It’s a great book. If you haven’t read them, you might also enjoy Sagan’s Broca’s Brain, and Dawkins’s Unweaving the Rainbow (which really reads a bit like his attempt to ‘do’ Demon-Haunted World).
I’m still pissed that Sagan is dead. He’d only be 83/84 today.
Sagan’s true calling was as a popularizer of science, though this is not to denigrate the very real contributions he made to planetary science. But Hawking, as far as I am able to understand, was the real deal, a la Newton/Einstein/Maxwell. When Hawking attempts to ‘dumb it down’ as in BHOT, he just can’t go dumb enough to make me understand what he’s writing. That said, I may give it another go some day.
We desperately need a Carl Sagan today. The dude was on a whole 'nother level when it came to conveying science to people.
So say we all.
Alan Alda is what you get if Carl Sagan had chosen to have been an actor.
Very much this. He was one of the great intellects of history.
I strongly encourage you to do so. It’ll warp your brain, but it’s worth it. Part of the problem is that the concepts Hawking is attempting to describe are so far out of the experience of most people, it’s hard to find where to start. He was far better at it than almost anyone, but it’s still tough going if you don’t have a math/physics background (and sometimes if you do).
ahem (and yeah it’s a bit embarrassing that the vid misspelled ‘creationists’)
Stephen Hawking’s last reddit post, 2016.
Yes, to me, Sagan was in incredible writer and communicator, as The Pale Blue Dot shows. His words were so powerful and moving, his delivery so calm, he was able to get people to stop and think.