(My Portuguese Edition)
(Original Review, 1980-11-17)
A lot of talk has been going on about the flaws in Carl Sagan's COSMOS
series. These flaws center on either Sagan's unusual speaking style and
acting(?) abilities, or the show's contents. I certainly agree that he looks stupid
when displaying the "awed" look; however, the complaints about the
content of his shows are not justified. Yes, he is short on reasons and long on
visual effects, and, yes, he talks as if the viewer did not know the obvious.
What we are all forgetting is this: the average person doesn't know what we
would consider "obvious". We should realize that Carl Sagan has his
work cut out for him making science digestible for the average person. A big
gripe is his lack of explanations and providing all information as
"given". This is due to the belief that science involves explaining
why things are as they are. Certainly, COSMOS ignores this premise, but that doesn't
mean it doesn't serve a purpose: a person must be aware of something's
existence before he can wonder "why". COSMOS makes the public aware
of the existence of the world around us as scientists see it. Once they are
aware and wondering, then they will seek to find out "why".
I, too, have found myself increasingly interested in Cosmos, mostly for
the conceptual simplicity on things I already understand and, more importantly,
some fantastic visual data. I have to mind a nonce when he showed a sequence of
shots by Voyager approaching Jupiter, which gave an animation of Jupiter
turning in the sky and its moons orbiting it. That was lovely.
I've been only mildly enjoying it, and then I sat thru 2 1/2 hrs of
pre- and early Saturn flyby last Tuesday night -- and realized how poorly
appreciative of Cosmos I'd been! My favorite so far might have been the Martian
one, except for 2 things: wondering if the simulated Valley of the Mariners was
accurately proportioned... it didn't \feel/ right; and, the *%#$& sitting
beside me who shouted as Sagan's 'ship' went careening down that canyon,
"Use the Force, Luke!"
But from the very 1st show, it's been the music which has most impressed
me -- so VERY right for what's on the screen that one has to almost consciously
attend to it to appreciate how right it is. It's great having knowledgeable BBSers
identify it. Just which of the recordings mentioned is the "impressiveness of
the starry universe" one, with those gorgeously sonorous piano chords?
It seems that @i(Cosmos) is giving us just enough information to read
science fiction. Mr. Sagan has described to us the concept of scooping up
interstellar hydrogen into a fusion reaction chamber as a means of fueling an
interstellar spacecraft. Such a craft would accelerate toward the destination
for half the journey, turn around, and run in reverse the rest of the way.
Larry Niven's Known Space was explored this way.
The problem, which neither Carl Sagan nor Larry Niven has
approached, is that the ramscoop is "looking the wrong way" to pick
up any fuel. Presumably, the reaction chamber must be turned independent of the
ramscoop, or something, so that the ramscoop is still looking forward when the
engine is running in reverse. Ideas?
The music of one of my favorite synthesizer artists, Vangelis, has been
used in several PBS productions: most recently Cosmos (parts from the albums
"Albedo 0.39" and "Heaven and Hell") and earlier on Death
of a Princess (Albedo 0.39). What puzzles me is that there were no credits
given for the music on either of these shows. Does anybody know why that is? I
can think of three possibilities:
1) ripoff, 2) Vangelis didn't WANT credit (?), or 3) the music isn't
"important" enough to deserve credit (again, ??)
Some thoughts on some later Cosmos episodes: I've come to really
enjoy this show, despite Sagan's sometimes infuriating hand gestures (at least
his "cosmic awe" of the earlier installments has ebbed). While the
technical information is 99% old hat to SF types, Carl has managed to present
the historical aspects of science in a way cohesive enough to keep my
attention. Names like Kepler, Copernicus, and Democritus haven't meant much to
me before; I'd read about them, be suitably impressed for a little while, and promptly
forget everything. I think Sagan's visuals and constant tying-together of
everything make it easier for the audience to associatively recall the
information in the series. And themusic's real good, too.
It's true that Sagan looks dumb when trying to look awed, but what
the hell, he's not an actor. The science may not be 100% correct or detailed
enough to suit this crowd, but there are masses of people out there that Cosmos
is good for. Remember, the goal is to get lots of people to be pro-science,
technology, engineering, etc, not to educate them.
This handsome book, Carl Sagan's tenth, was intended as a sort of course
syllabus for his current Public Broadcasting Service science series of the same
name. With the exquisite sense of timing for which the book industry is famous,
Random House officially published it Friday (Oct. 24), just in time for the
fifth show in the series. Sagan has become justly famous in a very few years as
a popularizer of science, one who is dedicated to raising the consciousness,
and the enthusiasm, of the public about the scientific method and what it has
given us since mankind's earlier intellectual stirrings. As a practicing
scientist with a university institute of his own, who needs all the public
financial support he can get, Sagan might be accused of conflict of interest,
but we can let that pass.
What Sagan has done in this book, is to review the history of science
from the very earliest times and to engage in speculation about where
scientific inquiry may lead us in times to come. No one who has read widely in
the literature of science will learn much from this book. Isaac Asimov's
"Intelligent Man's Guide to Science" comes to mind as a much more
comprehensive treatment of the general theme, and on specialized aspects of
science history there have been scores of better books, among them Willy Ley's "Rockets,
Missiles and Space Travel" and James R. Newman's four- volume anthology,
"The World of Mathematics."
The strong point of Sagan's book is precisely the same as the TV
version: the graphics. The book is lavishly, one might even say fulsomely,
illustrated, largely with frames from the PBS series. But some of the graphics
are rather old hat, the artists' conceptions of other worlds being more than
vaguely reminiscent of Chesley Bonestell's paintings for Collier's magazine a generation
ago that became enshrined in hard covers under the title "Across the Space
Frontier."
Sagan, a practicing astronomer, has excellent scientific credentials,
and his ability as a writer speaks for itself in the cogent prose of both
"Cosmos," the book, and "Cosmos," the TV show. But in some
ways I found the book a disappointment. To deal with the planet Mars, for
instance, without mentioning Asaph Hall as the discoverer of its two moons,
Deimos and Phobos, is simply inexcusable. Similarly, he discusses the
scientific method from the ancient Greeks to the present with no mention of
William of Ockham, who taught in the 13th century that the simplest explanation
of any phenomenon is usually the best one. "Ockham's razor" survives
to this day as a test of scientific truth, and its omission from this book is
puzzling. Also, I fear Sagan is at times too caught up in his own role in science
to remember history as it actually happened. In the foreword, for example, he
records that "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 vehicles on the surface of another world." In a
single sentence, Sagan manages to brush off six manned lunar landings in
Project Apollo - all before 1976 - to say nothing of five unmanned Surveyors
that had reached "another world" (the moon) eight to 10 years before
Viking.
As Sagan clearly indicated in the first episode of the TV
"Cosmos," he has a fascination with antiquity that borders on mania
and that most science buffs share. No one can question the seriousness of the
loss of the Alexandrian Library. But it seems to me that Sagan minimizes
(without actually ignoring) the thickness of superstition that overlays ancient
science.
I was curious, too, about Sagan's statement, in a discussion of the
Pythagorean view of the universe, that "the cube is the simplest example
(of the regular solids), having six squares as sides." I am open to
correction, but it would seem to me that the tetrahedron, having four
equilateral triangles as sides, is at least 25 percent simpler than the cube.
These are perhaps quibbles because, as story-telling,
"Cosmos" is well done, as one has come to expect from Carl Sagan. As
a topic, it couldn't be bigger; Sagan says at the start of the TV series and in
the opening sentence of Chapter 1 of the book, "The cosmos is all that is
or ever was or ever will be," and this, too, we have come to expect. Sagan
by now must be the most famous popularizer of science the world has ever known,
and he deserves a good, strong B-plus for effort.
But like a brand-new car with a dent in its fender, this book has
its shortcomings. And one should recognize that this is largely recycled
material: You've seen the movie; now read the book. The $20 price tag seems
hardly justifiable, unless you are looking for something new for the coffee
table this fall.
Final opinion after having
seen the series in its entirety and reading the book from cover to cover:
I found Cosmo's not only dull, but was offended by Sagan’s
bombasity. Many of the things that were presented on Cosmo's as FACTS. As per the question of material flexible to loop around in a flat loop
versus a typical belt loop. I remember seeing somewhere a luggage moving belt
that did just that. It consisted however, of rigid metal plates that overlapped,
rather than abutted. When it came time for them to go around a corner, the part
of the plate near the inside radius just overlapped more, while the outside
portion stayed constant. It would be little tricky to stand on, but I imagine
standing on a stretching rubber band would be too.
Firstly, I have not been enlightened as to the "mysteries of
the Cosmos." What I have been watching was the way in which Sagan aimed
his own feelings about science at the public. He is, I think, doing a damn good
job at relating some of the "Romance of Science" to the lay public. I
think that I feel some of that same "romance", but Sagan expresses it
more clearly than I can. I think that, by relating the basics of science to the
public, he is giving them much of the same *spirit* of science that I feel when
I read that it is presently believed that the universe has been relatively
homogenous for the first 10^-25 seconds of its existence. (From Scientific
American - Imagine explaining that in ancient Alexandria). I watch Sagan much
more for aesthetic/public-presentation reasons than for learning facts which I
get in more depth in school anyway. Secondly, on cetacean intelligence. A few
years ago, in Hawaii, a researcher was working on dolphin-human communication
using an intermediate language. A lab assistant, after being fired, came and released
the dolphins to the ocean. The assistant claimed that he aimed to stop the
"slavery" of dolphins, who as intelligent beings, should not be
imprisoned. I don't recall what the verdict was, but I heard that "the
defense was hopeful".
[2018 EDIT: I remember having conflicted emotions about both the
book and the TV show, but I didn’t remember having identified so many glaring omissions
and errors in both. I gave 3 stars to both the book and the TV Show…go figure…by reading this review now, everything
seemed to be going well at the beginning and then my brain started picking up maladroit
stuff; I still can't stop doing it nowadays; that’s why I still like debunking
stuff today…lol].
[2018 EDIT: This review was written at the time as I was running my
own personal BBS server. Much of the language of this and other reviews written
in 1980 reflect a very particular kind of language: what I call now in
retrospect a “BBS language”.]
