If he hadn’t died of cancer in 1996, Dr. Sagan would’ve been 75 today. In his honor there’s a celebration/gathering at Broward College which is somewhere in Florida, an odd place to have it since he taught at Cornell and grew up in NYC.
My only disagreement on the bio for Dr. Sagan would be calling him a philosopher. He was an intellectual but not the kind associated with Plato, Hegel, Hume or Aquinas. For starters, he worked for a living instead of sitting around on his ass “spouting off” his philosophy as many of the heavy hitters I studied. His book Cosmos was based upon the facts we discovered by the end of the Seventies too, not some nonsense about theoretical shadows of ideals on cave walls to fuel the argument of why we should allow philosopher-kings be our dictators (a theocracy wearing a different outfit). Sagan may have been a very vocal Atheist yet he didn’t outline a plan on what to do at any level which seems to be a key difference between a philosopher/theologian and an intellectual.
I never got the opportunity to see him speak in person as my friend Helen did. Back when we were freshmen or sophomores, she used to date a guy attending Cornell so Helen caught Sagan give an introduction during a Spring Break visit. Maybe she can elaborate for the rest of us via the Comments section of this post.
Despite the lack of seeing him personally, Sagan was influential in my life while I was finishing grade school at St. Agnes (what most call middle school). His PBS series Cosmos (based upon the same book) started airing Sunday nights (replayed on Thursdays) for 13 weeks. It was fascinating and enlightening, namely the Big Bang Theory which my teacher Mrs. Schultz discussed in Science class (another demonstration of Science and Religion co-existing successfully in a parochial school). Originally the theory was puzzling because it followed a analogical timeline which I think has since been thrown out thanks to the Hubble telescope’s findings (the universe may be closer to 12-14 billion, not 20) and from reading Dr. Plait’s books (heat-death of the universe is pretty far off). There were other facts he brought to my attention, many of which were a bummer as I was a 12-year-old SciFi fan: FTL travel is (currently) impossible, the speed of organisms evolving and star-faring civilizations’ technology being very disparate unlike Star Trek. For Christmas, my parents gave me his book 25 years ago so I could read his points in Cosmos in greater detail. I can’t remember why I didn’t finish it. I’m confident it had to do with moving to North Dakota or some teenage crisis.
In his honor, here’s a great episode of a podcast I’ve recently gotten into through Dr. Plait.