Pale Blue Dot (Carl Sagan, 1994)

[madali]

Pale Blue Dot (Carl Sagan, 1994)

There is a famous picture taken by a spacecraft of earth at a very long distance. The photo is completely dark, with a tiny dot. It is called, “Pale Blue Dot”, and the dot is our Earth and name of this book.

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, ever king and peasant, every young couple in love, every moth and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar,” every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

This is the best thing about this book. In describing earth and the universe, author and fucking smart guy, Carl Sagan, not only educated me, but made me be awed by the BIGNESS of everything. There are a lot of people who do not like science, because they think it is boring. Religion or fantasy seems to be full of life and wonder, while they pretend science is cold and dull.

“In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed"? Instead they say, "No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way."

In a way, to open our eyes to the universe might seem dehumanizing, as we lose our importance in the universe. Sagan keeps reminding us that our position is not special in the universe, and if the unimportance of our position was not enough, neither is our time in the universe. But to me, this doesn’t create a feeling of nihilism, but a feeling of energy. We might not have a heavenly purpose or have everything specially designed for us, but we are part of something unimaginably huge.

Sagan talks about the spacecrafts, Voyagers, that are sent out in space, to photograph and study the planets, but ultimately, it just goes and goes. It has no stop.

And with it, the Voyagers will have a capsule in them, from things like music and sound of a baby crying.

“Weakly grasped by the Sun's gravity, in every direction in the sky, is that immense horde of a trillion comets or more, the port Cloud. The two spacecraft will finish their passage through the Oort cloud in another 20,000 years or so. Then, at last, completing their long good-bye to the Solar System, broken free of the gravitational shackles that once bound them to the Sun, the Voyagers will make for the open sea of interstellar space. Only then will Phase Two of their mission begin.

Their radio transmitters long dead, the spacecraft will wander for ages in the calm, cold interstellar blackness—where there is almost nothing to erode them. Once out of the Solar System, they will remain intact for a billion years or more, as they circumnavigate the center of the Milky Way galaxy.”

An amazing and wonderful book, and it’s only weakness is that it is a decade old. It is not a flaw of the author, but reading it, you realize that things have happened since the book was written, so you have to keep checking wikipedia to see what has happened since then. But at least, the book made me check.

4/5

[X.]

An excellent selection, and an excellent review. Thank you.

In a way, to open our eyes to the universe might seem dehumanizing, as we lose our importance in the universe. Sagan keeps reminding us that our position is not special in the universe, and if the unimportance of our position was not enough, neither is our time in the universe.

Science purports it, but the self-professed noble religions instruct otherwise.

Religion is simple to understand because people can reconcile the complex aspects of consciousness like existentialism by praying five times to a supposedly omnipotent and omnipresent being, or kneeling before a crucifix that holds a mutilated corpse.

I blame parenting. Some of us are able to shake away the indoctrination of forced ideologies and beliefs with time and introspection. Others, for one reason or another, cannot. Science is ultimately demonized, and worst, slighted. That's a tragedy.

[theoddball]

Excellent comments, gentlemen.

Carl Sagan is my own personal hero. If everyone read and understood his vision, humanity will have a better chance at surviving its highly troubled adolescence into adulthood and full maturity.

And Mad, you are spot on in stating how contemplating the cosmos as revealed by science and rational inquiry, as opposed to the anthropomorphic revealed religions, can - to the willing and open-minded - provide a sense of kinship with the universe that is far grander than anything one is likely to experience. It is fulfilling spiritually without the need to make any absurd supernatural claims.

[madali]

I think its more grand and more majestic to think of humanity as a random consequence of the chaos of nature. To me, this is the ultimate freedom mankind can have. We can be anything, without limit, or at the same time, we can be nothing. The universe would not care either way, but we will.