Tyson’s anatomy of the orang-outang placed man in a whole new constellation. Just as Copernicus displaced the earth from the center of the universe, so Tyson removed man from his unique role above and apart from all the rest of Creation, for whose nutriment, clothing, and delight plants were created, and for whose service there was a world of animals. Never before had there been so circumstantial or so public a demonstration of man’s physical kinship with the animals. Just as Vesalius had detailed and drawn the structure of the human body, so Tyson now detailed the anatomy of what he showed to
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