December 2010
11 posts
1 tag
No amount of praise is too much to bestow upon Edison for his vigorous pioneer work, but all he did was wrought in known and passing forms. What I contributed constitutes a new and lasting addition to human knowledge. Like his lamp, my induction motor may be discarded and forgotten in the continuous evolution of the arts, but my rotating field with its marvelous phenomena and manifestations of...
1 tag
“My electrical eye comes as the result of years of study and experiment. Three stages mark its construction and the first two and most difficult have already been completed. I am certain that Man will soon possess this machine in completed form and will be able to see at will to any part of the earth. In planning its construction I have taken the human eye as a model and have followed the...
1 tag
Permit me to say on this occasion that if there exist to-day no facilities for wireless telegraphic and telephone communication between the most distant countries, it is merely because a series of misfortunes and obstacles have delayed the consummation of my labors, which might have been completed three years ago. In this connection I shall well remember the efforts of some, unwise enough to...
1 tag
To the Editor of the New York Times:
You have called me an “inventor of some useful pieces of electrical apparatus”. It is not quite up to my aspirations, but I must resign myself to my prosaic fate. I cannot deny that you are right.
Nearly four million horse power of waterfalls are harnessed by my alternating current system of transmission, which is like saying that one hundred...
1 tag
I can never forget the first sensations I experienced when it dawned upon me that I had observed something possibly of incalculable consequences to mankind. I felt as though I were present at the birth of a new knowledge or the revelation of a great truth. Even now, at times, I can vividly recall the incident, and see my .apparatus as though it were actually before me. My first observations...
2 tags
But the whole arrangement of the so-called waterways, as pictured by Lowell, would seem to have been designed. Personally I base my faith on the feeble planetary electrical disturbances which I discovered in the summer of 1899, and which, according to my investigations, could not have originated from the sun, the moon, or Venus. Further study since has satisfied me that they must have emanated...
1 tag
2 tags
2 tags
“From the inception of the wireless system,” he says, “I saw that this new art of applied electricity would be of greater benefit to the human race than any other scientific discovery, for it virtually eliminates distance. The majority of the ills from which humanity suffers are due to the immense extent of the terrestrial globe and the inability of individuals and nations to...
3 tags
When he was eighty-one, Tesla challenged Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, announcing he was working on a dynamic theory of gravity and argued that a field of force was a better concept and did away with the curvature of space. Unfortunately the theory was never published, but Tesla may have been developing a theory about gravity waves. This theory provides a basis for plasma...
2 tags
Upon Edison’s death, most of the remarks made in his epitaph were kind, save those from Tesla, who said of his former employer: “He had no hobby, cared for no sort of amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene.”
November 2010
87 posts
2 tags
March 16. Went to Auburn with S[achs] in am. E[sther] and Mr. Roope came out at 1 p.m. Tried rocket at 2.30. It rose 41 feet & went 184 feet, in 2.5 secs., after the lower half of the nozzle burned off. Brought materials to lab… .
March 17, 1926. The first flight with a rocket using liquid propellants was made yesterday at Aunt Effie’s farm in Auburn… .
Even though...
2 tags
On this day I climbed a tall cherry tree at the back of the barn … and as I looked toward the fields at the east, I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars, and how it would look on a small scale, if sent up from the meadow at my feet. I have several photographs of the tree, taken since, with the little ladder I made to...
2 tags
“A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage”
Suppose (I’m following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you’d want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!
“Show me,” you say. ...
3 tags
GEORGE SMITH: When you look at what he did during that time, it’s difficult to believe that any one human being carried out this amount of novel mathematical and mathematical physics research.
NARRATOR: Finally, he submitted a 500-page draft of his masterpiece, the Principia Mathematica, to the Royal Society for publication.
GALE CHRISTIANSON: It is the greatest book of science ever...
2 tags
4 tags
3 tags
Vividly, I remember those small black tape recorders with their bright red record buttons. We could be walking or talking and an interesting thought would come to him. He’d excuse himself, hold up an index finger to say he’d be just a minute, reach for the dictaphone, and then lay out his idea. Now I’m a writer and I use dictaphones, too. When I use them, my words usually come...
3 tags
His laugh was explosive and uninhibited. It was the kind of laugh that made you feel good for making him laugh. His sneezes were booming. And sometimes he’d talk to animals in their native tongue. The times we’d see dolphins, he’d greet them in a reasonable approximation of dolphin speak. They’d often answer him. I have no idea what was said. But my favorite sound of his...
3 tags
This Voyager spacecraft was constructed by the United States of America. We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization.
We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future,...
5 tags
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Aug. 19—The Voyager spacecraft scheduled for launching tomorrow to scout Jupiter, Saturn, and possibly Uranus will be carrying a message from Earth on the off chance that extraterrestrial beings will come upon the craft centuries from now, somewhere on its endless journey beyond the solar system.
The message is in the form of a recoding, called “Sounds of...
2 tags
I first met Carl when I was in high school in the mid-1970s. My letter of application to Cornell University was dripping with an interest in the universe. The admissions office, unbeknownst to me, forwarded the application to Carl Sagan’s attention. Within weeks I received a personal letter from Carl, inviting me up to Ithaca to visit him… . I visited Carl on a snowy afternoon in February....
3 tags
We are all molded and remolded by those who have inspired us, and though their lives may pass, we remain, nonetheless, the products of their influence. No one as fascinating as Sagan can ever cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark upon it forever.
4 tags
Music On Voyager Record
Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F. First Movement, Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, conductor. 4:40
Java, court gamelan, “Kinds of Flowers,” recorded by Robert Brown. 4:43
Senegal, percussion, recorded by Charles Duvelle. 2:08
Zaire, Pygmy girls’ initiation song, recorded by Colin Turnbull. 0:56
Australia,...
3 tags
MOYERS: When I learn something new - and it happens every day - I feel a little more at home in this universe, a little more comfortable in the nest. I’m afraid that by the time I begin to feel really at home, it’ll be over.
ASIMOV: I used to worry about that. I said, “I’m gradually managing to cram more and more things into my mind. I’ve got this beautiful mind,...
3 tags
PLOWBOY: So you consider expansion into nearby space to be essential.
ASIMOV: Yes. We’ve reached the stage where, if we don’t transcend the Earth, we’re going to destroy it. And I think that—over the next couple of centuries—it will be necessary for us to expand into the solar system generally. I don’t see that goal as the end, either. Eventually we are going to make all...
3 tags
SWA Magazine: I read an article once about a person claiming to be your brother. Do you have a brother, and if so, how does he feel about you? Asimov: I have a younger brother named Stan. He’s the vice president of the New York Newsday. He is an ideal brother to have; he’s sane, rational, well-balanced and he doesn’t mind being my brother in the least. He’s going his own...
5 tags
For myself, I like a universe that includes much that is unknown and, at the same time, much that is knowable. A universe in which everything is known would be static and dull, as boring as the heaven of some weak-minded theologians. A universe that is unknowable is no fit place for a thinking being. The ideal universe for us is one very much like the universe we inhabit. And I would guess that...
5 tags
#Ann Druyan: I believe we know nothing about God-not a thing. We hardly know anything about our tiny corner of the universe.
#Ann Druyan: Atheist posits knowledge. I would like us to get to a place where we embrace our newness and lack of knowledge.
#Ann Druyan: Yes. I think we should call ourselves “clueless.”
2 tags
What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the...
3 tags
Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insights and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the...
3 tags
The Platonists and their Christian successors held the peculiar notion that the Earth was tainted and somehow nasty, while the heavens were perfect and divine. The fundamental idea that the Earth is a planet, that we are citizens of the Universe, was rejected and forgotten.
Cosmos, by Carl Sagan, 1980
3 tags
Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. Initially our loyalties were to ourselves and our immediate family, next, to bands of wandering hunter-gatherers, then to tribes, small settlements, city-states, nations. We have broadened the circle of those we love. We have now organized what are modestly described as super-powers, which include...
3 tags
“Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?”
Interview with Charlie Rose, Carl Sagan, 1996.
3 tags
I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.
The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no...
3 tags
Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals — have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and ‘animals’ is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them — without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so...
2 tags
“I have some discomfort with both believers and with nonbelievers when their opinions are not based on facts … If we don’t know the answer, why are we under so much pressure to make up our minds, to declare our allegiance to one hypothesis or the other?”
2 tags
QUESTION: I find it a little surprising that you use the words “science”and “truth” together in the same sentence. You said that science doesn’t seek absolute truths, but asympomatically tries to approach truth. I find truth is something that is very anthropocentric, relative to human being at a given time and a given place. I usually think of science more as seeking asymptomatically a better...
3 tags
NOVA: On that note, can you describe the “grandfather paradox”? Sagan: The grandfather paradox is a very simple, science-fiction-based apparent inconsistency at the very heart of the idea of time travel into the past. It’s very simply that you travel into the past and murder your own grandfather before he sires your mother or your father, and where does that then leave you? Do...
3 tags
NOVA: Let’s start with the crux of the matter. What for you is time? Sagan: Ever since St. Augustine, people have wrestled with this, and there are all sorts of things it isn’t. It isn’t a flow of something, because what does it flow past? We use time to measure flow. How could we use time to measure time? We are stuck in it, each of us time travels into the future, one year,...
5 tags
Stork: It was pointed out that HAL was just one letter off from IBM. What was the reaction when that was discovered?
Clarke: I don’t know who discovered that coincidence, which is not a really remarkable one. And I don’t remember that Stanley ever commented on it. For some time we were a little embarrassed about it but I think now IBM is rather proud of the association.
4 tags
4 tags
Common fallacies of logic and rhetoric:
Ad hominem - attacking the arguer and not the argument.
Argument from “authority.”
Argument from adverse consequences (putting pressure on the decision maker by pointing out dire consequences of an “unfavorable” decision).
Appeal to ignorance (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence).
Special pleading (typically...
2 tags
This account was written in 1969 for publication in Marihuana Reconsidered (1971). Sagan was in his mid-thirties at that time. He continued to use cannabis for the rest of his life.
It all began about ten years ago. I had reached a considerably more relaxed period in my life - a time when I had come to feel that there was more to living than science, a time of awakening of my social...
6 tags
5 tags
Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of...
7 tags
4 tags
3 tags
Is intelligent design a science?
I think so. To answer that question I need to go back to the point that I see the scientific question as one of choosing between two hypotheses. One is that you needed intelligence to do the creating that had to be done in the history of life, and the other is that you didn’t need it. Then the scientific approach is to decide between these two hypotheses...
2 tags
“We wish to find the truth, no matter where it lies. But to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact.”
Cosmos, by Carl Sagan
