Science Saturday Cosmos "The Harmony of the Worlds"

In this installment of Cosmos [see others here], Carl Sagan takes on the pseudoscience of Astrology. He describes how the emergence of science as men attempted to describe the movement of the planets in the sky, and how men like Johannes Kepler gave rise to the modern world through scientific descriptions and the discovery of universal laws.

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Science Saturday Cosmos "One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue"

This is part of a series of video posts for Saturday Mornings called "Science Saturdays" and will generally be posted at 9am Eastern Time every week.

For the first series of posts, I must (of course) post Carl Sagan's Cosmos. It has become the yardstick by which all video science series are measured. I will be posting one episode per week.

This the second episode of Cosmos, "One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue", to see the 1st episode, "The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean", click here.



In this episode, Sagan tells the story of the Heike Crab to describe how artificial selection works and uses the Watchmaker analogy used by creationists (of which I am one) to describe Intelligent Design. He reviews where different steps in the evolution of life occur fit into the Cosmic Calender and an animated evolution from microbes to man is presented.

We are taken on a journey, by way of the Kew Gardens of London, into the cell nucleus. Then, we are introduced to the Urey-Miller Experiment and the common biochemistry of all life in earth.

Sagan then speculates about life in the clouds of Jupiter. This is my favorite part of the episode.

At the end, a ten year update is delivered.

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Science Saturday Cosmos "The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean"

I am starting a new series of video posts for Saturday Mornings called "Science Saturdays" and will generally be posted at 9am Eastern Time every week.

For the first series of posts, I must (of course) post Carl Sagan's Cosmos. It has become the yardstick by which all video science series are measured. I will be posting one episode per week:





In this episode (after a brief introduction by Sagan's widow, Ann Druyan) Carl Sagan gives us a brief tour of the cosmos, the solar system and brings us to the earth, and introduces us to the Library at Alexandria, Egypt and Eratosthenes some 2,000 years ago, and their role in history. Sagan introduces us to the Cosmic Year and our place in it.

A personal note: I was not able to see Cosmos when it aired because I grew up outside the range of the local PBS TV transmitter range, and still do. I read, and re-read, and re-read the book "Cosmos" shortly after it came out. I did not see the series until it was released on DVD in 2000.

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