Classics Reissued: Cosmos

Classics ReissuedCosmosby Carl SaganIntroduction by Anne DruyanForeword by Neil deGrasse TysonRandom House, 2013 Bridle as proper sensibilities might at the prospect of any kind of 'sequel' to the late Carl Sagan's incredibly beloved TV mini-series "Cosmos," there are possible silver linings. One of these is that the proposed new series would be hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, as great and indefatigable a science popularizer as Sagan was in his own day. And another is that the advent of such a sequel means bookstore 'New Arrivals' tables are once again displaying Cosmos, the book Sagan wrote as an integral part of writing the mini-series, giving readers new and already-acquainted a prod to take up this gentle, wondering, almost heartbreakingly humanist hymn of praise to all that's most noble in species not conspicuously overloaded with nobility.Sagan of course believed that species was far from alone in the universe, and in Cosmos as in many of his other books, he rehearses the staggering maths that underpin that belief - the likelihood that an Earth-type star would light habitable planets, the number of Earth-type stars theorized to exist in just the Milky Way Galaxy alone, the number of such galaxies theorized to exist in the universe. It drives him to a hope that still has not one single shred of ground underneath it:

In the face of such overpowering numbers, what is the likelihood that only one ordinary star, the Sun, is accompanied by an inhabited planet? Why should we, tucked away in some forgotten corner of the Cosmos, be so fortunate? To me, it seems far more likely that the universe is brimming over with life.

The quarter-century since its original publication has shifted around some of the data in Sagan's book but has left its core of wonder gloriously intact. Cosmos traces the origins of humanity's quest for scientific knowledge through the centuries, and at every turn Sagan's skills as both a storyteller and a teacher are on full display. But still the most beguiling parts are those not-infrequent intervals where Sagan gives his readers the odd little honor of watching him think out loud, as with one quick digression on the impossibility of life on Venus - and what it might be like:

In this stifling landscape, there is not likely to be anything alive, even creatures very different from us. Organic and other conceivable biological molecules would simply fall to pieces. But, as an indulgence, let us imagine that intelligent life once evolved on such a planet. Would it then invent science? The development of science on Earth was spurred fundamentally by observations of the regularities of the stars and planets. But Venus is completely cloud-covered. The night is pleasingly long - about 59 Earth days long - but nothing of the astronomical universe would be visible if you looked up into the night sky of Venus ... If a radio telescope were built on Venus, it could detect the Sun, the Earth and other distant objects. If astrophysics developed, the existence of stars could eventually be deduced from the principles of physics, but they would be theoretical constructs only. I sometimes wonder what their reaction would be if intelligent beings on Venus one day learned to fly, to sail in the dense air, to penetrate the mysterious cloud veil 45 kilometers above them and eventually to emerge out the top of the clouds, to look up and for the first time witness that glorious universe of Sun and planets and stars.

That moment - of piercing the clouds, of gaining first awestruck sight - happens again and again in Sagan's books and never more often than in Cosmos, worried as it is poverty, environmental destruction, and the looming possibility of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. For Sagan transformational moments are always new beginnings, and he persistently hopes that humanity has experienced such a new beginning:

A few million years ago there were no humans. Who will be here a few million years hence? In all the 4.6-billion-year history of our planet, nothing much ever left it. But now, tiny unmanned exploratory spacecraft from Earth are moving, glistening and elegant, through the solar system. We have made a preliminary reconnaissance of twenty worlds, among them all the planets visible to the naked eye, all those wandering nocturnal lights that stirred our ancestors toward understanding and ecstasy. If we survive, our time will be famous for two reasons: that at this dangerous moment of technological adolescence we managed to avoid self-destruction; and because this is the epoch in which we began our journey to the stars.

Neil deGrasse Tyson faces if anything a much tougher task than Sagan did back in 1980. Broadcast viewing has balkanized; poll after poll shows the average adult American to be not only less well-informed about science but also less curious than at virtually any time in the last century; and religious fundamentalism is stronger everywhere now than it was when Sagan was trying to teach people to treasure the pale blue dot that is their home. If the new Cosmos sequel does even half as much to ignite public amazement and curiosity as the original did, we should all consider ourselves lucky. And we have the book before us again, to spark amazements of its own.