Cosmic Connection by Carl Sagan Page A

Bible in England; Cervantes and Lope de Vega in Spain; Camoens in Portugal, all date from this period. From the writings of Francis Bacon it is clear that exposure to new parts of the world had a profound influence on the thinking of the times. This period saw the invention of such fundamental instruments as the telescope, the microscope, the thermometer, the barometer, and the pendulum clock.
    It was also the epoch of Galileo (1564-1642), who, while not resident in one of the new exploratory nations, was closely tied to one of them–Holland, where the telescope that he improved upon was first invented. Many of the works of graphic art during this period–for example, those of Hieronymus Bosch and El Greco–reflect the spirit of change that permeated the times. It was the era of the establishment of modern physics by Isaac Newton. Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza–pivotal individuals in the history of philosophy–flourished. In the activities and writings of da Vinci, Gilbert, Galileo, and Bacon, the period also corresponds to the origin of the experimental method in science.
    An interesting case history is provided by Holland, a country that has provided more than its fair share of men of learning and culture. If there was one moment of cultural efflorescence in Holland, it was the period centered around the last half of the seventeenth century. Iberian ports were inaccessible to the Dutch Republic because of the war between France and Spain. Forced to find its own sources of trade, Holland founded the Dutch East and West India Companies. A significant fraction of the national resources was put into seafaring; one consequence was that Holland became–for the only time in its history–a world power. Because of these ventures, Dutch is spoken in Indonesia today, and several individuals of Dutch ancestry rose to the Presidency of the United States. Far more important is the fact that, during the same period, Vermeer and Rembrandt, Spinoza and van Leeuwenhoek flourished in Holland. It was a tightly knit society: Van Leeuwenhoek, was, in fact, the executor of Vermeer’s estate. Holland was the most liberal and least authoritarian nation in Europe during this time.
    In all the history of mankind, there will be only one generation that will be first to explore the Solar System, one generation for which, in childhood, the planets are distant and indistinct discs moving through the night sky, and for which, in old age, the planets are places, diverse new worlds in the course of exploration.
    There will be a time in our future history when the Solar System will be explored and inhabited. To them, and to all who come after us, the present moment will be a pivotal instant in the history of mankind. There are not many generations given an opportunity as historically significant as this one. The opportunity is ours, if we but grasp it. To paraphrase K. E. Tsiolkovsky, the founder of astronautics: The Earth is the cradle of mankind, but one cannot live in the cradle forever.
    A human infant begins to achieve maturity by the experimental discovery that he is not the whole of the universe. The same is true of societies engaged in the exploration of their surroundings. The perspective carried by space exploration may hasten the maturation of mankind–a maturation that cannot come too soon.



Part Two: THE SOLAR SYSTEM
    T here was a time–and very recently–when the idea of the possibility of learning the composition of the celestial bodies was considered senseless even by prominent scientists and thinkers. That time has now passed. The idea of the possibility of a closer, direct study of the universe will today, I believe, appear still wilder. To step out onto the soil of asteroids, to lift with your hand a stone on the moon, to set up moving stations in ethereal space, and establish living rings around the earth, the moon, the sun, to observe Mars from a distance of several tens of versts, to land on its satellites and even on the