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Thinking Outside the Box The paradox is surely telling us that something is fundamentally wrong with our view of the universe, and our place in it. a Davtne INN11 There is another way of looking at the apparent paradox. We may be mis- understanding the reality around us. We have a long history of misconceiving our larger environment, even our own planet. Our world was—until at least the late eighteenth century for most Europeans and well beyond that for many others—a place of geographical uncertainty. As historian Anthony Padgen reminded us, the Romans, the Mughals, the Chinese, even the Spanish and the Ottomans all had very different versions of our planet, and all were different from the one we have today.” In every age, people have pitied the universes of their ancestors, con- vinced that they at last had discovered the full truth, observed astronomer Edward Harrison. Yet, the universe, as something seen through the human mind, shaped by human perception, and rationalized by human thought, is reconceived from century to century. Every universe if falsifiable.* Conceptions of the cosmos that our ancestors took for granted were challenged repeatedly as astronomers discovered new evidence and theo- rists drew new conclusions. We found that the Earth, our solar system, and our Galaxy are not central. We learned that the universe is far more immense than our predecessors had imagined. We also learned that the universe has a very long history, stretching more than 13 billion years into the past. Generations of stars have passed, many taking planets—and possibly life and intelligence—with them along their evolutionary courses. Astronomers often underestimated the number and diversity of celestial bodies beyond our planetary system. They once reasoned that the apparent 190 —Stephen Baxter, 2001! Misunderstanding the Universe