The Grand Canyon Argument
“May I name another vicious bromide you’ve never felt?"
"Which one?"
"You’ve never felt how small you were when looking at the ocean.”
He laughed. “Never. Nor looking at the planets. Nor at mountain peaks. Nor at the Grand Canyon. Why should I? When I look at the ocean, I feel the greatness of man, I think of man’s magnificent capacity that created this ship to conquer all that senseless space. When I look at mountain peaks, I think of tunnels and dynamite. When I look at the planets, I think of airplanes.”1
The grand canyon argument goes something like this:
Humans are just intelligent monkeys floating on a ball of dust in the middle of an infinite universe—we really aren’t all that special, so don’t get any highfalutin delusions of grandeur!
It is so-named by Leonard Peikoff as it is often repeated upon seeing the Grand Canyon.
Of course, if we are to view something as insignificant or irrelevant on these grounds, then we should equally discount the Grand Canyon argument itself. After all, its proponents are just monkeys on an insignificant pebble as against the vast enormity of the universe—why should we listen to what they have to say?