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Product Description
Product Description
Carl Sagan, writer and scientist, returns from the frontier to tell us about how the world works. In his delightfully down-to-earth style, he explores and explains a mind-boggling future of intelligent robots, extraterrestrial life and its consquences, and other provocative, fascinating quandries of the future that we want to see today.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Carl Segan's love of science and enthusiasm for sharing it with others is evident in all of his work. Sagan writes in a way that teaches fascinating information. His writing style is engaging, non-intimidating and fun. He ignites and sometimes re-ignites people's fascination with science and the universe.
I read Broca's brain years ago and enjoyed it thoroughly. Subjects such as solar sailing using ion pressure, why earth has an atmosphere, can we know the universe and more were great to read.
One telling explanation about the motivation of people helps sum up Sagan's attitude about science: He writes:
"As the great captain of industry is moved by the love of wealth and the politician by the love of power, so the astronomer is moved by the love of knowledge for its own sake and not for the sake of its application. Yet he is proud to know that his science has been worth more to mankind that it has cost."
Overall a great book that teaches and inspires!
The Re-Discovery of Common Sense: A Guide To: The Lost Art of Critical Thinking
I read Broca's brain years ago and enjoyed it thoroughly. Subjects such as solar sailing using ion pressure, why earth has an atmosphere, can we know the universe and more were great to read.
One telling explanation about the motivation of people helps sum up Sagan's attitude about science: He writes:
"As the great captain of industry is moved by the love of wealth and the politician by the love of power, so the astronomer is moved by the love of knowledge for its own sake and not for the sake of its application. Yet he is proud to know that his science has been worth more to mankind that it has cost."
Overall a great book that teaches and inspires!
The Re-Discovery of Common Sense: A Guide To: The Lost Art of Critical Thinking
Format:Mass Market Paperback
A lovely set of essays about science. As always Sagan is humane and witty with a passion for his subjects. However too much of the book is spent refuting the "Worlds in Collision" hypothses of Emmanuel Velikovsky.This may have been necessary at the time it was written but the numerous illogical ideas pointed out by the author seem like overkill.As with von Daniken, the ideas of alien interaction with early civilizations conveniently move chronologically around the globe as civilization develops. Mesopotamia Egypt Central America. However the rest of the book is fun. If you want to know the location of Einstein's brain or why Titan is so odd this is the book for you.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
43 reviews
59 of 61 people found the following review helpful
Writing that is almost religious in power
13 Jun 2001
Format:Hardcover
Carl Sagan is so widely known for his popularization of science that his thoughts on the philosophy of science are easily forgotten. Which is unfortunate, because he also shines in this area. This is never more aptly demonstrated than when he discusses the ideas of Immanuel Velikovsky. The ideas themselves are “explanations” of many of the ancient myths created by invoking rather extreme and unusual astronomic phenomena. While the explanations are clearly preposterous, Sagan does not simply dismiss them, but subjects them to a thorough critical examination. Along the way he also criticizes some of his scientist colleagues, pointing out that the role of science is not to make preconceived value judgements, but to subject all ideas to the ruthless meritocratic critical analysis that makes science work. His reasoned arguments against Velikovsky’s ideas and against some who rejected them using attacks beyond the normal bounds of legitimate criticism, is the best explanation of how science should work that you will ever find.
The title of the book is derived from his finding the preserved brain of Paul Broca in a French museum. Broca is best known for discovering the previously unsuspected fact that the brain is compartmentalized into functional regions. Broca’s brain is preserved in a jar of formalin and when he finds it, Sagan asks some questions that go to the heart of what makes humans what they are and what we become after death. His simple question, “How much of that man known as Paul Broca can still be found in this jar?” is a very profound one. If you possess a religious nature, the answer is probably “nothing.” However, if you follow modern studies of how the brain functions, there is the fascinating thought that since memories seem to be stored in proteins, it may be theoretically possible to “recreate” a dead person by manipulating their memory proteins. Such thoughts could also be used to argue in favor of life after death, in that we live on if our protein patterns live on. The soul of a human could then be considered as a permanent record of these patterns, that are continually updated as a person generates new memories.
The first book by Carl Sagan that I ever read was Intelligent Life In The Universe, which he co-wrote with I. S. Shklovski. I struggled through the book when I was still in elementary school, being overwhelmed with the science but so enthralled with the writing and subject matter that I refused to quit until I completed it. He was clearly the most lucid, readable and passionate expositor of what science is that his generation produced. His passing left a void that is not easily filled.
The title of the book is derived from his finding the preserved brain of Paul Broca in a French museum. Broca is best known for discovering the previously unsuspected fact that the brain is compartmentalized into functional regions. Broca’s brain is preserved in a jar of formalin and when he finds it, Sagan asks some questions that go to the heart of what makes humans what they are and what we become after death. His simple question, “How much of that man known as Paul Broca can still be found in this jar?” is a very profound one. If you possess a religious nature, the answer is probably “nothing.” However, if you follow modern studies of how the brain functions, there is the fascinating thought that since memories seem to be stored in proteins, it may be theoretically possible to “recreate” a dead person by manipulating their memory proteins. Such thoughts could also be used to argue in favor of life after death, in that we live on if our protein patterns live on. The soul of a human could then be considered as a permanent record of these patterns, that are continually updated as a person generates new memories.
The first book by Carl Sagan that I ever read was Intelligent Life In The Universe, which he co-wrote with I. S. Shklovski. I struggled through the book when I was still in elementary school, being overwhelmed with the science but so enthralled with the writing and subject matter that I refused to quit until I completed it. He was clearly the most lucid, readable and passionate expositor of what science is that his generation produced. His passing left a void that is not easily filled.
27 of 27 people found the following review helpful
Cosmology at its best
18 Dec 1998
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Carl Sagan established his reputation as a writer with three works: Cosmos, Broca's Brain, and Contact. Cosmos is renowned as one of the century's best non-fiction works and Contact became a top-grossing, award-winning film. Broca's Brain meets the standard of Sagan's more famous pieces. Even were you to only read one chapter, the book would still be worth purchase. I especially recommend this book to those who have read John F. Haught (theologian) or Stephen Hawking (physicist) and assume that science and religion are locked in a death match.
46 of 50 people found the following review helpful
It's Sagan, for heaven's sake!
6 Nov 2001
Format:Mass Market Paperback
At some point in my life, much of what Sagan wrote became "common knowledge" and much less interesting to read, because I stopped learning from him.
Then I realized: he had done his job. Sagan excited me, thrilled me, MADE me go out and learn more because I couldn't stand not knowing.
Carl Sagan was a master at distilling science to the masses; he made physics, biology, cosmology, math...he made it all so thrilling that the masses barely knew they were learning.
If you're not already a Sagan fan, try starting with his fiction (Contact--the book is a thousand times better than the movie), and then moving on to his nonfiction. You'll discover from Sagan why we are where and who we are.
Read it. Learn it. Then outgrow it. You'll be honoring Sagan, and you'll be honoring your own humanity.
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