Carl Sagan's famous essay, "Pale Blue Dot," is quoted and praised all across the cyber-galaxy, but just how original is it? Ever wondered that? How does it stack up, quotation-wise, against the 1846 American Sunday School Union text, The Starry Heavens (The Solar System, Part II)? Let's find out by comparing select passages between the two texts. Let's discover what 19th century children were learning about astronomy in Sunday School class in the days before the Civil War.
Sagan quotes are followed by select passages from The Starry Heavens:
Sagan: "The Earth is a small stage in a vast cosmic arena." And, "Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark."
The Starry Heavens: "What is the whole of this globe on which we dwell compared with the solar system, which contains a mass of matter so many millions of times greater? What is it in comparison with the hundred millions of suns and worlds which, by the telescope, have been descried through the starry regions?"
Sagan: "Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this
pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how
frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one other, how
fervent their hatreds. Thinks of the rivers of blood spilled by all those
generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the
momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.”
The Starry Heavens: "What, then, is a kingdom, a province, or a baronial territory, of which we are as proud as if we were the lords of the universe, and for which we engage in so much devastation and carnage? What are they, when set in competition with the glories of the sky?"
Sagan: "Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some
privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light."
The Starry Heavens: "(The objects connected with astronomy) show us what an insignificant being--what a mere atom, indeed, man appears amidst the immensity of creation!"
Sagan: “It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building
experience.”
The Starry Heavens: "We have reason to believe that the most exalted beings in the universe--those who are furnished with the most capacious powers, and who have arrived at the greatest perfection in knowledge--are distinguished by a proportional share of humility."
We close with a highly ironic Sagan quote: "A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths." Do those "conventional faiths" include 19th century American Christianity?
Lee
