On this day in 1996 we lost Carl Sagan. Dr. Sagan was one of those rare scientists who could explain difficult scientific concepts to non-scientists in a compelling and understandable way without dumbing it down and without a trace of condescension. There haven’t been many others (Stephen Jay Gould and Rachel Carson are the only two who come to mind) but Sagan was in a class by himself. Perhaps it was his sense of self-promotion and marketing that turned his name into a brand the enabled him to reach and teach the masses. This earned him some backlash and derision from his fellow scientists but at least some of it was due to resentment over his fame and fortune. In the end, however, while Sagan was promoting himself, he was also successful in promoting an appreciation and and understanding of the scientific method and ethics that is now his legacy.
An astronomer and astrophysicist by trade, Sagan’s books, written over the course of his lifetime, covered the whole spectrum of human knowledge and achievement. In addition to astronomy, his books delved into biology, evolution, psychology, theology, philosophy, politics, and public policy. Never willing to absolutely declare himself an atheist, he nevertheless was the world’s most famous agnostic. He was always respectful of religion, but fervently believed in rational argument based on provable facts and argued that the worlds of science and religion should neither encroach on one another nor negate one another. He was, in the truest and noblest sense, a humanist.
© 2010 – 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.
“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.”
today’s cable TV personalities. Back when the film was first released, it was considered a dark, comic satire of the confused nineteen seventies. It reflected the zeitgeist of the time, but was regarded as over the top, a caricature, an exaggeration on steroids of our increasingly trivializing culture. We were becoming gossipy, voyeuristic, and vapid. Viewed today, however, the film seems barely over the top. In some ways we have have far surpassed Paddy Chayefsky’s dystopian visions. As time passes, we begin to see that his darkest visions are not imaginary at all.
In more recent times, while politicians publicly decried WikiLeaks’ previous exposures of military secrets regarding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, some even calling for his arrest or assassination, no action was actually taken. In general, while there are laws that apply to those with secret and top secret clearances that make it a crime to reveal state secrets, they have not been applicable to journalists and media outlets who publish those secrets. Hence, the US soldier who provided secret documents to WikiLeaks faces prosecution, but the various news outlets who published those documents, including Wikileaks have not been prosecuted.
