| Carl Sagan |
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Carl Sagan in 1980
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| Born | Carl Edward Sagan
(1934-11-09)November 9, 1934
Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
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| Died | December 20, 1996(1996-12-20) (aged 62)
Seattle, Washington, U.S. |
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| Residence | United States[1] |
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| Nationality | United States of America |
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| Fields | Astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, astrobiology, space science, planetary science |
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| Institutions | Cornell University
Harvard University
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
University of California, Berkeley |
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| Alma mater | University of Chicago
(B.A.), (BSc), (MSc), (PhD) |
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| Doctoral advisor | Gerard Kuiper |
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| Known for | Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI)
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage
Cosmos
Voyager Golden Record
Pioneer plaque
Contact
Pale Blue Dot |
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| Notable awards | NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal (1977)
Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction (1978)
Oersted Medal (1990)
Carl Sagan Award for Public Understanding of Science (1993)
National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal (1994) |
|---|
| Spouse | Lynn Margulis
(1957–65; divorced; 2 children)
Linda Salzman
(1968–81; divorced; 1 child)
Ann Druyan
(1981–96; his death; 2 children) |
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Signature
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Carl Edward Sagan (
//; November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American
astronomer,
astrophysicist,
cosmologist, author, science popularizer and
science communicator in astronomy and other natural sciences. His contributions were central to the discovery of the high surface temperatures of
Venus. However, he is best known for his contributions to the scientific research of
extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of
amino acids from basic chemicals by
radiation. Sagan assembled the first physical messages that were sent into space: the
Pioneer plaque and the
Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them.
He published more than 600 scientific papers
[2] and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books. Sagan is known for many of his
popular science books, such as
The Dragons of Eden,
Broca's Brain and
Pale Blue Dot, and for the award-winning 1980 television series
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which he narrated and co-wrote. The most widely watched series in the history of American
public television,
Cosmos has been seen by at least 500 million people across 60 different countries.
[3] The book
Cosmos was published to accompany the series. He also wrote the science fiction novel
Contact, the basis for a 1997
film of the same name.
Sagan always advocated
scientific skeptical inquiry and the
scientific method, pioneered
exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (
SETI). He spent most of his career as a professor of astronomy at
Cornell University, where he directed the Laboratory for
Planetary Studies. Sagan and his works received numerous awards and honors, including the
NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, the
National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal, the
Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for his book
The Dragons of Eden, and, regarding
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, two
Emmy Awards, the
Peabody Award and the
Hugo Award. He married three times and had five children. After suffering from
myelodysplasia, Sagan died of
pneumonia at the age of 62 on December 20, 1996.
Inquisitiveness about nature
Soon after entering elementary school he began to express a strong inquisitiveness about nature. Sagan recalled taking his first trips to the
public library alone, at the age of five, when his mother got him a library card. He wanted to learn what stars were, since none of his friends or their parents could give him a clear answer:
- I went to the librarian and asked for a book about stars ... And the answer was stunning. It was that the Sun was a star but really close. The stars were suns, but so far away they were just little points of light ... The scale of the universe suddenly opened up to me. It was a kind of religious experience. There was a magnificence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has never left me. Never ever left me.[7]:18
At about age six or seven, he and a close friend took trips to the
American Museum of Natural History in New York City. While there, they went to the
Hayden Planetarium and walked around the museum's exhibits of
space objects, such as
meteorites, and displays of dinosaurs and animals in natural settings. Sagan writes about those visits:
- I was transfixed by the dioramas—lifelike representations of animals and their habitats all over the world. Penguins on the dimly lit Antarctic ice; ... a family of gorillas, the male beating his chest, ... an American grizzly bear standing on his hind legs, ten or twelve feet tall, and staring me right in the eye.[7]:18
His parents helped nurture his growing interest in science by buying him chemistry sets and reading materials.
[9] His interest in space, however, was his primary focus, especially after reading science fiction stories by writers such as
Edgar Rice Burroughs, which stirred his imagination about life on other planets such as
Mars. According to biographer Ray Spangenburg, these early years as Sagan tried to understand the mysteries of the planets became a "driving force in his life, a continual spark to his intellect, and a quest that would never be forgotten."
[8]
Education and scientific career
He attended the
University of Chicago, where he participated in the Ryerson Astronomical Society,
[10] received a bachelor of arts in self-proclaimed "nothing" with general and special honors in 1954, a bachelor of science in
physics in 1955, and a
master of science in
physics in 1956 before earning a PhD in
astronomy and
astrophysics in 1960.
[11][12][13] During his time as an honors program
undergraduate, Sagan worked in the laboratory of the
geneticist H. J. Muller and wrote a thesis on the
origins of life with
physical chemist H. C. Urey. He used the summer months of his
graduate studies to work with
planetary scientist Gerard Kuiper (
thesis advisor), physicist
George Gamow, and chemist
Melvin Calvin. From 1960 to 1962 Sagan was a
Miller Fellow at the
University of California, Berkeley.
[14] From 1962 to 1968, he worked at the
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. At the same time, he worked with
geneticist Joshua Lederberg.
Sagan lectured and did research at
Harvard University until 1968, when he moved to Cornell University in
Ithaca, New York, after being denied
tenure at Harvard. It has been suggested that Sagan was denied tenure in part because of his publicized scientific advocacy, which some scientists perceived as being self-promotion.
[15] He became a
full professor at Cornell in 1971, and directed the Laboratory for
Planetary Studies there. From 1972 to 1981, Sagan was associate director of the Center for Radiophysics and Space Research (CRSR) at Cornell.
Sagan was associated with the U.S. space program from its inception. From the 1950s onward, he worked as an advisor to
NASA, where one of his duties included briefing the
Apollo astronauts before their flights to the
Moon. Sagan contributed to many of the
robotic spacecraft missions that explored the
Solar System, arranging experiments on many of the expeditions. He conceived the idea of adding an unalterable and universal message on spacecraft destined to leave the Solar System that could potentially be understood by any
extraterrestrial intelligence that might find it. Sagan assembled the first physical message that was sent into space: a
gold-anodized plaque, attached to the space probe
Pioneer 10, launched in 1972.
Pioneer 11, also carrying another copy of the plaque, was launched the following year. He continued to refine his designs; the most elaborate message he helped to develop and assemble was the
Voyager Golden Record that was sent out with the
Voyager space probes in 1977. Sagan often challenged the decisions to fund the
Space Shuttle and the
International Space Station at the expense of further robotic missions.
[16]
Sagan taught a course on
critical thinking at Cornell University until he died in 1996 from pneumonia, a few months after finding that he was in remission of
myelodysplastic syndrome.
Scientific achievements
Former student
David Morrison describes Sagan as "an 'idea person' and a master of intuitive physical arguments and '
back of the envelope' calculations,"
[15] and Gerard Kuiper said that "Some persons work best in specializing on a major program in the laboratory; others are best in liaison between sciences. Dr. Sagan belongs in the latter group."
[15]
Sagan's contributions were central to the discovery of the high surface temperatures of the planet
Venus. In the early 1960s no one knew for certain the basic conditions of that planet's surface, and Sagan listed the possibilities in a report later depicted for popularization in a
Time–Life book,
Planets. His own view was that Venus was dry and very hot as opposed to the balmy paradise others had imagined. He had investigated radio emissions from Venus and concluded that there was a surface temperature of 500 °C (900 °F). As a visiting scientist to NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he contributed to the first
Mariner missions to Venus, working on the design and management of the project.
Mariner 2 confirmed his conclusions on the surface conditions of Venus in 1962.
Sagan was among the first to hypothesize that
Saturn's moon
Titan might possess oceans of liquid compounds on its surface and that
Jupiter's moon
Europa might possess subsurface oceans of water.
This would make Europa potentially habitable.
[17] Europa's subsurface ocean of water was later indirectly confirmed by the spacecraft
Galileo. The mystery of Titan's reddish haze was also solved with Sagan's help. The reddish haze was revealed to be due to complex
organic molecules constantly raining down onto Titan's surface.
[18]
He further contributed insights regarding the atmospheres of Venus and Jupiter as well as seasonal changes on
Mars. He also perceived
global warming as a growing, man-made danger and likened it to the natural development of Venus into a hot, life-hostile planet through a kind of
runaway greenhouse effect.
[19] Sagan and his Cornell colleague
Edwin Ernest Salpeter speculated about
life in Jupiter's clouds, given the planet's dense atmospheric composition rich in organic molecules. He studied the observed color variations on Mars' surface and concluded that they were not seasonal or vegetational changes as most believed but shifts in surface dust caused by
windstorms.
Sagan is best known, however, for his research on the possibilities of
extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of
amino acids from basic chemicals by
radiation.
[20]
He is also the 1994 recipient of the
Public Welfare Medal, the highest award of the
National Academy of Sciences for "distinguished contributions in the application of science to the public welfare".
[21] He was denied membership in the Academy, reportedly because his media activities made him unpopular with many other scientists.
[22][23][24]
Scientific and critical thinking advocacy
Sagan's ability to convey his ideas allowed many people to understand the cosmos better—simultaneously emphasizing the value and worthiness of the human race, and the relative insignificance of the Earth in comparison to the
Universe. He delivered the 1977 series of
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in London.
[25] He hosted and, with
Ann Druyan, co-wrote and co-produced the highly popular thirteen-part
Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) television series
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.
[26]
Cosmos covered a wide range of scientific subjects including the
origin of life and a perspective of our place in the Universe. The series was first broadcast by PBS in 1980, winning an
Emmy[27] and a
Peabody Award. It has been broadcast in more than 60 countries and seen by over 500 million people,
[3][28] making it the most widely watched PBS program in history.
[29] In addition,
Time magazine ran a cover story about Sagan soon after the show broadcast, referring to him as "creator, chief writer and host-narrator of the new public television series Cosmos, [and] takes the controls of his fantasy spaceship".
[30] However, Sagan was criticized for putting too much attention into the series, with several of his classes at Cornell being cancelled and complaints from his colleagues.
[15]
Sagan was a proponent of the search for extraterrestrial life. He urged the scientific community to listen with
radio telescopes for signals from potential intelligent
extraterrestrial life-forms. Sagan was so persuasive that by 1982 he was able to get a petition advocating SETI published in the journal
Science and signed by 70 scientists, including seven
Nobel Prize winners. This was a tremendous increase in the respectability of this controversial field. Sagan also helped
Frank Drake write the
Arecibo message, a radio message beamed into space from the
Arecibo radio telescope on November 16, 1974, aimed at informing potential extraterrestrials about Earth.
Sagan was chief technology officer of the professional planetary research journal
Icarus for twelve years. He co-founded
The Planetary Society, the largest space-interest group in the world, with over 100,000 members in more than 149 countries, and was a member of the
SETI Institute Board of Trustees. Sagan served as Chairman of the Division for Planetary Science of the
American Astronomical Society, as President of the Planetology Section of the
American Geophysical Union, and as Chairman of the Astronomy Section of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
At the height of the
Cold War, Sagan became involved in public awareness efforts for the effects of
nuclear war when a mathematical climate model suggested that a substantial nuclear exchange could upset the delicate balance of life on Earth. He was one of five authors—the "S"—of the
"TTAPS" report, as the research paper came to be known. He eventually co-authored the scientific paper hypothesizing a global
nuclear winter following nuclear war.
[31] He also co-authored the book
A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, a comprehensive examination of the phenomenon of nuclear winter.
Sagan also wrote books to popularize science, such as
Cosmos, which reflected and expanded upon some of the themes of
A Personal Voyage and became the best-selling science book ever published in English;
[32] The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, which won a
Pulitzer Prize; and
Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. Sagan also wrote the best-selling science fiction novel
Contact in 1985, based on a
film treatment he wrote with his wife in 1979, but he did not live to see the book's 1997
motion picture adaptation, which starred
Jodie Foster and won the 1998
Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.
He wrote a sequel to
Cosmos,
Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, which was selected as a notable book of 1995 by
The New York Times. He appeared on PBS'
Charlie Rose program in January 1995.
[16] Sagan also wrote the introduction for
Stephen Hawking's bestseller,
A Brief History of Time. Sagan was also known for his popularization of science, his efforts to increase scientific understanding among the general public, and his positions in favor of
scientific skepticism and against
pseudoscience, such as his
debunking of the
Betty and Barney Hill abduction. To mark the tenth anniversary of Sagan's death,
David Morrison, a former student of Sagan's, recalled "Sagan's immense contributions to planetary research, the public understanding of science, and the skeptical movement" in
Skeptical Inquirer.
[15]
Pale Blue Dot: Earth is a bright pixel when photographed from
Voyager 1 six billion kilometers out (beyond Pluto). Sagan encouraged NASA to generate this image.
Sagan hypothesized in January 1991 that enough smoke from the 1991
Kuwaiti oil fires "might get so high as to disrupt agriculture in much of South Asia ..." He later conceded in
The Demon-Haunted World that this prediction did not turn out to be correct: "it
was pitch black at noon and temperatures dropped 4°–6 °C over the Persian Gulf, but not much smoke reached stratospheric altitudes and Asia was spared".
[33] A 2007 study noted that modern computer models have been applied to the Kuwait oil fires, finding that individual smoke plumes are not able to loft smoke into the
stratosphere, but that smoke from fires covering a large area, like some forest fires or the burning of cities that would be expected to follow a nuclear strike, would loft significant amounts of smoke into the stratosphere.
[34][35][36][37]
In his later years Sagan advocated the creation of an organized search for near-Earth objects that might impact the Earth.
[38] When others suggested creating large nuclear bombs that could be used to alter the orbit of a NEO that was predicted to hit the Earth, Sagan proposed the Deflection Dilemma: If we create the ability to deflect an asteroid away from the Earth, then we also create the ability to deflect an asteroid towards the Earth—providing an evil power with a true doomsday bomb.
[39][40] His interest in the use of nuclear weapons in space grew out of his work in 1958 for the
Armour Research Foundation's
Project A119, concerning the possibility of detonating a nuclear device on the Lunar surface.
[41]
Sagan was a critic of
Plato. Sagan said of Plato: "Science and mathematics were to be removed from the hands of the merchants and the artisans. This tendency found its most effective advocate in a follower of
Pythagoras named Plato." and "He (Plato) believed that ideas were far more real than the natural world. He advised the astronomers not to waste their time observing the stars and planets. It was better, he believed, just to think about them. Plato expressed hostility to observation and experiment. He taught contempt for the real world and disdain for the practical application of scientific knowledge. Plato's followers succeeded in extinguishing the light of science and experiment that had been kindled by
Democritus and the
other Ionians."
[42]
Popularizing science
Speaking about his activities in popularizing science, Sagan said that there were at least two reasons for scientists to explain what science is about. Naked self-interest was one because much of the funding for science came from the public, and the public had a right to know how their money was being spent. If scientists increased public excitement about science, there was a good chance of having more public supporters. The other reason was the excitement of communicating one's own excitement about science to others.
[43]
Phrase 'billions and billions'
Sagan with a model of the
Viking lander which would land on
Mars. Sagan examined possible landing sites for Viking along with Mike Carr and Hal Masursky.
From
Cosmos and his frequent appearances on
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Sagan became associated with the
catchphrase "billions and billions". Sagan said that he never actually used the phrase in the
Cosmos series.
[44] The closest that he ever came was in the book
Cosmos, where he talked of "billions
upon billions":
[45]
A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars—billions upon billions of stars.
—Carl Sagan,
Cosmos, page 3[19]
Precursor to Sagan,
Richard Feynman is observed to use the phrase "billions and billions" multiple times in his "
red books."
However, his frequent use of the word
billions, and distinctive delivery emphasizing the "b" (which he did intentionally, in place of more cumbersome alternatives such as "billions with a 'b'", in order to distinguish the word from "millions" in viewers' minds),
[44] made him a favorite target of comic performers, including
Johnny Carson,
[46] Gary Kroeger,
Mike Myers,
Bronson Pinchot,
Penn Jillette,
Harry Shearer, and others.
Frank Zappa satirized the line in the song "
Be in My Video", noting as well "atomic light". Sagan took this all in good humor, and his final book was entitled
Billions and Billions, which opened with a tongue-in-cheek discussion of this catchphrase, observing that Carson was an amateur astronomer and that Carson's comic caricature often included real science.
[44]
He is also known for expressing wonderment at the vastness of space and time, as in his phrase "The total number of stars in the Universe is larger than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth."
As a humorous tribute to Sagan and his association with the catchphrase "billions and billions", a
sagan has been defined as a
unit of measurement equivalent to a large number of anything.
[47][48][49]
Social concerns
Sagan believed that the
Drake equation, on substitution of reasonable estimates, suggested that a large number of extraterrestrial civilizations would form, but that the lack of evidence of such civilizations highlighted by the
Fermi paradox suggests
technological civilizations tend to self-destruct. This stimulated his interest in identifying and publicizing ways that humanity could destroy itself, with the hope of avoiding such a
cataclysm and eventually becoming a
spacefaring species.
Sagan's deep concern regarding the potential destruction of
human civilization in a
nuclear holocaust was conveyed in a memorable cinematic sequence in the final episode of
Cosmos, called "Who Speaks for Earth?" Sagan had already resigned from the
Air Force Scientific Advisory Board and voluntarily surrendered his
top secret clearance in protest over the
Vietnam War.
[50] Following his marriage to his third wife (
novelist Ann Druyan) in June 1981, Sagan became more politically active—particularly in opposing escalation of the
nuclear arms race under
President Ronald Reagan.
In March 1983, Reagan announced the
Strategic Defense Initiative—a multi-billion dollar project to develop a comprehensive
defense against attack by
nuclear missiles, which was quickly dubbed the "Star Wars" program. Sagan spoke out against the project, arguing that it was technically impossible to develop a system with the level of perfection required, and far more expensive to build such a system than it would be for an enemy to defeat it through
decoys and other means—and that its construction would seriously destabilize the nuclear balance between the United States and the
Soviet Union, making further progress toward
nuclear disarmament impossible.
When Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev declared a unilateral moratorium on the
testing of nuclear weapons, which would begin on August 6, 1985—the 40th anniversary of the
atomic bombing of
Hiroshima—the Reagan administration dismissed the dramatic move as nothing more than propaganda, and refused to follow suit. In response, US
anti-nuclear and peace activists staged a series of protest actions at the
Nevada Test Site, beginning on
Easter Sunday in 1986 and continuing through 1987. Hundreds of people were arrested, including Sagan, who was arrested on two separate occasions as he climbed over a chain-link fence at the test site.
[51]
Personal life and beliefs
Sagan was married three times. In 1957, he married biologist
Lynn Margulis, mother of
Dorion Sagan and
Jeremy Sagan. After Sagan and Margulis divorced, he married artist
Linda Salzman in 1968, mother of
Nick Sagan. During these marriages, Sagan focused heavily on his career, a factor which may have contributed to Sagan's first divorce.
[15] In 1981, Sagan married author
Ann Druyan, mother of Alexandra Rachel (Sasha) Sagan and Samuel Democritus Sagan. Sagan and Druyan remained married until his death in 1996.
Isaac Asimov described Sagan as one of only two people he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own. The other, he claimed, was the
computer scientist and
artificial intelligence expert
Marvin Minsky.
[52]
Sagan wrote frequently about religion and the relationship between religion and science, expressing his skepticism about the conventional conceptualization of God as a sapient being. For example:
Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Others—for example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einstein—considered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws.[53]
In another description of his view on the concept of God, Sagan emphatically writes:
The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying ... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.[54]
On atheism, Sagan commented in 1981:
An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do now to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.[55]
Sagan also commented on Christianity, stating "My long-time view about Christianity is that it represents an amalgam of two seemingly immiscible parts, the religion of Jesus and the religion of
Paul. Thomas Jefferson attempted to excise the Pauline parts of the New Testament. There wasn't much left when he was done, but it was an inspiring document."
[56]
Regarding the relationship between spirituality and science, Sagan stated: "Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual."
[57]
An environmental appeal, "Preserving and Cherishing the Earth", signed by Sagan with other noted scientists in January 1990, stated that "The historical record makes clear that religious teaching, example, and leadership are powerfully able to influence personal conduct and commitment... Thus, there is a vital role for religion and science."
[58]
In reply to a question in 1996 about his religious beliefs, Sagan answered, "I'm agnostic."
[59] Sagan's views on religion have been interpreted as a form of
pantheism comparable to Einstein's belief in
Spinoza's God.
[60] Sagan maintained that the idea of a creator of the Universe was difficult to prove or disprove and that the only conceivable scientific discovery that could challenge it would be an infinitely old Universe.
[61] His last wife, Ann Druyan, stated:
When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me—it still sometimes happens—and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don't ever expect to be reunited with Carl.[62]
In 2006, Ann Druyan edited Sagan's 1985 Glasgow
Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology into a book,
The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, in which he elaborates on his views of divinity in the
natural world.
Carl Sagan (center) speaks with
CDC employees in 1988.
Sagan is also widely regarded as a
freethinker or
skeptic; one of his most famous quotations, in
Cosmos, was, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"
[63] (called the "Sagan Standard" by some
[64]). This was based on a nearly identical statement by fellow founder of the
Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal,
Marcello Truzzi, "An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof."
[65][66] This idea had been earlier aphorized in
Théodore Flournoy's work
From India to the Planet Mars (1899) from a longer quote by
Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827), a French mathematician and astronomer, as the Principle of Laplace: "The weight of the evidence should be proportioned to the strangeness of the facts."
[67]
Late in his life, Sagan's books elaborated on his skeptical,
naturalistic view of the world. In
The Demon-Haunted World, he presented tools for testing arguments and detecting fallacious or fraudulent ones, essentially advocating wide use of critical thinking and the scientific method. The compilation
Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium, published in 1997 after Sagan's death, contains essays written by Sagan, such as his views on abortion, and his widow Ann Druyan's account of his death as a skeptic,
agnostic, and freethinker.
Sagan warned against humans' tendency towards
anthropocentrism. He was the faculty adviser for the Cornell Students for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. In the
Cosmos chapter "Blues For a Red Planet", Sagan wrote, "If there is life on Mars, I believe we should do nothing with Mars. Mars then belongs to the Martians, even if the Martians are only microbes."
[68]
Sagan was a user and advocate of
marijuana. Under the pseudonym "Mr. X", he contributed an essay about smoking cannabis to the 1971 book
Marihuana Reconsidered.
[69][70] The essay explained that marijuana use had helped to inspire some of Sagan's works and enhance sensual and intellectual experiences. After Sagan's death, his friend
Lester Grinspoon disclosed this information to Sagan's biographer, Keay Davidson. The publishing of the biography,
Carl Sagan: A Life, in 1999 brought media attention to this aspect of Sagan's life.
[71][72][73] Not long after his death, widow Ann Druyan had gone on to preside over the board of directors of the
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), a non-profit organization dedicated to reforming cannabis laws.
[74][75]
In 1994, engineers at
Apple Computer code-named the
Power Macintosh 7100 "Carl Sagan" in the hope that Apple would make "billions and billions" with the sale of the PowerMac 7100.
[4] The name was only used internally, but Sagan was concerned that it would become a product endorsement and sent Apple a cease-and-desist letter. Apple complied, but engineers retaliated by changing the internal codename to "BHA" for “
Butt-Head Astronomer”.
[76][77] Sagan then sued Apple for
libel, a form of
defamation, in federal court. The court granted Apple's motion to dismiss Sagan's claims and opined in
dicta that a reader aware of the context would understand Apple was "clearly attempting to retaliate in a humorous and satirical way", and that “It strains reason to conclude that Defendant was attempting to criticize Plaintiff's reputation or competency as an astronomer. One does not seriously attack the expertise of a scientist using the undefined phrase ‘butt-head’.”
[76][78] Sagan then sued for Apple's original use of his name and likeness, but again lost.
[79] Sagan appealed the ruling.
[79] In November 1995, an out-of-court settlement was reached and Apple's office of trademarks and patents released a conciliatory statement that “Apple has always had great respect for Dr. Sagan. It was never Apple's intention to cause Dr. Sagan or his family any embarrassment or concern.”
[80] Apple's third and final code name for the project was "LAW", short for "Lawyers are Wimps".
[77]
Sagan briefly served as an adviser on
Stanley Kubrick's film
2001: A Space Odyssey.
[7]:168 Sagan proposed that the film suggest, rather than depict, extraterrestrial superintelligence.
[81]
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