Harvard Astronomer: "We Seem to Be Cosmically Special, Perhaps Even Unique"

Writing in the Washington Post, Harvard astronomer Howard Smith forcefully blunts Stephen Hawking's assertion that "The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet." Of course, it's not only Dr. Hawking who says as much -- denying human exceptionalism is close to universal orthodoxy among the socio-academic demographic he occupies. Carl Sagan put the same view a little more mildly: "We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star."

Smith points out, howeve...