I miss Carl Sagan

[electricmonk]

We really need a scientist of his stature and popularity to make the talk show rounds today to debunk all that intelligent design crap and other anti-science rightwing crap.

I've been re-reading Broca's Brain and every chapter has a bunch of paragrahs or comments that make me realize how important he was. He had the best ability to break down complex theories, discoveries, ideas, etc. into language that the average citizen could grasp.

I love this passage:

"Similarly, the new Department of Energy can be effective only if it can maintain a distance from vested commercial interests, if it is free to pursue new options even if such options imply loss of profits for selected industries. The same is clearly true in pharmaceutical research, in the pursuit of alternatives to the internal combustion engine, and in many other technological frontiers. I do not think that the development of new technologies should be placed in the control of old technologies; the temptation to suppress the competition is too great. If we Americans live in a free-enterprise society, let us see substantial independent enterprise in all of the technologies upon which our future may depend. If organizations devoted to technological innovation and its boundries of acceptability are not challenging ( and perhaps even offending ) at least some powerful groups, they are not accomplishing their purpose."

[lenidog]

1. Not to diss Carl

Cause I loved him too but I think the late Stepehen Jay Gould would be a better pick especially seeing as evolutionary science was his forte.

[electricmonk]

3. True but...

I'm sure there's a large percentage of the population that if you said the name Steven Jay Gould to you would get a blank stare but if you said Carl Sagan they would go "Oh yeah, the billions and billions guy." And it's those people we really need to reach.

[lenidog]

4. You do have a point but Gould was a guest star on the Simpsons

[electricmonk]

6. That's true

Stephen Hawkins is still alive maybe he can take up the cause. Hell he's both respected and was on the Simpsons too. Now we just need to get every lame brained talking head show in the country to book him.

[mrfrapp]

8. Dawkins

Richard Dawkins is the natural choice, surely. He's the current "Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science" at Oxford University in England. He's perhaps not as well known as Hawking or Gould but his contributions to the field of evolutionary science are immeasurable and is thus an authoritative figure of the subject.

I'm sure he would be more than happy to "make the talk show rounds" -- it's what Oxford University pay him to do!

[lenidog]

11. Problem with him is that he is very arrogant

We want to win these people over not piss them off. This is coming from someone who considers him a brilliant man and greatly respects him.

[Swamp Rat]

2. Me too!

[Crunchy Frog]

5. I miss him too,

but I can't help thinking that he might have been grateful to not have to live to see the way things are going in the world and this country right now.

He would be great to explain science to people, but I'm not sure that even he would get through. The Christian right just seems like a juggernaut that runs over everything in its path.

[electricmonk]

7. Yeah

that's something that pops into my head quite often while reading the book; thinking that he's doing cartwheels in his grave over some of the shit being passed off as science now.

[chrisau214]

9. He knew what was coming.

He lays it all out pretty well in his book 'The Demon Haunted World'.


Chris

[H2O Man]

10. Carl Sagan

had a gift for being able to communicate the world of science in a way that "common folk" found fascinating. There have been few people with that ability. He was the cosmos gift to us.

[buddysmellgood]

12. Too true

[Qibing Zero]

13. Yes, it hurts! Time to go watch some old Cosmos... nt

[mb7588a]

14. i'd like to see bill nye the science guy

out there more often. He was on Larry King after Katrina, and he was just brilliant.

Sagan's book "The Demon-Haunted World:Science as A candle in the dark" is a wonderfully fantastic book that I read in high school.

Amazon.com review:
Carl Sagan muses on the current state of scientific thought, which offers him marvelous opportunities to entertain us with his own childhood experiences, the newspaper morgues, UFO stories, and the assorted flotsam and jetsam of pseudoscience. Along the way he debunks alien abduction, faith-healing, and channeling; refutes the arguments that science destroys spirituality, and provides a "baloney detection kit" for thinking through political, social, religious, and other issues.