The opposing position – namely the recognition that there are no authoritative sources of knowledge, nor any reliable means of justifying ideas as being true or probable – is called fallibilism.

anti-anthropocentrism has increasingly been elevated to the status of a universal principle, sometimes called the ‘Principle of Mediocrity’: there is nothing significant about humans (in the cosmic scheme of things). As the physicist Stephen Hawking put it, humans are ‘just a chemical scum on the surface of a typical planet that’s in orbit round a

What made science effective at understanding the physical world when all previous ways had failed?

gold can be created only by stars and by intelligent beings. If you find a nugget of gold anywhere in the universe, you can be sure that in its history there was either a supernova or an intelligent being with an explanation. And if you find an explanation anywhere in the universe, you know that there must have been an intelligent being. A

The physical world is not only much bigger and more violent than it once seemed, it is also immensely richer in detail, diversity and incident. Yet it all proceeds according to elegant laws of physics that we understand in some depth. I do not know which is more awesome: the phenomena themselves or the fact that we

The phrase ‘thousands of galaxies’ trips lightly off the tongue, but it takes a while to make room in one’s mind for the reality of it.

scientific theories are not ‘derived’ from anything. We do not read them in nature, nor does nature write them into us. They are guesses – bold conjectures. Human minds create them by rearranging, combining, altering and adding to existing ideas with the intention of improving upon them.

representative of the universe, and that the Earth is vast, fixed and permanent. They both stress instead that it is tiny and ephemeral. Both oppose arrogance:

for truth into a quest for certainty (a feeling) or for endorsement (a social status). This misconception is called justificationism.