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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carl Sagan | 6/13 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T13:17:36.414677+00:00 | kb-cron |
Sagan and Ann Druyan co-wrote the 13-part PBS documentary Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. It drew on earlier documentaries, notably Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man. The production involved the recreation of the Library of Alexandria. It covered an array of scientific subjects, including the evolution of stars and how it is linked to the evolution of life. Frederic Golden wrote "The series' name comes from the Greek word for the ordered universe, the antithesis of chaos. It is an apt choice. Cosmos is nothing less than Sagan's attempt to make sense out of what is for many people the hopelessly baffling world of 20th century science. To unfold his story he roves through two millennia of scientific progress, often shuttling back and forth over the centuries like some Wellsian time traveler. One moment he is seated in a cafe on the Aegean island of Samos, home of Pythagoras and Aristarchus, explaining the first stirrings of Greek scientific prowess. At another moment, he is strolling through the venerable Cavendish Laboratories of England's Cambridge University, recounting the birth of modern atomic physics. Sagan makes science as palatable as the apple pie he lovingly cuts up in a Cambridge University dining room in order to make a point about matter." He offers an optimistic and a perspective of humans' place on Earth, arguing that "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." Cosmos has been seen by at least 500 million people across 60 countries, making it the most widely watched series in the history of American public television until Ken Burns's The Civil War in 1990. Cosmos won an Emmy and a Peabody. It featured music by Bach, Vivaldi, Vangelis and others. The accompanying book was well received. James Michener wrote "Mr. Sagan's essay, a spin-off from his hugely successful television show, is a cleverly written, imaginatively illustrated summary of his geological, anthropological, biological, historical and astronomical ruminations about our universe. His references comprise the entire scope of human history. His treatment, necessarily abbreviated, is highly personal. He is always readable, and because his mind ranges so far and wide, he seems exactly the right man for the job." He wrote the introduction to Stephen Hawking's bestseller A Brief History of Time. In 1988, Magnus Magnusson moderated a discussion between Sagan, Hawking and Arthur C. Clarke, God, the Universe and Everything Else. He wrote a sequel to Cosmos, Pale Blue Dot. The title refers to the view of Earth from the Voyager spacecraft. Sagan said that there were at least two reasons for scientists to share the purposes and findings of science. Simple self-interest was one: much of the funding for science came from the public, and the public therefore had the right to know how the money was being spent. If scientists increased public admiration for science, there was a good chance of having more public supporters. The other reason was the joy of communicating one's own excitement about science to others. He wrote: "Among the best contemporary scientist-popularizers, I think of Stephen Jay Gould, E. O. Wilson, Lewis Thomas and Richard Dawkins in biology; Steven Weinberg, Alan Lightman and Kip Thorne in physics; Roald Hoffmann in chemistry; and the early works of Fred Hoyle in astronomy. (And while requiring calculus, the most consistently exciting, provocative, and inspiring science popularization of the last few decades seems to me to be Volume 1 of Richard Feynman's Introductory Lectures on Physics.)"
=== Science fiction === Sagan wrote that science fiction led him to science. He added that, while most of the science fiction he read in his youth didn't hold up, "the best of science fiction remains very good indeed. There are stories that are so tautly constructed, so rich in the accommodating details of an unfamiliar society that they sweep me along before I have even a chance to be critical. Such works include Robert Heinlein's The Door into Summer; Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination and his The Demolished Man; Jack Finney's Time and Again; Frank Herbert's Dune, and Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz." Sagan was acquainted with science fiction fandom through his friendship with Isaac Asimov, and he spoke at the Nebula Awards ceremony in 1969. Asimov described Sagan as one of only two people he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own, the other being computer scientist and artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky. Sagan briefly served as an adviser on Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. He proposed that the film suggest, rather than depict, extraterrestrial superintelligence. In 1971, he participated in a panel on Mars with Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Bruce C. Murray and Walter Sullivan, published as Mars and the Mind of Man. Sagan turned his pen to science fiction with Contact. He needed a way for his heroine, Ellie Arroway, to get from Earth to Vega, so he asked his friend Kip Thorne for advice on the physics of wormholes. This led to original research by Thorne on closed timelike curves.
=== Skepticism === Sagan promoted scientific skepticism against pseudoscience. He credited Martin Gardner's Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science and Charles Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds with teaching him critical thinking. In 1974, he challenged Immanuel Velikovsky to a debate. He was a critic of practices like crystal healing and astrology. In a column for Parade, he proposed a "Baloney Detection Kit", a phrase coined by Arthur Felberbaum, a friend of his wife Ann Druyan. He expanded on it in his penultimate book, The Demon-Haunted World. He lamented the fact that most newspapers had a daily column on astrology and very few had even a weekly column on astronomy. To mark the tenth anniversary of Sagan's death, David Morrison, a former student of Sagan, recalled "Sagan's immense contributions to planetary research, the public understanding of science, and the skeptical movement" in Skeptical Inquirer. He taught a Senior Seminar on "Critical Thinking".