“a tingling in the spine”
“The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation of a distant memory, as if we were falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.”—
Carl Sagan, Cosmos p.4
i loved cosmos when i was a kid. i still do. i watched the series when it first aired (the tv announcer in the philippines pronounced his name as sa-GAHN … hehe). and i later bought the book too—sadly, it fell victim to a typhoon years ago. more recently, i was excited to find out that the series was on hulu. i watched a couple of episodes online.
what carl sagan says above, though, makes conclusions that go beyond what is scientifically verifiable. he enters the realm of philosophy. the prose almost sounds theological, actually. perhaps it’s not fair to call them conclusions—okay, let’s call them theories or conjectures or speculations. still, though, don’t words like “ever will be” sound more than mere scientific?
i’ll always be grateful to carl sagan for sparking my interest and imagination in things physical and astronomical and cosmological. as i mentioned here before, i wanted to become an astronomer because of him. even though my career path ended up elsewhere, the subject continues to fascinate me.
as a Christian, i pray that God welcome carl sagan to the place where he can finally see the indescribable grandeur and awesomeness of the Cosmos.
