Thank you Ann Druyan, Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Seth MacFarlane, Dr. Steven Soter, Bill Pope, Brannon Braga, and everyone else involved honoring Carl Sagan and providing an educational experience with the production of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. I can attribute a large part of who I am and my inner development during the younger years -- the belief in moral responsibilities and kindness that we have to each other, the desire to investigate the physical world, a sense of healthy skepticism, the responsibility of being stewardesses of the only home weve ever known, the confidence to not accept all claims made by authority figures, the yearning to be a well-rounded individual who considers not only our present, but also our past and future -- to the influence of Dr. Sagan (particularly the books A Demon-Haunted World, Brocas Brain, and Billions and Billions). Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson did a great job and Im delighted that the series reached views in the millions, because that means that a larger audience had the opportunity to experience the same joy that I did on my own personal voyage. We live in an age dominated by technology; it is important that we all have a basic understanding of science because knowledge is power. The ending was a nice touch: The universe is mostly dark, dotted by islands of light. Learning the age of the Earth, or the distance to the stars, or how life evolved -- what difference does that make? Well, part of it depends on how big a universe you’re willing to live in. Some of us like it small. That’s fine. Understandable. But I like it big. And when I take all of this into my heart and my mind, I’m uplifted by it. And when I have that feeling, I want to know that it’s real. That it’s not just something happening inside my own head. Because it matters what’s true and our imagination is nothing compared with Nature’s awesome reality. I want to know what’s in those dark places and what happened before the Big Bang. I want to know what lies beyond the cosmic horizon and how life began. Are there other places in the cosmos where matter and energy have become alive and aware? I want to know my ancestors. All of them. I want to be a good, strong link in the chain of generations. I want to protect my children and the children of ages to come. We who embody the local eyes and ears, thoughts and feelings of the cosmos -- we’ve begun to learn the story of our origins. Starstuff, contemplating the evolution of matter, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness. We and the other living things on this planet carry a legacy of cosmic evolution spanning billions of years. If we take that knowledge to heart -- if we come to know and love Nature as it really is, then we will surely be remembered by our descendants as good, strong links in the chain of life. And our children will continue this sacred searching. Seeing for us as we have seen for those who came before. Discovering wonders yet undreamed of in the cosmos.
Posted on: Wed, 11 Jun 2014 14:03:27 +0000
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