Sagan Essay Research Paper The

Sagan Essay, Research Paper

The New Education

There is a bed in Seattle which is nestled in North America on the spinning Earth led by the Sun around the Milky Way, a speck of cosmic dust floating in the Universe. On this bed Carl Sagan died of an obscure disease for which there is no cure. Carl Sagan is a celebrated writer and astronomer, but most remembered for his writings. Like Galileo he brought the beauty of science to the people. He is the writer of Cosmos’, an award winning television mini-series that brought the wonders of astronomy into the home. His last and final work was a collection of his essays; Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death on the Brink of the Millennium. . Sagan wrote with a sense of awe, humility and reverence of nature. This book is an expression of Sagan’s passions for the things around. The book is so varied in topic that it is difficult at times to find a unifying factor. Nor does the book reach any sort of conclusion as to the direction of man and things around him. In this we can understand the true sadness of Sagan’s death, he was a child who was overwhelmed by the beauty of the universe around him and had not the time needed to express all of it in words.

The book is split into three parts; “The Power and Beauty of Quantification”, “What are the Conservatives Conserving.” and “Where Hearts and Minds Collide”. In the first section Sagan begins by teaches the reader about large numbers and what innovations in the past allowed us to use them. Sagan moves slowly and tactfully building the readers understanding of these basic concepts of large numbers and exponents, then applies them to such problems as exponential growth of populations, radioactive decay and nuclear chain reactions. . He exposes scientific concepts like a traditional narrative. Building the story’ to the questions he would most like answered concerning the nature of the universe and extraterrestrial (intelligent or otherwise) life. There is only a slight deviation coherence of this section where Sagan-or the editors- decide to delve into the nature of man’s war instinct and whether or not it is good to suppress it or nurture it. Sagan feels that thousands of years of a hunter/gatherer society will not be offset by relatively few years of a sedentary existence. Despite this Sagan maintains an optimistic outlook on humanities destiny, a trend that runs the course of the book. Overall this section is fairly light and enjoyable to read, the concepts early in the section will not overwhelm the reader. Upon finishing the section one is left with a sense of satisfaction, not the confusion associated by the jargon riddled books that plague this genre.

In our day, that is today, there are more scientists than there ever was in the past. Tomorrow will bring more still. Scientists by nature are disruptive creatures, there favourite pastime is pacing in back and forth in their laboratories creating theories as to how the clockwork of the universe ticks. Others scientists spend their time trying to disprove each others theories. In doing so changing the nature the universe-there could be nothing more disruptive than that. What then do we do when two scientists, or, two separate herds of them disagree on a theory. We could have them strap on safety goggles, have them butt heads like mountain goats, last scientist standing is correct. Though this sounds amusing, in some circumstances it is not any better than some of systems that exists to test the validity of a theory. A theory by definition can never be proven or become fact, except for mathematical ones. The Scientific method requires of us to perform tedious experiments and to keep concise observations as a means of strengthening a theory This is the inherent problem. If two contradicting theories are both sound then which one do we accept, and to compound the problem; what if the theories were predicting if life on this planet would end in the next year, decade or century. Choosing one over the other now becomes very personal, and scientists might try to resolve their problems with attacks on each others character, each will accuse the other of scare-mongering or being too conservative. This only breeds paranoia and hate for science in the minds of the public. The issues are ozone levels, greenhouse gases, fish stocks and whatever is being leached into your backyard. Sagan address’ this issue in the second part of his book. This by far being the strongest and most important part because it affects the each life on our planet. It is interesting that Sagan in his final chapter of this part “Religion and Science: An Alliance” that Sagan comes to the conclusion that Science and Religion can together work through this problem; Science being the antithesis of Religion, but both-for now- are committed to helping humanity prevail.

The third and final part is mixed bag of topics from Americas cold war with Russia, America war with itself, a new view on abortion, morality and Sagan’s top three advances in twentieth century existence. Each essay only begins to discuss topics of enormous depth. Sagan in the style that is prevalent throughout the book keeps them all very readable and thought provoking. The essays define so well aspects of the Twentieth century that one gets the feeling that some of them will find their way into the anthologies of the future.

In many ways this book is loosely held to