Along this incredible journey, the epic saga of how humans learned this vast, all-encompassing story was embroidered with stories of those who discovered tantalizing pieces of the answers: Copernicus, Kepler, Newton (lots of European white dudes, yes, but hang on, that gets somewhat rectified later)... despite their differences in era and levels of education, these pioneers were curious people like me who just kept asking follow-up questions.
By that time, I had read just enough about outer space to know there was much more to learn. But I already had an inkling that it had some kind of tangible link to my terrestrial life. In fact, my first real brush with the concept of death didn't come with the tragic passing of a relative, but instead with my discovery of a Time-Life photo essay about the life cycle of stars. Knowing that the sun, something that seemed like the ultimate constant, would one day burn out upended my concept of life and its meaning.
Cosmos took me further into these thoughts, taking something as unsettling as that idea and putting it into the largest possible context. I learned how everything in the Universe, as small as atoms or as huge as galactic superclusters, changes on vastly different scales of time. Everything is born, lives, dies, and is born again in some drastically different form. Out of the ashes of stars come planets... from the dust and dirt of planets comes life itself. Something disturbing was transformed into something uniquely comforting.
And that, I think, is the most important part of the whole experience. Our short, human lives are simultaneously exalted and trivialized when you put them in the context of all time and space. When you come to understand that you are a part of a vast tapestry of not only places and people, but worlds, suns, and galaxies, every single one of them brimming with the same potential for wonder that we have here on Earth, it suddenly brings you outside of yourself. This, I could tell even at the age of eight, was what it was all about.
Now, thirty-four years later, I'm watching Cosmos again, a new incarnation that was produced by Seth McFarlane, probably the only creative mind with enough clout to get Fox (Fox!) to air it. Carl Sagan passed away almost exactly at the midpoint between the airing of these two series, but his torch has been picked up by the equally charismatic host Neil deGrasse Tyson. The most vital key to the success of the show, of course, is to have it narrated by a scientist who can bridge the gap between the layperson and the scientifically literate, enlightening and entertaining them both. Both Carl and Neil have the sort of relatability that can pique the general public's interest in the history of the Universe, and in this sense we have to consider that Tyson was perhaps the one that the continuing story of Cosmos was waiting for.
Of course, some time has passed since the original Cosmos aired. There are things in common knowledge that were mere conjecture back then. We weren't quite sure that black holes actually existed in 1980, they were more mathematical concepts that hadn't been actually found yet, never mind that we would soon realize that one formed the heart of many galaxies, including our own! Mysterious dark matter, and the 84% of the Universe that it compromises, was unknown as well. Planets orbiting other stars? Lakes of liquid methane on Saturn's moon Titan? Solid evidence that water used to flow on Mars? None of this stuff was part of the original show, but now can be included to give us a much clearer view of how amazing -- and amazingly weird -- the Universe is.
Going back and looking at the original Cosmos now, I'm stunned by how glacially paced it seems, how drawn out the biographical scenes are. I should point out that, aside from the late Dr. Sagan, the writing team behind the show is actually the same as the original. Carl's widow, Ann Druyan, and Steve Soter, apply the same kind of human's-eye-view and overall sense of wonder of the 1980 version.
One of the many things that the new Cosmos does right is to show that it just wasn't white European men who were figuring out the basic laws of the Universe. Until now, it always has seemed like after the decline of the Greek and Roman empires, no one even thought seriously about science until the Renaissance. In truth, during that time it passed into the hands of their Middle Eastern brethren. Algebra? The numerals that are now used the world over? Those are Arab inventions. And most of the stars are still called by Anglicizations of their original Arabic names. The new Cosmos spends a fair amount of time outlining these contributions, while also suggesting that it was the use of toxic, brain-altering lead in Roman plumbing that led to the European Dark Ages. While they were literally drinking themselves stupid, the Byzantines and Egyptians kept the flame of knowledge alive.
After all that praise, I do have one quibble with the new series... In general, I think it's a mistake to call any scientific concept a "fact", no matter how well established it is. The whole reason that science works as a path of rational thought is that it is never above revision, or even wholesale page-one correction when necessary. Nothing is ever proven definitively, we just keep constructing more and more accurate models of the Universe and the way it works. One unexpected experiment result could prove that any theory is in need of refinement. Even gravity itself isn't a "fact". It's called "the theory of gravity" for good reason... no matter how much Newton and the three hundred years of scientists who came after him considered his version of gravity as gospel, Einstein showed that they didn't have it quite right. Close enough for most practical purposes, but not exactly.
With that in mind, I'm not sure why scientists in the public eye keep saying that things are "facts". Tyson comes flat out in the new Cosmos and calls evolution a fact. Look, I understand why it's good to be clear that there's a near-unanimous scientific consensus about its accuracy, and to not leave a lot of room for ambiguity, but if a slight tweak to our understanding of it were to come along next week, it would definitely undermine that sense of authority.
Case in point: the reason politicians are dragging their feet on climate change is that, while there's a definite consensus that humanity's actions are warming the planet, whenever politicians ask climatologists if they've proven it, or if they have *all* the data, they have to honestly say "no". That sound bite then gets trotted out by everyone who has a vested interest in denying it, and any action gets tabled until some time when we know more than we do. But that's exactly the point... science is in the business of predicting what will happening the future, the only way it can be 100% sure that projections are right is when the predicted future actually happens. We'll *never* have all the data, but at some point you just have to consider that we know what we're talking about.
I say that we should be more focused on educating people on the definition of scientific "fact" and "theory", instead of making it sound like we have the ability to put the finishing touches on anything. In science, as it should be, everything is a work in progress. It's the only way to keep an open mind.
The final episode of the original Cosmos series was titled "Who Speaks for Earth?". The story goes that Carl Sagan wanted to talk about the possibility of intelligent life on other planets (one of his pet projects), but Steve Soter pointed out that what was needed more in the midst of a nuclear-age Cold War was for people to understand that *we* are the intelligent life. The result is a stunning hour-long mosaic of human life on Earth, with Carl presenting the idea that *we*, as far as we know, are the most advanced beings in the Universe, and perhaps we should take some time to remember this, and starting acting like it.
People joke all the time about how intelligent we can really be, considering the way we treat each other and our surroundings, but I think -- and I believe Carl would back me up on this -- that we can never reach our potential if we continually put ourselves down by pointing out our shortcomings. That's as true for mankind itself as it is for us as individuals. Maybe we really are the very first beings who have looked out into space and are able to start comprehending our place in it. Maybe we're the initial generation of a grand, galaxy-spanning civilization... but first we've got to get our house in order. To treat ourselves as less than worthy would be a crime against the Universe itself.
As Carl was fond of saying, we live on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. What Cosmos did for me, and what I hope it will do for my daughter when I share it with her (it will be, after all, only three short years until she'll be my age when I first saw it), is to show simultaneously how utterly insignificant and important we are, and how there's really no conflict in thinking both ways. Ultimately, scale doesn't matter -- there's as much wonder in a single drop of water as in all the vast rings of Saturn. It's right here around us, and it all makes sense, if you just keep asking the right questions.
(*Yep, that's the correct plural of "cosmos", but it seems a little silly to me, because as Carl says at the beginning of the original series, cosmos means "all that is, all that ever was, and ever will be". Who needs more?)
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