The cosmos seems to be gigantic in both space and time. It is more ancient than all our ape-like ancestors and all other life forms. It might also seem safe to assume that the trillions of entities in the cosmos engage in relations and duels even when no humans observe them. However interesting we humans may be to ourselves, we are apparently in no way central to the cosmic drama, marooned as we are on an average-sized planet near a mediocre sun, and confined to a tiny portion of the history of the universe. All these apparent facts are sacrificed, in the name of superior rigor, by Kant’s Copernican philosophy and its successors. It is said that all statements about distant time and space are statements by humans, and hence we are trapped in the same circle as before. This is a huge philosophical gamble, justified only by the desire for an unshakeable first principle on which the remainder of knowledge can be built.

Graham Harman, The Quadruple Object