She Blinded Me with Science

The other day, my friend Pamela told me that she is reading Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man for one of her classes. I thought I had read it, but it turns out the book I actually read was Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden. My confusion was because the books covered similar topics (the evolution of human intelligence) and were published close in time.

I confess, I am kind of a science geek. I read science magazines, newspaper articles and books with great interest. Recently, I read the nearly 600 page biography of Einstein by Walter Isaacson. It was totally riveting, both the personal and the science. What Issacson's book does well is show how scientific knowledge (and the pursuit of it) fits into the broader context of history and culture. Einstein's theories literally changed the world. They ushered in the atomic age and shifted our understanding of the basic laws of nature. The thing that people don't remember is that he spent decades in a fruitless quest for a grand unified theory bridging the very large (cosmology) and the very small (quantum physics). That quest still continues by others. He also rejected much of the new physics that followed his revolutionary ideas of the first two decades of the 20th century. He was a true celebrity in the way that say a Bill Clinton is. He attracted a crowd wherever he went and people clambered to hear him speak.

Carl Sagan was like that for me when I was a teenager. His books, and particularly, his TV show Cosmos really opened my eyes to the wonder of the universe and helped me become a critical thinker. Sagan really showed me the romantic nature of science. My other hero during these years was Arthur C. Clarke, the science fiction writer. When I was 15 years old, I joined an organization called the Planetary Society. All you had to due was pay annual dues, and you were in. One day, they sponsored a lecture by Carl Sagan. My mon and I attended the lecture. Seated in the front row was none other that Arthur C. Clarke. The man lived in Sri Lanka, but here he was in NYC, not but 50 feet away. Before the lecture started, many of the audience members queued up and got Mr. Clarke's autograph. I didn't have anything for him to sign, so I did not get in the line. I have always wished that I would have gotten in line and simply shaken his hand and thanked him for all the great stories. You don't often get a chance to thank your heroes, and to this day, I wish I had. Isaac Asimov was there too, but I didn't care about him in those days.