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Billions of Planets, But Only One Earth

Claims of Earth’s uniqueness have been held up for ridicule ever since Copernicus. That’s why scientists have dubbed the principle that Earth is nothing more than a ho-hum phenomenon the “Copernican principle” or, even more humbling, the “principle of mediocrity.” Now along come Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee to upset scientific orthodoxy. Earth, they claim, is no run-of-the-mill planet. We are “not so ordinary as Western science has made us out to be . . . . Our global inferiority complex may be unwarranted.”