Carl Sagan’s Cosmos inspires audiences to look at the universe with new eyes and to appreciate humanity’s importance in it. Sagan’s deft use of rhetorical strategy creates an experience that pushes beyond the limits of a mere “educational” program to reveal a mythic adventure. Although Sagan contributed much to the field of science as well as to public understanding of it, Cosmos remains his signature brand. Cosmos and the Rhetoric of Popular Science builds on Thomas M. Lessl’s observations regarding Cosmos’ connection to the mythic and science fiction. It delves deeply into Sagan’s rhetorical construction of the program in order to understand what elements contributed to its mythos.

Public Religions in the Future World is the first book to map the utopian terrain of the political-religious movements of the past four decades. Examining a politically diverse set of utopian fictions, this book cuts across the usual Right/Left political divisions to show a surprising convergence: each political-religious vision imagines a revived world of care and community over and against the economization and fragmentation of neoliberalism. Understanding these religions as utopian movements in reaction to neoliberalism, Public Religions invites us to rethink the bases of religious identification and practice. Offering new insights on texts from the Left Behind series to the novels of Octavia Butler, Public Religions shows that the utopian energy of the present opens new opportunities for political organizing and genuine, lasting community building. Public Religions in the Future World presents a literary history of the political-religious present, arguing that the power of public religion lies in the utopian visions that underlie religious beliefs. It shows that contemporary literary utopianism is deeply inflected with religious ideas, with the visions, values, and ambitions of Christianity, Islam, nature mysticism, and other traditions. Further, Public Religions demonstrates that this utopianism’s religiosity is in turn politically inflected, that it resonates with and underwrites a range of competing political projects: those of imperialism, globalization, neoliberal capitalism, deep ecology, and the pro-migration movement. David Morris constructs a working theory of how religion makes large-scale interventions in political debates. The novels in his study draw on religious traditions to articulate visions, programs, or missions for achieving some version of an improved world. In doing so, they undertake the work of literary postmodernism: to represent globality, to recover the voices of the underrepresented, and to imagine a future that escapes the destructiveness of global capitalism.

Based on the television series cosmos.

Space Science and Public Engagement: 21st Century Perspectives and Opportunities critically examines the many dimensions of public engagement with space science by exploring case studies that show a spectrum of public engagement formats, ranging from the space science community's efforts to communicate developments to the public, to citizenry attempting to engage with space science issues. It addresses why public engagement is important to space science experts, what approaches they take, how public engagement varies locally, nationally and internationally, and what roles "non-experts" have played in shaping space science. Space scientists, outreach specialists in various scientific disciplines, policymakers and citizens interested in space science will find great insights in this book that will help inform their future engagement strategies. - Critically examines how expert organizations and the space science community have sought to bring space science to the public - Examines how the public has responded, and in some cases self-organized, to opportunities to contribute to space science - Outlines future engagement interests and possibilities

Carl Sagan's Cosmos is one of the most widely read popular science texts published in the last forty years. It is a story of the universe that claims to fit the findings of modern science. But more than that, it is a story focused on humanity and providing us with a place and purpose in the order of the cosmos. Sagan's story maintains its appeal to this day. It also happens to be a story at odds in many ways with what Christians believe, teach, and confess. Despite its popularity and challenge to the faith, few Christian theologians have relected on Cosmos. This thesis corrects that deficiency. It begins by framing Cosmos in terms of its rhetorical syle, categorizing the story as a telological myth. Teleological myths are arguments for ultimate values and meanings in the form of stories. From there, the thesis lays out the chronological motif that forms the rhetorical spine of Sagan's story and makes explicit its central teleological claim: what Sagan refers to as the "Cosmic Perspective." The thesis then looks at the broader context of Sagan's audience and determines some of the cultural anchor-points to which his story specially appeals. The last chapter focuses on what Christians can learn from Cosmos, identifying clear points for appreciation and critique, before moving into practical implications. The thesis concludes that the challenges posed by Cosmos reveal a need among Christians for better teleological catechesis, broader vocation openness, and deeper cultural awareness.

Fringe Rhetorics: Conspiracy Theories and the Paranormal identifies the rhetorical similarities of conspiracy theories and paranormal accounts by delving into rhetorical, psychosocial, and political science research. Identifying something as “fringe” indicates its proximal placement within accepted norms of contemporary society. Both conspiracy theories and paranormal accounts dwell on these fringes and use surprisingly similar persuasive techniques. Using elements of the Aristotelian canon as well as Steve Oswald’s strengthening and weakening strategies, this book establishes a pattern for the analysis of fringe rhetorics. It also applies this pattern through rhetorical analyses of several documentaries and provides suggestions for countering fringe arguments.

Unbelievable explodes seven of the most popular and pernicious myths about science and religion. Michael Newton Keas, a historian of science, lays out the facts to show how far the conventional wisdom departs from reality. He also shows how these myths have proliferated over the past four centuries and exert so much influence today, infiltrating science textbooks and popular culture. The seven myths, Keas shows, amount to little more than religion bashing—especially Christianity bashing. Unbelievable reveals: · Why the “Dark Ages” never happened · Why we didn’t need Christopher Columbus to prove the earth was round · Why Copernicus would be shocked to learn that he supposedly demoted humans from the center of the universe · What everyone gets wrong about Galileo’s clash with the Church, and why it matters today · Why the vastness of the universe does not deal a blow to religious belief in human significance · How the popular account of Giordano Bruno as a “martyr for science” ignores the fact that he was executed for theological reasons, not scientific ones · How a new myth is being positioned to replace religion—a futuristic myth that sounds scientific but isn’t In debunking these myths, Keas shows that the real history is much more interesting than the common narrative of religion at war with science. This accessible and entertaining book offers an invaluable resource to students, scholars, teachers, homeschoolers, and religious believers tired of being portrayed as anti-intellectual and anti-science.

The secrets of light — Your pathway to a state of presence Seeking a state of presence: The most important things in life are our health and happiness. Yet most of us are neither healthy nor happy. We have been led to believe that if we think ahead and make the right choices, we can manifest our dreams. Yet despite our best efforts, we still have more disease and discontent than ever before. Is it possible that our essential ideas about life are flawed? Can we learn how to get into the zone or a flow state? Is light the key to finding a state of presence? Living in the light: We are all aware of the impact of sunlight on a plant’s growth and development. But few of us realize that a plant actually “sees” where light is emanating from and positions itself to be in optimal alignment with it. This phenomenon, however, is not just occurring in the plant kingdom — humans are also fundamentally directed by light. The intersection of science and spirituality: In Luminous Life, Dr. Jacob Israel Liberman integrates scientific research, clinical practice, and direct experience to demonstrate how the luminous intelligence we call light effortlessly guides us toward health, contentment, and a life filled with purpose. If you have read Barbara Brennan’s Hands of Light or Light Emerging, you’re going to love Jacob Liberman’s Luminous Life.

The sublime evokes our awe, our terror, and our wonder. Applied first in ancient Greece to the heights of literary expression, in the 18th-century the sublime was extended to nature and to the sciences, enterprises that viewed the natural world as a manifestation of God's goodness, power, and wisdom. In The Scientific Sublime, Alan Gross reveals the modern-day sublime in popular science. He shows how the great popular scientists of our time--Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, Steven Weinberg, Brian Greene, Lisa Randall, Rachel Carson, Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, and E. O. Wilson--evoke the sublime in response to fundamental questions: How did the universe begin? How did life? How did language? These authors maintain a tradition initiated by Joseph Addison, Edmund Burke, Immanuel Kant, and Adam Smith, towering 18th-century figures who adapted the literary sublime first to nature, then to science--though with one crucial difference: religion has been replaced wholly by science. In a final chapter, Gross explores science's attack on religion, an assault that attempts to sweep permanently under the rug two questions science cannot answer: What is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of the good life?

Despite the efforts of modern scholars to explain the origins of science communication as a social, rhetorical, and aesthetic phenomenon, most researchers approach the popularization of science from the perspective of present issues, thus ignoring its historical roots in classical culture along with its continuities, disruptions, and transformations. This volume fills this research gap with a genealogically reflected introduction into the popularization of science as a recurrent cultural technique. The category »popular science« is elucidated in interdisciplinary and diachronic dialogue, discussing case studies from all historical periods. Classicists, archaeologists, medievalists, art historians, sociologists, and historians of science provide the first diachronic and multi-layered approach to the rhetoric techniques, aesthetics, and societal conditions that have shaped the dissemination and reception of scientific knowledge.