Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Saganwas an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy and other natural sciences. He is best known for his contributions to the scientific research of extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space: the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth9 November 1934
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world.
Modern Darwinism makes it abundantly clear that many less ruthless traits, some not always admired by robber barons and Fuhrers - altruism, general intelligence, compassion - may be the key to survival.
Has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? . . . No other human institution comes close.
Some racists still reject the plain testimony written in the DNA that all the races are not only human but nearly indistinguishable. . . .
Discussing the possibilities of extraterrestrial life: I would love it even if they were short, sullen, grumpy and sexually obsessed. But there just isn't any good evidence.
But amid much elegance and precision, the details of life and the Universe also exhibit haphazard, jury-rigged arrangements and much poor planning. What shall we make of this: an edifice abandoned early in construction by the architect?
If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.
For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.
Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.
I don't want to believe. I want to know.
The secrets of evolution are death and time-the deaths of enormous numbers of lifeforms that were imperfectly adapted to the environment; and time for a long succession of small mutations.
When Kepler found his long-cherished belief did not agree with the most precise observation, he accepted the uncomfortable fact. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, that is the heart of science.
Science is merely an extremely powerful method of winnowing what's true from what feels good.
Our children long for realistic maps of the future that they can be proud of. Where are the cartographers of human purpose?