The word ''heresy'' is usually used within a Christian, Jewish, or Islamic context, and implies something slightly different in each. In certain historical Christian and Jewish cultures, heresy was punishable by law. In modern times, the word ''heresy'' is often used in jest and without religious context.
Heretics usually do not perceive their own beliefs as heretical. For instance, the Roman Catholic Church holds Protestantism as espousing numerous heresies, while some Protestants retrospectively considered Roman Catholicism the "Great Apostasy". The Roman Catholic Church derives claims of heresy from a system of ecclesial authority while Protestants view the Bible alone as authoratative.
The first known usage of the term in a civil legal context was in 380 AD by the "Edict of Thessalonica" of Theodosius I. Prior to the issuance of this edict, the Church had no state-sponsored support for any particular legal mechanism to counter what it perceived as "heresy". By this edict, in some sense, the State's authority and that of the catholic Church became somewhat overlapping. One of the outcomes of this blurring of Church and State was the sharing of State powers of legal enforcement between Church and state authorities. At its most extreme reach, this new secular reinforcement of the Church's authority gave Church leaders the power to, in effect, pronounce the death sentence upon those whom the Church considered heretical.
Within five years of the official "criminalization" of heresy by the emperor, the first Christian heretic to be prosecuted, Priscillian was executed in 385 by Roman officials. For some years after the Reformation, Protestant churches were also known to execute those whom they considered as heretics, including catholics. The last known heretic executed by sentence of the Roman Catholic Church was Cayetano Ripoll in 1826. The number of people executed as heretics under the authority of the various "ecclesiastical authorities" is not known, however it most certainly numbers into the several thousands.
The Roman Catholic Church had always dealt sternly with strands of Christianity that it considered heretical, but before the 12th century these tended to centre around individual preachers or small localised sects. By the 12th century, more organised groups such as the Waldensians and Cathars were beginning to appear in the towns and cities of newly urbanized areas. In Western mediterranean France, one of the most urbanized areas of Europe at the time, the Cathars grew to represent a popular mass movement and the belief was spreading to other areas. The Cathar Crusade was initiated by the Roman Catholic Church to eliminate the Cathar heresy in Languedoc.
Perhaps due to the many modern negative connotations associated with the term ''heretic'', such as the Spanish inquisition, the term is used less often today. There are however, some notable exceptions: see for example Rudolf Bultmann and the "character" of debates over ordination of women and gay priests. The subject of Christian heresy opens up broader questions as to who has a monopoly on spiritual truth, as explored by Jorge Luis Borges in the short story "The Theologians" within the compilation ''Labyrinths''.
Starting in medieval times, Muslims began to refer to heretics and those who antagonized Islam as ''zindiqs'', the charge being punishable by death.
The term ''heresy'' is also used as an ideological pigeonhole for contemporary writers because by definition heresy depends on contrasts with an established orthodoxy. For example, the tongue-in-cheek contemporary usage of heresy, such as to categorize a "Wall Street heresy" a "Democratic heresy" or a "Republican heresy", are metaphors which invariably retain a subtext that links orthodoxies in geology or biology or any other field to religion. These expanded metaphoric senses allude to both the ''difference'' between the person's views and the mainstream, and the ''boldness'' of such a person in propounding these views.
Variance from orthodox Marxism–Leninism is described as "right" or "left deviationism". The Church of Scientology uses the term "squirreling" to refer to unauthorized alterations of its teachings or methods.
Category:History of ideas Category:Religious law Category:Dissent Category:Religious terminology
ar:هرطقة ba:Ересь be:Ерась be-x-old:Ерась bs:Hereza bg:Ерес ca:Heretgia cs:Hereze da:Kætteri de:Häresie et:Hereesia el:Αίρεση es:Herejía eo:Herezo eu:Heresia fr:Hérésie gl:Herexía ko:이단 hr:Hereza io:Herezio id:Ajaran sesat ia:Heresia is:Villutrú it:Eresia he:כופר (אמונה דתית) kk:Ересьтер la:Haeresis lv:Ķecerība lt:Erezija hu:Eretnekség nl:Ketterij ja:異端 no:Heresi oc:Eretgia pl:Herezja pt:Heresia ro:Erezie ru:Ересь sah:Иэрэс sq:Herezia simple:Heresy sk:Heréza sl:Herezija sr:Јерес sh:Hereza fi:Kerettiläisyys sv:Kätteri tl:Erehiya uk:Єресь zh:異端This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
name | Jerry Falwell |
---|---|
birth name | Jerry Lamon Falwell |
birth date | August 11, 1933 |
birth place | Lynchburg, Virginia,United States |
death date | May 15, 2007 |
death place | Lynchburg, Virginia,United States |
occupation | Pastor, televangelist, commentator |
religion | Southern Baptist |
years active | 1956–2007 |
website | Liberty University Bio }} |
He graduated from Brookville High School in Lynchburg, Va. He graduated from Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri in 1956. This Bible college was unaccredited until 2001. Falwell was eventually awarded three honorary doctoral degrees, and he sometimes used the title "doctor". The honorary doctorates were Doctor of Divinity from Tennessee Temple Theological Seminary, Doctor of Letters from California Graduate School of Theology, and Doctor of Laws from Central University in Seoul, South Korea.
In speaking of the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling, he said, in 1958:
"If Chief Justice Warren and his associates had known God's word and had desired to do the Lord's will, I am quite confident that the 1954 decision would never had been made. The facilities should be separate. When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line."
In 1977, Falwell supported Anita Bryant's campaign, which was called by its proponents "Save Our Children", to overturn an ordinance in Dade County, Florida prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and he supported a similar movement in California.
But 28 years later, in an appearance on MSNBC television, Falwell said he was not troubled by reports that the nominee for Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, John G. Roberts (whose appointment was confirmed by the U.S. Senate) had done volunteer legal work for homosexual rights activists on the case of Romer v. Evans. Falwell told MSNBC's Tucker Carlson that if he were a lawyer, he too would argue for civil rights for LGBT people. "I may not agree with the lifestyle, but that has nothing to do with the civil rights of that part of our constituency," Falwell said. When Carlson countered that conservatives "are always arguing against 'special rights' for gays," Falwell said that equal access to housing, civil marriage, and employment are basic rights, not special rights. "Civil rights for all Americans, black, white, red, yellow, the rich, poor, young, old, gay, straight, et cetera, is not a liberal or conservative value. It's an American value that I would think that we pretty much all agree on."
One unusual link between Falwell and Conservative rabbi Arnold Resnicoff, a Navy chaplain, was created when President Ronald Reagan surprised the participants at Falwell's "Baptist Fundamentalism '84" convention in Washington, D.C., by choosing to read Resnicoff's on-site report of the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing as his keynote address. When Resnicoff later served as Special Assistant for Values and Vision for the Secretary and Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, he would meet with Falwell to discuss issues linked to religious rights in the military, including the role and responsibilities of U.S. military chaplains. Resnicoff reported that Falwell supported the idea of using the Biblical verse that teaches that "God hears the words of our mouths and the meditations of our heart" as a basis for allowing Christian chaplains to offer "inclusive" prayers, because they could offer denominational words, such as "In Jesus's name," silently, as a "meditation of the heart."
Falwell supported President George W. Bush's Faith Based Initiative, but had strong reservations concerning where the funding would go and the restrictions placed on churches. "My problem is where it might go under his successors... I would not want to put any of the Jerry Falwell Ministries in a position where we might be subservient to a future Bill Clinton, God forbid... It also concerns me that once the pork barrel is filled, suddenly the Church of Scientology, the Jehovah Witnesses ''[sic]'', the various and many denominations and religious groups — and I don't say those words in a pejorative way — begin applying for money — and I don't see how any can be turned down because of their radical and unpopular views. I don't know where that would take us."
Funding for the film was provided by "Citizens for Honest Government," to which Jerry Falwell paid $200,000 in 1994 and 1995. In 1995 Citizens for Honest Government interviewed two Arkansas state troopers, Roger Perry and Larry Patterson, regarding the murder conspiracy about Vincent Foster. Perry and Patterson also gave information regarding the allegations in the Paula Jones affair.
Falwell's infomercial for the 80-minute tape included footage of Falwell interviewing a silhouetted journalist who claimed to be afraid for his life. The journalist accused Clinton of orchestrating the deaths of several reporters and personal confidants who had gotten too close to his illegalities. It was subsequently revealed, however, that the silhouetted journalist was, in fact, Patrick Matrisciana, the producer of the video and president of Citizens for Honest Government. "Obviously, I'm not an investigative reporter," Matrisciana admitted to investigative journalist Murray Waas. Later, Falwell seemed to back away from personally trusting the video. In an interview for the 2005 documentary ''The Hunting of the President'', Falwell admitted, "to this day I do not know the accuracy of the claims made in ''The Clinton Chronicles''."
After comedienne and actress Ellen DeGeneres came out as a lesbian, Falwell referred to her in a sermon as "Ellen DeGenerate." DeGeneres responded by saying "Really, he called me that? Ellen DeGenerate? I've been getting that since the fourth grade. I guess I'm happy I could give him work."
At the same time, Falwell's legacy regarding homosexuality is complicated by his support for LGBT civil rights (see "civil rights" section above), as well as his efforts at reconciliation with the LGBT community in later years. In October 1999 Falwell hosted a meeting of 200 evangelicals with 200 homosexuals at Thomas Road Baptist Church for an "Anti-Violence Forum", during which he acknowledged that some American evangelicals' comments about homosexuality entered the realm of hate speech that could incite violence. At the forum, Falwell told homosexuals in attendance "I don't agree with your lifestyle, I will never agree with your lifestyle, but I love you" and added "anything that leaves the impression that we hate the sinner, we want to change that" He later commented to New York Times columnist Frank Rich that “admittedly, evangelicals have not exhibited an ability to build a bond of friendship to the gay and lesbian community. We've said ‘go somewhere else, we don't need you here [at] our churches.’”
In a televised interview with ''60 Minutes'', Falwell stated, "I think Muhammad was a terrorist." He added, "I concluded from reading Muslim and non-Muslim writers that Muhammad was a violent man, a man of war." Falwell later apologized to Muslims for what he said about Muhammad and affirmed that he did not necessarily intend to offend "honest and peace-loving" Muslims. However, he still refused to erase his opinions about Islam in his website and the sincerity of his apology was doubted.
Egyptian Christian intellectuals, in response, signed a statement in which they condemned and rejected what Falwell had said about Muhammad being a terrorist.
After the death of Falwell, Larry Flynt released a comment regarding his friendship over the years with Falwell.
"My mother always told me that no matter how much you dislike a person, when you meet them face to face you will find characteristics about them that you like. Jerry Falwell was a perfect example of that. I hated everything he stood for, but after meeting him in person, years after the trial, Jerry Falwell and I became good friends. He would visit me in California and we would debate together on college campuses. I always appreciated his sincerity even though I knew what he was selling and he knew what I was selling."
Previous to this, "Falwell's attorneys have fought over domain names in the past" with a different man who despite eventually turned over jerryfalwell.com and jerryfallwell.com after Falwell threatened to sue for trademark infringement. Lawyers for Public Citizen Litigation Group's Internet Free Speech project represented the domain name owners in both cases.
Based on this and other statements, Falwell has been identified as a Dispensationalist.
In 1999, Falwell declared the Antichrist would probably arrive within a decade and "Of course he'll be Jewish." After accusations of anti-Semitism Falwell apologized and explained that he was simply expressing the theological tenet that the Antichrist and Christ share many attributes.
On May 15, 2007, Falwell was found without pulse and unconscious in his office about 10:45 am after missing a morning appointment and was taken to Lynchburg General Hospital.
"I had breakfast with him, and he was fine at breakfast... He went to his office, I went to mine and they found him unresponsive" said Ron Godwin, the executive vice president of Falwell's Liberty University. His condition was initially reported as "gravely serious"; CPR was administered unsuccessfully. As of 2:10 pm, during a live press conference, a doctor for the hospital confirmed that Falwell had died of "cardiac arrhythmia, or sudden cardiac death." A statement issued by the hospital reported he was pronounced dead at Lynchburg General Hospital at 12:40 pm, EST. Falwell's family, including his wife Macel and sons Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Jonathan Falwell, were at the hospital at the time of the pronouncement.
Falwell's funeral took place at 1:00 PM EDT on May 22, 2007 at Thomas Road Baptist Church after lying in repose at both the church and Liberty University.Falwell's burial service was private. It took place at a spot on the Liberty University campus near the Carter Glass Mansion, near his office. Buried nearby is B. R. Lakin.
After his death, his two sons succeeded him at his two posts; Jerry Falwell, Jr. took over as Chancellor of Liberty University while Jonathan Falwell became the Senior Pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church.
The last televised interview with Jerry Falwell was conducted by Christiane Amanpour for the CNN original series ''CNN Presents: God's Warriors.'' He had been interviewed on May 8, one week before his death. Falwell's last televised sermon was his May 13, 2007 message on Mother's Day.
He was described by atheist social commentator Christopher Hitchens in turns as a "Chaucerian fraud" and a "faith-based fraud", and "especially disgusting in exuding an almost sexless personality while railing from dawn to dusk about the sex lives of others." Hitchens took special umbrage with Falwell's alignment with "the most thuggish and demented Israeli settlers", and his declaration that 9/11 represented God's judgement on America's sinful behaviour; deeming it "a shame that there is no hell for Falwell to go to, and [...] extraordinary that not even such a scandalous career is enough to shake our dumb addiction to the 'faith-based.'" Hitchens also mentioned that, despite his support for Israel, Falwell "kept saying to his own crowd, yes, you have got to like the Jews, because they can make more money in 10 minutes than you can make in a lifetime. He was always full, as his friends Robertson and Graham are and were, of anti-Semitic innuendo." Appearing on CNN a day after Falwell's death, Hitchens said, "The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing: that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you will just get yourself called 'reverend'." On C-SPAN, Hitchens made the comment that "If he had been given an enema, he could have been buried in a matchbox."
Falwell was an enemy of the revenge humorist "George Hayduke", who called Falwell a "fund-grubbing electronic Bible-banger" and "pious pride-in-the-pulpit". In his book ''Screw Unto Others'', Hayduke mentions the story of one Edward Johnson, who in the mid-1980s, programmed his Atari home computer to make thousands of repeat phone calls to Falwell's 1–800 phone number, since Johnson claimed Falwell had swindled large amounts of money from his followers, especially Johnson's own mother. Southern Bell forced Johnson to stop after he had run up Falwell's phone bill an estimated $500,000. At one point, crank callers, especially homosexual activists, made up about 25% of Falwell's total calls, until the ministry disconnected the toll-free number in 1986.
Category:1933 births Category:2007 deaths Category:20th-century Christian clergy Category:21st-century Christian clergy Category:American anti-communists Category:American Christian writers Category:American Christian Zionists Category:American evangelicals Category:American television evangelists Category:American university and college presidents Category:Anti-pornography activists Category:Baptist Bible College alumni Category:Baptist writers Category:Cardiovascular disease deaths in Virginia Category:Christian fundamentalists Category:Conservatism in the United States Category:Criticism of feminism Category:Criticism of Islam Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:Liberty University Category:People from Lynchburg, Virginia Category:Southern Baptist ministers Category:University and college founders
af:Jerry Falwell ar:جيري فالويل da:Jerry Falwell de:Jerry Falwell es:Jerry Falwell eo:Jerry Falwell fr:Jerry Falwell ko:제리 폴웰 it:Jerry Falwell la:Geraldus Laymon Falwell nl:Jerry Falwell ja:ジェリー・ファルエル no:Jerry Falwell pl:Jerry Falwell pt:Jerry Falwell ru:Фалуэлл, Джерри simple:Jerry Falwell fi:Jerry Falwell sv:Jerry FalwellThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
name | Danny Lohner |
---|---|
background | non_vocal_instrumentalist |
birth name | Daniel Patrick Lohner |
alias | Renholdër, Castle Renholdër |
born | December 13, 1970Corpus Christi, Texas, United States |
origin | Corpus Christi, Texas, United States |
instrument | Guitar, bass guitar, keyboard |
genre | Alternative rock, hard rock, industrial metal, progressive metal, experimental |
associated acts | Nine Inch Nails, Skrew, Methods of Mayhem, Killing Joke, Tapeworm, Black Light Burns, Angkor Wat |
website | }} |
Daniel Patrick "Danny" Lohner (born December 13, 1970), frequently known as Renholdër, is an American rock musician who plays bass guitar, electric guitar, and keyboards. He worked with Trent Reznor on numerous occasions, both with Nine Inch Nails and on the now defunct Tapeworm project. He has also played for Killing Joke, Methods of Mayhem, and in the past was one of the founding members of industrial-thrash outlet Skrew, as well as one of the members of the Texas thrash metal band Angkor Wat.
In early 2003, A Perfect Circle's official Web site announced that Renholder would be replacing Troy Van Leeuwen as the band's second guitarist. While Lohner did receive production credit on the band's second release, ''Thirteenth Step'', he had other obligations by the time touring began, and ex-Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha stepped in to fill the void. The most notable reason for Lohner's departure was his obligation to produce the soundtrack of the movie ''Underworld''. This soundtrack was a collection mostly consisting of tracks written, produced, remixed, and performed by Lohner and his friends in the industry, including David Bowie, TRUSTcompany, Maynard James Keenan, Johnette Napolitano, and others. Lohner worked with Richard Patrick of Filter, Wes Borland of Limp Bizkit, Black Light Burns, and Josh Freese of A Perfect Circle and Nine Inch Nails, in a project called The Damning Well. A total of 14 songs were recorded, but only one of these made the soundtrack. So far, there have been no plans to release the rest of the songs.
In November 2004, Lohner contributed heavily to ''eMOTIVe'', the third full length album by A Perfect Circle. This album was mostly a collection of cover songs, but it also included "Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums," a continuation of "Pet" from the band's second album, ''Thirteenth Step''. In addition, there was an original work, titled "Passive," which was the final version of a song originally composed for the Tapeworm Project. This track subsequently appeared on the soundtrack of the film ''Constantine'', and Lohner appeared in the video for this track. A sister to ''eMOTIVe'', 2004 also saw the release of ''aMOTION'', a 2-disc collection that included a CD of the band's remixes and a DVD of music videos and live material. The remix album included Lohner's remixes of "3 Libras," "Judith," "Weak and Powerless," and "The Outsider." Although these remixes had previously been available on various soundtracks and CD singles, ''3 Libras'' was reworked slightly from its original release, and "Judith" now featured censored lyrics. On both ''eMOTIVe'' and ''aMOTION'', Lohner was credited as a band member.
Song !! Length !! Soundtrack !! Track | |||
"Now I Know" | 0:57 | Underworld (Soundtrack)>Underworld'' (2003) | |
"Down In the Lab" | 1:46| | Underworld (Soundtrack)>Underworld'' (2003) | 8 |
"Falling Through the Sky" | 1:01| | Underworld (Soundtrack)>Underworld'' (2003) | 13 |
"Death Dealer's Descent" | 0:55| | Underworld (Soundtrack)>Underworld'' (2003) | 17 |
"Kill With Me (Website theme)" | 3:54| | "Untraceable" (2008) | 12 |
"The List" | 3:58| | Pathology (film)>Pathology" (2008) | 1 |
Category:1970 births Category:American bass guitarists Category:American industrial musicians Category:American keyboardists Category:American rock guitarists Category:Living people Category:Nine Inch Nails members Category:People from Corpus Christi, Texas Category:A Perfect Circle members
de:Danny Lohner gl:Danny Lohner it:Danny Lohner hu:Danny Lohner pl:Danny Lohner pt:Danny LohnerThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
Name | Henry Fonda |
---|---|
Birth date | May 16, 1905 |
Birth place | Grand Island, Nebraska, U.S. |
Death date | August 12, 1982 |
Death place | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
Birth name | Henry Jaynes Fonda |
Death cause | Heart disease |
Occupation | Actor |
Years active | 1935–82 |
Party | Democratic |
Spouse | Margaret Sullavan(m. 1931-32, divorced)Frances Ford Seymour(m. 1936-50, her death)Susan Blanchard(m. 1950-56, divorced)Afdera Franchetti(m. 1957-61, divorced)Shirlee Mae Adams(m. 1965-82, his death) |
Children | Jane FondaPeter FondaAmy Fishman |
Relatives | Bridget Fonda (granddaughter) }} |
Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins. He made his Hollywood debut in 1935, and his career gained momentum after his Academy Award-nominated performance as Tom Joad in ''The Grapes of Wrath'', a 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel about an Oklahoma family who moved west during the Dust Bowl. Throughout six decades in Hollywood, Fonda cultivated a strong, appealing screen image in such classics as ''The Ox-Bow Incident'', ''Mister Roberts'' and ''12 Angry Men''. Later, Fonda moved both toward darker epics as Sergio Leone's ''Once Upon a Time in the West'' (portraying a villain who kills, among others, a child) and lighter roles in family comedies like ''Yours, Mine and Ours'' with Lucille Ball.
Fonda was the patriarch of a family of famous actors, including daughter Jane Fonda, son Peter Fonda, granddaughter Bridget Fonda, and grandson Troy Garity; his family and close friends called him "Hank". In 1999, he was named the sixth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute.
Fonda was brought up as a Christian Scientist, though he was baptized an Episcopalian at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Grand Island, and claimed that "my whole damn family was nice". They were a close family and highly supportive, especially in health matters, as they avoided doctors due to their religion. Fonda was a bashful, short boy who tended to avoid girls, except his sisters, and was a good skater, swimmer, and runner. He worked part-time in his father's print plant and imagined a possible career as a journalist. Later, he worked after school for the phone company. He also enjoyed drawing. Fonda was active in the Boy Scouts of America, Teichmann reports that he reached the rank of Eagle Scout. When he was about 14, his father took him to observe a lynching, from the window of his father's plant, of a young black man accused of rape. This so enraged the young Fonda that a keen social awareness of prejudice was present within him for his entire adult life. By his senior year in high school, he grew suddenly to over six feet but remained a shy teenager. He then attended the University of Minnesota, majoring in journalism, but he did not graduate. He took a job with the Retail Credit Company.
At age 20, Fonda started his acting career at the Omaha Community Playhouse when his mother's friend Dodie Brando (mother of Marlon Brando) recommended that he try-out for a juvenile part in ''You and I'', in which he was cast as Ricky. He was both fascinated by the stage, learning everything from set construction to stage production, and also profoundly embarrassed by his acting ability. When he received the lead in ''Merton of the Movies'', he realized the beauty of acting as a profession, as it allowed him to deflect attention from his own tongue-tied personality and create stage characters relying on someone else's scripted words. Fonda decided to quit his job and go East in 1928 to strike his fortune. He arrived on Cape Cod and had just finished a role at the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts when a friend took him over to Falmouth where he instantly became a valued member of the new University Players, an intercollegiate summer stock company, where he worked with Margaret Sullavan, his future wife, and which would be responsible for a lifelong friendship with James Stewart. He landed his first professional role in the University Players production of ''The Jest'', by Sem Benelli, when Joshua Logan, a young sophomore at Princeton who had been double-cast in the show, gave Fonda the part of Tornaquinci, "an elderly Italian with long, white beard and heavy wig." Also in the cast of ''The Jest'' with Fonda and Logan were Bretaigne Windust, Kent Smith, and Eleanor Phelps.
Fonda's film career blossomed as he costarred with Sylvia Sidney and Fred MacMurray in ''The Trail of the Lonesome Pine'' (1936), the first Technicolor movie filmed outdoors. He also starred with ex-wife Margaret Sullavan in ''The Moon's Our Home'', and a short re-kindling of their relationship led to a brief consideration of re-marriage. Sullavan then married Fonda's agent Leland Hayward and Fonda married socialite Frances Ford Seymour, who had little interest in the movies or the theater. Fonda got the nod for the lead role in ''You Only Live Once'' (1937), also costarring Sidney, and directed by Fritz Lang. Fonda's first child Jane Fonda was born on December 21, 1937. A critical success opposite Bette Davis, who had picked Fonda, in the film ''Jezebel'' (1938) was followed by the title role in ''Young Mr. Lincoln'' (1939), his first collaboration with director John Ford and as Frank James in ''Jesse James'' (1939). Another 1939 film was ''Drums Along the Mohawk'', directed by John Ford.
Fonda's successes led Ford to recruit him to play "Tom Joad" in the film version of John Steinbeck's novel ''The Grapes of Wrath'' (1940), but a reluctant Darryl Zanuck, who preferred Tyrone Power, insisted on Fonda's signing a seven-year contract with the studio, Twentieth Century-Fox. Fonda agreed, and was ultimately nominated for an Academy Award for his work in the 1940 film, which many consider to be his finest role, but his friend James Stewart won the Best Actor award for his role in ''The Philadelphia Story''. Second child Peter Fonda was born in 1940. He starred in ''The Return of Frank James'' (1940) with Gene Tierney.
Fonda then enlisted in the Navy to fight in World War II, saying, "I don't want to be in a fake war in a studio." Previously, he and Stewart had helped raise funds for the defense of Britain. Fonda served for three years, initially as a Quartermaster 3rd Class on the destroyer . He was later commissioned as a Lieutenant Junior Grade in Air Combat Intelligence in the Central Pacific and was awarded the Navy Presidential Unit Citation and the Bronze Star.
Refusing another long-term studio contract, Fonda returned to Broadway, wearing his own officer's cap to originate the title role in ''Mister Roberts'', a comedy about the Navy, where Fonda, a junior officer, wages a private war against the captain. He won a 1948 Tony Award for the part. Fonda followed that by reprising his performance in the national tour and with successful stage runs in ''Point of No Return'' and ''The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial''. After a few years almost completely absent from films, he starred in the 1955 film version of ''Mister Roberts'' opposite James Cagney, William Powell and Jack Lemmon, continuing a pattern of bringing his acclaimed stage roles to life on the big screen. On the set of ''Mister Roberts'', Fonda came to blows with John Ford, who punched him during filming, and vowed never to work for him again. He never did (though he appeared in Peter Bogdanovich's acclaimed documentary ''"Directed by John Ford"'' and spoke glowingly of Ford therein).
Fonda followed ''Mr. Roberts'' with Paramount Pictures's production of the Leo Tolstoy epic ''War and Peace'', in which he played Pierre Bezukhov opposite Audrey Hepburn, and which took two years to shoot. Fonda worked with Alfred Hitchcock in 1956, playing a man falsely accused of robbery in ''The Wrong Man'', an unusual semi-documentary work of Hitchcock's based on an actual incident and partly filmed on location.
In 1957, Fonda made his first foray into production with ''12 Angry Men'', based on a teleplay and a script by Reginald Rose and directed by Sidney Lumet. The low budget production was completed in only seventeen days of filming mostly in one claustrophobic jury room and had a strong cast including Jack Klugman, Lee J. Cobb, Martin Balsam, and E. G. Marshall. The intense film about twelve jurors deciding the fate of a young Puerto Rican man accused of murder was well-received by critics worldwide. Fonda shared the Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations with co-producer Reginald Rose and won the 1958 BAFTA Award for Best Actor for his performance as "Juror #8", who with logic and persistence eventually sways all the jurors to an acquittal. Early on the film drew poorly, but after winning critical acclaim and awards, it proved a success. In spite of the good outcome, Fonda vowed that he would never produce a movie again, fearing that failing as a producer might derail his acting career. After western movies ''The Tin Star'' (1957) and ''Warlock'' (1959), Fonda returned to the production seat for the NBC western television series ''The Deputy'' (1959–1961), in which he starred as Marshal Simon Fry. His co-stars were Allen Case and Read Morgan. About this time, Fonda's fourth troubled marriage was unraveling.
The 1960s saw Fonda perform in a number of war and western epics, including 1962's ''The Longest Day'' and ''How the West Was Won'', 1965's ''In Harm's Way'' and ''Battle of the Bulge''. In the Cold War suspense film ''Fail-Safe'' (1964), Fonda played the President of the United States who tries to avert a nuclear holocaust through tense negotiations with the Soviets after American bombers are mistakenly ordered to attack the USSR. He also returned to more light-hearted cinema in ''Spencer's Mountain'' (1963), which was the inspiration for the TV series, ''The Waltons''.
Fonda appeared against type as the villain 'Frank' in 1968's ''Once Upon a Time in the West''. After initially turning down the role, he was convinced to accept it by actor Eli Wallach and director Sergio Leone, who flew from Italy to the United States to persuade him to take the part. Fonda had planned on wearing a pair of brown-colored contact lenses, but Leone preferred the paradox of contrasting close-up shots of Fonda's innocent-looking blue eyes with the vicious personality of the character Fonda played.
Fonda's relationship with Jimmy Stewart survived their disagreements over politics — Fonda was a liberal Democrat, and Stewart a conservative Republican. After a heated argument, they avoided talking politics with each other. The two men teamed up for 1968's ''Firecreek'', where Fonda once again played the heavy. In 1970, Fonda and Stewart costarred in the western ''The Cheyenne Social Club'', a minor film in which they humorously argued politics. They had first appeared together on film in ''On Our Merry Way'' (1948), a comedy which also starred William Demarest and Fred MacMurray and featured a grown-up Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer.
Fonda made a return to both foreign and television productions, which provided career sustenance through a decade in which many aging screen actors suffered waning careers. He starred in the ABC television series ''The Smith Family'' between 1971 and 1972. 1973's TV-movie ''The Red Pony'', an adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel, earned Fonda an Emmy nomination. After the unsuccessful Hollywood melodrama, ''Ash Wednesday'', he filmed three Italian productions released in 1973 and 1974. The most successful of these, ''My Name is Nobody'', presented Fonda in a rare comedic performance as an old gunslinger whose plans to retire are dampened by a "fan" of sorts.
Fonda continued stage acting throughout his last years, including several demanding roles in Broadway plays. He returned to Broadway in 1974 for the biographical drama, ''Clarence Darrow'', for which he was nominated for a Tony Award. Fonda's health had been deteriorating for years, but his first outward symptoms occurred after a performance of the play in April 1974, when he collapsed from exhaustion. After the appearance of a heart arrhythmia brought on by prostate cancer, a pacemaker was installed following surgery and Fonda returned to the play in 1975. After the run of a 1978 play, ''First Monday of October'', he took the advice of his doctors and quit plays, though he continued to star in films and television.
In 1976, Fonda appeared in several notable television productions, the first being ''Collision Course'', the story of the volatile relationship between President Harry Truman (E. G. Marshall) and General MacArthur (Fonda), produced by ABC. After an appearance in the acclaimed Showtime broadcast of ''Almos' a Man'', based on a story by Richard Wright, he starred in the epic NBC miniseries ''Captains and Kings'', based on Taylor Caldwell's novel. Three years later, he appeared in ABC's ''Roots: The Next Generations'', but the miniseries was overshadowed by its predecessor, ''Roots''. Also in 1976, Fonda starred in the World War II blockbuster ''Midway''.
Fonda finished the 1970s in a number of disaster films. The first of these was the 1977 Italian killer octopus thriller ''Tentacoli'' (''Tentacles'') and ''Rollercoaster'', in which Fonda appeared with Richard Widmark and a young Helen Hunt. He performed once again with Widmark, Olivia de Havilland, Fred MacMurray, and José Ferrer in the killer bee action film ''The Swarm''. He also acted in the global disaster film ''Meteor'' (his second role as a sitting President of the United States after ''Fail-Safe''), with Sean Connery, Natalie Wood and Karl Malden, and then the Canadian production ''City on Fire'', which also featured Shelley Winters and Ava Gardner. Fonda had a small role with his son, Peter, in 1979's ''Wanda Nevada'', with Brooke Shields.
As Fonda's health continued to suffer and he took longer breaks between filming, critics began to take notice of his extensive body of work. In 1979, the Tony Awards committee gave Fonda a special award for his achievements on Broadway. Lifetime Achievement awards from the Golden Globes and Academy Awards followed in 1980 and 1981, respectively.
Fonda continued to act into the early 1980s, though all but one of the productions he was featured in before his death were for television. These television works included the critically acclaimed live performance of Preston Jones' ''The Oldest Living Graduate'' and the Emmy nominated ''Gideon's Trumpet'' (co-starring Fay Wray in her last performance).
thumb|left|Fonda won an Academy Award for his work with Katharine Hepburn in ''[[On Golden Pond (1981 film)|On Golden Pond'']]''On Golden Pond'' in 1981, the film adaptation of Ernest Thompson's play, marked one final professional and personal triumph for Fonda. Directed by Mark Rydell, the project provided unprecedented collaborations between Fonda and Katharine Hepburn, along with Fonda and his daughter, Jane. The elder Fonda played an emotionally brittle and distant father who becomes more accessible at the end of his life. Jane Fonda has said that elements of the story mimicked their real-life relationship, and helped them resolve certain issues. She bought the film rights in the hope that her father would play the role, and later described it as "a gift to my father that was so unbelievably successful."
Premiered in December 1981, the film was well received by critics, and after a limited release on December 4 ''On Golden Pond'' developed enough of an audience to be widely released on January 22. With 11 Academy Award nominations, the film earned nearly $120 million at the box office, becoming an unexpected blockbuster. In addition to wins for Hepburn (Best Actress), and Thompson (Screenplay), ''On Golden Pond'' brought Fonda his only Oscar - for Best Actor (he would become the oldest recipient of the award; it also earned him a Golden Globe Best Actor award). Fonda was by that point too ill to attend the ceremony, and his daughter Jane Fonda accepted on his behalf. She said when accepting the award that her dad would probably quip, "Well, ain't I lucky." After Fonda's death, some film critics called this performance "his last and greatest role".
Fonda's relationship with his children has been described as "emotionally distant." In Peter Fonda's 1998 autobiography ''Don't Tell Dad'', he described how he was never sure how his father felt about him, and that he did not tell his father he loved him until his father was elderly and he finally heard the words, "I love you, son." His daughter Jane rejected her father's friendships with Republican actors such as John Wayne and James Stewart, and as a result, their relationship was extremely strained.
Jane Fonda also reported feeling detached from her father, especially during her early acting career. Henry Fonda introduced her to Lee Strasberg, who became her acting teacher, and as she developed as an actress using the techniques of "The Method", she found herself frustrated and unable to understand her father's effortless acting style. In the late 1950s, when she asked him how he prepared before going on stage, she was baffled by his answer, "I don’t know, I stand there, I think about my wife, Afdera, I don't know."
Writer Al Aronowitz, while working on a profile of Jane Fonda for ''The Saturday Evening Post'' in the 1960s, asked Henry Fonda about Method acting: "I can't articulate about the Method", he told me, "because I never studied it. I don't mean to suggest that I have any feelings one way or the other about it...I don't know what the Method is and I don’t care what the Method is. Everybody's got a method. Everybody can’t articulate about their method, and I can't, if I have a method—and Jane sometimes says that I use the Method, that is, the capital letter Method, without being aware of it. Maybe I do; it doesn’t matter."
Fonda's daughter shared this view: "My father can't articulate the way he works." Jane said. "He just can't do it. He's not even conscious of what he does, and it made him nervous for me to try to articulate what I was trying to do. And I sensed that immediately, so we did very little talking about it...he said, 'Shut up, I don't want to hear about it.’ He didn’t want me to tell him about it, you know. He wanted to make fun of it."
Fonda himself once admitted in an interview that he felt he wasn't a good father to his children. In the same interview, he explained that he did his best to stay out of the way of Jane and Peter's careers, citing that he felt it was important to them to know that they succeeded because they worked hard and not because they used his fame to achieve their goals.
In the years since his death, Fonda's career has been held in even higher regard than during his life. He is widely recognized as one of the Hollywood greats of the classic era. On the centenary of his birth, May 16, 2005, Turner Classic Movies honored him with a marathon of his films. Also in May 2005, the United States Post Office released a 37-cent postage stamp with an artist's drawing of Fonda as part of their "Hollywood legends" series. Henry Fonda Theater (now called the Music Box) is located at 6126 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, Los Angeles, California.
Henry Fonda received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1978. |rowspan=4|Academy Awards |1940 |Best Actor |''The Grapes of Wrath'' |Nominated |- |1957 |Best Picture |''12 Angry Men'' |NominatedProducer |- |1981 |Best Actor |''On Golden Pond'' |Won |- |1980 |Honorary Award | |Lifetime Achievement |- |rowspan=2|BAFTA Awards |1958 |Best Actor |''12 Angry Men'' |Won |- |1981 |Best Actor |''On Golden Pond'' |Nominated |- |rowspan="3"|Emmy Awards |- |1973 |Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie |''The Red Pony'' |Nominated |- |1980 |Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie |''Gideon's Trumpet'' |Nominated |- |rowspan="3" |Golden Globes |1958 |Best Motion Picture Actor - Drama |''12 Angry Men'' |Nominated |- |1980 |Cecil B. DeMille Award |Lifetime Achievement |Honorary |- |1982 |Best Motion Picture Actor - Drama |''On Golden Pond'' |Won |- |rowspan="1"|Grammy Awards |1977 |''Best Spoken Word Album |''Great American Documents'' |Won |- |rowspan="3"|Tony Awards |1975 |Best Actor |''Clarence Darrow'' |Nominated |- |1979 |Special Award |Lifetime Achievement |Honorary |- |1948 |Best Actor |''Mister Roberts'' |Won |}
Category:1905 births Category:1982 deaths Category:20th-century actors Category:Academy Honorary Award recipients Category:Actors from Omaha, Nebraska Category:University of Minnesota alumni Category:American Christian Scientists Category:American film actors Category:American military personnel of World War II Category:American people of Dutch descent Category:American stage actors Category:American television actors Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:Beekeepers Category:Best Actor Academy Award winners Category:Best Drama Actor Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Best Foreign Actor BAFTA Award winners Category:California Democrats Category:Cardiovascular disease deaths in California Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:Nebraska Democrats Category:Recipients of the Bronze Star Medal Category:Spaghetti Western actors Category:Tony Award winners Category:United States Navy officers Category:Vaudeville performers Category:Western (genre) film actors
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name | Carl Sagan |
---|---|
birth date | November 09, 1934 |
birth place | Brooklyn, New York City, U.S. |
residence | United States |
nationality | American |
death date | December 20, 1996 |
death place | Seattle, Washington, U.S. |
death cause | Pneumonia |
education | Rahway High School |
alma mater | University of Chicago,Cornell University |
field | Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology, Astrobiology, Space science, Planetary science |
work institutions | Cornell UniversityHarvard UniversitySmithsonian Astrophysical ObservatoryUniversity of California, Berkeley |
alma mater | University of Chicago(B.A.), (B.Sc.), (M.Sc.), (Ph.D.) |
known for | Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI)''Cosmos: A Personal Voyage''''Cosmos''Voyager Golden RecordPioneer plaque''Contact''''Pale Blue Dot'' |
prizes | Oersted Medal (1990)NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal (twice)Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction (1978)National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal (1994) }} |
Carl Edward Sagan () (November 9, 1934 December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in the space and natural sciences. During his lifetime, he published more than 600 scientific papers and popular articles and was author, co-author, or editor of more than 20 books. In his works, he advocated skeptical inquiry and the scientific method. He pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
Sagan became world-famous for his popular science books and for the award-winning 1980 television series ''Cosmos: A Personal Voyage'', which he narrated and co-wrote. A book to accompany the program was also published. Sagan also wrote the novel ''Contact'', the basis for the 1997 film of the same name.
He had one sister, Carol, and the family lived in a modest apartment near the Atlantic Ocean, in Bensonhurst, a Brooklyn neighborhood. According to Sagan, they were Reform Jews, the most liberal of the three main Jewish groups. Both Sagan and his sister agree that their father was not especially religious, but that their mother "definitely believed in God, and was active in the temple ... and served only Kosher meat." During the height of the Depression, his father had to accept a job as a theater usher.
According to biographer Keay Davidson, Sagan's "inner war" was a result of his close relations with both his parents, who were in many ways "opposites." Sagan traced his later analytical urges to his mother, a woman who had known "extreme poverty as a child," and had grown up almost homeless in New York City during World War I and the 1920s. She had her own intellectual ambitions as a young woman, but they were blocked by social restrictions, because of her poverty, her being a woman and wife, and her Jewish religion. Davidson notes that she therefore "worshiped her only son, Carl. He would fulfill her unfulfilled dreams."
However, his "sense of wonder" came from his father, who was a "quiet and soft-hearted escapee from the Czar." In his free time, he gave apples to the poor, or helped soothe labor-management tensions within New York's "tumultuous" garment industry. Although he was "awed" by Carl's "brilliance, his boyish chatter about stars and dinosaurs," he took his son's inquisitiveness in stride, as part of his growing up. In his later years as a writer and scientist, Sagan would often draw on his childhood memories to illustrate scientific points, as he did in his book, ''Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors''. Sagan describes his parents' influence on his later thinking:
:''My parents were not scientists. They knew almost nothing about science. But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder, they taught me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method.''
:''Plainly, the world held wonders of a kind I had never guessed. How could a tone become a picture and light become a noise?''
He also saw one of the Fair's most publicized events, the burial of a time capsule at Flushing Meadows, which contained mementos of the 1930s to be recovered by Earth's descendants in a future millennium. "The time capsule thrilled Carl," writes Davidson. As an adult, Sagan and his colleagues created similar time capsules, but ones that would be sent out into the galaxy. These were the Pioneer plaque and the ''Voyager Golden Record'' records, all of which were spinoffs of Sagan's memories of the World Fair.
About the time he was six or seven, he and a close friend took trips to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. While there, they went to the Hayden Planetarium and walked around the museum's exhibits of space objects, such as meteorites, and displays of dinosaurs and animals in natural settings. Sagan writes about those visits: :''I was transfixed by the dioramas — lifelike representations of animals and their habitats all over the world. Penguins on the dimly lit Antarctic ice; ... a family of gorillas, the male beating his chest, ... an American grizzly bear standing on his hind legs, ten or twelve feet tall, and staring me right in the eye.''
His parents helped nurture his growing interest in science by buying him chemistry sets and reading materials. His interest in space, however, was his primary focus, especially after reading science fiction stories by writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, which stirred his imagination about life on other planets, such as Mars. According to biographer Ray Spangenburg, these early years as Sagan tried to understand the mysteries of the planets, became a "driving force in his life, a continual spark to his intellect, and a quest that would never be forgotten."
Sagan lectured and did research at Harvard University until 1968, when he moved to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He became a full Professor at Cornell in 1971, and he directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies there. From 1972 to 1981, Sagan was the Associate Director of the Center for Radio Physics and Space Research at Cornell.
Sagan was associated with the American space program from its inception. From the 1950s onward, he worked as an advisor to NASA, where one of his duties included briefing the Apollo astronauts before their flights to the Moon. Sagan contributed to many of the robotic spacecraft missions that explored the solar system, arranging experiments on many of the expeditions. He conceived the idea of adding an unalterable and universal message on spacecraft destined to leave the solar system that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find it. Sagan assembled the first physical message that was sent into space: a gold-anodized plaque, attached to the space probe Pioneer 10, launched in 1972. Pioneer 11, also carrying another copy of the plaque, was launched the following year. He continued to refine his designs; the most elaborate message he helped to develop and assemble was the Voyager Golden Record that was sent out with the Voyager space probes in 1977. Sagan often challenged the decisions to fund the Space Shuttle and Space Station at the expense of further robotic missions.
Sagan taught a course on critical thinking at Cornell University until he died in 1996 from pneumonia, a few months after finding that he was in remission of myelodysplastic syndrome.
Sagan was among the first to hypothesize that Saturn's moon Titan might possess oceans of liquid compounds on its surface and that Jupiter's moon Europa might possess subsurface oceans of water. This would make Europa potentially habitable for life. Europa's subsurface ocean of water was later indirectly confirmed by the spacecraft Galileo. Sagan also helped solve the mystery of the reddish haze seen on Titan, revealing that it is composed of complex organic molecules constantly raining down onto the moon's surface.
He further contributed insights regarding the atmospheres of Venus and Jupiter as well as seasonal changes on Mars. Sagan established that the atmosphere of Venus is extremely hot and dense with pressures increasing steadily all the way down to the surface. He also perceived global warming as a growing, man-made danger and likened it to the natural development of Venus into a hot, life-hostile planet through a kind of runaway greenhouse effect. Sagan and his Cornell colleague Edwin Ernest Salpeter speculated about life in Jupiter's clouds, given the planet's dense atmospheric composition rich in organic molecules. He studied the observed color variations on Mars' surface and concluded that they were not seasonal or vegetational changes as most believed but shifts in surface dust caused by windstorms.
Sagan is best known, however, for his research on the possibilities of extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation.
He is also the 1994 recipient of the Public Welfare Medal, the highest award of the National Academy of Sciences for "distinguished contributions in the application of science to the public welfare." He was denied membership in the Academy, reportedly because his media activities made him unpopular with many other scientists.
Sagan's ability to convey his ideas allowed many people to better understand the cosmos — simultaneously emphasizing the value and worthiness of the human race, and the relative insignificance of the Earth in comparison to the universe. He delivered the 1977 series of Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in London. He hosted and, with Ann Druyan, co-wrote and co-produced the highly popular thirteen-part PBS television series ''Cosmos: A Personal Voyage'' modeled on Jacob Bronowski's ''The Ascent of Man''.
Sagan was a proponent of the search for extraterrestrial life. He urged the scientific community to listen with radio telescopes for signals from intelligent extraterrestrial life-forms. So persuasive was he that by 1982 he was able to get a petition advocating SETI published in the journal ''Science'' and signed by 70 scientists including seven Nobel Prize winners. This was a tremendous turnaround in the respectability of this controversial field. Sagan also helped Dr. Frank Drake write the Arecibo message, a radio message beamed into space from the Arecibo radio telescope on November 16, 1974, aimed at informing extraterrestrials about Earth.
Sagan was chief technology officer of the professional planetary research journal ''Icarus'' for twelve years. He co-founded the ''Planetary Society'', the largest space-interest group in the world, with over 100,000 members in more than 149 countries, and was a member of the SETI Institute Board of Trustees. Sagan served as Chairman of the Division for Planetary Science of the American Astronomical Society, as President of the Planetology Section of the American Geophysical Union, and as Chairman of the Astronomy Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
At the height of the Cold War, Sagan became involved in public awareness efforts for the effects of nuclear war when a mathematical climate model suggested that a substantial nuclear exchange could upset the delicate balance of life on Earth. He was one of five authors — the "S" of the "TTAPS" report as the research paper came to be known. He eventually co-authored the scientific paper hypothesizing a global nuclear winter following nuclear war. He also co-authored the book ''A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race'', a comprehensive examination of the phenomenon of nuclear winter.
''Cosmos'' covered a wide range of scientific subjects including the origin of life and a perspective of our place in the universe. The series was first broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service in 1980, winning an Emmy and a Peabody Award. It has been broadcast in more than 60 countries and seen by over 500 million people, making it the most widely watched PBS program in history. In addition, ''Time'' magazine ran a cover story about Sagan soon after the show broadcast, referring to him as "creator, chief writer and host-narrator of the new public television series Cosmos, [and] takes the controls of his fantasy spaceship."
Sagan also wrote books to popularize science, such as ''Cosmos'', which reflected and expanded upon some of the themes of ''A Personal Voyage'', and became the best-selling science book ever published in English; ''The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence'', which won a Pulitzer Prize; and ''Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science''. Sagan also wrote the best-selling science fiction novel ''Contact'' in 1985, based on a film treatment he wrote with his wife in 1979, but he did not live to see the book's 1997 motion picture adaptation, which starred Jodie Foster and won the 1998 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Adaption.
thumb|left|Pale Blue Dot: Earth is a bright pixel when photographed from "Voyager 1" six billion kilometers out (past Pluto). Sagan encouraged NASA to generate this image. He wrote a sequel to ''Cosmos,'' ''Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space'', which was selected as a notable book of 1995 by ''The New York Times''. He appeared on PBS' Charlie Rose program in January 1995. Sagan also wrote an introduction for the bestselling book by Stephen Hawking, ''A Brief History of Time''. Sagan was also known for his popularization of science, his efforts to increase scientific understanding among the general public, and his positions in favor of scientific skepticism and against pseudoscience, such as his debunking of the Betty and Barney Hill abduction. To mark the tenth anniversary of Sagan's passing, David Morrison, a former student of Sagan, recalled "Sagan's immense contributions to planetary research, the public understanding of science, and the skeptical movement" in ''Skeptical Inquirer''.
Sagan hypothesized in January 1991 that enough smoke from the 1991 Kuwaiti oil fires "might get so high as to disrupt agriculture in much of South Asia ..." He later conceded in ''The Demon-Haunted World'' that this prediction did not turn out to be correct: "it ''was'' pitch black at noon and temperatures dropped 4°–6°C over the Persian Gulf, but not much smoke reached stratospheric altitudes and Asia was spared." A 2007 study noted that modern computer models have been applied to the Kuwait oil fires, finding that individual smoke plumes are not able to loft smoke into the stratosphere, but that smoke from fires covering a large area, like some forest fires or the burning of cities that would be expected to follow a nuclear strike, would loft significant amounts of smoke into the stratosphere.
In his later years Sagan advocated the creation of an organized search for near Earth objects that might impact the Earth. When others suggested creating large nuclear bombs that could be used to alter the orbit of a NEO that was predicted to hit the Earth, Sagan proposed the Deflection Dilemma: If we create the ability to deflect an asteroid away from the Earth, then we also create the ability to deflect an asteroid towards the Earth — providing an evil power with a true doomsday bomb.
From ''Cosmos'' and his frequent appearances on ''The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'', Sagan became associated with the catchphrase "billions and billions". Sagan stated that he never actually used the phrase in the ''Cosmos'' series. The closest that he ever came was in the book ''Cosmos'', where he talked of "billions ''upon'' billions": }}
However, his frequent use of the word ''billions'', and distinctive delivery emphasizing the "b" (which he did intentionally, in place of more cumbersome alternatives such as "billions with a 'b'", in order to distinguish the word from "millions" in viewers' minds), made him a favorite target of comic performers, including Johnny Carson, Gary Kroeger, Mike Myers, Bronson Pinchot, Penn Jillette, Harry Shearer, and others. Frank Zappa satirized the line in the song "Be In My Video", noting as well "atomic light". Sagan took this all in good humor, and his final book was entitled ''Billions and Billions'' which opened with a tongue-in-cheek discussion of this catchphrase, observing that Carson himself was an amateur astronomer and that Carson's comic caricature often included real science.
The popular perception of his characterization of large cosmic quantities continued to be a sense of wonderment at the vastness of space and time, as in his phrase "The total number of stars in the Universe is larger than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth." However, this famous saying was widely misunderstood, as he was in fact referring to the world being at a "critical branch point in history" as in the following quote from ''Cosmos: A Personal Voyage'', Episode 8: "Journeys in Space and Time":
"Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours and every one of them is a succession of incidents, events, occurrences which influence its future. Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time. And our small planet at this moment, here we face a critical branch point in history: what we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants. It is well within our power to destroy our civilization and perhaps our species as well."
In March 1983, Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative — a multi-billion dollar project to develop a comprehensive defense against attack by nuclear missiles, which was quickly dubbed the "Star Wars" program. Sagan spoke out against the project, arguing that it was technically impossible to develop a system with the level of perfection required, and far more expensive to build than for an enemy to defeat through decoys and other means — and that its construction would seriously destabilize the nuclear balance between the United States and the Soviet Union, making further progress toward nuclear disarmament impossible.
When Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declared a unilateral moratorium on the testing of nuclear weapons, which would begin on August 6, 1985 — the 40th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima — the Reagan administration dismissed the dramatic move as nothing more than propaganda, and refused to follow suit. In response, American anti-nuclear and peace activists staged a series of protest actions at the Nevada Test Site, beginning on Easter Sunday in 1986 and continuing through 1987. Hundreds of people were arrested, including Sagan, who was arrested on two separate occasions as he climbed over a chain-link fence at the test site.
Isaac Asimov described Sagan as one of only two people he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own. The other, he claimed, was the computer scientist and artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky.
Sagan wrote frequently about religion and the relationship between religion and science, expressing his skepticism about the conventional conceptualization of God as a sapient being. For example:
Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Others — for example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einstein — considered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws.
In another description of his view of God, Sagan emphatically writes:
The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.
Despite his criticism of religion, Sagan denied that he was an atheist, saying "An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no god. By some definitions atheism is very stupid." In reply to a question in 1996 about his religious beliefs, Sagan answered, "I'm agnostic." Sagan maintained that the idea of a creator of the universe was difficult to prove or disprove and that the only conceivable scientific discovery that could challenge it would be an infinitely old universe. According to his last wife, Ann Druyan, he was not a believer: }}
In 2006, Ann Druyan edited Sagan's 1985 Glasgow ''Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology'' into a book, ''The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God'', in which he elaborates on his views of divinity in the natural world. Sagan is also widely regarded as a freethinker or skeptic; one of his most famous quotations, in ''Cosmos'', was, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" (called the "Sagan Standard" by some). This was based on a nearly identical statement by fellow founder of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, Marcello Truzzi, "An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof." This idea originated with Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827), a French mathematician and astronomer who said, "The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness."
Late in his life, Sagan's books elaborated on his skeptical, naturalistic view of the world. In ''The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark'', he presented tools for testing arguments and detecting fallacious or fraudulent ones, essentially advocating wide use of critical thinking and the scientific method. The compilation ''Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium'', published in 1997 after Sagan's death, contains essays written by Sagan, such as his views on abortion, and his widow Ann Druyan's account of his death as a skeptic, agnostic, and freethinker.
Sagan warned against humans' tendency towards anthropocentrism. He was the faculty adviser for the Cornell Students for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. In the ''Cosmos'' chapter "Blues For a Red Planet", Sagan wrote, "If there is life on Mars, I believe we should do nothing with Mars. Mars then belongs to the Martians, even if the Martians are only microbes."
Sagan was a user and advocate of marijuana. Under the pseudonym "Mr. X", he contributed an essay about smoking cannabis to the 1971 book ''Marihuana Reconsidered''. The essay explained that marijuana use had helped to inspire some of Sagan's works and enhance sensual and intellectual experiences. After Sagan's death, his friend Lester Grinspoon disclosed this information to Sagan's biographer, Keay Davidson. The publishing of the biography, ''Carl Sagan: A Life'', in 1999 brought media attention to this aspect of Sagan's life. Not long after his death, widow Ann Druyan had gone on to preside over the board of directors of NORML, a foundation dedicated to reforming cannabis laws.
In 1994, engineers at Apple Computer code-named the Power Macintosh 7100 "Carl Sagan" in the hope that Apple would make "billions and billions" with the sale of the PowerMac 7100. The name was only used internally, but Sagan was concerned that it would become a product endorsement and sent Apple a cease and desist letter. Apple complied, but engineers retaliated by changing the internal codename to "BHA" for "Butt-Head Astronomer". Sagan then sued Apple for libel, a form of defamation, in federal court. The court granted Apple's motion to dismiss Sagan's claims and opined in dicta that a reader aware of the context would understand Apple was "clearly attempting to retaliate in a humorous and satirical way", and that "It strains reason to conclude that Defendant was attempting to criticize Plaintiff's reputation or competency as an astronomer. One does not seriously attack the expertise of a scientist using the undefined phrase 'butt-head'." Sagan then sued for Apple's original use of his name and likeness, but again lost. Sagan appealed the ruling. In November 1995, an out of court settlement was reached and Apple's office of trademarks and patents released a conciliatory statement that "Apple has always had great respect for Dr. Sagan. It was never Apple's intention to cause Dr. Sagan or his family any embarrassment or concern."
Sagan briefly served as an adviser on Stanley Kubrick's film ''2001: A Space Odyssey''. Sagan proposed that the film would suggest, rather than depict, extraterrestrial superintelligence.
Stuart Appelle notes that Sagan "wrote frequently on what he perceived as the logical and empirical fallacies regarding UFOs and the abduction experience. Sagan rejected an extraterrestrial explanation for the phenomenon but felt there were both empirical and pedagogical benefits for examining UFO reports and that the subject was, therefore, a legitimate topic of study."
In 1966, Sagan was a member of the Ad Hoc Committee to Review Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force's UFO investigation project. The committee concluded Blue Book had been lacking as a scientific study, and recommended a university-based project to give the UFO phenomenon closer scientific scrutiny. The result was the Condon Committee (1966–1968), led by physicist Edward Condon, and in their final report they formally concluded that UFOs, regardless of what any of them actually were, did not behave in a manner consistent with a threat to national security.
Ron Westrum writes that "The high point of Sagan's treatment of the UFO question was the AAAS's symposium in 1969. A wide range of educated opinions on the subject were offered by participants, including not only proponents such as James McDonald and J. Allen Hynek but also skeptics like astronomers William Hartmann and Donald Menzel. The roster of speakers was balanced, and it is to Sagan's credit that this event was presented in spite of pressure from Edward Condon". With physicist Thornton Page, Sagan edited the lectures and discussions given at the symposium; these were published in 1972 as ''UFOs: A Scientific Debate''. Some of Sagan's many books examine UFOs (as did one episode of ''Cosmos'') and he claimed a religious undercurrent to the phenomenon.
Sagan again revealed his views on interstellar travel in his 1980 ''Cosmos'' series. In one of his last written works, Sagan argued that the chances of extraterrestrial spacecraft visiting Earth are vanishingly small. However, Sagan did think it plausible that Cold War concerns contributed to governments misleading their citizens about UFOs, and that "some UFO reports and analyses, and perhaps voluminous files, have been made inaccessible to the public which pays the bills ... It's time for the files to be declassified and made generally available." He cautioned against jumping to conclusions about suppressed UFO data and stressed that there was no strong evidence that aliens were visiting the Earth either in the past or present.
In 1997, the Sagan Planet Walk was opened in Ithaca New York. It is a walking scale model of the solar system, extending 1.2 km from the center of The Commons in downtown Ithaca, NY, to the Sciencenter, a hands-on museum. The exhibition was created in memory of Carl Sagan, who was an Ithaca resident and Cornell Professor. Professor Sagan had been a founding member of the museum's advisory board.
The landing site of the unmanned Mars Pathfinder spacecraft was renamed the ''Carl Sagan Memorial Station'' on July 5, 1997.
Sagan's son, Nick Sagan, wrote several episodes in the ''Star Trek'' franchise. In an episode of ''Star Trek: Enterprise'' entitled "Terra Prime", a quick shot is shown of the relic rover Sojourner, part of the Mars Pathfinder mission, placed by a historical marker at Carl Sagan Memorial Station on the Martian surface. The marker displays a quote from Sagan: "Whatever the reason you're on Mars, I'm glad you're there, and I wish I was with you." Sagan's student Steve Squyres led the team that landed the Spirit Rover and Opportunity Rover successfully on Mars in 2004.
Asteroid 2709 Sagan is also named in his honor.
On November 9, 2001, on what would have been Sagan's 67th birthday, the NASA Ames Research Center dedicated the site for the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Cosmos. "Carl was an incredible visionary, and now his legacy can be preserved and advanced by a 21st century research and education laboratory committed to enhancing our understanding of life in the universe and furthering the cause of space exploration for all time", said NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin. Ann Druyan was at the Center as it opened its doors on October 22, 2006.
Sagan has at least three awards named in his honor:
On December 20, 2006, the tenth anniversary of Sagan's death, a blogger, Joel Schlosberg, organized a Carl Sagan "blog-a-thon" to commemorate Sagan's death, and the idea was supported by Nick Sagan. Many members of the blogging community participated.
August 2007 the Independent Investigative Group IIG awarded Sagan posthumously a Lifetime Achievement Award. This honor has also been awarded to Harry Houdini and James Randi.
In 2008, Benn Jordan, also known as "The Flashbulb", released the album ''Pale Blue Dot: A Tribute to Carl Sagan''.
In 2009, clips from Carl Sagan's ''Cosmos'' were used as the basis for ''A Glorious Dawn'', the first video produced for the Symphony of Science, an educational music video production by composer John Boswell. Musician Jack White later released this song as a vinyl single under his record label Third Man Records. Additional clips were used in several followup videos which featured Sagan alongside other noted scientists and proponents of rational thinking, such as Richard Dawkins, Richard Feynman, Brian Greene, Lawrence M. Krauss, Bill Nye, and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
In 2010, the 76th anniversary of Carl Sagan's birth, the second "Carl Sagan Day" was celebrated on November 6.
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