The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
by Carl Sagan
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Book Summary Information
Author: Carl SaganEditor: Ann Druyan
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2006-11-02
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Book Reviews of The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
Book Review: Gentle, clear, rational, and utterly honest
Summary: 5 Stars
This book shows why Carl Sagan is my favorite rationalist -- he expressed his ideas in crystal clear terms while maintaining a graceful civility throughout.
His arguments for rational understanding of the universe and our human place within it (without the need for "faith" or belief in the unprovable) are entirely convincing and down to earth. He expresses his views so well, they are are actually comforting, and that's a real miracle in itself.
Key points: The god(s) we were taught to revere by our various ancestors are just too small for the job of managing or creating the universe. Yet we can learn what we can, and slowly, by successive approximations, we can appreciate the magnificence of what is, and improve our relationship to it, and survive and thrive as well.
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Summary of The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
On the 10th anniversary of his death, brilliant astrophysisist and Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Sagan's prescient exploration of the relationship between religion and science and his personal search for God.Carl Sagan is considered one of the greatest scientific minds of our time. His remarkable ability to explain science in terms easily understandable to the layman in bestselling books such as Cosmos, The Dragons of Eden, and The Demon-Haunted World won him a Pulitzer Prize and placed him firmly next to Isaac Asimov, Stephen Jay Gould, and Oliver Sachs as one of the most important and enduring communicators of science. In December 2006 it will be the tenth anniversary of Sagan's death, and Ann Druyan, his widow and longtime collaborator, will mark the occasion by releasing Sagan's famous "Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology," The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God.
The chance to give the Gifford Lectures is an honor reserved for the most distinguished scientists and philosophers of our civilization. In 1985, on the grand occasion of the centennial of the lectureship, Carl Sagan was invited to give them. He took the opportunity to set down in detail his thoughts on the relationship between religion and science as well as to describe his own personal search to understand the nature of the sacred in the vastness of the cosmos.
The Varieties of Scientific Experience, edited, updated and with an introduction by Ann Druyan, is a bit like eavesdropping on a delightfully intimate conversation with the late great astronomer and astrophysicist. In his charmingly down-to-earth voice, Sagan easily discusses his views on topics ranging from manic depression and the possibly chemical nature of transcendance to creationism and so-called intelligent design to the likelihood of intelligent life on other planets to the likelihood of nuclear annihilation of our own to a new concept of science as "informed worship." Exhibiting a breadth of intellect nothing short of astounding, he illuminates his explanations with examples from cosmology, physics, philosophy, literature, psychology, cultural anthropology, mythology, theology, and more. Sagan's humorous, wise, and at times stunningly prophetic observations on some of the greatest mysteries of the cosmos have the invigorating effect of stimulating the intellect, exciting the imagination, and reawakening us to the grandeur of life in the cosmos.
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