“Understanding is a kind of ecstasy” – Carl Sagan
The great Carl Sagan would have been 75 today. Most famous for the 1980s TV series and accompanying book, Cosmos, he was a prolific science writer producing more than 600 papers and articles and was the author, co-author, or editor of more than 20 books including the novel Contact which was the basis for the 1997 film of the same name.
As well as being an engaging writer and presenter, Sagan was a critical thinker, scientist and visionary and was also a proponent of the search for extraterrestrial life and an advocate of SETI. He was part of an all too brief popularisation of science and is quoted as saying “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology“. His efforts at putting this right were not wasted but there is still a long way to go.
Cosmos covers a wide range of subjects including the origin of life, the value and worthiness of the human race, and the relative insignificance of the earth in comparison to the universe. Even thirty years on it is still a must watch for anyone even remotely interested in science and remains an astounding piece of television. You can watch Cosmos on Google Video starting here.
I’ll leave you with another quote from the great man:
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known” – Carl Sagan
I have Cosmos on my bookshlelf to read, but it’s in a queue behind John Gribbin’s Deep Simplicity and Richard Fortey, two other excellent science writers