Science and the sacred cosmos: The ideological rhetoric of Carl Sagan

Abstract

In his public television series Cosmos, Carl Sagan uses evolutionary science as the doctrinal basis for a cosmology that attempts to answer questions traditionally belonging to the province of religion. Sagan’s rhetoric identifies science with what is ultimate in nature by placing it at the apex of cosmic evolution, and thus he legitimates the role of the scientist in the modern world. Cosmos can be regarded as an effort to renew the religious bonds that formerly induced cooperation between science and society. © 1985 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.