COSMOS The Book “Cosmos is magnificent, challenging.… One of the book’s strengths is the way it traces today’s knowledge and today’s scientific method to their historical roots. It is enthusiasm, plus Dr. Sagan’s poetic insight and literary skill, that makes this an eminently readable book.” The Christian Science Monitor “Carl Sagan is one of the most brilliant scientists of our times.… He has done an excellent writing job as he delves into the past, present, and future of science, dealing with the mindstaggering enormity of the cosmos in which we exist.” Associated Press “Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Sagan has gathered the whole glittering universe into one magnificent book.… He blends science and philosophy in a text of such lyric energy.… Sagan dazzles the mind with the miracle of our survival, framed by the stately galaxies of space.” Cosmopolitan COSMOS The Book “The past year … saw that extraordinary television series, Cosmos, on the Public Broadcasting Service; these programs initiated tens of millions of viewers not only into the wonders of space but also into awareness of the deepest scientific questions concerning the nature and origin of the world, of life, of humankind. Carl Sagan’s book Cosmos is not the script of the television series but rather a full-fledged account, mostly in chronological order, of the great human efforts at scientific accomplishment.
Cosmos gives the reader the opportunity to explore in depth.… will make the writings of Jules Verne and H. Wells seem prosaic.” The Christian Century “In just a few years, Sagan … has become Mr. Science, a widely respected popularizer able to link the stuff and history of life with the vastness of space and eternity. And he does it with a grace and élan that persuades you, for the moment at least, that nothing is more exciting or more important,” Chicago Tribune “Sagan is an astronomer with one eye on the stars, another on history, and a third—his mind’s—on the human condition.… We admire him greatly for his ambition and erudition, occasionally for the grace of his prose, and often for amazing us about our universe and ourselves.” Newsday “A fine work of popular science, with an unusual dose of imagination and vision.” The San Diego Union “Sagan knows precisely how to excite the imagination of the lay reader and hold his interest from first page to last.… Here is this mind- stretching book to take us on the most fascinating of all voyages, knowledgeable, beautifully written, and strikingly illustrated.
Every intelligent reader should read, mark, learn and inwardly digest Sagan’s cosmic story.” John Barkham Reviews “Magnificent … Sagan’s inquiry into man within nature is free from superstition and pessimism.” The American Rationalist COSMOS The Television Series The most widely watched series in the history of American public television, Cosmos, has now been viewed by over 200 million people in more than 60 countries. “Cosmos is perhaps the most original and unique contribution to television programming made during the past three years.… superior at every level. It entertains, instructs, informs, excites and inspires.… great attention to clarity and scholarship … exceptional respect for the viewing public. Cosmos is a triumph for Dr.
Sagan, for science television programming and for the American people.” Ohio State University Annual Award for Television Excellence By Carl Sagan Published by The Random House Publishing Group: BROCA’S BRAIN COSMOS THE DRAGONS OF EDEN MURMURS OF EARTH SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS (with Ann Druyan) PALE BLUE DOT BILLIONS & BILLIONS A Ballantine Book Published by The Random House Publishing Group Copyright © 1980 by Carl Sagan Productions, Inc. All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Since this page cannot legibly accommodate all acknowledgments, they appear on the next page.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.com Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 80-5286 eISBN: 978-0-30780098-5 This edition published by arrangement with Random House, Inc.1 Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: American Folklore Society: Excerpt from “Chukchee Tales” by Waldemar Borgoras from Journal of American Folklore, volume 41 (1928). Reprinted by permission of the American Folklore Society. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.: Quote by Isaac Newton (Optics), quote by Joseph Fourier (Analytic Theory of Heat), and A Question Put to Pythagoras by Anaximenes (c. Reprinted with permission from Great Books of the Western World.
Copyright 1952 by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. Harvard University Press: Quote by Democritus of Abdera taken from Loeb Classical Library. Reprinted by permission of Harvard University Press. Indiana University Press: Excerpts from Ovid, Metamorphoses, translated by Rolfe Humphries, copyright 1955 by Indiana University Press.
Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Oxford University Press: Excerpt from Zurvan: A Zoroastrian Dilemma by R. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press. Penguin Books, Ltd.: One line from Enuma Elish, Sumer, in Poems of Heaven and Hell from Ancient Mesopotamia, translated by N.
Twelve lines from Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, translated by D. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Books, Ltd. Pergamon Press, Ltd.: Excerpts from Giant Meteorites by E. Krinov are reprinted by permission of Pergamon Press, Ltd.
Simon & Schuster, Inc.: Quote from the Bhagavad Gita from Lawrence and Oppenheimer by Nuel Pharr Davis (1968, page 239), and excerpt from The Sand Reckoner by Archimedes taken from The World of Mathematics by James Newman (1956, volume 1, page 420). Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Simon & Schuster, Inc., and Bruno Cassirer, Ltd.: Quote from The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis. Reprinted by permission of the publisher in the United States, Simon & Schuster, Inc., and the publisher in England, Bruno Cassirer (Publishers), Ltd.
Copyright © 1960 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. The University of Oklahoma Press: Excerpt from Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Ancient Quiché Maya, by Adrian Recinos, 1950. Copyright © 1950 by the University of Oklahoma Press. Reprinted by permission of the University of Oklahoma Press.
For Ann Druyan In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with Annie. CONTENTS Cover Other Books by This Author Title Page Copyright Dedication Introduction I The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean II One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue III The Harmony of Worlds IV Heaven and Hell V Blues for a Red Planet VI Travelers’ Tales VII The Backbone of Night VIII Travels in Space and Time IX The Lives of the Stars X The Edge of Forever XI The Persistence of Memory XII Encyclopaedia Galactica XIII Who Speaks for Earth? Acknowledgments Appendix 1: Reductio ad Absurdum and the Square Root of Two Appendix 2: The Five Pythagorean Solids For Further Reading INTRODUCTION The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject … And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them … Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced.
Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has in it something for every age to investigate … Nature does not reveal her mysteries once and for all. —Seneca, Natural Questions, Book 7, first century In ancient times, in everyday speech and custom, the most mundane happenings were connected with the grandest cosmic events. A charming example is an incantation against the worm which the Assyrians of 1000 B. imagined to cause toothaches.
It begins with the origin of the universe and ends with a cure for toothache: After Anu had created the heaven, And the heaven had created the earth, And the earth had created the rivers, And the rivers had created the canals, And the canals had created the morass, And the morass had created the worm, The worm went before Shamash, weeping, His tears flowing before Ea: “What wilt thou give me for my food, What wilt thou give me for my drink?” “I will give thee the dried fig And the apricot.” “What are these to me? The dried fig And the apricot! Lift me up, and among the teeth And the gums let me dwell!…” Because thou hast said this, O worm, May Ea smite thee with the might of His hand! (Incantation against toothache.) Its treatment: Second-grade beer … and oil thou shalt mix together; The incantation thou shalt recite three times thereon and shalt put the medicine upon the tooth. Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon the method. They imagined a small, quaint, tidy universe in which the dominant forces were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not a central role.
We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of toothache with second-rate beer was tied to the deepest cosmological mysteries. Today we have discovered a powerful and elegant way to understand the universe, a method called science; it has revealed to us a universe so ancient and so vast that human affairs seem at first sight to be of little consequence. We have grown distant from the Cosmos.
It has seemed remote and irrelevant to everyday concerns. But science has found not only that the universe has a reeling and ecstatic grandeur, not only that it is accessible to human understanding, but also that we are, in a very real and profound sense, a part of that Cosmos, born from it, our fate deeply connected with it. The most basic human events and the most trivial trace back to the universe and its origins. This book is devoted to the exploration of that cosmic perspective.
In the summer and fall of 1976, as a member of the Viking Lander Imaging Flight Team, I was engaged, with a hundred of my scientific colleagues, in the exploration of the planet Mars. For the first time in human history we had landed two space vehicles on the surface of another world. The results, described more fully in Chapter 5, were spectacular, the historical significance of the mission utterly apparent. And yet the general public was learning almost nothing of these great happenings.
The press was largely inattentive; television ignored the mission almost altogether. When it became clear that a definitive answer on whether there is life on Mars would not be forthcoming, interest dwindled still further. There was little tolerance for ambiguity. When we found the sky of Mars to be a kind of pinkish-yellow rather than the blue which had erroneously first been reported, the announcement was greeted by a chorus of good-natured boos from the assembled reporters —they wanted Mars to be, even in this respect, like the Earth.
They believed that their audiences would be progressively disinterested as Mars was revealed to be less and less like the Earth. And yet the Martian landscapes are staggering, the vistas breathtaking. I was positive from my own experience that an enormous global interest exists in the exploration of the planets and in many kindred scientific topics—the origin of life, the Earth, and the Cosmos, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, our connection with the universe. And I was certain that this interest could be excited through that most powerful communications medium, television.
My feelings were shared by B. Gentry Lee, the Viking Data Analysis and Mission Planning Director. We decided, gamely, to do something about the problem ourselves. Lee proposed that we form a production company devoted to the communication of science in an engaging and accessible way.
In the following months we were approached on a number of projects.