Conversations With Carl Sagan (Literary Conversations Series)

195 Pages·2006·6.203 MB·English

by  Tom Head, Carl Sagan

Conversations with Carl Sagan
Literary Conversations Series
Peggy Whitman Prenshaw
General Editor
Photo credit:© Photofest
Conversatwiiotnhs
CarSla gan
Edited by
Tom Head
University Press of Mississippi
Jackson
ww'\v. upress.state. ms. us
The University Press of Mississippi is a n1en1ber of the Association of An1erican
University Presses.
Copyright© 2006 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of An1erica
First edition 2006
x.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sagan Carl, 1934-
Conversations with Carl Sagan I edited by Tom Head.- 1st ed.
p. cm. - (Literary conversations series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-57806-735-9 (cloth: alk. paper)- ISBN 1-57806-736-7 (paper: alk. paper)
I. Sagan, Carl, 1934--Interviews. 2. Novelists, American-20th century-Interviews.
3. Science fiction-Authorship. I. Head, Tom. II. Title. III. Series.
PS3569.A287Z475 2006
520' .92-dc22
[BJ 2005048747
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
Books by Carl Sagan
The Atmospheres of Mars and Venus. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences,
1961.W ith W[illiam] W. Kellogg.
Intelligent Life in the Universe. Oakland, CA: Holden-Day, 1963. With I[osif]
S[amuilovich] Shklovskii.
Planets. New York: Time-Life Science Library, 1966. With Jonathan Leonard.
Planetary Exploration: The Condon Lectures. Corvallis, OR: University of Oregon Press,
1970.
Planetary Atmospheres. New York: Reidel, 1971. Edited with Tobias C. Owen and Harlan
J.S mith.
Space Research XI. 2 vols. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1971. Edited with K[irill] Ya. Kondratyev
and M[ichael] Rycroft.
UFOs: A Scientific Debate. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972. Edited with
Thornton Page.
Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, editor. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1973.
Mars and the Mind of Man. New York: Harper, 1973.W ith Ray Bradbury, Arthur C.
Clarke, Bruce Murray, and Walter Sullivan.
Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man. Washington, DC: U.S.G overnment Printing
Office, 1973. With Richard Berendzen, Ashley Montagu, Philip Morrison, Krister
Stendhal, and George Wald.
The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective. New York: Doubleday, 1973.
Other Worlds. New York: Bantam, 1975.
The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. New York:
Random House, 1977.
Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record. New York: Random House, 1978. With
F[rank] D[onald] Drake, Ann Druyan, Jon Lomberg, Linda Sagan, and Timothy Ferris.
Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. New York: Random House, 1979.
Cosmos. New York: Random House, 1980.
The Cold and the Dark: The World After Nuclear War. New York: Norton, 1984. With Paul
R. Ehrlich, Donald Kennedy, and Walter Orr Roberts.
Comet. New York: Random House, 1985. And Ann Druyan.
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Contents
Introduction ix
Chronology xxi
A Conversation with Carl Sagan Timothy Ferris 3
A Resonance with Something Alive lfe nry S. F. Cooper, Jr. 19
Carl Sagan Interviewed Joseph Goodavage 36
Second View: Sagan on Encounters Art Harris 47
Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection and Extraterrestrial Life-Wish
Dennis Meredith 51
The Cosmos Jonathan Cott 57
God and Carl Sagan: Is the Cosmos Big Enough for Both of Them?
Edward Wakin 68
A Pale Blue Dot Claire Marino 76
Sagan: Dump Environmentally Unconscious Slobs Ponchitta Pierce 79
Talk of the Nation: Science Friday Ira Flatow 82
Bringing Science Down to Earth Anne Kalosh 99
The Charlie Rose Show Charlie Rose 106
A Slayer of Demons Psychology Today 1 13
., ...
Talk of the Nation: Science Friday Ira Flatow 125
The Charlie Rose Show Charlie Rose 141
The Final Frontier? Joel Achenbach 151
Index 163
..
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Introduction
"When you're in love:' Carl Sagan said in his last published interview, "you
1
want to tell the world. I've been in love with science, so it seems the most nat­
ural thing in the world to tell people about it." The passion for science Sagan
displayed in his interviews was not base� strictly on professional interest;
it was based on a deeply personal and sincere curiosity about the cosmos
and an almost religious commitment to preserving the vulnerable humanity
he saw within it. Before Sagan, scientists had argued for centuries that the
Earth is not at the center of the universe and existentialists had argued for
centuries that human life is not subject to special protection, but these were
abstract ideas generally described in an abstract way. These beliefs, though
widely accepted by philosophers and scientists alike, had not been introduced
together into the public consciousness as a clear, meaningful model of human­
ity and the cosmos that could be visualized and understood. Sagan attempted
to combine these images and emerged with an original way of describing the
universe. As he told Interview magazine in 1996:
We live on an obscure hunk of rock and metal circling a humdrum sun, which is on
the outskirts of a perfectly ordinary galaxy comprised of 400 billion other suns,
which, in turn, is one of some hundred billion galaxies that make up the universe,
which, current thinking suggests, is one of a huge number-perhaps an infinite
number-of other closed-off universes. From that perspective, the idea that we're
at the center, that we have some cosmic importance, is ludicrous.2
Sagan's interviews convey a humanism, a confidence in the potential of
the human race tempered by a sense of its vulnerability as a tiny hive swept
about in an indifferent cosmos. This explains, in part, his passion for sci­
ence-the only way humanity has ever learned to protect itself from the
unspeakably powerful and mysterious blind forces of nature. «It's not that
scientists are prejudiced toward science," Sagan told U.S. News' Stephen
.
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