Most of this article pertains to this clip from Carl Sagan’s ‘Cosmos.’
“History is full of people who out of fear or ignorance or the lust for power have destroyed treasures of immeasurable value which truly belong to all of us. We must not let it happen again.”
-Carl Sagan
In 1980, Dr. Carl Sagan wrote his book, “Cosmos,” and his television show of the same name was also broadcast for the first time by PBS. Through both of these, he produced a great contribution to the history of science. He demonstrated how science’s past relates to the present and what can be taken from it. In the early eighties, the present situation contained the threat of nuclear weapons due to the Cold War and, through his work on television, Sagan was able to broadcast his ideas to a very large group of home audiences.
Although Carl Sagan is best known for his popular science, he actually has a pretty amazing list of credentials. While completing his doctorate, Sagan was already working with NASA and continued to assist them while also working as a professor at Harvard and Cornell. He correctly described the Venusian surface conditions, which were vital in the Mariner missions. His work with Venus described the planet as extremely hot and dry, which was contrary to the current views of the planet. Additionally, he saw correlations between Venus and Earth regarding the greenhouse effect, which led him to advocate action against global warming. Through his work, Sagan found evidence to support his political beliefs. These included a desire for disarmament, religion’s effect on science, legalization of marijuana, environmental concerns and peace. His ability to intertwine science, history and politics made him famous. In his lifetime, he earned the Oersted Medal, two NASA Distinguished Public Service Medals, the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal. His television show won an Emmy and a Peabody Award. Unfortunately, Carl Sagan passed away in 1996.
In a scene from the first episode of Cosmos, “The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean,” Sagan visits the Alexandrian Library. Obviously, this is physically impossible since the library was destroyed but, through the magic of television, he visits a recreation of the site, which he rightfully believed to be the origin of space exploration research. Since the destruction of Alexandria approximately two thousand years ago, only the library’s cellar remains, which left the world with only a very small fraction of its holdings. The library contained the majority of the world’s knowledge, which was about a million volumes. In a later episode, he compares this to the New York Library, which contains about ten million volumes. Sagan samples the holdings of the Alexandrian Library, whose knowledge included:
“…the astronomer Hipparchus, who mapped the constellations and estimated the brightness of stars; Euclid, who brilliantly systematized geometry…; Dionysus of Thrace, the man who defined the parts of speech and did for the study of language what Euclid did for geometry; Herophilus, the physiologist who firmly established that the brain rather than the heart is the seat of intelligence; Heron of Alexandria, inventor of gear trains and steam engines and the author of ‘Automata,’ the first book on robots; Apollonius of Perga, the mathematician who demonstrated the forms of the conic sections… followed in their orbits by the planets, the comets and the stars; Archimedes, the greatest mechanical genius since Leonardo di Vinci; and the great astronomer and geographer Ptolemy, who compiled much of what is today the pseudoscience of astrology.”
On his show and in his book, he says, “We have far surpassed the science known to the ancient world. But there are irreparable gaps in our historical knowledge. Imagine what mysteries about our past could be solved with a borrower’s card to the Alexandrian Library.” He goes on to explain that society went on without the information which was destroyed in the library, which would be the period of the Middle Ages, and that the Renaissance was really just the rediscovery of this lost work. According to Sagan, at the time movable type was invented, only a few tens of thousands of books were in existence in Europe, which is only a small amount in comparison to the glory of the Alexandrian Library.
Sagan never actually mentions the Cold War in this passage or on his show. However, a mention of the current issues would have been unnecessary. Sagan makes his point in this segment. The destruction of the Alexandrian Library set back science for at least 1500 years. When discussing a lost work of Aristarchus, which argued that the Earth is one of the planets, which orbits the Sun, he says, “If we multiply by a hundred thousand our sense of loss for this work of Aristarchus, we begin to appreciate the grandeur of the achievement of classical civilization and the tragedy of its destruction.” In the event that nuclear weapons were used, humans could have again lost so much of their knowledge. It appears unlikely that Sagan would be able to state his anti-war sentiments blatantly, so he had to use history to subtilely get his point across. He closes the episode by saying,
“We are the legacy of fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution. We have a choice: We can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us or we can squander our 15 billion year heritage in meaningless self- destruction. What happens [in the near future] depends on what we do here and now with our intelligence and our knowledge of the cosmos.”
Interestingly, this was written in 1980, before the internet rose to importance in containing the world’s information. However, Sagan’s history lesson still holds true. If some terrorist attack erased all the information on the internet, so much of the world’s knowledge would be lost, in addition to a lot of complete garbage. Even the Alexandrian Library had its nonsense though. Sagan says, “[Ptolemy's] Earth-centered universe held sway for 1,500 years, a reminder that intellectual capacity is no guarantee against being dead wrong.” The destruction of the internet would probably mean people would have to start reading books again, something which appears to be in decline due to projects like gutenberg.org, which offers over 33,000 books online for free, and gadgets such as the Kindle, a tablet-like device which makes electronic books portable.
Unfortunately, Carl Sagan is often overlooked because he wrote popular science. However, in addition to making important contributions to NASA, he also worked to better the common man. His work made the history of science accessible to everyone and also showed how it related to current events. Furthermore, he used his show as a platform to demonstrate his political beliefs. He presented how the destruction of the library of Alexandria could be repeated in our lifetime.
Works Cited
Cosmos, “The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean,” episode 1, April 11, 2011 [originally aired September 28, 1980].
Cosmos, “The Persistence of Memory,” episode 11, April 11, 2011 [originally aired December 1, 1980].
Cosmos, “Who Speaks for Earth?” episode 13, April 11, 2011 [originally aired December 21, 1980].
Poundstone, William. Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos. New York: Henry Holt and Company. 1999.
Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. New York: Random House, 1980.
