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The most dangerous myths are the ones we don't see. Human exceptionalism - the belief that humans are fundamentally superior to the rest of nature - is one of those myths. This worldview is not hidden because it's obscure - it's hidden because it's everywhere, taken for granted, and rarely questioned. But what struck me most is just how thoroughly this belief has infiltrated (渗透) science - an institution meant to challenge our biases, not reinforce them.

Take research on self-awareness. For decades, we believed only humans and certain primate species could recognize themselves in mirrors, a supposed benchmark of self-awareness. But the mirror test is biased toward vision. Dogs experience the world primarily via scent. They pass the smell-based mirror test with ease - demonstrating self-awareness in their dominant sense. When we measure the world with a human-oriented ruler, other species inevitably come up short.

Many treat human exceptionalism as a natural conclusion. But recent studies in developmental and cross-cultural psychology suggest otherwise. Beliefs in human exceptionalism aren't an inevitably biological outcome - they instead reflect a cultural worldview.

Across repeated studies, when presented with moral dilemmas - such as saving one human or multiple animals - adults overwhelmingly favored humans, even when the trade-off involved 100 dogs or pigs. Children, however, often chose to save multiple animals over one human, valuing human and nonhuman lives far more similarly. This suggests that the human-centred moral frameworks commonly held by adults are not the biological default, but emerge over time through cultural learning - particularly as children become increasingly exposed to the ways other forms of life are used and valued in our society.

Research across human cultures also reveals that human exceptionalism is far from universal. Many Indigenous (土著的) and non-Western knowledge systems reject such natural hierarchies. They recognize other animals, plants, rivers, forests, and mountains as kin: sentient, agentive beings embedded in a shared moral and ecological world. Within these frameworks, the notion that humans are separate or superior simply doesn't hold.

While writing my last book, I was introduced to various alternative cosmologies (宇宙观) that reject the ideology of human exceptionalism. These worldviews model ways of living in greater balance with the rest of the natural world. Some today maintain that humans are the most evolutionarily "successful" species. Success, in this view, is measured by ecological dominance. But in reality, the most resilient ecosystems are built on interdependence. We've constructed our scientific models around struggle and individualism, even though life on earth is held together by relationships and co-evolution.

The real insight comes from humility. Seeing ourselves clearly - not as rulers, but as participants in a larger web - is one of the most urgent scientific and moral challenges of our time.