Activity 3: Scientific Revolution

Jomari, R. Maninang
BSAR 2F

1. Differentiate the contributions of Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud in Science (Further

research is recommended).
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/copernicus-darwin-and-freud-a-tale-of-science-
and-narcissism/?
fbclid=IwAR3DHqk3pPlPLkOqOCzkbadDmNsTpWrmyLvmEF6sxbXYAsOhU6RSZGusPnA

Copernicus, Darwin and Freud: A Tale of Science and Narcissism The polymathic German
physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond described Copernicus and Darwin as deflators of human
self-regard decades before Freud did. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons and Bibliothèque
nationale de France. ADVERTISEMENT In a recent column I wrote: “In spite of all the blows
dealt to our egos by science—beginning with the demonstration that the Sun and not the Earth is
the center of the Solar System—many of us remain convinced that this universe was created for
us, and that our destiny is unfolding according to a pre-ordained divine plan.” The notion that
heliocentrism was a blow to humanity’s narcissism is commonly attributed to Freud. But after
reading my column, my buddy Gabriel Finkelstein, a historian of science at the University of
Colorado, Denver, informed me that Freud got the idea from the 19th-century German
physiologist-polymath Emil du Bois-Reymond, about whom Gabriel wrote a terrific biography.
(See this 2013 interview with Gabriel about his book.) As Gabriel details below, Freud was well
aware of du Bois-Reymond’s work, as were other pioneers of mind-science. But first, consider
this quote from Freud’s A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (delivered as lectures 1915-
1917 and first translated into English in 1920): “Humanity has in the course of time had to endure
from the hands of science two great outrages upon its naive self-love. The first was when it
realized that our earth was not the center of the universe, but only a tiny speck in a world-system
of a magnitude hardly conceivable; this is associated in our minds with the name of Copernicus,
although Alexandrian doctrines taught something very similar. The second was when biological
research robbed man of his peculiar privilege of having been specially created, and relegated him
to a descent from the animal world, implying an ineradicable animal nature in him: this
transvaluation has been accomplished in our own time upon the instigation of Charles Darwin,
Wallace, and their predecessors, and not without the most violent opposition from their
contemporaries. But man's craving for grandiosity is now suffering the third and most bitter blow
from present-day psychological research which is endeavoring to prove to the ‘ego’ of each one
of us that he is not even master in his own house, but that he must remain content with the veriest
scraps of information about what is going on unconsciously in his own mind. We psychoanalysts
were neither the first nor the only ones to propose to mankind that they should look inward; but it
appears to be our lot to advocate it most insistently and to support it by empirical evidence which
touches every man closely.” ADVERTISEMENT I love how Freud narcissistically suggests that
his blow to our narcissism is mightier than those delivered by Copernicus and Darwin. Now
compare Freud’s comments to the eulogy, “Darwin and Copernicus,” that du Bois-Reymond gave
in Berlin after Darwin’s death of Darwin in 1882 (reprinted in Nature in 1883): “Darwin seems to
me to be the Copernicus of the organic world. In the sixteenth century Copernicus put an end to
the anthropocentric theory by doing away with the Ptolemaic spheres and bringing our earth
down to the rank of an insignificant planet. At the same time he proved the non-existence of the
so-called empyrean, the supposed abode of the heavenly hosts, beyond the seventh sphere,
although Giordano Bruno was the first who actually drew the inference. Man, however, still stood
apart from the rest of animated beings— not at the top of the scale, his proper place, but quite
away, as a being absolutely incommensurable with them. One hundred years later Descartes still
held that man alone had a soul, and that beasts were mere automata… [After On the Origin of
Species] all things were seen to be due to the quiet development of a few simple germs; graduated
days of creation gave place to one day on which matter in motion was created; and organic
suitability was replaced by a mechanical process, for as such we may look on natural selection,
and now for the first time man took his proper place at the head of his brethren… Though many
links are still missing, we may fairly consider the knowledge of the existence of primeval man as
the beginning of the long-looked-for connection between him and the anthropoids on the one
hand, and between them both and their common progenitors on the other.”

2. Amongst the contributions of the three in the emergence of modern science, choose one

contribution (each from Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud) that you like the most and

explain why you choose them.

Darwin- explain how biology evolution organism evolved overlong

Freud – he believes that the unconscious sexual drive is fundamental to all human

Copernicus – his beginning of modern astronomy and also he refers to a Copernican revolution