The Copernican Revolution famously displaced Earth from the center of the cosmos, forcing humanity to confront its non-privileged position in space. However, I propose that we may need another revolution—one that challenges our implicit assumption that our particular spatiotemporal scale occupies a privileged position in physical theory. Just as we no longer consider ourselves spatially central, perhaps we should question whether our scale of observation is fundamentally special.

Scale Symmetry as a Fundamental Principle

What if we adopt the perspective that every scale is equally “central” to understanding reality? This represents a radical extension of the Copernican principle: not only is our spatial location non-privileged, but our temporal and spatial scale of observation may also be arbitrary.

When we observe the universe, we notice a pattern: entities larger than us tend to evolve more slowly, while smaller entities change more rapidly. Galaxies evolve over billions of years, human affairs over decades or centuries, cellular processes over minutes or hours, and subatomic interactions over infinitesimal fractions of a second. This pattern suggests an intriguing possibility: perhaps each scale of reality has its own equivalent of “cosmology” and “particle physics.”

From this perspective, our human-scale physics might be the “particle physics” of larger-scale structures and simultaneously the “cosmology” of smaller-scale entities. The physics we observe at any given scale would represent only a cross-section of a multi-scale reality.

Epistemic Constraints vs. Ontological Reality

This multi-scale framework suggests that many properties we attribute to physical reality may be epistemic (related to how we know) rather than ontological (related to what exists). Consider elementary particles, which appear identical and indivisible at our scale of observation. Their apparent simplicity and indistinguishability might be an artifact of how they manifest at our scale.

Just as a distant galaxy appears as a mere point of light despite containing billions of stars, perhaps elementary particles that seem identical to us possess rich internal structures and behaviors at their intrinsic scale—a kind of “hidden variables” scenario. These internal dynamics would be effectively irrelevant to any measurement we could perform at our scale, making them epistemically inaccessible but ontologically real.

This perspective admittedly challenges conventional approaches to physics, which traditionally resist positing unmeasurable entities. However, as a metaphysical framework, it offers intriguing insights about the relationship between scale and knowledge.

The Recursive Nature of Cosmic Evolution

Perhaps the most profound implication of scale-relativity concerns our understanding of cosmic time. Consider that from the perspective of a sufficiently large-scale observer, our entire present cosmic age (approximately 13.7 billion years) might be equivalent to what we would consider “the first second after the big bang.”

By the same token, what we perceive as the first second after the big bang—a seemingly simpler, more homogeneous era—might have contained the entire rich evolution of a universe when viewed from a sufficiently small-scale perspective. Each instant of cosmic time, when appropriately rescaled, could contain the equivalent of billions of years of evolution at smaller scales.

This presents a profoundly hopeful view: the apparently vast structures of our cosmos—galaxy superclusters stretching across billions of light-years—might themselves be mere particles in the formation of even larger structures, potentially supporting complex emergent phenomena including life, albeit at scales and timeframes inconceivable to us.

Beginning-less and Endless Time

This framework suggests a universe without a true beginning or end. While we might place the origin of our observable universe at 13.7 billion years ago, each moment of cosmic time could be subdivided into smaller and smaller intervals, each potentially containing the equivalent of billions of years when appropriately rescaled.

Every second might contain infinite nested “universes,” each experiencing their own equivalent of 13.7 billion years of evolution. Conversely, what we experience as the entire age of the universe might constitute a mere instant at sufficiently large scales where cosmic evolution has hardly begun.

In this view, the universe has always existed and will always exist if we abandon our scale-centric perspective. Time becomes fractal-like, with cosmic histories nested within each moment, recurring endlessly at different scales.

Conclusion

The hypothetical framework of scale relativity represents not a rejection of current physics but an invitation to consider its contextual nature. Just as the Copernican Revolution didn’t invalidate Earth-based astronomical observations but rather placed them in proper context, acknowledging our scale-bound perspective doesn’t invalidate our physics but helps us understand its scope and limitations.

By recognizing that our particular spatiotemporal scale might not be privileged, we open ourselves to a richer conception of reality—one where each level of description reveals unique aspects of a fundamentally multi-scale universe. Perhaps the true legacy of the Copernican principle is not merely that we occupy no special place, but that there is no special place or scale at all.