Cosmic Queries: StarTalk's Guide to Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We‚Äôre Going
Authors: deGrasseTyson Neil , Trefil James 
Published: September 2022

COSMIC QUERIES: StarTalk's Guide to Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We're Going by Neil deGrasse Tyson and James Trefil. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2021. 309 pages. Hardcover; $30.00. ISBN: 9781426221774. *Neil deGrasse Tyson is a well-known popularizer of science; the StarTalk podcast he hosted for years is both a fun and educational resource for countless science subjects. He has teamed up with James Trefil, a prolific science writer and popularizer in his own right, to produce a book trying to summarize a vast array of human discoveries about our place in the cosmos for a primarily nonscientific audience. The book attempts to mimic the style of StarTalk in using humor and even a bit of goofiness at times to keep it light. *Two observations are worth starting off with. First, the authors have attempted to summarize and -simplify a huge amount of science, and no reviewer could possibly do justice by attempting to summarize their summary. There is no central thesis or question which is under debate. An overview of topics and some high points discussed below will suffice. *But secondly, and more importantly, given the full title including the subtitle, these are questions which humans have wrestled with for millennia, and especially as they engage with personal considerations of meaning, purpose, and destiny. The ancient Greek philosophers asked similar questions, and surely humankind had pondered them for millennia before that. Yet the book settles for a response with a rather casual and unfortunate scientism. The science is wonderful, but apparently the publisher thought the book would sell better by choosing a philosophical title for a purely scientific discussion. *It may be a sign of the times that the 1982 cult movie Blade Runner engages more directly and significantly with those title questions than this 2021 book does. Recall the scene near the end of the movie in which Deckard asks, "All he'd wanted were the same answers the rest of us want. Where did I come from? Where am I going? How long have I got?" That is an extremely important tone and context in which those subtitle questions belong! But the essential philosophical side of those questions is utterly ignored in the book, except perhaps for a few times they poke fun at common straw man views of the church (they could at least acknowledge that the Christian worldview provided a foundation for the beginning of science as we know it). For example, the authors casually dismiss important questions when they say, "The emergence of galaxies, stars, and human intelligence all followed from this event" (p. 216). Excuse us? Human intelligence did what? Followed from galaxies and stars? Like water downhill? Is there no hard problem of human consciousness? Unfortunately, obvious categories of ideas are avoided as if they do not exist. This is clearly not accidental. *The chapter "Are We Alone in the Universe?" provides a great opportunity to characterize the book. Tyson and Trefil neatly and enjoyably summarize the history of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence starting with Lowell's "canals" on Mars and proceeding through modern day SETI. The writing is light, fast-paced, and even includes a "Dad joke." They present the Drake equation, of course, and even try their hand at a calculation of the odds, ending up as most do with a range of from one to possibly millions of intelligent races in the Milky Way. But then there is the meat--or lack thereof. They mention the Fermi Paradox that asks, "If aliens exist, where are they?" But the authors do not consider the question of why the cumulative SETI effort, after surveying over 60 million stars, has found no evidence of other intelligent races out there. The authors mention the Rare Earth hypothesis, that the odds strongly favor very few if any other intelligent races, but dismiss it with, "This scenario is popular with religions that favor Earth as God's unique and special place in the universe" (p. 208). This slap against Rare Earth's authors Brownlee and Ward is made although the word "God" does not appear in their book. Indeed, many scientists who, like Brownlee and Ward, have no apparent religious motivation, have entertained the question of whether intelligent life is common or rare. For example, consider the 2021 paper published in the peer-reviewed Astrobiology Journal with the title "The Timing of Evolutionary Transitions Suggests Intelligent Life Is Rare" by astronomer Andrew Snyder-Beattie et al. at the University of Oxford. In a YouTube video, physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, who is herself an atheist, states that in her experience scientists who are believers are better at keeping religion out of their work than scientists who are atheists. *One more example: the last chapter discusses the subject "before the beginning," and the fine-tuning problem is brought up briefly, but according to the authors, "The multiverse saves the day" (p. 282). First, no, it doesn't. And second, that is hardly a scientific claim! Later in the chapter they comment that when the science becomes too difficult, "philosophers step in and give it a go" (p. 286). Apparently, according to Tyson and Trefil, it is nice to have those philosophers around to engage with the insignificant questions, like who we are, how we got here, and where we're going. Oh wait, that's the book's subtitle! Yet it disingenuously ignores or disparages the deeper human questions it claims to consider and settles "merely" for amazing facts and discoveries. *This is, either accidentally or on purpose, an anti-philosophy book. Despite all of the fascination with the science, this black-and-white view of the world painfully downplays the color of our genuine deepest questions. Indeed, it has been stated that scientists often make lousy philosophers. Very bright minds can make indefensible statements, as when Stephen Hawking wrote "philosophy is dead," oblivious to the fact that this was a philosophical statement. *Ah well, enough on that theme for now. The science in the book is quite fascinating. A more appropriate subtitle for the overall work would be, "What can science alone tell us about ourselves and our universe?" But that probably would not sell the same. *The book begins with Newton and Aristotle watching an object fall, and discusses how the two would see it differently, tracing some of the history of scientific views of Earth and the cosmos. It is good to see the authors point out that the Greeks, as far back as the third century BC, knew that the world was round. Eratosthenes measured the length of the shadow of an obelisk in Alexandria at the same time the sun touched the bottom of a well in Syene, and he calculated from the angle of the shadow and the distance between the cities the size of the Earth. The authors here introduce the "distance ladder," how observations on a smaller scale can then be used to estimate much larger things. They use this several times to explain how we know some of what we think we know, especially about the size of our universe. This is well done. *After a history of views of our physical placement in the cosmos follows the history of tools of discovery--from telescopes, through radio waves, and reaching above our atmosphere to access the full electromagnetic spectrum. *Next, they look at our universe in the macro, along with its age and materials, leading to stars, planets, and solar systems, including, of course, our own. Further detail about the beginning follows, including the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), Inflation, and so-called Dark Energy and Matter. *After a look at chemistry for elements, particles, and quarks, and also a look at life and biochemistry, they turn to the very beginning and end of the universe, and conclude with a brief but unsatisfying chapter that explores before the beginning. *On the positive side, the book is a good basic primer to the science behind our universe. It will leave any serious student of science, professional or not, unsatisfied. Very few new ideas are presented, breadth over depth is preferred, and controversial views are omitted or minimized. *In the end, Cosmic Queries is an easy read and might be fine for a person just becoming interested in science and the universe, such as perhaps a high school student or a person with little or no science background. Some disclaimers are warranted regarding the utter lack of engagement in the philosophical side of the questions in the subtitle. At least the science is solid. However, a person even somewhat well read in science will find little new or exciting in it. If you need a gift for that well-read person, or if that describes you, the reviewers suggest you pick up the richer and more nuanced Welcome to the Universe (2016) which Tyson cowrote with Richard Gott and Michael Strauss. *Reviewed by Marty Pomeroy, ASA Member and Software Engineer, and C. David Seuss, Founder and CEO of Northern Light, Boston, MA 02129.