Cosmos
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This book is about science in its broadest human context, how science and civilization grew up together. It is the story of our long journey of discovery and the forces and individuals who helped to shape modern science, including Democritus, Hypatia, Kepler, Newton, Huygens, Champollion, Lowell and Humason. The book also explores spacecraft missions of discovery of the nearby planets, the research in the Library of ancient Alexandria, the human brain, Egyptian hieroglyphics, the origin of life, the death of the Sun, the evolution of galaxies and the origins of matter, suns and worlds. The author retraces the fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution that have transformed matter into life and consciousness, enabling the cosmos to wonder about itself. He considers the latest findings on life elsewhere and how we might communicate with the beings of other worlds. ~ WorldCat.org
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This book should be mandatory reading in all schools. Heck, everyone needs to read this book.
The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us - there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if adistant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest ofmysteries
A book that is impenetrable by age and void brought about by Time.
Cosmos did not stop at helping multiple scientists and science enthusiasts find their passion in the past but perseveres to be a source of inspiration and wonder in the modern era. The content is non-technical in nature and can be accessed by anyone at any age - and re-reading them at different stages of one's life will mean very differently than those younger or wizened.
Despite being the opposite of anything fiction, this is the closest one can be to feeling the ride on the beam of light Albert Einstein conjured up before writing the ground-breaking 1905 research paper on the Theory of Special Relativity. The language used by Sagan exudes a feeling of calm understanding while he romantacises the history of Science from the Greek era of Eratosthenes, all the way to our Voyages into the ether. Through his means of elocution, he indirectly stresses on research in the field of Sciences to induce humility as opposed to hubris or अहंकार, as Samkhya philosophy has long defined. There is little else that facilitates this more than the Overview effect that is expertly rendered through perfect elucidations of ideas and philosophy. He does not rush you, neither does he leave you alone swamped with input; he does not restrict your imagination, but highlights the need for grounded thought in an unstable world.
He concludes by ruminating about man and his place in the Cosmos. He notes the erosion of artificial boundaries, laws and restrictions set up when looked at from above - both physically and the view of a possible extra-terrestrial life form.
Fanatical ethnic or religious, or national chauvinism are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous pointof light against the bastion and citadel of the stars. (chapter XIII)
A full nuclear exchange would burn the nitrogen in the upper air, converting it to oxides of nitrogen, which would in turn destroy a significant amount of the ozone in the high atmosphere, admitting an intense dose of solar ultraviolet radiation. The increased ultraviolet fluxwould last for years. It would produce skin cancer preferentially in light-skinned people.Much more important, it would affect the ecology of our planet in an unknown way.Ultraviolet light destroys crops. Many microorganisms would be killed; we do not knowwhich ones or how many, or what the consequences might be.... (Chapter XIII)
We know who speaks for the nations. But who speaks for the human species? Who speaks for Earth?
