The Ptolemaic system of astronomy, which had the planets waltzing around the Earth in “compounded circles,” predicted celestial positions — sort of — for centuries. As time went on, however, the refinements needed to keep the system semi-functional turned it into a conceptual monster.
Enter Copernicus.
His heliocentric system, in which the Earth was just one of a number of orbiting planets, represented one of the great “paradigm shifts” — to use the term coined by Thomas Kuhn — in the history of science. The Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection was another. In current times, “official” climate science is trying to ignore/fight off the Sun’s return to the central role in climate change.
What these two established — and one prospective — shifts have in common is that they all dented, or threaten to dent, man’s sense of his significance. Copernicus moved humanity from the centre of the universe to a planet circling a minor star in an unimaginably huge cosmos. Darwin further injured man’s self-esteem by pointing out that he was an evolved creature, albeit with the dubious gift of limited self-awareness. Solar theory not merely threatens to explode the notion that human carbon dioxide emissions are driving the climate, it comes linked to the rejection of the even greater conceit that climate control is possible via economic policy.
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