I’m joining in on the Carl Sagan Memorial blog-a-thon, but I can’t offer unstinting praise. Sagan wrote about biology now and then, and every time he irritated me; I always felt like arguing with him about some detail that bugged me, and I think that was actually among his virtues—he was a scientist you cared enough about to want to criticize, and he also addressed questions wide and deep enough that we all felt like this curious astronomer was touching on our part of the universe.
Here’s one example, a short excerpt from my favorite Sagan book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll).
The blueprints, detailed instructions, and job orders for building you from scratch would fill about 1,000 encyclopedia volumes if written out in English. Yet every cell in your body has a set of these encyclopedias. A quasar is so far away that the light we see from it began its intergalactic voyage before the Earth was formed. Every person on Earth is descended from the same not-quite-human ancestors in East Africa a few million years ago, making us all cousins.
Whenever I think about any of these discoveries, I feel a tingle of exhilaration. My heart races. I can’t help it. Science is an astonishment and a delight. Every time a spacecraft flies by a new world, I find myself amazed. Planetary scientists ask themselves: “Oh, is that the way it is? Why didn’t we think of that?” But nature is always more subtle, more intricate, more elegant than what we are able to imagine. Given our manifest limitations, what is surprising is that we have been able to penetrate so far into the secrets of Nature.
At the same time that I want to tear apart his annoying analogy of the genome to a set of encyclopedias, while I deplore the incessant focus on human evolution rather than, say, the beauty of a sponge or a beetle, there’s one thing he did well: he represented the joy we can find in the natural world. That’s something we don’t communicate enough, I think, that science is this wonderful, powerful, far-reaching enterprise that reaches farther into the glories of the universe than any other idea that has ever occurred to humanity. That’s something he made explicit in the title of his book, too — the way we will beat back the darkness is to illuminate it with science.
This is such a trivial point as to amount to nothing, but it always sets my teeth on edge a little when people say things like “every cell in your body has a set of these encyclopedias.” Germ cells don’t–they have a sort of half-set. And mature red blood cells don’t, either, because they have no nucleus. As I said, trivial…but sometimes inaccurate generalizations fog over some really interesting exceptions.
At least in this passage, the “set of encyclopedias” is just an analogy to indicate the size of the genome’s information content. I don’t recall anything in The Demon-Haunted World which is more explicit about the genome’s contents than “blueprints, detailed instructions, and job orders”. Perhaps only a physicist would ask this, but what’s so terribly wrong with that? For an audience which doesn’t necessarily have an intuitive grasp of megabytes and gigabytes, an “encyclopedia volume” seems like a reasonable unit of measurement. It’s like measuring area in football fields.
You see, it is only because I care about you too that I criticize, Prof. Myers! Your remarks dovetail somewhat with my comments over at Memoirs of a Skepchick’s Sagan thread, which see.
BTW (and forgive me for going somewhat off-topic) has anyone noticed how quickly the opinions and writings of Carl Sagan have evaporated from the public and scientific arenas? I knew Carl when he was here at Cornell, and admired him for his ability to communicate basic scientific concepts to the general public, but his science was definitely light-weight compared with people like Martin Harwit or Frank Drake (whose ideas Carl popularized, and for which he wound up getting a lot of credit).
My guess is, people will still be reading Darwin and Fisher and Haldane and Wright a hundred years from now, but Sagan…an historical curiosity at best.
Allen MacNeill, June 13, 2006
http://designparadigm.blogsome.com/2006/06/13/free-will/#comment-816
“Billions and billions” of future scientists inspired!
Thanks, Carl. We miss you.
Of course this analogy can get seriously misleading if pushed even a little way, but in my line of work I find that for communcating the rudiments of how DNA identity testing works to scientifically illiterate jurors, it comes in quite handy.
To focus on human evolution when attempting to reach the laity with science is entirely appropriate — while most people don’t give two turds in an outhouse for sponges, they’re egocentrically involved to a fault.
Remember, Carl was trying to reach non-scientists and non-biologists. Focussing with retentive adoration on the life of a gastropod would have turned him into another Gould. Worthy as Gould was, he didn’t have the impact on pop culture that Sagan did.
My comments on Carl are here.
I hate it that Carl is gone. We could have had him and his good works for many years more. I miss Stephen Jay Gould and Isaac Asimov, too. Would that they had been blessed with length of days like Martin Gardner, still chugging along in his 90s. But it was not to be.
I actually got to meet Sagan once and I wrote up the event for the blog-a-than. Everyone should follow PZ’s link over to Joel’s blog-a-than for a veritable feast in honor of Carl Sagan.
Carl Sagan has been dead for ten years. Meanwhile, the forces of darkness have Mel Gibson and Rocky Balboa:
Sagan communicated the amazing and humbling view that science provides. The universe is an amazing place and we’re vanishingly insignificant in the scheme of things. Stroking anthropocentric egos wasn’t Sagan’s method at all. Sagan focused on human genetics in the quote above not to stroke human egos but to deflate the notion that there are meaningful differences between groups of humans. The “pale blue dot” represents the core of Sagan’s call for humility based on the understanding we’ve gained through science.
I’ve heard it said that if a cell were a house, a virus would be a mouse; if an atom were a baseball stadium, its nucleus would be an orange on the pitcher’s mound.
Analogies are always imprecise. They do not pretend to be a scientific monograph. They present a foundational fact of nature to a lay person that astonishes the mind and clears it of misconceptions. They excite the brain and prepare it for learning.
Off Topic, but I’m dying inside. Isn’t anyone keeping up with the UD response to the Blasphemy Challenge? They are ‘praying’ for all those poor kids who sold their souls for a DVD. even Davetard has weighed in.
i didn’t think this would stay up long.
11. Erasmus // Dec 20th 2006 at 2:25 pm
Where are the atheist ID supporters I keep hearing about? Seems like some of them should be represented on the Blasphemy Challenge.
And the Hindu. And Jew. and all the other big tent members. Something’s fishy.
Comment by Erasmus — December 20, 2006 @ 2:25 pm
Very Ishmael-ish. I like it.
If we’re going to nit-pick, then I have a beef with this quote. “Every person on Earth is descended from the same not-quite-human ancestors in East Africa a few million years ago, making us all cousins.”
The last common ancestor of all living humans was much more recent and was almost certainly a fully modern human. I know- details, details.
Why should I go out of my way to do something which carries no emotional or psychological significance to me whatsoever?
How fishy would it be if there were a resounding silence to a challenge for denials of Zeus or Quetzalcoatal?
Before it makes sense to waste one’s time “blaspheming” something, one must give a shit about it.
People could be motivated to participate through the use of rewards, such as a free DVD.
I am reading through Dawkins’ Blind Watchmaker right now, and in several cases he compares DNA structure to books, including the Bible. He also makes the comparison to binary code in the Blind Watchmaker, which is not a strict analogy, either. I think it serves to assist people in visualizing, and it didn’t bother me that Sagan or Dawkins used those analogies.
warren of course. why just deny that one when there are at least a zillion others.
my point was that the so called Big Tent is a hoax
Talking about the forces of darkness, I just picked this up from CBC news
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2006/12/20/jesus-poland.html
Is this, or is this not a Polish joke?
No! It’s not funny, it’s goddamn depressing. King fucking Jesus of Poland!
June said; Analogies are always imprecise. They do not pretend to be a scientific monograph. They present a foundational fact of nature to a lay person that astonishes the mind and clears it of misconceptions. They excite the brain and prepare it for learning.
Well said, and I also agree 1000 percent. We need more Sagan’s, Gould’s, and yes, PZ Myers, to excite the laypersons like myself to the wonders of science, explained in a way they can understand. While any of these or other scientists could be pointed out as lacking for some reason, each makes science interesting for different reasons. Carl got me re-excited about astronomy, I found Stephen J. wonderful for his insight into the history of science, and PZ always has the latest cutting edge info on his blog like nobody else has. MANY more scientists need to be available to the general public to keep the subject in the public mind and children’s hearts.
We may not have Rocky Balboa, but at lesat we’ve got one Rocky on our side.
This is such a trivial point as to amount to nothing, but it always sets my teeth on edge a little when people say things like “every cell in your body has a set of these encyclopedias.” Germ cells don’t–they have a sort of half-set. And mature red blood cells don’t, either, because they have no nucleus. As I said, trivial…but sometimes inaccurate generalizations fog over some really interesting exceptions.
And to add a little more trivia to your point: most of the cells in your body have a completely different (and much smaller) genome.
GWW: I’m intrigued, because I don’t understand the intent of the MacNeill quote above. Comparing a gifted popularizer and polymath like Sagan with Darwin or Haldane is just missing the point, which is that someone like Sagan inspires us to learn more about a Darwin or a Haldane.
The quote seems to harbor a very narrow view of what science is, and perhaps sheds some light on MacNeill’s willingness to indulge IDevotees. What do you think?
The quote seems to harbor a very narrow view of what science is, and perhaps sheds some light on MacNeill’s willingness to indulge IDevotees. What do you think?
I think MacNeill is one of biology’s most pompous asses and that bizarre quote of his is just another piece of evidence supporting my thesis.
I’ve no doubt that in some quarters there are scientists who would feel comfortable blaming Sagan for “inspiring” the Christian “backlash” which led to the “intelligent design” movement, just as they continue to attack contemporary popularizers of science (tho’ no such popularizer today seems to have Sagan’s level of media attention).
Hmm, not sure what this “big tent” is of which you speak, but it seems kind of odd that you’d claim it’s a “hoax” based on an observation that Hindus, Jews and atheists haven’t gone to a website to deny a nonexistent entity. (And the incentive of a free DVD doesn’t grab me; it’s conceivable it doesn’t grab quite a few others either.)
Isn’t it just as plausible that the Hindus, Jews and atheists have better things to do? Or that what you define as a “big tent” doesn’t actually have to conform to your rules of expected behavior?
Perhaps if you could begin by stating what you believe this “big tent” to be, there’d be a chance of determining whether it exists or not…
Speaking as a nonscientist who reads pop sci for fun, the idea that genes were not a simple blueprint, but instead a sort of cybernetic system of switches plus a bunch of specifications for parts (my current best metaphor that you’re welcome to correct) really only started penetrating about 10 years ago from Gould essays. It consolidated a few years later reading about insect development and hanging out with entomologists.
Blueprint is a powerful metaphor, one that I would guess most of the public still has.
Warren if you are not paying attention, the UD crowd is in their prayer closets asking that Jeebus save the souls of these poor deluded blasphemers who ‘know not what they do’. I find it very ironic that they do this, en masse, in one breath and in the next proclaim that their pseudointellectual movement includes those who would have no qualms with the statement ‘I deny the holy spirit’ (muslims, hindu, jews, atheists, etc).
I completely concede your point about motivation, and perhaps that explains it. those folks just don’t want a dvd.
but i suspect there are fewer of those precious minorities in the ranks than advertised.
Ahh Erasmus, I think I glean your meaning. In the name of apparent diversity, a certain faction of individuals is claiming to have some kind of “big tent” ideal that is accepting of many faiths, including those which refute the idea of a “holy spirit”?
Yet another faction, which may or may not intersect the “big tent”ers, is whining to a nonexistent entity to save “blasphemers” from “damnation” because they publicly refute another nonexistent entity?
Well, religion and hypocrisy are old, old bedfellows; politics can’t hold a candle to the ability of the goddish to weasel, wrangle and doubletalk.
“We may not have Rocky Balboa, but at least we’ve got one Rocky on our side.”
Yea, confirmed Atheist, and very proud of it. And, I was Rocky before Sylvester was Rocky. I was sad to see he’s falling all over himself now to evangelize everyone. Too many punches to the head, see’s stars and angels……
GWW: There seems to be a fundamental disconnect for some in the scientific community who feel any sort of discussion or meditation on the metaphysical/epistemic consequences of science should be suppressed, because it might lead to ‘controversy.’
Obviously, I don’t feel that way. I think that sort of thing is a powerful stimulus to learn what science is (and isn’t) and to do science. MacNeill’s approach puzzles me.
SH
Demon-Haunted World is also my favorite Sagan. I particularly liked the parallel he drew between reports of demonic invasions in the night in past centuries, and reports of molestation by ETs in the 20th century. The same sorts of feelings (paralysis, sexual invasion by superhuman strangers) painted on two different backgrounds – the supernatural world, and the extraterrestrial universe.
Migrations blogs Sagan’s grave.
GWW,
I respect Allen MacNeill, but I think it’s completely mistaken. Name recognition of scientists has little, if anything, with how brilliant a scholar they were. Take Thoreau, for instance. He was a less-than-mediocre naturalist, and yet we credit him as a great early thinker of modern ecology and environmentalism.
A century from now, his astronomical discoveries may have become forgettable, but his words and ideas will live on.
Sagan was such a successful science populizer becase he wisely communicated his exhilaration for science from a human viewpoint. Even open-minded lay people would find focus on a sponge’s or beetle’s genome less exciting than their own. People are egotists, and Sagan realized and exploited that tendency.
Germ cells don’t–they have a sort of half-set. And mature red blood cells don’t, either, because they have no nucleus.
And I beleive that white blood cells have to do something funky with their DNA to create all the protein combinations they need. Those are all interesting but it’s more important to know that about 90% of the cells in the human body aren’t “human” at all. They are not homo sapiens at all. Something to remember the next time you have an abortion debate.
Respectfully, PZ, I think Sagan did a much better job of presenting easily-comprehesible metaphors for biology than you could possibly do presenting metaphors for astrophysics.
Respectfully, PZ, I think Sagan did a much better job of presenting easily-comprehesible metaphors for biology than you could possibly do presenting metaphors for astrophysics.
Caledonian lays down the gauntlet!!!!!!!!
For some reason, I have a sudden vision in which there is intense study of extrasolar planets in the newly-named Calamari quadrant of the galaxy……SH
Bruce.cordell:
I suspect this is more true of adults than of children.
I already left a comment on Bad Astronomy, but let me repeat some of the same sort of sentiment here …
I had learned most of the science in many of Carl’s books before I encountered them. But I hadn’t learned (and still struggle with) the communication aspect. There I return again and again to his work for inspiration and a model of clarity, joy and a sense of wonder. As Aristotle said, philosophy (including, of course, science) begins in wonder, so this is vital. Thank you, Carl.