From Wikipedia:

Cosmos: A Personal Voyage is a thirteen-part television series written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and Steven Soter, with Sagan as global presenter. [...] It covered a wide range of scientific subjects including the origin of life and a perspective of our place in the universe.

The series was first broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service in 1980, and was the most widely watched series in the history of American public television until 1990′s The Civil War. It is still the most widely watched PBS series in the world.[1] It won an Emmy and a Peabody Award and has since been broadcast in more than 60 countries and seen by over 600 million people, according to the Science Channel. A book to accompany the series was also published.

For details on the contents of episodes, check the episode guide on Wikipedia. The first episode gave an overview of the universe, from billions of galaxies, to our local group, to billions of stars, to the planets, and on to the Great Library of Alexandria. It contained some speculation and imagination, I think its purpose was to inspire, as well, of course, to serve as an intro to the 13-episode series.

The second episode dealt with biology, explained natural selection and evolution, and animated the evolutionary process from microbes to humans. It covered the Miller-Urey experiment. The science update at the end (ten years later) presented the idea of exogenesis. Some speculation on the potential nature of extra-terrestrial life was included, including gaseous life-forms on Jupiter, an idea I first came across in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel 2010: Odyssey Two, published 1982.

Thoughts on Educational Potential

Mentioned on the Wikipedia page:

Other parts of Cosmos were controversial among the general public, though hardly among scientists, such as Sagan’s straightforward treatment of astrology as a pseudoscience and his equally straightforward description of biological evolution.

The straightforward description of biological evolution in the second episode describes to the layperson what science has found. It is unapologetic, and the evidence these conclusions are based on is not shown. It is not an episode aimed at dealing with skeptics and evolution-denialists. (In this case, the skeptics are those undecided between evolution and creationism, and the denialists are those that are explicitly creationists ).

The basic idea is this: when teaching science, the first aim is to bring people up to speed with what science has learned, and teaching the basic principles of how science works. There is so much knowledge in science these days, that until you’re specialising in a particular field, you cannot spend excessive amounts of time dwelling on the evidence that led to its conclusions. Cutting edge science research takes place in postgraduate research work, not at school or in undergraduate courses.

Now the Cosmos series was targeted at laypeople that wanted to know more about science, not at skeptics and denialists. Getting bogged down in the details of and the evidence for every claim would be counter productive to the primary goal of introducing as much science as possible. Of course the side-effect is that those that do play skeptic and denialist will remain unconvinced, having been encouraged to distrust any authority figures or experts in the field.

Episode Three

Episode Three was great, dealing with the history of science and the work of Johannes Kepler. Kepler was a contemporary of Galileo, and participant in the shift from Geocentrism to Heliocentrism. Between Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, I suspect Kepler is the least famous, but that he maybe deserves more fame than he gets?)

The episode presented through these examples, good insight into how the scientific method works. Some of Kepler’s cherished ideas had to die at the hands of evidence. I also liked the illustration of the impact human pride and politics can have in holding back scientific progress, but that it is unable to influence eventual scientific conclusions.

This episode should be quite uncontroversial (except maybe to those that think astrology is “true”) and can be a wonderful resource for illustrating how science works.

The Remaining Episodes

If anyone wants to join in when I watch episodes four to thirteen (over at least three sessions), let me know. It will probably only take place after 9 June.

I’ve discovered how hard it would be to obtain a neutral atmosphere where seekers, undecided between evolution and creationism, could feel comfortable asking questions and discussing theories and the supposed “debate”. The first Christian to arrive simply assumed everyone there would be “evolutionists” like him, demonstrating an incredulous attitude towards creationism. We won’t even need any scientists or atheists at such an event to make them feel inhospitable to creationists…

I’m not sure what we’d have to do to make the atmosphere more conducive to such discussions. Creationist-leaning people typically reject the authority of scientists on science, preferring the authority of their religious leaders (who have not studied science and have typically avoided a university theology degree), or more specifically, the authority of famous creationist websites. For this reason, they may experience the series as a “brainwashing attempt”. (Of course, if they consider that brainwashing, they cannot complain if creationism seminars are also considered brainwashing.) Evolutionists typically “know they’re right”, and may find it very difficult to avoid coming across as condescending. Unless I hand-pick the audience… ideally picking primarily people that have wondered about “creationism versus evolution” in the past, thereby more able to understand what the creationist-leaning folk are going through, or else science educators that have grappled with creationism long enough to understand the nature of the problem, but not too long to have given up on patience.

Most people might say “let them figure it out for themselves or live in ignorance”, but I’m weird. I’m still interested in doing what I can to facilitate dialogue and scientific learning. Maybe it is because humans fascinate me. Should I become a psychologist or an anthropologist, maybe?

Either way, I might have to give up on such discussions on Cosmos-nights, but discussion on this blog afterwards might be possible. There were a number of questions that came up during the night, shall we discuss them here? (Mostly unrelated to creationism, rather just curiosity about certain things in astrophysics and biology.)

1. Pick up the book nearest you with at least 123 pages. (No cheating!)
2. Turn to page 123.
3. Count the first five sentences.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five other bloggers.

I don’t call the stuff that I see nearest me “books”. I get up, and walk out of my study (where my computer is) and into my living area. On the dinner table, conveniently, lies Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World. Stunning book, that. I turn to page 123. What’s this? Ugh, a quoted piece. Pity, I don’t want a quoted piece.

But wait!

It is dark, I’m working only by the light of the computer screen. I have been up all night, did not sleep at all, I’m about to go for a long cycle at first light. The movie Elizabeth has just rocked my world. Your conscience, how powerful can your conscience not be. I bet what we call “conscience”, is what the ancients called “the Holy Spirit”. Whatever, my conscience tells me things, the Holy Spirit tells me things. Conscience, why can’t more people actually listen to their conscience? But yes, I digress.

Lo and behold, I’m looking at page 122, not page 123! Page 123 is on the right, not on the left. I’m serious, this is genuine. My “only serious cheat” thus, is this:

Five sentences? So do you count the first half sentence? So here I cheat, I invert it, and I make it two. To pay for this sin in attempting to find better context, I must provide less-context compensation. I drop the last of the three sentences. This is what I see:

His copies of the New Testament (which a century later became the basis of the exquisite King James translation) were then hunted down house-to-house by armed posses — Christians piously defending Christianity by preventing other Christians from knowing the words of Christ. Such a cast of mind, such a climate of absolute confidence that knowledge should be rewarded by torture and death were unlikely to help those accused of witchcraft.

Page 123. Remarkable? A coincidence? You tell me. Either way, just get yourself a copy of Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World and read it.

Somewhere else in that chapter, or another chapter near it, I had read a claim that we still burn witches here in South Africa. I didn’t want to believe it, but lo and behold, within the month, I see an article on a newspaper’s website about a witch burning. In 2007. My, apartheid really messed up our education, I think. Especially in the rural areas. There is much work to be done, many demons to drive out.

The text above refers to William Tyndale, who I heard about in Shofar’s Bible School on Tuesday. Shofar loves the King James Version, but they are not quite “King James Only”. Maybe thanks to the diversity in our town, maybe thanks to so many Afrikaans speakers. There is no Afrikaans “King James”. I should check my notes with regards to what they said about Tyndale, and see how it compares with the whole paragraph (ending in the above two sentences):

Witchcraft of course was not the only offence that merited torture and burning at the stake. Heresy was a still more serious crime, and both Catholics and Protestants punished it ruthlessly. In the sixteenth century the scholar William Tyndale had the temerity to contemplate translating the New Testament into English. But if people could actually read the Bible in their own language instead of arcane Latin, they could form their own, independent religious views. They might conceive of their own private unintermediated line to God. This was a challenge to the job security of Roman Catholic priests. When Tyndale tried to publish his translation, he was hounded and pursued all over Europe. Eventually he was captured, garroted, and then, for good measure, burned at the stake.

I fear not accusations of heresy, and I abhor any people that insist on placing themselves between congregations and God. Except, I must be careful, because that is a particularly strong statement. Every clergy, every priest, every pastor, preaching from a pulpit, runs the risk of getting in the way. It is a dangerous job, a job that takes courage and humility. Well, either courage and humility, or vanity and pride. Vanity and pride can unfortunately serve as a substitute.

So now I must tag some people… let’s chicken out of the international ones, and stay local: Saligerus, Kinekansel, Die Pienk Zuit, Johan Swarts. No, wait, I bet the Bad Astronomer would love to make some interesting comments about “picking up a book, flipping it open at a random page, and reading a random verse”. This seems right up his alley. I’d be honoured if he bites, what with all the Christian Heresy I am spewing and will be spewing on this blog.

I have another confession to make: the vitriolic polemic that I didn’t want to call a book because I didn’t want to make use of it, was The God Delusion. Yea, it’s lying here right next to me. I still don’t want to waste time with it, I have more important things to read right now. I’m on a Jesus-mission, and Dawkins aint gonna be very helpful, he’s clueless about such matters. So let’s hope the following earns some credit with the Bad Astronomer: I thought “Ok, so I cheat by not using this book… what do I want to use? Ah, yes, that Good Book on skepticism, by a guy a biologist like Dawkins could only dream of being, by an astronomer, no less!” (Dear Dawkins fans, if you don’t understand the Bad Astronomy/Pharyngula dynamic, just ignore this paragraph, m’kay? ) “Now where’s that book? Ah, in the kitchen, my sister gave it back to me recently. So let’s go get close to it, so that I can pick it.” I just knew it would have good stuff in it.

Oh, and if the Bad Astronomer doesn’t bite, that’s probably also for the best. I fear he might send me more people that don’t understand my local context and the journey I’ve been walking. Phil, luckily the rules don’t say you have to link to me, y’know!

Gary Bates quote mines Carl Sagan (and many other people, of course). I wonder if he has read any of Carl Sagan’s books? It didn’t sound like it. I practically begged him to read just the first two chapters of Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World (Amazon, Kalahari). He explains science beautifully. Of course, I wish he would also read the next seven or eight chapters, as it deals with the exact same subject matter as Bates’ own Alien Intrusion (Amazon, Kalahari), except, from a scientific perspective (and without the altar call at the end, of course). I find it shocking and unforgivable that someone could write a book on that subject matter without having read The Demon-Haunted World, but maybe that’s just me.

With no tertiary education (and secondary education generally not being what it should ideally be), it unfortunately comes as no surprise that Bates does not know what science is. I would not be surprised if 99% of humanity does not know. School mostly teaches things that science has discovered. This is useful and important, but it is so much more important to explain science itself, the scientific method, the role of falsifiability, the ability to think critically, the answer to the very difficult question, “how can we know stuff?”

A friend pointed out that the majority of Bates’ audience probably knows more about science than Bates does, and yet, they listen uncritically to Bates and accepts everything he has to say, no questions asked.

With contemporary media what it is, the marketing departments are running our lives for us. “The Secret” currently tops Kalahari.net’s best-sellers list. Our lives are increasingly dependent upon science and advanced technology. There is no going back. Scientific literacy is becoming one of the most, most important things every human should have.

Please, please read this Slate article on “The Secret”. It is humorous, a fun read, and something all of us should be able to agree on. Except Oprah worshippers, maybe. Discuss, understand and laugh at the quote-mining in “The Secret” and the silliness of its assertions. Done that? Great. Now, stop looking at the splinters in your neighbours’ eyes.

As my time is limited, I will probably not be reading or watching any of it, until October. Still, it was inevitable that I at least make a start. The prologue of The Demon Haunted World fell to my onslaught last night, and the first few pages of the first chapter this morning. I’m sure I will enjoy Carl Sagan immensely. (I also want to be able to blog while reading, another reason why I should only read when I have enough time.)

Now, about the Cosmos DVDs, and DVD regions…

UPDATE: I had a little rant here about how DVD regions are evil, and how I might have to make an “illegal” copy in order to continue watching the DVDs I own. Well, turns out I was an idiot. I recently re-installed Linux, and forgot I had not yet installed the “DVD cracking library”, libdvdcss. It seems I have no problem watching DVDs from various regions. The fact that the encryption has to be cracked, potentially illegally, so that I can watch the DVDs I own… is not worthy of a rant.

About the content: again, while I won’t watch them now, I had to glance at least at a few minutes of this series from 1980. While it is easy to see the recordings are rather dated, I hear the content is still completely relevant. Hopefully I’ll be watching it later this year.