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Cosmos
by Carl Sagan
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This book is about science in its broadest human context, how science and civilization grew up together. It is the story of our long journey of discovery and the forces and individuals who helped to shape modern science, including Democritus, Hypatia, Kepler, Newton, Huygens, Champollion, Lowell and Humason. The book also explores spacecraft missions of discovery of the nearby planets, the research in the Library of ancient Alexandria, the human brain, Egyptian hieroglyphics, the origin of life, the death of the Sun, the evolution of galaxies and the origins of matter, suns and worlds. The author retraces the fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution that have transformed matter into life and consciousness, enabling the cosmos to wonder about itself.…
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"This book was written almost 40 years ago by a famous astronomy Professor Carl Sagan from Cornell University. He trained as a biologist and then worked as an astronomy professor—a fact that permeates his story and creates a very multidisciplinary book. This book is more about general science and philosophy, but it also sheds a lot of light on how one needs to approach engineering. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter It explains 14 billion years of the evolution of the universe, a sort of engineering experiment on the largest possible scale. It spans all scales of space and time, describing everything from the largest scales of the universe to the smallest scales of molecules and atoms. It’s a good book for putting everything in perspective. It talks about space travel, and the evolution of the universe as a whole. It’s also a very optimistic book. It shows how the human race will have to develop in the future and how we’ll have to go to different places. I don’t think it does quite suggest that, but it does say that engineering will have to be part of our salvation, definitely. Engineering must be part of it, because we will have to find ways to continue to live on this planet. Then, if we want to conquer other planets or other worlds, we will need engineering to help us to go down that path. But, as I said, this is a multidisciplinary book and also a very philosophical book. It does not put engineering on some kind of pedestal, not at all. That’s why I think it’s helpful for putting things into perspective. Engineering is important, but our future security cannot be left to engineering alone. Sagan gives it the right weight."
"Cosmos is the story of my other hero, Carl Sagan. The other guy who inspired me to do what I do now."
"But if I am forced to pick one, it would be Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" (1980). Not for the science it taught, but for how effectively the book shared why science matters — or should matter — to every citizen of the world."