A new Copernican revolution
24
Oct
The center of our universe is no longer the sun,
at the center of our galaxy there is a black hole, although the name seems to be negative, according to new theories after the James Webb super telescope it is just a new reality beyond current physical thinking, called Sagittarius A* it has a diameter of 35 million kilometers and is the most massive object in the galaxy (first photo taken in 2017 by the Event Horizon telescope, Feryal Ozel).
Edgar Morin points out that this and other scientific changes of our century are more “formidable” than the apparently revolutionary ideas of our time, which have changed little or nothing in the social, human and world conception we still have.
Morin wrote: “We have had to abandon an ordered, perfect, eternal universe for a universe in dispersive becoming, born in irradiation, in which order, disorder and organization act dialogically, that is, in a complementary, competing and antagonistic way” (Morin, 2003, p. 62), and also: “we are in a universe that is neither banal, nor normal, nor evident” (p. 63) and we should also think of human and social life in this way.
Thus, our tiny home in an almost infinite universe is “… a small cosmic wastebasket transformed in an improbable way not only into a very complex star, but also into a garden, our garden” (p. 64) and this is how we should think and not about conflicts.
“Our terrestrial family tree and our terrestrial identity card can now finally be known” (p. 64) and points to this as evidence of our problems.
The first piece of evidence he points to is economic unruliness: “We cannot consider the economy as a closed entity. It is an autonomous instance dependent on other instances (sociological, cultural, political), which are also autonomous/dependent in relation to each other” (p. 65), so the current wars are nothing more than a dispute over markets where we could recognize the interdependence and autonomy of each economy.
The second is the ecological crisis: the Meadows report commissioned by the Club of Rome in 1972, but also: “the great local catastrophes with far-reaching consequences: Seveso, Bhopal, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, drying up of the Sea of Arai, pollution of Lake Baikal, cities on the verge of suffocation (Mexico, Athens)” and now more recently Fukushima and natural disasters.
He also pointed to the crisis of development and the universal crisis of the future, the one we are in today, with hatreds and world wars escalating where love and fraternity are suffocated.
“Thus, everywhere, the development of the science/technology/industry triad loses its providential character. The idea of modernity remains all-conquering and full of promise wherever there are dreams of well-being and liberating technical means” (p. 76).
Without a return to common sense, global cooperation, fraternity the crisis is inevitable.
MORIN, Edgar e Kern, Anne-Brigitte. (2003) Terra-Patria. Transl. Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre.
