Carl Sagan: A Life by Keay Davidson, John Wiley, $30, ISBN
0471252867
IN 1743 Benjamin Franklin founded the American Philosophical Society,
dedicated to “Promoting Useful Knowledge”, and set the tone for Americans’
attitude towards science. At his best, astronomer Carl Sagan promoted useless
knowledge. He captured the public imagination with visions of alien life and
intelligence, shattered stereotypes of scientists and undoubtedly inspired many
to consider a career in science. His efforts won him the admiration of millions,
but cost him the respect he wanted most.
Sagan, who died in 1996, is an apt biographical subject. He was a colourful,
complex man whose passions and talents made him a spokesman for space-race
culture. Tracing his life allows the biographer to reflect on substantive
issues: the building of scientific reputation, the role of science in the
postwar US and the merits and pitfalls of popularisation. To probe such themes,
biographers must approach their subjects dispassionately, yet with empathy. Keay
Davidson writes like a family member gossiping with a more distant relative. He
gives Sagan credit where it is due, but criticises him unflinchingly where
appropriate.
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Born in Brooklyn in 1934, Sagan grew up watching the Sun rise over Manhattan,
from Rahway, New Jersey. He was the first child and only son of Jewish parents.
Rachel Sagan, his mother, was an intelligent, strong-minded woman who gave young
Carl the sense that nothing short of greatness would satisfy her. He was voted
“most likely to succeed” in high school and was a television quiz kid. Like many
children in the Cold War 1950s, he was fascinated by science and science
fiction.
But unlike most of those children, Sagan never outgrew his astral romances.
Before his 17th birthday he gained a scholarship to the University of Chicago,
where he immersed himself in Robert Hutchins’s great books programme. He majored
in physics and astronomy, then stayed on for graduate work in astronomy at the
affiliated and celebrated Yerkes Observatory, in nearby Williams Bay, Wisconsin.
Brash and self-possessed, he made overtures to Nobel laureates and future Nobel
laureates: Joshua Lederberg, Harold Urey and Hermann Muller all found the young
astronomer compelling. Such eminent contacts helped to propel Sagan, who seemed
older than his years, into elite circles usually open only to far more
distinguished scientists.
Though Sagan had a dense scientific core, he seemed to many observers bright
but gaseous. A tireless careerist, he stayed steadfastly on the scientific high
track, winning a prestigious fellowship at Berkeley which led to an assistant
professorship at Harvard. At each stage he worked on high-profile projects,
making both headlines and contacts. Colleagues winced at his self-promotion. In
1968 he failed to get tenure at Harvard and then settled back half a notch and
accepted a job at Cornell, underdog of the Ivy League, where he remained for the
rest of his career.
In his science, Sagan theorised about the origin of life and intelligence.
Much of his work had a common formula: first, analyse a planet’s surface or
atmosphere. Then, drawing on chemistry and molecular biology, compose a scenario
in which life could exist there. He warned astronauts of deadly germs on the
Moon, speculated about life on hostile Mercury, imagined “balloon animals”
wafting through the Venusian atmosphere—and he insisted on the possibility
of Martian animals the size of polar bears.
Sometimes, as with his prediction of the greenhouse effect on Venus, he
challenged assumptions and led to new insights. Often, his arguments seemed
far-fetched, desperate efforts to save his fantasy of cosmic companionship from
death by evidence.
He developed a talent for cosmic performance art. In 1972, he helped to
design plaques intended to express the human condition to extraterrestrials and
shipped them out on the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft. In 1977, he assembled a
New-Agey videodisc, packed with images of artifice and nature. The spacecraft
Voyager 2 has carried this high-tech message-in-a-bottle out past Pluto,
hurtling whale songs, “Hello” in Akkadian, and Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode”
into interstellar space.
Sagan wrote award-winning nonfiction and best-selling science fiction. He
produced and starred in the hugely popular PBS series Cosmos, which had
children across the US blurting “billions and billions”—a phrase which
Sagan denied uttering, though one hard to avoid when discussing the number of
stars in the Universe.
As a counterweight to his starry-eyed popularising, Sagan championed a public
campaign against ufologists and other people he considered to be
pseudoscientific charlatans. Late in life, his two great causes were the search
for extraterrestrial intelligence, and with his wife Ann Druyan the “nuclear
winter” hypothesis, which predicts climatic disaster in the aftermath of nuclear
war and kick-started work on climate change. Through all this, his message was
enchanting: science fiction was not just for flakes; alien dreams can be
respectable.
Sagan also learnt to enjoy marijuana. When spaced out, he thought about
space: he would leap up to jot ideas in a notebook. Like his lifelong quest for
evidence of extraterrestrial life, marijuana use seems less frivolous when
infused with Sagan’s seriousness and rigour. He had a talent for making play
seem like serious work.
Great scientists, though, make serious ideas seem like play. Though Sagan had
advocates in the scientific community, many of his peers never quite took him
seriously. In 1992 he was devastated by the rejection of his nomination to the
National Academy of Sciences. Many scientists saw him primarily as a
populariser. If Sagan got in, who would be next? Isaac Asimov? Gene Roddenberry,
creator of Star Trek? Bill Nye the Science Guy?
Sagan’s strength is his biographer’s weakness. The book reads as if it had
been written too quickly. It is a galaxy of clichés, a nebula of vague
chronology and misplaced emphasis. Sagan’s science is stinted in a few places
where more detail would be interesting and would help combat the impression of
Sagan as a lightweight. Those who enjoy Sagan’s soaring metaphors and fancies
may feel earthbound by the mundane style of this biography.
Quibbles aside, Davidson’s Sagan promotes useful biography. Purely
celebratory lives of scientists set an impossible standard, creating a bubble
that must eventually burst. In popular culture, the scientist is the saviour of
civilisation one moment, a kooky social menace the next. If more scientific
biographies adopted Davidson’s critical, compassionate stance, the
Jekyll-and-Hyde image of the scientist would fade into our primitive literary
past.