The 25th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope has been in the news for the last few days. Hubble images of distant galaxies are commonly recognizable, but the implications of them to our understanding of our place in the universe has not been integrated well yet.
On NOVA last night, in a special Hubble show, they said that Hubble showed that there were more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the beaches and in all the deserts of the Earth combined.
That's a long way from the thought that Earth sits at the center of the Heavens with Sun, Moon and stars revolving around it, a tidy little system created for us by a diety, and the corollary thought that humans are central to the purpose of the universe.
In searching for information about the Hubble, Google turned up a link to a column posted on Forbes.com. Forbes is famous for featuring wise and witty quotes. Today's happened to be:
On earth there is nothing great but man; in man there is nothing great but mind. Sir William Hamilton
My instant reaction to that quote was that it seemed very wrong. I don't agree that man is greater than the rest of life on earth, or even the physical processes of earth. Further, I disagree with the notion that man can be identified as separate from earth to be held apart for special greatness. How can man be great, but not the systems of our living planet that enabled man to evolve and enable us to live through the next breath? Is man, an organism that relies on oxygen and nutrients created by other life, greater? For greatness, I'll nominate a tree, or any other photosynthesizing autotroph. Without them, I'd be dead.
As for mind being the greatest of the great -- nah. The human mind is amazing, but so is a butterfly. The flying abilities of machines created from our minds pale in sophistication compared to the commonest of birds. Hamilton, it turns out, was a very smart man, a man fully caught up in the powers of his mind. But I think his thought here reveals more about the limitations of someone so caught up in the thinking mind than it is a true insight into what is great.
This inquiry took me down another unexpected path, too. There are several Sir William Hamiltons, and I initially looked into the wrong one. One was Scottish, and lived from 1731-1803. He was a diplomat, spent time in Italy, and seemed to have an interesting life. A second was also Scottish, a 9th Baronet, and lived from 1788-1856. The author of the quote was an Irishman, Sir William Rowan Hamilton, who lived from 1805-1865. As a physicist, astronomer and mathematician, I'm sure he would have appreciated the Hubble and what it has revealed about the universe. Perhaps it would give him a different perspective on greatness.
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