The Skeptics Society & Skeptic magazine

There are few celebrities in science who have done more for the promotion of science, reason, rationality, and critical thinking than Carl Sagan, whom we remember this week upon the impending occasion of his birthday on November 9, 1934.

Carl Sagan was a scholar and a visionary. He changed the world. His work still does. As Bill Nye thinks back on the time he got to spend in Sagan’s classes, he realizes what made Sagan the best science communicator of his day.

David Morrison reviews two books: Carl Sagan: A Life by Keay Davidson (1999, John Wiley and Sons) and Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos by William Poundstone (1999, Henry Holt)

Michael Shermer ponders the question of what the measure of a life is once it has gone. And if that life was an epochal-shaping life, how is a contemporary biographer to put that life in perspective before the epoch is over?

Solen discovered The Demon-Haunted World on the library shelf one day. He had heard of Sagan, of course, but knew little of him. At a time when Solen’s friends had left him, where he could not confide in his own family, the book’s dedication invited him toward the candle…

Gregory Benford recounts how Carl Sagan, the best known astronomer in the world, was turned down by the National Academy of Sciences and laments that no other widely recognized scientist has replaced him in popular discourse.

Joel Achenbach moved offices, and began to purge files, stuff he didn’t need and hadn’t looked at in years. Digging deep, he came across a fat file marked “Sagan.” The astronomer died in December 1996. Save? Throw away? From the documents, a voice emerged…

When Tom McDonough was a grad student at Cornell in the late 1960s, he ploughed through dry scientific journals. Occasionally, he found papers bordering on science fiction, hidden within them like naughty pictures. These gems were often by an obscure Harvard scientist named Carl Sagan. They spoke about the possibility of life on other worlds, a subject almost taboo in science at that time…

Carl Sagan and Edward Teller were bitter opponents in national security debates about issues such as “Star Wars” and nuclear test bans, but ironically they agreed on defending the Earth against asteroids — an agreement that neither, however, was ready to admit in public.

Carl Sagan saw a vision of human space-explorers venturing out into the universe, following the great tradition of the sailors who ventured out onto the oceans and began to explore the continents of this planet 500 years earlier. But Carl was not only a romantic visionary; he was also a professional scientist.

Culled from the expansive work of Carl Sagan, we present some of his own words on the cosmos, ETs, childhood, genes, brains, pseudoscience, science literacy, nonsense, uncertainty, biology, history and God.

James Randi’s heroes are few. Among that short list of heroes is Carl Sagan. Randi recounts how Carl Sagan, in all respects, supported science and the simple process of thinking.

As an undergraduate in the 1960s, Tom McDonough eagerly read the scientific papers of an obscure young astrophysicist named Carl Sagan — one of the few researchers investigating the possibilities of life on other worlds. McDonough shares some of his personal reminiscences of Carl Sagan.

December 20, 1996 was a gloomy day at the Skeptics Society. In light of the death of one of the finest human beings of our age, Michael Shermer pays tribute to the late Carl Sagan.

In this week’s eSkeptic, Carl Sagan was a man ahead of his time. On the 10th anniversary of his death we celebrate Carl Sagan’s remarkable legacy in Skeptic magazine volume 13, number 1.

In this week’s eSkeptic, the Skeptics Society announces its exclusive release of Dawkins’ controversial documentary DVD The Root of All Evil? in North America; on Skepticality, Michael Shermer interviews Ann Druyan, wife and collaborator of the late Dr. Carl Sagan; and David Lidden reviews Thomas Kida’s Don’t Believe Everything You Think: The 6 Basic Mistakes We Make in Thinking.

In this Skeptics Distinguished Lecture at Caltech from 1999, three science biographers take an illuminating look back over the life and legacy of one of the 20th Century’s most celebrated astronomers: Carl Sagan.