Bright Star Among Billions
by Stephen Jay Gould
s Saul
despised David for receiving ten thousand cheers to his own mere thousand,
scientists often stigmatize, for the same reason of simple jealousy, the
good work done by colleagues for our common benefit. We live in a philistine
nation filled with Goliaths, and we know that science feeds at a public
trough. We therefore all give lip service to the need for clear and
supportive popular presentation of our work. Why then do we downgrade the
professional reputation of colleagues who can convey the power and beauty of
science to the hearts and minds of a fascinated, if generally uninformed
public?
This narrow-minded error—our own
philistinism—arises in part from our general ignorance of the long and
honorable literary tradition of popular presentation for science, and our
consequent mistake in equating popularization with trivialization,
cheapening, or inaccuracy. Great scientists have always produced the
greatest popularizations, without compromising the integrity of subject or
author. In the seventeenth century, Galileo wrote both his major books as
dialogues in Italian for generally literate readers, not as formal Latin
treatises designed only for scholars. In the eighteenth century, the Swiss
savant J. J. Scheuchzer produced the beautifully elaborate eight-volume
Physica sacra, with 750 full-page copperplate engravings illustrating
the natural history behind all biblical events. In the nineteenth century,
Charles Darwin wrote The Origin of Species, the most important and
revolutionary of all scientific works, as a book for general readers. (My
students often ask me where they can find the technical monograph that
served as the basis of Darwin's popular work; I tell them that The
Origin of Species fulfills both allied, not opposing, functions.)
With the death of Carl Sagan, we have lost both a fine
scientist and the greatest popularizer of the twentieth century, if not of
all time. In his many books, and especially in his monumental television
series Cosmos—our century's equivalent of
Scheuchzer's Physica sacra and the most widely accessed presentation
of our subject in all human history—Carl explained the method and
content of our discipline to the general public. He also conveyed the
excitement of discovery with an uncanny mix of personal enthusiasm and clear
presentation unequaled by any predecessor. I mourn his passing primarily
because I have lost a dear friend, but I am also sad that many scientists
never appreciated his excellence or his importance to all of us, while a few
of the best of us (in a shameful incident at the National Academy of
Sciences) actively rejected him. (Carl was a remarkably sanguine man, but I
know that this incident hurt him deeply.) Too many of us never grasped his
legendary service to science.
I would epitomize Carl Sagan's excellence and integrity
in three points. First, in an age characterized by the fusion of high and
pop culture, Carl moved comfortably across the entire spectrum while never
compromising scientific content. He could joke with
Johnny Carson, compose a
colunm
for Parade, and write a science fiction novel while maintaining an active
laboratory and publishing technical papers. He had foibles aplenty; don't we all?
We joked about his emphatic pronunciation of "billions," and my young son
(much to Carl's amusement) called Cosmos the "stick-head-up show"
because Carl always looked up dreamily into the heavens. But the public
watched, loved, and learned. Second, for all his pizzazz and charisma, Carl
always spoke for true science against the plethora of irrationalisms that
surround us. He conveyed one consistent message: real science is so damned
exciting, transforming, and provable; why
would anyone prefer the undocumentable nonsense of astrology, alien
abductions, and so forth? Third, he bridged the gaps between our various
cultures by showing the personal, humanistic, and artistic side of scientific
activity. I will never, for example, forget his excellent treatment of Hypatia, a
great woman, philosopher, and mathematician, martyred in Alexandria in A.D.
415.
You had a wonderful life, Carl, but far too short. You
will, however, always be with us, especially if we as a profession can learn
from you how the common touch enriches science while extending an ancient
tradition that lies at the heart of Western humanism, and does not represent
(when properly done) a journalistic perversion of the "sound bite" age. In
the words that John Dryden wrote about another great artist, the composer
Henry Purcell, who died even younger in 1695: "He long ere this had tuned
the jarring spheres and left no hell below."
[ Stephen Jay Gould, "Bright Star Among Billions,"
Science
275 (January 31, 1997): 599; Reprinted here with permission from
The Lying Stones
of Marrakech, New York: Harmony Books, 2000, pp. 237-239. ]
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