Carl Sagan: A Life [Paperback]

Carl Sagan : A Life by Keay Davidson; (see also my review at Carl Sagan : A Life in the Cosmos by William Poundstone - this review considers both books)

Carl Sagan is easily the second most famous scientist of the 20th century. If you came of age in the period 1970-1990, you were influenced by Sagan - period. Whatever you may think of him as a scientist, you must admit that nobody did more to popularize science in the public eye during this period. The two most obvious examples are his Cosmos television series and his numerous appearances with Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show.

Poundstone's book reflects Ann Druyan's influence much more than Davidson's. The result is a much more flattering account of Sagan's life, potentially minimizing some of the warts. Davidson, if anything, spends too much effort trying to psychohistorically analyze Sagan's two failed marriages and his fractured relationship with oldest son Dorion.

Davidson also focuses much more attention on Sagan's books, attempting to plot the development of his career as a scientist and maturity as a writer based on each book's unique character. Here again, he attempts to delve below the surface into the hidden motives and influences. For instance, while both Poundstone and Davidson detail Sagan's marijuana use, Davidson goes further and suggests that the Pulitzer-winning Dragon's of Eden was largely a marijuana- induced work.

William Poundstone Focuses more on his scientific achievements, with emphasis on the many conferences he chaired regarding SETI, exobiology, and his work on the Voyager and Mariner probes to Mars and the gas giants. Some of the reviews of the latter actually read like a popular scientific account of these missions, written around Sagan's contribution and perspective.

A very rough generalization would be that Davidson looks more closely at Sagan's personal life while Poundstone looks more closely at his scientific achievemnts, though both books do cover the whole picture. Poundstone's book left me with more of a positive regard for Sagan though, and struck me as the better book of the two. Poundstone's account strikes me as first and foremost a work of scientific biography, with more detail of Sagan's scientific achievements.

Imagine if you will - the biographer of Leonardo da Vinci portraying him, not as an artist, not as innovator - but as a failed helicopter designer. What a travesty!

That's the feeling I got reading Keay Davidson's biography of Carl Sagan. For the most part the book highlights Sagan's numerous failures in his scientific career. And contains numerous disparaging words on Sagan's "undeserved" fame - the most stinging being Edwards Teller's parting remark of Sagan, "What did he do? What did he discover?" (pg 380)

Clearly, Davidson has missed the mark here - not on facts but on focus. Sagan's work was never in the same league with that of - say - Feynman, Bohr or Einstein. We know this. We accept this. And he can hardly be blamed for such a shortcoming since astrophysics has hardly been at the frontiers of science - as, say particle physics or mathematical physics. (Well, perhaps not since the times of Kepler, Galileo and Newton.)

Davidson admits to being influenced by Sagan, (more than just once) and he comes across as a fan still pretty much in awe of his idol. I don't really blame him for that. In fact, if Davidson had paid more attention to this line of thought - Sagan's influence - rather than Sagan's science, the book may have come closer to capturing the spirit of awe and wonder that Sagan seemed to wield almost effortlessly, especially to millions of television viewers across the globe.

Sagan was more than a scientist. He was more than a teacher. Sagan was - to me and millions of people like me around the globe - a Svengali of science. The first - but hopefully not the last. I can say with absolute certainty that I may never have given a career in physics a second thought, had I not, as child, been dazzled by the television series Cosmos.

To Teller's question, I have this to say: Sagan discovered within us the ability to see ourselves as residents of an infinite universe. He made "wonder" a legitimate part of the scientific experience.

I just wish Davidson had said something like that in his biography - instead of letting Teller have the last word: "You waste your time writing about a nobody."

Don't waste your time with this book - especially if you grew up in awe of Sagan's art.

It is a regrettable fact of human nature that success creates enemies, no matter how the success was achieved. Jealousy being what it is, there will always be those who will dislike a successful person simply for what they have accomplished. Carl Sagan was a showman, no question about it. He had the stage presence of an accomplished actor, which in many ways he was. At the same time, he was also a good scientist, again no question about it. He was able to converse in many different fields, making significant contributions in planetary science and posing some questions that have led others to many different results. Finally, he was a first class author, winning awards for his writing. These characteristics led to a great deal of bad feelings towards him, some of which he could have blunted and a little of which appears in this book.
I generally found the book to be a good, interesting description of the life of Carl Sagan, but there was one point that I found particularly annoying. There is no doubt that Sagan was not much of a family man in his early years, almost completely refusing to do any of the household or child rearing chores. What I found trying was the authors continuing amateur psychoanalysis, attributing this to a problem concerning his domineering mother. The author completely ignores the American society of the late fifties and early sixties, where it was the husbands job to pursue a career and the wife was to take care of house and family and unconditionally support his career path. While Sagan may have been more distant than most fathers, his fundamental approach was identical to the overwhelming majority of men. To attribute this to the relationship with his mother is absurd.
Sagan also changed over the years to become more of a father and worker about the house. In this sense, he also mirrors the changes that were moving through society. As it became more socially acceptable for women to pursue careers, there was a corresponding movement for men to do the basic tasks like change diapers. In this way, he was much more mainstream than the author gives him credit for.
Was Sagan a great scientist? Probably not, although he was clearly a very good one. His everlasting contribution will be the awareness and interest he generated among the public. So many of those who were critical of him owed their very jobs and careers to the public funding that probably would not have been available if it had not been for him. His ability to capture and control the stage at a time when the public showed little interest in space exploration made him a media star, one of only two scientists to reach celebrity status. The other was of course Einstein, but there simply was not the competition for celebrity status in Einsteins time as there was in Sagans. A great deal of time is also spent describing the jealousies that were generated due to Sagans success. It was interesting at first, but after some time it began to drag. My reason for reading the book was to learn about his ideas and accomplishments, not learn about the fellow scientists who were unhappy with his style and approach. The book would have been much better with less description of these petty conflicts.
Carl Sagan changed the world in many ways, almost all of which were positive. He helped preserve funding for the space program at a time when only governments can pay for it. He was instrumental in creating a private organization for space research and through his popular books, made a whole generation think about things in a different way. No one really has any idea what the final verdict will be concerning exobiology, a field he helped found. But if a signal is ever discovered from another world, he will go down in history as one of the greatest visionaries of science. We will not know the scientific consequences of his life for another ten years or so. In this book, you learn about his life, both the personal and professional. I would have preferred less about the personal, especially when the author attempts to interpret the reasons for it, and why he was married three times. Sagan was a genius, and it is always trecherous to explain the actions of someone with a mind of that caliber.