Science writer Isaac Asimov wrote a collection of essays in the 1970s entitled “The Tragedy of the Moon”. The first essay is the title track, followed by “The Triumph of the Moon”.

Asimov theorizes about whether or not Earth would have been better off without the moon. If the moon orbits Earth but every other visible planet orbits the Sun, why couldn’t there be two centers of the Universe? He suggests that the moon throws a wrench in the observation machinery.

If the moon orbited Venus instead, early astronomers wouldn’t have wasted 1000+ years trying to work out the geocentric (Earth-centered) model of the Universe. He claims that this had a major effect on human consciousness. It encouraged the conceit that humankind was at the center of everything. “Only one’s country, one’s city, one’s tribe, one’s family and one’s self counts”.

Arguably, not much has changed on that score since Copernicus presented the Heliocentric (Sun-centered) view of the Universe in the 1500s. I guess that really wasn’t that long ago. Yet, to clarify, this is European history. Egyptians knew that that the Sun was the center of the solar system back even before 3000 BCE. They just had a more mystical worldview that was rejected by Christianity.

Asimov suggests that religious systems might not have taken on scholarly significance if the moon orbited Venus instead of Earth. That religion and science would not have been in conflict with each other and that experimental technologies would be about 4000 years more advanced.

He counters this theory in “The Triumph of the Moon” by stating that without the moon humans would never have existed. Without the moon, Earth would have only solar tides. It would be way too dry to be habitable. If life began in the sea around 3 billion years ago, this was absolutely because of the moon.

The moon controls the tides of the oceans, rivers, streams – all water on Earth. Hundreds of millions of years ago, when land life was evolving, the moon was much closer to Earth. Water covered most of the globe at that time.

What Asimov doesn’t mention is that the moon was formed out of pieces of Earth. Over the course of roughly 10-20 million years, after the Earth was formed by recycled dead stars, a massive collision happened between Earth and an object about the size of Mars. Pieces of Earth flung out and formed the moon.

I half expected Asimov to even casually mention that the tragedy of the moon had something to do with humans being so emotional. The moon is Earth’s memento of a traumatic event, internalized by humans. Asimov would laugh at that even as a concept, but there’s no denying that we humans are an emotional bunch.

Asimov concludes that the main triumph of the moon is that its proximity to Earth has facilitated space exploration. Not only is Venus too far away, but at 900 degrees Fahrenheit, there could be no manned spacecraft landing for excavation. The Russians did collect data on Venus from an unmanned spacecraft, but that’s not quite the same. It was the ability to set a human foot on the moon that triggered a desire for more.