"And so I have to say something horrible: The Copernican view of the solar system that people now learn about was able to lodge in human souls because a superficial person could believe in this system. Superficiality is part of what it takes to be quickly convinced of Copernicanism. This is not to deny the great merit of Copernicanism or its significance as a first class cultural phenomenon. The intent is not to downplay the significance of Copernicus for humanity. Not at all, and yet it can be said that it is not necessary to be a very profound person in order to believe in Copernicanism, because it does not require developing oneself more inwardly, but rather outwardly. And it truly takes a high degree of superficiality on the part of the human mind to come up with statements as trivial as those found in modern monistic books, which state with a certain enthusiasm that the Earth we human beings inhabit is but a speck of dust in the cosmos compared to other bodies in the universe. This tirade is trivial for the simple reason that this speck of dust with all its details concerns human beings on Earth, while other things spread out in the cosmos and compared to Earth are of little concern to us. Human evolution had to take a totally outward and superficial direction in order to quickly become capable of accepting Copernicanism, so to speak." ~  Rudolf Steiner http://wn.rsarchive.org/RelArtic/BobbetteRSW/steiner2_002.html