Book Carl Sagan and the science of God
What, another book by Carl Sagan? The idea of a publication from the storied astronomer—author of Contact and host of the wildly popular PBS television miniseries Cosmos—a decade after his death may smack of Bruce Lee's posthumous movie career. But this is no pastiche of outtakes. Sagan is serving up insight into humankind's weightiest question: What is the nature of God?
The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
(Penguin, $27.95) is an edited transcription of nine invited talks given by Sagan at the University of Glasgow in 1985 as part of the Gifford Lectures, begun more than a century ago to promote discussion of so-called natural theology, which relies not on revelation but on reason and empirical experience.
