functional footnote hyperlink lost in the ether like a sad comet looking for a nice, big star to warm her up. That Caleb Scharf has an academic background in what he’s writing about and I could not find any real concerns about this book gives me confidence to both enjoy it as a reader and still praise it in this review, but the detached notes is a major slip by the publisher, one that you’d think they would have caught and fixed.

[Antonio Gallo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nicola Copernico, astronomo e matematico polacco del XVI secolo, ha proposto la teoria eliocentrica, secondo cui i pianeti orbitano intorno al Sole e non intorno alla Terra, come si credeva all'epoca. Questo ha portato a una rivoluzione scientifica e ha ridefinito il posto dell'uomo nell'universo. Copernico ha sfidato la visione geocentrica dell'universo, basata sull'idea che la Terra fosse al centro dell'universo e che tutto ruotasse intorno ad essa. Questa visione era stata accettata per secoli e aveva radici nella filosofia greca antica.

La teoria ha avuto un impatto enorme sulla scienza, la filosofia e la religione. Ha portato a una maggiore comprensione dell'universo e ha aperto la strada alla fisica moderna. Ha anche sollevato questioni sulla posizione dell'uomo nell'universo e sulla sua relazione con Dio. La teoria eliocentrica è stata poi sviluppata e confermata da altri scienziati, tra cui Galileo Galilei e Johannes Kepler. La loro ricerca ha portatoalla nascita dell'astronomia moderna e ha contribuito alla rivoluzione scientifica che ha caratterizzato il Rinascimento e l'inizio dell'età moderna.

Fu una svolta epocale nella storia della scienza e della cultura. Ha dimostrato come la scienza possa portare a una rielaborazione radicale delle concezioni tradizionali, aprendo nuove prospettive sulla conoscenza dell'universo e del nostro posto in esso. Si ebbe un impatto significativo sulla religione del tempo. La visione geocentrica dell'universo, basata sull'idea che la Terra fosse al centro dell'universo e che tutto ruotasse intorno ad essa, era stata accettata per secoli e aveva radici nella filosofia greca antica. Questa visione era stata anche accettata dalla Chiesa cattolica romana, che la considerava un dogma della fede. Copernico ha posto una sfida alla visione tradizionale dell'universo e ha sollevato domande sulla posizione dell'uomo nell'universo e sulla sua relazione con Dio. In particolare, sembrava contraddire la Bibbia, che descrive l'universo in termini geocentrici. Per questo motivo, la Chiesa cattolica ha reagito in modo critico alla teoria di Copernico. Nel 1616, la Chiesa ha inserito il libro di Copernico "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" nell'Indice dei libri proibiti, che era un elenco di libri considerati eretici o pericolosi per la fede cattolica. Nel 1633, Galileo Galilei, che aveva sostenuto le idee di Copernico, è stato processato per eresia dalla Chiesa e costretto a ritrattare le sue affermazioni.

Tuttavia, non tutti i leader religiosi del tempo hanno reagito in modo negativo alla teoria di Copernico. Ad esempio, il teologo tedesco Thomas Murner ha difeso la visione geocentrica dell'universo e criticato la teoria di Copernico, ma ha anche sottolineato che la scienza e la religione dovevano essere viste come complementari e non contrapposte.

In generale, la teoria eliocentrica di Copernico ha rappresentato una sfida per la visione tradizionale dell'universo e ha portato alla revisione di molte idee precedenti. Ha anche sollevato domande profonde sulla relazione tra scienza e religione, che sono state oggetto di dibattito per secoli. Tuttavia, con il passare del tempo, la maggior parte delle differenze tra scienza e religione sono state risolte o almeno attenuate, e oggi molti credenti vedono la scienzae la religione come complementari e non in conflitto tra loro.