Science Sunday, Books, Etc.

I’ve found it difficult to find a few succinct words to introduce you to the new types of posts I hope to incorporate here at The Sleeping Owl.

You may have noticed that a brief pattern has emerged – Science Sunday.  This spawned from another idea, but originated within the same theme: Books.

I like books. More precisely, I like knowing what is in books.

Certainly, some are just for fun.  The vast and engrossing experience of a great story  that plays-out over the weeks you spend with a book is cheap, old-school, enjoyable, and it actually gives you a sense of accomplishment that cannot seem to be replicated by our favorite new technologies.  Many other books are not simply for entertainment, but your encounter with them may be exceedingly more profound.  This first book-themed post is regarding the latter type of book.

Basically, I want to share a bit of my great experiences with books.  I’ve always had a habit of highlighting.  I seem to highlight for a number of reasons. Whether it is a skillfully written sentence, a hilarious metaphor, vivid imagery, or some incredible new scientific fact that I learn, I often feel as if I’m highlighting for others.

Whatever the assembly of black letters communicated, the florescent ink bled into the page because – at that moment – I thought it was great.

I may elaborate on the diverse reasons I’m choosing to do this, but for now I’ll let the cited material speak for me.  So, in the future, I will periodically share some of the highlighted words in my bookshelf.  I’ll do my best to keep the quotes short.

I’m hoping that one or two of the samples will intrigue you to check-out the book or author or topic – I will not quote from a book that I don’t recommend reading.

While reading today, I happened upon a few paragraphs directly discussing books.

I am a few days from finishing astrophysicist/cosmologist Carl Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World. I came upon it by way of many recommendations.  People consistently cite this book as one of the most important and influential books that they have read.  It certainly gains my approval for recommendation and I am thrilled to add it to my library. I’m sure there will be a few more posts taken from this impressive book.

For 99 percent of the tenure of humans on earth, nobody could read or write. The great invention had not yet been made.  Except for first-hand experience, almost everything we knew was passed on by word of mouth. As in the children’s game “Telephone,” over tens and hundreds of generations, information would slowly be distorted and lost.

Books changed all that. Books, purchasable at low cost, permit us to interrogate the past with high accuracy; to tap the wisdom of our species; to contemplate – with the best teachers – the insights, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history.  They allow us to go over the hard parts as many times as we wish, and are never critical of our lapses.  Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society.

- Carl Sagan

Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

(1996)

p. 357