Thursday, December 13, 2018

Anthropocentrism and Evolution

The disproof of Geocentricism undermines two entailed theses: 1. The existence of a deity in a realm that is physically contiguous with the Earth, i. e. the sky; and 2. Anthropocentrism.  Now, each loss has had traumatic Nihilism-breeding implications for Humans.  But, while Nietzsche more provocatively addresses the first, i. e. "God is dead", the second, expressed by "Human All Too Human", more profoundly signifies the problem.  For, what has been lost is more than Meaning--it is the presumed privileged status of the favored creature that breeds the Nihilism that permits, e. g. the self-designated superiority of the murderous Hitler.  In contrast, Darwinism offers a better-grounded revision of Anthropocentrism--the evolutionary superiority of the Human species.  However, that revision entails the condition that Humans are not also independent of the Earthly biosphere, but are products of it. Thus, Armstrong's Anthropocentric "one giant leap for Mankind" should be amended as "one giant leap for Earthkind", i. e. because just as Armstrong is representative of Mankind, Mankind is representative of all of the Earth.  Likewise, the Moon landing is a moment in not only Human history, but in Natural History as well.

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