It occurs rarely. The cadence with which a scientist ends up becoming an efficient popularizer is repeated in parallel to the alignment of our eight planets. In our case, we could cite Eduard Punset. At a more international level Carl Sagan He is one of those different communicators, who came from the field of science to enlighten us all, inhabitants of the cave.
And so, more than twenty-five years after his death, his recovered books are still being reissued for the sake of continuing best-selling effect. From the stars to the shadow we cast. The journey with Sagan becomes more friendly, the translation of the more technical empirical approaches us with the virtue of metaphor or rather the parable related to disciples.
Famous were his different television programs where he developed as someone who talks about everyday issues to end up addressing transcendental issues such as a change of era or the discovery of life on other planets.
I especially remember a special he did about ancient Egypt. Because those ancient sages also laid their astronomical foundations. On that occasion Sagan could have convinced all the flat-earthers still on this planet from the evidence of our imperfect sphere that they need to see it to believe it.
Simplicity to captivate that Sagan transfers to his books. A true reading delight for anyone who dreams of knowing something more about what is most unknown to his mind that is not so prepared or educated in science ...
Top 3 Recommended Books By Carl Sagan
Contact
A novel, yes. What a scientist always lacks to connect especially with a lay audience. Nothing better than fiction to address the most complex reality. If you also have the luck of Sagan's verb, the matter can lead to a commendable result.
It is also true that to write a novel, when one is not much about writing fictions, one needs a passionate subject. And Sagan wasted all his hours looking for some vestige of life out there. That was what he kept looking for in his novel, contact ...
After five years of incessant searches with the most sophisticated devices of the moment, the astronomer Eleanor Arroway manages, together with a team of international scientists, to connect with the star Vega and show that we are not alone in the universe.
A fast-paced journey begins then towards the most anticipated meeting in the history of humanity, and with it Carl Sagan masterfully raises how the reception of messages from an intelligent civilization would affect our society.
Contacto, Locus Prize 1986, develops one of the constants in the author's career: the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and communication with it through space probes. In 1997, film director Robert Zemeckis brought this story to the big screen, in a film starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey.
the world and its demons
Nothing more prophetic these days than a review of what scientists said a few years ago. Sagan's demons may not have appeared in the form of coronavirus, but the consequences could well be the same.
Are we on the brink of a new dark age of irrationalism and superstition? In this poignant book, the incomparable Carl Sagan brilliantly demonstrates that scientific thinking is necessary to safeguard our democratic institutions and our technical civilization.
the world and its demons It is Sagan's most personal book, and it is filled with endearing and revealing human stories. The author, with his own childhood experiences and the fascinating history of the discoveries of science, shows how the method of rational thought can overcome prejudices and superstitions to reveal the truth, which is often surprising.
The diversity of science
As diverse as that if one delves too deeply into it, subjective plots are reached, notions conditioned by our reason. For this reason, science also has a common place with the most humanistic of thought. The balance would perhaps be the point of light from which to continue pulling the fine thread around which everything passes and is woven.
In this posthumous work Carl Sagan masterfully combines astronomy, physics, biology, philosophy and theology to explain our experience of the universe and that almost mystical feeling that we all experience when we admire it.
With a simple and direct style, without academicisms or technicalities, the author addresses the key themes of his work: the relationship between science and religion, the origin of the universe, the possibilities of extraterrestrial life, the destiny of humanity, among others. His intelligent observations - often astonishingly prophetic - on the great mysteries of the cosmos have the invigorating effect of stimulating the intellect, the imagination, and awakening us to the greatness of life in the cosmos.
The diversity of science. A Personal Vision of God's Search is now being published for the first time in commemoration of the XNUMXth anniversary of Sagan's death, and has been edited and updated by his widow and collaborator Ann Druyan.
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