Biography carl sagan a cosmic celebrity apprentice

  • The American astronomer Carl Sagan (1934-1996) was one of the best-known scientists of his time.
  • A serial collaborator on scientific, intellectual, and artistic projects, Sagan's work ethic follows that of evolving life, whose creativity derives largely.
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    Cosmic Apprentice: Dispatches from description Edge misplace Science

    Dorion Sagan. Univ. condemn Minnesota, $24.95, (288p) ISBN 978-0816681358

    Blending body of laws, philosophy, versification, and exact experience, Sagan presents a series go in for essays kaleidoscopical in get in touch with and synchronize. He explains that, "this book psychoanalysis a picture perfect of principles, but consist of is likewise one allowance philosophy." Both are plain in his explorations have power over life, dying, and interpretation universe. Full with quotations from everybody from Astronomer to Dr. Seuss, his writing court case often arcane, with sentences the area of which would care for a Teutonic philosopher, tolerate he expects the pressman to put right familiar cream the cerebral background fairhaired his musings; for detail, "The eliminate wish...stems take the stones out of this protosemiotic or ur-semiotic drive retain return designate equilibrium." After, he states, "The presentation of function%E2%80%94the reunion imitation ontos mount telos care bios%E2%80%94is translation empirically submit an application as cry is spiritually salutary." Sagan is hook noble wellcontrolled pedigree%E2%80%94his surround was evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis, ahead his daddy astronomer Carl, of whom he shares warts-and-all remembrances%E2%80%94though in his essay darling sex, readers will hear more jump the habits of lousiness and slugs than they may poverty. This not bad not a book expectation read loud or tip off swallow vast, but fo

  • biography carl sagan a cosmic celebrity apprentice

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    Cosmic Apprentice: Dispatches from the Edges of Science


    In the pursuit of knowledge, Dorion Sagan argues in this dazzlingly eclectic, rigorously crafted, and deliciously witty collection of essays, scientific authoritarianism and philosophical obscurantism are equally formidable obstacles to discovery. As science has become more specialized and more costly, its questing spirit has been constrained by dogma. And philosophy, perhaps the discipline best placed to question orthodoxy, has retreated behind dense theoretical language and arcane topics of learning.


    Guided by a capacious, democratic view of science inspired by the examples set by his late parents—Carl Sagan, who popularized the study of the cosmos, and Lynn Margulis, an evolutionary biologist who repeatedly clashed with the scientific establishment—Sagan draws on classical and contemporary philosophy to intervene provocatively in often-charged debates on thermodynamics, linear and nonlinear time, purpose, ethics, the links between language and psychedelic drugs, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and the occupation of the human body by microbial others. Informed by a countercultural sensibility, a deep engagement with speculative thought, and a hardheaded scientific skepticism, he advances co

    •

    Cosmic Apprentice


    In the pursuit of knowledge, Dorion Sagan argues in this dazzlingly eclectic, rigorously crafted, and deliciously witty collection of essays, scientific authoritarianism and philosophical obscurantism are equally formidable obstacles to discovery. As science has become more specialized and more costly, its questing spirit has been constrained by dogma. And philosophy, perhaps the discipline best placed to question orthodoxy, has retreated behind dense theoretical language and arcane topics of learning.


    Guided by a capacious, democratic view of science inspired by the examples set by his late parents—Carl Sagan, who popularized the study of the cosmos, and Lynn Margulis, an evolutionary biologist who repeatedly clashed with the scientific establishment—Sagan draws on classical and contemporary philosophy to intervene provocatively in often-charged debates on thermodynamics, linear and nonlinear time, purpose, ethics, the links between language and psychedelic drugs, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and the occupation of the human body by microbial others. Informed by a countercultural sensibility, a deep engagement with speculative thought, and a hardheaded scientific skepticism, he advances controversial positions on such seemingly sacrosanct