THE VARIETIES OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE A Personal View of the Search for God By Carl Sagan Edited by Ann Druyan Penguin Press. 284 pp. $27.95 In 1877, the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli was looking at Mars through his new telescope, and he noticed intricate etchings in the equatorial region of the planet's surface. Schiaparelli called these lines canali, by which he probably meant something like "gullies" or "grooves," but his coinage got wrongly translated into English as "canals." It was a regrettable linguistic slip. ... -
Searching the Heavens
THE VARIETIES OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE A Personal View of the Search for God By Carl Sagan Edited by Ann Druyan Penguin Press. 284 pp. $27.95 In 1877, the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli was looking at Mars through his new telescope, and he noticed intricate etchings in the equatorial region of the planet's surface. Schiaparelli called these lines canali, by which he probably meant something like "gullies" or "grooves," but his coinage got wrongly translated into English as "canals." It was a regrettable linguistic slip. ...-
Reviewed by Wray Herbert