At the centre of the universe
Against the view that the geocentric view of the universe before Copernicus was a mark of human arrogance
There are many views of the ancient and medieval Western world that don't really stand up to the evidence. One of my favourite, and among the most enduring, is that according to which the worldview before the Copernican-Galilean ‘revolution’ was not only incorrect, but the ultimate expression of human self-centredness, arrogance and presumption. That the geocentric model of the universe, with Earth at the centre and all the other planets and the Sun revolving around it, was the topos of an age obsessed with Man’s (read male into the indictment) mastery, control and dominance over all of Creation. That there is nothing more self-absorbed, and nothing more undesirable than to assume you're at the centre at the universe, at the individual, special and ontological level.
I think the formulation is fair, and I’ve come across this view in far too many cultural commentaries to believe that all there is to it is a straw man’s argument. The view is also widely held in the popular imagination and the way we in the West see ourselves, namely growing out of that worldview, via progress, science and knowledge, into the light of the Enlightenment and modernity.
There are two ways in which that view of the premodern worldview may be argued to be wrong.
One is to show that being at the centre of the universe is not a great thing at all, quite the opposite.
The other is to argue that a geocentric view of the world is but the extension of the phenomenological view, that is the natural, experiential view each of us takes when we relate to each other and to the world at large. Not the view from nowhere, as the scientific worldview sometimes claims, but a view from somewhere. For in taking a picture, we can't edit the point of view out of the picture.
But first, the idea that being at the centre of the universe is no badge of honour.
In the geocentric worldview preceding Copernicus, the center of the universe was perceived as the most degraded and impure location.
The earth, sitting at this center, was considered the repository of the heaviest, darkest, and least perfect elements of creation. Instead of symbolizing honor, the earth’s central position marked it as the cosmic dumping ground, a place of material density and spiritual impurity.
This interpretation was not unique to one cultural or religious tradition but was shared by major thinkers across Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. For example, the Jewish philosopher Maimonides, writing in the 12th century, explicitly stated that the closer a part of the universe was to the center, the more ‘turbid, solid, inert, dim, and dark’ it became, as it was furthest from the ‘loftiest element’—the divine source of light and purity. This idea of the earth’s lowliness was deeply ingrained in premodern thought.
Likewise, the influential Islamic scholar Al-Biruni, writing in the 11th century, reinforced this notion in his cosmological writings. He described the earth as occupying the ‘lowest part’ of the universe, situated at the very center of the celestial spheres, beneath the moon. Far from being a privileged place, the earth’s centrality signified its distance from the more perfect and divine realms of the cosmos.
This view was not restricted to religious thought; it also extended into the philosophical and intellectual traditions of the Renaissance. As Dennis Danielson, Professor of English at the University of British Columbia points out, many prominent figures associated with Renaissance humanism continued to regard the earth as a lowly, stagnant place, even after the publication of Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus. One such figure was the French essayist Michel de Montaigne, who, a quarter-century after Copernicus, described humanity as being ‘lodged’ in the ‘mire and shit of the world,’ nailed to the lowest and most lifeless part of the universe.
The second argument reframes the geocentric view of the world not as a scientific misstep but as a phenomenological perspective, rooted in human experience and perception. In this view, the geocentric model is an extension of how individuals naturally relate to their surroundings: from their own standpoint or ‘view from somewhere.’ It contrasts with the later scientific worldview, described by Thomas Nagel, as the ‘view from nowhere,’ which claims objectivity by removing the subjective observer from the equation. In premodern thought, the centrality of the earth was not derived from the idea that humanity held a privileged place in the cosmos but rather, and this is a key point, from the human experience of the world. Each individual, standing on the earth and observing the heavens, naturally perceived themselves as central to their own experience. This experiential worldview is deeply relational, meaning that human beings’ positions and observations were inherently linked to their surroundings, much like a camera cannot take a picture without a particular vantage point.
In this sense, the geocentric worldview aligns with the way humans still experience the world today—through the lens of personal perspective. Scientific models, such as Copernican heliocentrism, offer a view from nowhere, abstracting the observer out of the equation to provide a supposedly objective account of the universe. However, this scientific detachment does not negate the phenomenological reality that humans always occupy a specific place and time in relation to their surroundings, where the view is always taken from the centre. In the premodern view, centrality was not so much about cosmic importance than orientation. The earth’s perceived central position was a natural consequence of how people related to their environment from their embodied perspective.