The Seeds of Tomorrow

I love science. Like many people, when I was a little boy, I used to look up at the stars and wonder and theorize about the vastness of space and the thought processes of things like bugs and plants. I would imagine what a rhododendron might say to an ant as it crawled about the petals of its blooms. I wondered if cicadas flying through the air navigated using the stars as placeholders, and imagined shrimp whistling tunes as they foraged for plankton in the seemingly never-ending soup of the ocean. As I got older and I became a little less fantastical about the world and universe that surrounds us, I abandoned these fantasies in search for truth. Each day, more and more as I learned about the world, I became drawn to history and the people that discovered and created constructs of our reality. There were so many people and so many components to the vast body of knowledge that we learned and the even vaster body of knowledge that we did not know. As I tried to back my mind away from the entire population though, it began to seem as if as time moved along, less and less scientific celebrities appeared.

Then I discovered Carl Sagan.

Carl Sagan was many things. He was an astronomer, a cosmologist, an astrophysicist, a novelist, a teacher, and a promoter of the search for extra-terrestrial life. Sagan brought the technical nonsense that oozed from nerdy scientists in white lab coats behind closed doors in government facilities to the living rooms and minds of people like you and me when, in 1980, he hosted the landmark series, Cosmos. Through the wildly popular television show, Sagan translated all the mumbo-jumbo science had to offer, put it into a common and workable form, and gave it an even more common perspective that most anyone could easily translate. Once, more, he gave it all purpose. Cosmos was more than a science program. It was a presentation of the driving force of why science existed, and its part within the human mechanism. In essence, Cosmos was the human interaction and observation of everything that was, is, and might be. This astounded me. Somehow in the bowels of my mind I knew that everything had to fit in line with everything else. There had to be some sort of order to the chaos of the universe. But, up to that point, I had never heard anyone or anything put it in some a viable form as when I began to watch Carl Sagan pull apart the universe and the earth and glue it to the human purpose.

But Carl didn't answer all the questions. Sagan left the entire universe open and still greatly undiscovered. His presentations re-ignited the dreams and wonders of anyone lounged on the couch with a bag of potato chips and a willingness to wonder. Sadly, in 1996, this pioneer of translation, Carl Sagan, died. For a while, some of us wondered if there would ever be another face of the scientific world, a man so knowledgeable and, well, human, to present the hidden world of science to the people again.

Then I discovered Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Neil deGrasse Tyson has become the face and voice bridging the gap between the general population and science and exploration today. Tyson's career, like Sagan, is marked by a number of titles and talents such as astrophysicist, cosmologist, science communicator, teacher, and perhaps even celebrity. Currently, he is the Director at the Hayden Planetarium in Manhattan, New York, and has, not one, but ten honorary degrees from a variety of institutions. Author of several book including The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Planet, Death By Black Hole: And Other cosmic Quandaries, and his most recent publication The Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier, has racked up formidable resume of guest and TV appearnaces. Seven times he's appeared on The Colbert Report, Six times on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and a number of times he attended Real Time with Bill Maher. He shows up everywhere, and still has time to be the host for PBS's NOVA: scienceNOW.

But Neil deGrasse Tyson is not merely a scientist nor is he merely a celebrity. He has a message to give, and it starts with a dream. In his recent offering to the world, The Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier, Tyson shines the spotlight on the importance of the rediscovery and importance of America's space exploration program and NASA. On March 7th of this year, Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked to speak before congress on the future of just these topics. There, Tyson explained to the Science Committee that "...audacious visions have the power to alter mind states, to change assumptions about what is possible, and when a nation allows itself to dream big, these dreams prevail in the citizens' ambitions." But as much as Neil deGrasse Tyson is a student of the present and scientist of the future, he is also a student of history. Noting that the space exploration program and NASA was born out of a national fear and cold war, he goes on to mention that once America decided they had won the space race, we stopped dreaming about discovering new planets and traversing the cosmos. As he asserted quite frankly and with expertly simple articulation, the problems of this country are "...the collective consequence of the absence of ambition that consumes you when you stop having dreams."

Neil deGrasse Tyson gets it. What made this country great was not war and legislation, but rather innovation and opportunity. The seeds of both innovation and opportunity are grown in the dreams and the wonders of children. As those seeds grow and are watered by our environment, the stalks burst forth from their beds, peering at the sky for the first time. Those seeds are the dreams of a new generation who begin to see the possibilities and that there's a place and room for their flowers to grow. They will open their petals to the sky. They will become mathematicians, engineers, physicists, and geologists. They will become teachers, inventors, discoverers, and explorers. It is this next generation that will transform the desert of yesterday into the garden of tomorrow. Yes, we must worry about today, but we cannot continue to ignore tomorrow. Without dreams, there are no ambitions. Without ambitions, there is no progression. Without progression, there are no heroes. And without heroes, humanity becomes unable to realize the possibility of escaping the harshnesses of the world and its environment.

Dare to dream, Neil. Keep spreading the seeds of tomorrow.


Invino Veritas
3/24/12
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