The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

by Carl Sagan

Ann Druyan (Editor)

Carl Sagan's prophetic vision of the tragic resurgence of fundamentalism and the hope-filled potential of the next great development in human spirituality

The late great astronomer and astrophysicist describes his personal search to understand the nature of the sacred in the vastness of the cosmos. Exhibiting a breadth of intellect nothing short of astounding, Sagan presents his views on a wide range of topics, including the likelihood of intelligent life on other planets, creationism and so-called intelligent design, and a new concept of science as "informed worship." Originally presented at the centennial celebration of the famous Gifford Lectures in Scotland in 1985 but never published, this book offers a unique encounter with one of the most remarkable minds of the twentieth century.

• ISBN10: 1594201072
• ISBN13: 9781594201073
• Publish Date: 2 November 2006 (first published 1 November 2006)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 5 March 2013
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc
• Imprint: The Penguin Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 284
• Language: English

Reviews

[jamiereadthis]

My copy of this stays loaned out about ten months out of the year, so whenever it falls back into my hands for a week or two I’m practically duty-bound to eat it up as quick as I can.

Verdict: best as ever. If you read this book and don’t have some fundamental opinions changed, then we’ll probably be friends because you hold them in the first place.

Also, I always forget (though probably no longer, writing something down has a way of solving that problem) that Kurt Vonnegut is the only blurb for the book, right on the back cover. On Carl: “I miss him so.”

Don’t we all.

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June 2009 review:

There’s nothing I could say about Carl Sagan (his work, his writing, his imitable open-minded approach to our world and everything beyond it) that hasn’t already been said, but I think that if there were one person, living or dead, with whom I could talk for days on end, my pick would be him.

[empressbrooke]

This book is a collection of the lectures Sagan gave during his Gifford Lectures appointment in Glasglow. Although he gave the lectures in 1985, they needed very little updating (done with minimal footnotes) upon their publication in 2006. I think the only thing I noticed that is irrelevant now is Sagan's musings about whether or not the universe is forever expanding, and the implications of a universe that expands and contracts (a footnote helpfully reveals that evidence now shows a rapidly expanding universe).

I've noticed many reviews on Goodreads refer to Sagan as an atheist, which isn't correct (he's been quoted elsewhere that an atheist would have to know a lot more than Sagan does), but I can see how it's easy to come away from the book with that idea - his agnostic stance isn't really demonstrated until the Q&A transcript at the end of the lectures, where he points out that you can't prove something without evidence, but that a lack of evidence is not proof that something doesn't exist.

There's a little bit of an overlap between this and Sagan's [b:The Demon-Haunted World Science as a Candle in the Dark|17349|The Demon-Haunted World Science as a Candle in the Dark|Carl Sagan|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1349023715s/17349.jpg|252618], but I think this is the better book; as I noted in my review of The Demon-Haunted World, the latter part of that book seems like a tangent that doesn't quite fit with the first part. The lectures in this collection, on the other hand, all go together very well and transition into each other nicely. On the other hand, The Demon-Haunted World demonstrates more of the balance between Sagan's wonder and skepticism. The lectures come off as being more on the skeptic side.