The mediocrity principle was implicitly applied during the 17th century, when astronomers attempted to measure the distance between distant stars and the Earth. By assuming that the Sun was just an average star, and that some stars seemed brighter simply because they were closer to us, they were able to estimate how far these stars were from the Earth. Although this method was flawed in view of the differences among stars, it gave astronomers at that time a rough idea of how far the stars were from the Earth. For example, James Gregory, Isaac Newton and Christiaan Huygens were able to estimate the distance between Sirius and the Earth through this method.
Comparison with other approaches
The mediocrity principle is in contrast with the anthropic principle, which asserts that the presence of an intelligent observer limits the circumstances to bounds under which intelligent life can be observed to exist, no matter how improbable. Both stand in contrast to the fine-tuning hypothesis, which asserts that the natural conditions for intelligent life are implausibly rare. The mediocrity principle implies that Earth-like environments are necessarily common, based in part on the evidence of any happening at all, whereas the anthropic principle suggests that no assertion can be made about the probability of intelligent life based on a sample set of one example, who are necessarily capable of making such an assertion about themselves. It is also possible to handle the Mediocrity Principle as a statistical problem, a case of a single Data point statistics, also present in the German tank problem.
Other uses
argues that the mediocrity principle is incorrect from a physical point of view, in reference to either humanity's part of the universe or to its species. Deutsch refers to Stephen Hawking's quote: "The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies". Deutsch wrote that Earth's neighborhood in the universe is not typical and that a concentration of mass such as the Solar System is an "isolated, uncommon phenomenon". He also disagrees with Richard Dawkins, who considers that humans, because of natural evolution, are limited to the capabilities of their species. Deutsch responds that even though evolution did not give humans the ability to detect neutrinos, scientists can currently detect them, which significantly expands their capabilities beyond what is available as a result of evolution.
