Cosmos

Cosmos has 13 heavily illustrated chapters, corresponding to the 13 episodes of the Cosmos television series. In the book, Sagan explores 15 billion years of cosmic evolution and the development of science and civilization. Cosmos traces the origins of knowledge and the scientific method, mixing science and philosophy, and speculates to the future of science. The book also discusses the underlying premises of science by providing biographical anecdotes about many prominent scientists throughout history, placing their contributions into the broader context of the development of modern science. The book covers a broad range of topics, comprising Sagan's reflections on anthropological, cosmological, biological, historical, and astronomical matters from antiquity to contemporary times. Sagan reiterates his position on extraterrestrial life—that the magnitude of the universe permits the existence of thousands of alien civilizations, but no credible evidence exists to demonstrate that such life has ever visited earth. Cosmos is the book version of Carl Sagan's famous television series of the same name. While it certainly is about Sagan's field of expertise, astronomy, it also a survey of the intellectual history of mankind. Sagan shows us that not only did ancient Greek mathematicians know that the earth is a sphere, with the work of Eratosthenes in the third century B.C., they even knew its circumference - and Sagan allows his readers to easily appreciate both the logic and the calculations involved. A page or two later readers are introduced to the existence of the wondrous ancient "Library at Alexandria," a university-like complex in Egypt "where we humans first collected, seriously and systematically, the knowledge of the world...." As the pages and chapters fly by, we are treated to Kepler, Copernicus, and Galileo; to Apollo missions, time dilation, Mars landers, and Arecibo. And tantalizing readers throughout is one of the greatest questions that we can ever ask - Are we alone? Or is our universe rich with life? 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