I was listening to a discussion on NPR this weekend about the relationship of the human ego to the cosmos. The program mentioned how Copernicus waited until he was on his deathbed to publish his findings about the Earth’s relationship to the sun, knowing the Catholic Church would take reprisals. The commentators then brought up a brief summary of humanity’s previous beliefs relating to the universe. At first we thought the sun revolved around us. When that was disproved, we still thought the galaxy revolved around the Earth. When we discovered that we lived in the Milky Way’s distant outskirts, we still thought we were at least the center of the universe until it turned out that there was no center at all. We still thought we were the only life around, but one look at the most commonly found elements in the universe — hydrogen, oxygen, carbon — reveals that we may not be the only neighbors on the block. Of course the strangest fact of all is that we can’t even see ninety-six percent of the universe with what physicists elusively call “dark matter” (20%) and “dark energy”(76%) How can we only see 4% (the stars, planets, etc) of what’s around us? This makes me think of Plato’s cave — that perhaps we really are stuck down in the dark, mistaking shadows and a little flame as the ultimate reality. Perhaps, a larger truth, and light, lay in that 96% of the cosmos that we can’t even see. In some ways, maybe we are still like Medieval humans needing a Copernicus, or two, brave enough to guide our way.