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A review by tbr_the_unconquered
Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science by Carl Sagan
2.0
The science and mathematics text books that were used at my school time all started off with a little pledge that set out to instill in the young minds a scientific spirit. It spoke of endless curiosity, an investigative spirit and the willingness to observe and rework. I don’t remember the words nor the structure but I can remember looking at those pages in something like fondness for they were the only islands of difference in an otherwise droll sea of studies. The essays in Sagan’s book are a toast to this scientific mindset for he is an outspoken advocate of believing only after something is being proved beyond reasonable doubt. His writings in this book are reflections on varied topics including the lives of scientific greats, planetary wonders, the dangers of pseudo-science et al.
Sagan as a writer does not disappoint with his style. He is never a high-brow scientist writer who mumbles away just for the benefit of his computer and to no one else. It would not be an exaggeration to say that I did begin to feel a lot more affinity to Science as a discipline after reading him and Feynman. That’s right folks ! School was the best way to discard Science in the badlands of my mind. He does cover a wide variety of topics in his writing and this did arouse curiosity in my mind. Sadly, this strength of Sagan is also the biggest undoing of this little book.
The book suffers a serious problem in terms of its content (both in terms of being logically connected and also in terms of quality). After a couple of chapters I was left to wonder if Sagan ever meant this to be a book or whether the publishers cashed in on his popularity and swept in quite a few of his writings and hammered it into a shape that resembled a book. Earlier works of his that I have been acquainted with ( read Cosmos, Dragons Of Eden) have been logical and lucid in terms of their approach to the subjects. In here however, Sagan wanders all over the place. We jump right from Albert Einstein to circus freak-shows from one essay to the next. From the number of reviews in the site, it appears that there are quite a few folks who had no issues with such a style but for me it was a jumbled mass. Attention wanders as a result of this and I left the book much disappointed.
Not one of his best !
Sagan as a writer does not disappoint with his style. He is never a high-brow scientist writer who mumbles away just for the benefit of his computer and to no one else. It would not be an exaggeration to say that I did begin to feel a lot more affinity to Science as a discipline after reading him and Feynman. That’s right folks ! School was the best way to discard Science in the badlands of my mind. He does cover a wide variety of topics in his writing and this did arouse curiosity in my mind. Sadly, this strength of Sagan is also the biggest undoing of this little book.
The book suffers a serious problem in terms of its content (both in terms of being logically connected and also in terms of quality). After a couple of chapters I was left to wonder if Sagan ever meant this to be a book or whether the publishers cashed in on his popularity and swept in quite a few of his writings and hammered it into a shape that resembled a book. Earlier works of his that I have been acquainted with ( read Cosmos, Dragons Of Eden) have been logical and lucid in terms of their approach to the subjects. In here however, Sagan wanders all over the place. We jump right from Albert Einstein to circus freak-shows from one essay to the next. From the number of reviews in the site, it appears that there are quite a few folks who had no issues with such a style but for me it was a jumbled mass. Attention wanders as a result of this and I left the book much disappointed.
Not one of his best !