Sancho Panza Anticipates the Pale Blue Dot
December 2022
In the second part of Don Quixote, a Duke and Duchess are enjoying Quixote’s particular madness. They pretend to believe that he is truly a great knight of chivalry, but instead devise scenarios to humiliate him for their amusement. One such scenario requires Sancho and Don Quixote to ride a flying horse to another land in order to battle a giant.
They are blindfolded atop a wooden horse and made to believe they are flying high above the earth. Though they never leave the ground and Sancho never takes off his blindfold, he has an experience that greatly changes his perspective. He is like an astronaut that has seen Earth from orbit. Sancho says,
After I came down from the sky, and after I looked at the earth from that great height and saw how small it was, the burning desire I had to be a governor cooled a little; where’s the greatness in ruling a mustard seed, or the dignity or pride in governing half a dozen men the size of hazel nuts? It seemed to me that this was all there was on the whole earth. If your lordship would be kind enough to give me just a tiny part of the sky, something no bigger than half a league, I’d be happier to take that than the best ínsula in the world.
So maybe not quite the same overview effect experienced by astronauts. Throughout the novel Sancho talks incessantly about becoming the governor of an ínsula. After just imagining what the world must look like from above, Sancho was less interested in governing a tiny speck. Of course this hasn’t erased Sancho’s desire completely, now he just wants an infinite slice of the sky.
The comment is reminiscent of the Pale Blue Dot from Carl Sagan. This line, in particular.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
It took a photograph from the Voyager 1 space probe 3.7 million miles from Earth for Sagan to produce this beautiful idea. Sancho simply needed to close his eyes and imagine. Perhaps Sancho is just a misunderstood genius.