The Varieties of Scientific Experience

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Carl Sagan was a scientist, but he had some qualities that I associate with the Old Testament. "When he came up against a wall-the wall of jargon that mystifies science and withholds its treasures from the rest of us, for example, or the wall around our souls that keeps us from taking the revelations of science to heart-when he came up against one of those topless old walls, he would, like some latter-day Joshua, use all of his many strengths to bring it down.

As a child in Brooklyn, he had recited the Hebrew V'Ahavta prayer from Deuteronomy at temple services: "And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might." He knew it by heart, and it may have been the inspiration for him to first ask, What is love without understanding? And what greater might do we possess as human beings than our capacity to question and to learn?

The more Carl learned about nature, about the vastness of the universe and the awesome timescales of cosmic evolution, the more he was uplifted.

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