Carl Sagan - Quodid

About

Carl Sagan was an American astrophysicist. He is best known as a science-popularizer who showed the world the wonders of the scale and complexity of the universe.

Picture of Carl Sagan

Carl Edward Sagan (; SAY-gən; November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist and science communicator. Initially an assistant professor at Harvard, Sagan later moved to Cornell, where he was the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences and directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies. He played an active role in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager programs. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and several popular science books, starting with The Cosmic Connection. He won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for The Dragons of Eden.

Quotes from Carl Sagan

Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves.

Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals — have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and "animals" is essential if we are to bend them to our will, wear them, eat them — without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret.

regret pain guilt animals humans

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

My fundamental premise about the brain is that its workings—what we sometimes call "mind"—are a consequence of its anatomy and physiology, and nothing more.

—Carl Sagan in The Dragons of Eden

mind brain anatomy phsiology

The entire recent history of biology shows that we are, to a remarkable degree, the results of the interactions of an extremely complex array of molecules; and the aspect of biology that was once considered its holy of holies, the nature of the genetic material, has now been fundamentally understood in terms of the chemistry of its constituent nucleic acids, DNA and RNA, and their operational agents, the proteins.

—Carl Sagan in The Dragons of Eden

biology protein DNA genetics

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Books

Carl Sagan has the following books quoted on Quodid: