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Authors: Carl Sagan

Broca's Brain

BOOK: Broca's Brain
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“Carl Sagan is the most effective
and popular advocate of the wonders of
science in the United States.”

The New York Times Books Review
 

“He not only can make complex scientific matters understandable to the general reader, but does so in entrancing ways as well.”

—Associated Press

 

“Sagan can write about anything … and seem as if he learned what he knows while playing in the sandbox.”


The New York Times

 

“Sagan has a love affair going with the universe.…You cannot come away unmoved from an encounter with him. He is full of intensity, of fascination, of courtesy, and of a lust for accuracy and truth.…Sagan blows through my head like a tornado, filling me with questions and with joy.”


The Detroit News

 

“Sagan overwhelms us, overpowering our senses.…[He] sweeps us off our simple planet earth and into interplanetary space.”


The San Diego Union

 
“Devastating, balanced, unforgettable.”

Science
 

“He has the confidence and ability to range widely beyond his specialties, an infectious enthusiasm for ideas, delight in the ‘romance of science’ and optimism for the future.… Sagan has probably done more than anyone else to make wonders of science readily available to the intelligent lay readers of this country.”


The Pittsburgh Press

 

“Throughout, Sagan’s writing is eloquent and refreshing, his subjects wide-ranging and stimulating. He easily communicates the careful reason, the lively imagination, and the contagious enthusiasm that have made him the nation’s best-known scientist.”


The Charlotte Observer

 

“The love and enthusiasm he exudes in his writings is infectious. He goads us to greater understanding by stimulating our intelligence.…Sagan dazzles.”


American Way

 

“Intellectually omnivorous, utterly understandable … A brilliant book!”


Vogue

 
“The best nonfiction bet of the year.”

The Denver Post
 

“Every generation needs one scientist of impeccable credentials who is capable of explaining, in reasonably clear English and without sounding patronizing, what the hell is going on in our labs and think-tanks. At the moment, the chair is occupied (and very ably) by Carl Sagan, whose
Dragons of Eden
has already garnered a Pulitzer Prize.”


The Houston Post

 

“In the hands of an extraordinary scientist like Carl Sagan, the presentation of science as it really is becomes the exhilarating adventure it ought to be.”


Worcester Telegram

 

“Articulate, entertaining, and occasionally profound, he does what few other respected scientists can or have bothered to do—he gives science to the people. BROCA’S BRAIN is a marvelous gift.”


The Providence Journal

 

“Sagan is enjoying himself.… The puzzles and enigmas of the universe are unending. It is a scientist’s delight in them that runs through all the parts of BROCA’S BRAIN.”


Washington Star

 

By Carl Sagan
Published by Ballantine Books:

BILLIONS & BILLIONS

BROCA’S BRAIN

COMET

COSMOS

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD

THE DRAGONS OF EDEN

MURMURS OF EARTH

PALE BLUE DOT

SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS
(with Ann Druyan)

 

A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979 by Carl Sagan

 

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

 

Portions of this work have previously appeared in
American Scholar, Atlantic Monthly, Book Digest, Holiday, Mercury, Natural History, New Republic, New York Times Magazine, Physics Today, Playboy, Scientific American, Smithsonian Magazine, TV Guide
and
Vogue
(British).
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Cornell University Press: “An Analysis of ‘Worlds in Collision’ ” by Carl Sagan, in
Scientists Confront Velikovsky
, edited by D. Goldsmith. Copyright © 1976 by Cornell University Press.
Encyclopedia Americana: “UFO’s.” Copyright © 1975 by Americana Corporation.
Field Enterprises: “The Climates of Planets” in
Science Year
1975. Copyright © 1975 by Field Enterprises Educational Corporation. William Morrow & Company, Inc.: Excerpts from
The Planets
by Diane Ackerman. Copyright © 1975, 1976 by Diane Ackerman. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow & Company, Inc.

 

Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

 

www.ballantinebooks.com

 

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 78-21810

 

eISBN: 978-0-307-80099-2

 

This edition published by arrangement with Random House, Inc.

 

v3.1

 

To Rachel and Samuel Sagan, my parents,
who introduced me to the joys of understanding
the world, with gratitude and admiration and love

 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
 

FOR DISCUSSION
on specific points I am grateful to a number of friends, correspondents and colleagues, including Diane Ackerman, D. W. G. Arthur, James Bakalar, Richard Berendzen, Norman Bloom, C. Chandrasekhar, Clark Chapman, Sidney Coleman, Yves Coppens, Judy-Lynn Del Rey, Frank Drake, Stuart Edelstein, Paul Fox, D. Carleton Gajdusek, Owen Gingerich, Thomas Gold, J. Richard Gott III, Steven J. Gould, Lester Grinspoon, Stanislav Grof, J. U. Gunter, Robert Horvitz, James W. Kalat, B. Gentry Lee, Jack Lewis, Marvin Minsky, David Morrison, Philip Morrison, Bruce Murray, Phileo Nash, Tobias Owen, James Pollack, James Randi, E. E. Salpeter, Stuart Shapiro, Gunther Stent, O. B. Toon, Joseph Veverka, E. A. Whitaker and A. Thomas Young.

This book owes much, in all stages of production, to the dedicated and competent efforts of Susan Lang, Carol Lane, and, particularly, my executive assistant, Shirley Arden.

I am especially grateful to Ann Druyan and Steven Soter for generous encouragement and stimulating commentary on a great many of the subjects of this book. Ann has made essential contributions to most chapters and to the title; my debt to her is very great.

CONTENTS
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

References

 
INTRODUCTION
 

WE LIVE
in an extraordinary age. These are times of stunning changes in social organization, economic wellbeing, moral and ethical precepts, philosophical and religious perspectives, and human self-knowledge, as well as in our understanding of that vast universe in which we are imbedded like a grain of sand in a cosmic ocean. As long as there have been human beings, we have posed the deep and fundamental questions, which evoke wonder and stir us into at least a tentative and trembling awareness, questions on the origins of consciousness; life on our planet; the beginnings of the Earth; the formation of the Sun; the possibility of intelligent beings somewhere up there in the depths of the sky; as well as, the grandest inquiry of all—on the advent, nature and ultimate destiny of the universe. For all but the last instant of human history these issues have been the exclusive province of philosophers and poets, shamans and theologians. The diverse and mutually contradictory answers offered demonstrate that few of the proposed solutions have been correct. But today, as a result of knowledge painfully extracted from nature, through generations of careful thinking, observing and experimenting, we are on the verge of glimpsing at least preliminary answers to many of these questions.

There are a number of themes that weave through the structure of this book, appearing early, disappearing for a few chapters, and then resurfacing in a somewhat different context—including the joys and social consequences of the scientific endeavor; borderline or pop science; the not entirely different subject of religious doctrine; the exploration of the planets and the search
for extraterrestrial life; and Albert Einstein, in the centenary of whose birth this book is published. Most of the chapters can be read independently, but the ideas have been presented in an order chosen with some care. As in some of my previous books, I have not hesitated to interject social, political or historical remarks where I thought they might be appropriate. The attention given to borderline science may seem curious to some readers. Practitioners of pop science were once called Paradoxers, a quaint nineteenth-century word used to describe those who invent elaborate and undemonstrated explanations for what science has understood rather well in simpler terms. We are today awash with Paradoxers. The usual practice of scientists is to ignore them, hoping they will go away. I thought it might be useful—or at least interesting—to examine the contentions and conceits of some Paradoxers a little more closely, and to connect and contrast their doctrines with other belief systems, both scientific and religious.

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