Ann Druyan
Ann Druyan (born June 13, 1949) is an American author and media producer known for her involvement in many projects aiming to popularize and explain science. She is probably best-known as the last wife of Carl Sagan, and co-author of the Cosmos series and book, along with Sagan and Steven Soter.
In her writings, Druyan has stressed the idea that people can have a sense of awe and wonder about the unity of the cosmos without introducing the concept of a god.
Druyan wrote the books Comet and Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, as well as sections of The Demon-Haunted World, with her late husband Carl Sagan. In addition, she wrote an introduction to The Cosmic Connection and the epilogue to Billions and Billions, both by Sagan. Alone, she wrote the novel A Famous Broken Heart.
In the areas of film and television, she was one of the writers for the television series Cosmos, and a producer of the film Contact. Most recently, she is the CEO and a co-founder of Cosmos Studios. In 2007 she was said to be working on an IMAX film on global warming as well as a sequel to Cosmos.
She has served on the Board of Directors of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) for over 10 years, and is also the current president of the NORML Foundation Board of Directors.
Other projects that she has been involved in include the selection of the music on the Voyager Golden Record mounted on the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes, and the Cosmos 1 spacecraft, which intended to demonstrate solar sail propulsion. The Cosmos 1 used a former Soviet submarine missile as a launch vehicle (in keeping with the "swords into plowshares" philosophy) but due to a malfunction in separation, the Cosmos 1 never reached stable orbit.
In January 2007, she was a juror at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival in the jury responsible for selecting the winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Prize, given to films that focus on science and technology.
She attended and was a speaker at the Beyond Belief symposium in November 2006.
“When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me-it still sometimes happens-and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don't ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous-not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance. . . . That pure chance could be so generous and so kind. . . . That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time. . . . That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and it’s much more meaningful. . . . The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don't think I'll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.”
“It takes a fearless, unflinching love and deep humility to accept the universe as it is. The most effective way he knew to accomplish that, the most powerful tool at his disposal, was the scientific method, which over time winnows out deception. It can't give you absolute truth because science is a permanent revolution, always subject to revision, but it can give you successive approximations of reality.”
“Ten long trips around the sun since I last saw that smile, but only joy and thankfulness that on a tiny world in the vastness, for a couple of moments in the immensity of time, we were one.”
“The aspirations of democracy are based on the notion of an informed citizenry, capable of making wise decisions. The choices we are asked to make become increasingly complex. They require the longer-term thinking and greater tolerance for ambiguity that science fosters. The new economy is predicated on a continuous pipeline of scientific and technological innovation. It can not exist without workers and consumers who are mathematically and scientifically literate. ”
“No single step in the persuit of enlightenment should ever be considered sacred; only the search was.”
“I think the roots of this antagonism to science run very deep. They're ancient. We see them in Genesis, this first story, this founding myth of ours, in which the first humans are doomed and cursed eternally for asking a question, for partaking of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. It's puzzling that Eden is synonymous with paradise when, if you think about it at all, it's more like a maximum-security prison with twenty-four hour surveillance. It's a horrible place. Adam and Eve have no childhood. They awaken full-grown. What is a human being without a childhood? Our long childhood is a critical feature of our species. It differentiates us, to a degree, from most other species. We take a longer time to mature. We depend upon these formative years and the social fabric to learn many of the things we need to know.”
“Interviewer: Didn't Sagan want to believe?Druyan: he didn't want to believe. he wanted to know.”
“Science has carried us to the gateway to the universe. And yet our conception of our surroundings remains the disproportionate view of the still-small child. We are spiritually and culturally paralyzed, unable to face the vastness, to embrace our lack of centrality and find out actual place in the fabric of nature.”
“If you are searching for sacred knowledge and not just a palliative for your fears, then you will train yourself to be a good skeptic.”
“And what greater might do we possess as human beings than our capacity to question and to learn?”