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It's very hard to give a review and rating for the entirety of this book. From chapter to chapter it feels disjointed and varies quite a bit in both content and quality. I seem forced to review the different parts and chapters individually. The first "part" of the book, titled "Science and Human Concern" and encompassing the first four chapters, showcases Sagan's eloquent and brilliant writing especially well. In these chapters I learned new things and gained a new appreciation for Einstein's in...
Miscellaneous writings by Carl Sagan. I read it immediately after "Cosmos" was aired on Doordarshan (the national TV channel of India). Sagan is a great explainer - reading him will automatically engender a love for science!
The Earth is the cradle of mankind. But one does not live in the cradle forever.Tsiolkovsky
It took me a lot more time than I expected, mainly because I kept checking for update information about most of the interesting topics. I still love Carl Sagan's writing though.
This book is a collection of essays, some dated and some that probably didn't belong in the first place. In the better essays, Sagan's love of science comes through, but reading Cosmos would deliver all of that and none of the fluff. 2½ stars at best.
One of the best books of all time. If this doesn't make you think (and wonder), your brain needs a jump start! Sagan is one of my all-time favorite human beings!
i'm amazed that i was able to understand three quarters of this book with little or no help at all from any outside source. there were times when i had to use the dictionary or find someone on the internet who can explain physics to a near idiot in the domain; even so, i can give myself a pat on the back for this one. of course, sagan writes for the masses, and this here is not real science, but more like an introduction to it, a taste.. even if it's a really small one for an expert, for someone...
This should be a school textbook. The world would be a better place.
A nice collection of essays. Recommended.
Good collection of Carl Sagan essays. Most are on themes Sagan is well-known for writing. Perhaps it is foolish but I keep expecting to feel the same intensity of emotion and wonder I felt when reading Cosmos and keep getting disappointed.The most boring, and also the longest, chapter in this book was the debunking of the Velikovskian collision hypothesis. It was at times almost unbearable - to me, from my biased point of view in the future, the whole planet collision theory seemed outrageously
A re-read after 13 years certainly was worth the effort for at least a few chapters. Although a lot of information must be now updated considering this being a 1979 (updated) edition, this book must have been intense at that time. An entire section is dedicated to debunking "Paradoxers" which occupies more than a quarter of the book, especially on Immanuel Velikovsky's theories.Certain introductory chapters dealing with "Why Science?", "Albert Einstein" and "about the lack of public education in...
Considering this book was written forty years ago, it's a masterpiece. In it, Carl Sagan covers a range of different topics. In one whole chapter, which I think is the bulk of this book, Sagan makes a critical analysis of Velikovsky's book, Worlds in Collision. Sometimes the borderline between science and pseudoscience is so thin, you have to be a scientist to point it out. That being said, in most cases we can apply methods and tools of skepticism and critical thinking to come to a sound decisi...
I read most of Carl Sagan's Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science while I was in Guatemala in January. I had never read any of Sagan's work before, and rather like well-written popularizations of science. Some of the chapters were, however, well beyond my own knowledge; but I soldiered through them.
The science and mathematics text books that were used at my school time all started off with a little pledge that set out to instill in the young minds a scientific spirit. It spoke of endless curiosity, an investigative spirit and the willingness to observe and rework. I don’t remember the words nor the structure but I can remember looking at those pages in something like fondness for they were the only islands of difference in an otherwise droll sea of studies. The essays in Sagan’s book are a...
Although some of the book is dated since it was written in the early 1970’s, it was still an interesting book. It contains essays covering different topics. Although the ideas can be deep, Sagan is able to communicate the ideas to the masses. The title of the book comes from the opportunity Sagan had to hold the brain of one of his idols. He wondered if future scientific advances would allow us to be able to obtain the memories of a deceased person. He then goes on to say that it would be the ul...
Museums have an inner world that the public never sees. In one of these hideaways, Carl Sagan was permitted to view the brain of Paul Broca, a surgeon who died in 1880. As Dr. Sagan looked at the cerebral remains of one of his heroes, he had this thought: “It was difficult to hold Broca’s brain without wondering whether in some sense Broca was still in there.”Sagan wondered at a possible future where technology would allow us to download Broca’s memories. And then he wrote something that struck
I've been on a Sagan kick, but this was a tough read to get through. The book is a little technical, but even more tedious in sections, discussing in depth discoveries of the 1950s and 1960s. The best parts of the book require a grasping understand of the nature of present day astronomy to compare and contrast with what Sagan thinks will occur. Ever the optimist, it is a little disappointing to realize that we have not come close to the explorations that Sagan envisioned in the late 1970s. Some
Classic Sagan, making me regret not pursuing an astronomy degree.Great book, though be aware that this it is not like Cosmos or Pale Blue Dot, but a collection of essays that he wrote and published in various magazines. The only thing keeping this book from 5 stars, imo, is the chapter spawning 70 pages where Sagan disproves the arguments of a book that I'm quite certain that no one has even heard of. It was a gruelling experience reading that part. As with all his books, it will make you feel d...
Carl Sagan instigates within me a deep will to know, to leave the myths that might reduce me to lurk in the shadows of deep-seated ignorance. I've read many of his books so far and they have all inspired me, they all served a specific purpose.This book followed the premise of all of the others and made me, in essence a better, wiser person.
"...we do not advance the human cause by refusing to consider ideas that make us frightened."It's so odd to say that I miss Carl Sagan, and yet it's altogether true - I miss his wisdom, his wry humour, his empathetic presentation of hard-nosed science and constant questing and questioning of the world around us. Broca's Brain was published in 1979 and naturally some of the information in it is dated, although it only spurs the reader to research where the ideas eventually landed (Voyager 1 and 2...