This isn’t Carl Sagan’s best book, but it was his last, and it has plenty of good stuff to say.
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Chapter 5 is about “Four Cosmic Questions”
1st cosmic question: “Was there ever life on Mars?”
2nd cosmic question: “Is Titan a laboratory for the origins of life?”
3rd cosmic question: “Is there intelligent life elsewhere?”
4th cosmic question: “What is the origin and fate of the universe?”
The possibility of an infinitely old universe that cycles between expansion and contraction is greatly fascinating.
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On Three Unprecedented Innovations of the 20th Century
Chapter 18 of Carl Sagan’s book “Billions and Billions” is called “The Twentieth Century” and begins with a couple of interesting quotes. I’ll reproduce them as they are quoted in full.
Sagan lists three broad innovations of the twentieth century:
- “Unprecedented means to save, prolong, and enhance life”
- “Unprecedented means to destroy life, including for the first time putting our global civilization at risk”
- “Unprecedented insights into the nature of ourselves and the universe.”
All three Sagan says “have been brought forth by science and technology, a sword with two razor-sharp edges. All three have roots in the distant past.”
“…99.9 percent of us owe our lives to agricultural technology and the science that underlies it…” we really don’t think about this enough.
“My own view,” Sagan writes, “is that it is far better to understand the Universe as it really is than to pretend to a universe as we might wish it to be.”
He concludes, “Whether we will acquire the understanding and wisdom necessary to come to grips with the scientific revelations of the twentieth century will be the most profound challenge of the twenty-first.”
And about twenty five years into this century, I’d say the challenge is immensely profound.
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On Facing Death Without Certainty of an Afterlife:
“I do believe there is life after death. But it’s nothing like the Christian belief of heaven and hell. I believe it’s more like a weird sort of purgatory. Some of our energy is passed on to other living beings. Our consciousness, I feel, drifts about, sometimes remaining anchored for a time, potentially a long time. I believe in ghosts, even if they are just nothing more than echoes. But I do believe there are wonders that exist just outside of what our senses allow us to perceive, and in death, we can’t possibly be alone.” – Albert Einstein
In his final chapter of his book “Billions and Billions,” Carl Sagan quoted this passage from Albert Einstein to explain how it’s possible for him to face death without the certainty of an afterlife. Considering this final book would be published after his death, it’s clear why he chose to end his book this way. What’s interesting about this Einstein quote to me is that I have a very similar outlook on my own eventual demise. It’s interesting to me that Albert and I are on such a similar wavelength.
This is a topic I must return to in depth.
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Other quotes from this book:
Carl Sagan on Black and White: “Black and white are fundamentally the same thing; the difference is only in the relative amounts of light reflected, not in their color.”
Carl Sagan on CO2: “CO2 molecules, being brainless, are unable to understand the profound idea of national sovereignty.”
Carl Sagan on Fossil Fuels: “Like some ghastly cannibal cult, we subsist on the dead bodies of our ancestors and distant relations.”
Carl Sagan on Human Arrogance: “We have become predators on the biosphere – full of arrogant entitlement, always taking and never giving back.”
Carl Sagan on Life and Death: “The world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better, it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look Death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.”
Carl Sagan on Limits of Human Intelligence: “…it was not until very recently that it dawned on us that even the benign use of our intelligence and our tools might — because we are not smart enough to foresee all consequences — put us at risk.”
Carl Sagan on Nature: “Nature does not always conform to our predisposition and preferences, to what we deem comfortable and easy to understand.”
Carl Sagan on Nature, also: “…Nature is far more inventive, subtle, and elegant than humans are.”
Carl Sagan on Partisan Politics: “The hard-liners on each side encourage one another. They owe their credibility and their power to one another. They need one another…”
Carl Sagan on Quantification: “Being afraid of quantification is tantamount to disenfranchising yourself, giving up on one of the most potent prospects for understanding and changing the world.”
Carl Sagan on Returning Good for Evil: “We return good for evil because we know that we can thereby sometimes touch people’s sense of justice, or shame them into being nice.” (How often this works as intended is quite debatable.)
Carl Sagan on the Nations of the World: “It is clear now that the nations of the world now can only rise and fall together. It is not a question of one nation winning at the expense of another. We must all help one another or all perish together.”
Carl Sagan on Why Fascism Doesn’t Last: “Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term.”
Carl Sagan on Win-Win Propositions: “Such vital human concerns as love, friendship, parenthood, music, art, and the pursuit of knowledge are win-win propositions. Our vision is dangerously narrow if all we know is win-lose.”