"The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be ... "
- Opening lines of Carl Sagan's "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage"
Let me start out with an up-front disclaimer that I am not an expert on natural science. I am a layperson when it comes to this subject, as I have never even taken an introductory class about astronomy. But expertise in the subject matter is not required to enjoy this documentary, as my love of it demonstrates. This is a good documentary for laypeople as well as subject experts.
This is not to say that I agree with everything that Carl Sagan says. He is both a liberal and an agnostic, which means that I disagree with him about politics and religion. But when he sticks to the science, his documentaries have much to offer. And his exposition of his views tends to be interesting, even when I do not agree with him. I have enjoyed classes from a number of liberals that I disagree with, and learned a lot from even the most far-out ones.
Part of my enjoyment of this series might come from my childhood fascination with science fiction. This documentary is more about science fact than science fiction, but it has a space setting, which is something it shares with such classics as Star Trek and the Foundation series. And it does not shy away from speculation about subjects that we currently know little about. As Carl Sagan puts it, "We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact" - a rule that he does not always follow himself.
Another part of my fascination with this series might come from the fact that it talks a lot about the history of its particular topics. They talk about the history of the European exploration of the Earth, for example, or the history of human knowledge about such faraway worlds as Venus, Mars, or Jupiter. They also talk about Johannes Kepler's discovery of the laws of planetary motion (today known as "Kepler's laws"). They also have a discussion of Greek philosophy - a discussion that I do not always agree with, but which I have tended to enjoy listening to anyway. And it's always fascinating to hear about time dilation (the fancy word for time warp), and time travel - which, if possible, would be highly relevant to my interests in history, because of its hypothesized ability to change history.
And another part of my love of this series might come from the natural curiosity about the things beyond this Earth. Who hasn't wondered about whether there is extraterrestrial life, or whether human beings will ever colonize another planet? And who hasn't had a sense of the smallness of Earth, or the uniqueness of its having known life? And there is also the fascinating parable of Flatland, which helps to understand the possibilities of beings (and other things) that exist in more than three dimensions.
A tesseract (or four-dimensional hypercube) performing a simple rotation about a plane which bisects the figure
For all of these things, I am fascinated by Cosmos, even though I have nothing but layperson's knowledge about its subject matter. Carl Sagan's series has the power to captivate ordinary people, without dumbing down the basic science that it attempts to teach. The writing of the series is wonderful, and I have even turned on the Spanish and French subtitles on these DVD's, and used them to practice my foreign languages. (The hardest language practice I had ever done, in some ways ... ) No matter what language you speak, though, Cosmos is a powerful series, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in things beyond this Earth.
"We embarked on our journey to the stars with a question first framed in the childhood of our species and in each generation asked anew with undiminished wonder: What are the stars? Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars."
- The book version of Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" (1980)
DVD at Amazon
Disclosure: I am an Amazon affiliate marketer, and can sometimes make money when you buy the product using the link(s) above.
If you liked this post, you might also like:
A review of Neil deGrasse Tyson's "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey"
How did the Cold War lead to the Space Race?
Some fun facts about the solar system
See also the audiobook series
Science & Discovery
Others to be covered later
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