---
title: "The 5 Blows to the Human Ego"
date: 2013-10-26
author: Drew Breunig
description: "Donna Haraway's four blows to the human ego, Copernicus to cyborgs, plus a fifth from Kepler: our solar system is not special."
tags: ["science", "space"]
url: https://www.dbreunig.com/2013/10/26/the-5-blows-to-the-human-ego.html
---

[Donna Haraway](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Haraway), one of my favorite professors from my time at UCSC, came up with a list of **the four major blows to the human ego**: ideas which caught on, undermined our supposed central place in the universe, and diverted culture. They are:

- [The Copernican Revolution](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_Revolution), which allowed us to realize we weren’t the center of the universe.
- [Darwinian thought](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species), which allowed us to realize we weren’t separate from animals.
- [Freud’s ideas of the unconscious](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscious_mind#Freud.27s_view_of_the_unconscious), which allowed us to realize that we weren’t in full control of our selves.
- [Cyborgs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyborg), [robots](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot), and [automatons](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automaton), which allowed us to realize that non-humans could do the work of humans.

I haven’t seen this list referenced anywhere since Haraway introduced it offhandedly[^1] in a seminar, so apologies for no original sourcing. I think about it at least once every three months.

Stumbling on the 4 Blows to the Ego this morning I realized a fifth has emerged over the last couple years:

- [The Kepler revolution](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_(spacecraft)), which allowed us to realize that planets and solar systems are not the exception, but the norm.

[It is now accepted that the Milky Way contains at least as many planets as it does stars](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepler20130103.html#.UmvKbpE7NcQ). This is quite a change from my childhood, when all the space literature I read marveled at the exemption that was our solar system.

As [Kepler winds down](http://www.nasa.gov/content/kepler-mission-manager-update-pointing-test-results/) we’re just beginning to see this thinking trickle out of science communities into mainstream narrative. Only time will tell how it affects our culture, thinking, and overall worldview.

* * *

[^1]: Casually tossing out giant, mind-rearranging ideas on the way to her seemingly unrelated central thesis is the defining element of Haraway lectures and writing.