Though one of my personal heroes has been deceased for many years, he still touches base with me every so often through the amazing body of work that he left behind. Carl Sagan, science guru extraordinaire, penned some tremendous science non-fiction, from Cosmos to Demon-Haunted World, but also a fair bit of science fiction. I just finished reading Contact (1985), his first novel, which would eventually become a feature film (1997, the year after he passed) that I have yet to see.
Contact is a tremendous novel by many standards, but one measure is the extent to which it has permeated my consciousness, and it has a great deal. While reading this tale of a message from an alien civilization and an eventual visit, and in the weeks since, I have stared a bit longer at the stars at night, captivated by the scale of the universe. I wonder if there are beings on another planet looking up in similar awe at a view not so different from mine.
Showing posts with label Carl Sagan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carl Sagan. Show all posts
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Carl Sagan: The Greatest Storyteller of Science
When I mention the name "Carl Sagan" in my physics classes, only a small minority of my students recognize it. It is a shame, as in my view, he is the greatest author of science non-fiction of all time. It is also surprising, as he was the leading physics rock star of his time: His masterpiece, The Cosmos, has amassed an audience in the area of five hundred million (it exists as a TV series and an accompanying book). A leading astrophysicist and genial communicator, Sagan inspired wonder, and helped to attract a generation of scientists to their field.
Sagan has been on my mind over the past month as I made my way through what has become my new favourite non-fiction book: The Demon-Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark. It happens to be the last book that Sagan wrote. Published in early 1996, it was his love letter to science and his parting message to us all; he died later that year at the relatively young age of 62 after a long battle with myelodysplasia.
Unlike much of his previous work, The Demon-Haunted World deals less with the behaviour of nature and more with the practice of science. He details the importance of critical thinking among all members of society and methodically rips apart the practice of mysticism and pseudoscience through detailed analyses of ghost mythology, astrology, witchcraft and, in particular, UFO 'encounters'.
What makes this work so special is the complete treatment that each of these diverse topics receives. While most readers of science non-fiction are skeptical of alien visitors, they rarely go the extra step, and ask why a non-negligible proportion of people claim to have been abducted by green extraterrestrials. The conclusions presented in this book enter the realms of psychology and psychiatry, and the discussion follows fascinating directions that I did not see coming. For example, I had not considered the fact that most alien abductees claim to have been taken advantage of sexually in a space ship, and most of them also have a history of being sexually abused.
Sagan has been on my mind over the past month as I made my way through what has become my new favourite non-fiction book: The Demon-Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark. It happens to be the last book that Sagan wrote. Published in early 1996, it was his love letter to science and his parting message to us all; he died later that year at the relatively young age of 62 after a long battle with myelodysplasia.
Unlike much of his previous work, The Demon-Haunted World deals less with the behaviour of nature and more with the practice of science. He details the importance of critical thinking among all members of society and methodically rips apart the practice of mysticism and pseudoscience through detailed analyses of ghost mythology, astrology, witchcraft and, in particular, UFO 'encounters'.
What makes this work so special is the complete treatment that each of these diverse topics receives. While most readers of science non-fiction are skeptical of alien visitors, they rarely go the extra step, and ask why a non-negligible proportion of people claim to have been abducted by green extraterrestrials. The conclusions presented in this book enter the realms of psychology and psychiatry, and the discussion follows fascinating directions that I did not see coming. For example, I had not considered the fact that most alien abductees claim to have been taken advantage of sexually in a space ship, and most of them also have a history of being sexually abused.
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