Carl Sagan Explains Evolution in an Eight-Minute Animation

Bio­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion: nev­er has a phe­nom­e­non so impor­tant so lent itself to such clear, under­stand­able, ele­gant expla­na­tions. But just as evo­lu­tion itself pro­duces a seem­ing­ly infi­nite vari­ety of life forms, so the human under­stand­ing of evo­lu­tion has pro­duced count­less edu­ca­tion­al and enter­tain­ing kinds of illus­tra­tions by which to explain it. In the video above, astronomer-astro­physi­cist-cos­mol­o­gist Carl Sagan, no stranger to demys­ti­fy­ing the once seem­ing­ly unfath­omable phe­nom­e­na of our uni­verse, shows how evo­lu­tion actu­al­ly works with eight min­utes of crisp ani­ma­tion that take us from mol­e­cules in the pri­mor­dial soup, to bac­te­ria, to plants and polyps, to lam­preys, to tur­tles, to dinosaurs and birds, to wom­bats, to baboons and apes, to us. Then he goes back and does the whole four bil­lion-year evo­lu­tion­ary jour­ney again in forty sec­onds.

This con­cise les­son con­cerns itself not just with how we human beings came about, but how every­thing else came about as well. That wide-angle view of real­i­ty won a great deal of acclaim for Sagan’s Cos­mos: A Per­son­al Voy­age, the 1980 tele­vi­sion series on which the seg­ment orig­i­nal­ly appeared. Though most of its orig­i­nal broad­casts on life, the uni­verse, and every­thing still hold up as well as this clip on evo­lu­tion, a 21st-cen­tu­ry suc­ces­sor has late­ly appeared in the form of Cos­mos: A Space­time Odyssey, host­ed by astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson, doubt­less the most suit­ed heir to Sagan’s tra­di­tion of enthu­si­asm and rig­or in pub­lic sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion. For a more extend­ed treat­ment of evo­lu­tion, see also our post from ear­li­er this week on deGrasse Tyson’s episode on the sub­ject, in which he spends an entire hour on his equal­ly fas­ci­nat­ing expla­na­tion of what, up to and includ­ing you, he, and I, nat­ur­al selec­tion has so far come up with.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Episode #2 of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cos­mos: Explains the Real­i­ty of Evo­lu­tion (US View­ers)

Carl Sagan Presents Six Lec­tures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar Sys­tem … For Kids (1977)

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: 40 Essen­tial Texts for a Well-Round­ed Thinker

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.


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Comments (12)
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  • Paul Rowland says:

    I am glad that through the grace of God I am a Bible believ­ing Chris­t­ian and know that the world was cre­at­ed by the Almighty in six days as stat­ed in the first chap­ter of the Holy Scrip­tures. The rea­son­ing behind the absurd and laugh­able the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion owes its ori­gin to what is described in the third chap­ter of the Holy Bible where the account is giv­en of the fall of man and his sub­se­quent enmi­ty against God and the Truth of God. Until men are con­vert­ed by the mighty pow­er of God work­ing in them, enlight­en­ing their minds and chang­ing their hearts, man will con­tin­ue in his sin­ful rebel­lion against his Cre­ator and right­ful Mas­ter. Solemn­ly, this will be to his eter­nal woe! All men must die, and then there is the Day of Judge­ment and eter­nal damna­tion for all who live and die despis­ing the sav­ing gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, as do all who believe the Satan­ic lie of evo­lu­tion.

  • Michael Johnson says:

    Dear self-right­eous Swine,
    I also assume you were breast­fed until you were twelve. You have no argu­ment here. Go play in the mud with the rest of your pig­gies. Or prove to me God made us.

  • Paul says:

    Troll. Why on earth would you be on an edu­ca­tion­al site oth­er­wise??

  • robin combs fields says:

    I total­ly agree with Michael.

  • JamesM says:

    Sagan is cor­rect as far as he goes, but he does­n’t tell us how evo­lu­tion hap­pened or how learn­ing start­ed with apes and not ear­li­er with bac­te­ria for exam­ple. This leaves room for sim­ple mind­ed cre­ation­ism to fill those gaps for the igno­rant reli­gion­ists.
    Evo­lu­tion­ists today see evo­lu­tion as a self-evolv­ing process based on all crea­tures learn­ing from expe­ri­ence, and very grad­u­al­ly man­ag­ing to change their forms accord­ing­ly.
    Acci­dents of nature help but they can’t do that com­plex build­ing by them­selves.

  • louis says:

    What if God formed man this way ? from the dust of the earth. In the Bible one day is like a thou­sand years to God…

  • Defaithed says:

    I am glad that through the grace of Odin I am an Edda-believ­ing Pagan and know that Midgard was cre­at­ed by Odin, Vili, and Vé from the corpse of Ymir as stat­ed in the Prose Edda. The rea­son­ing behind the absurd and laugh­able the­o­ry of uni­verse with­out the world-tree Yggdrasil owes its ori­gin to what is described in the Naf­naþu­lur sec­tion of Skáld­ska­parmál and in Gylfagin­ning where the account is giv­en of the ori­gin of the dwarves from the soil of Ymir’s flesh. Until Ask and Embla were cre­at­ed from drift­wood and giv­en three gifts by the mighty pow­er of three gods, imbu­ing them with breath, movement/intelligence, and shape/senses, jotuns and trolls con­tin­ued in their sin­ful rebel­lion against the Aesir and Vanir gods. Solemn­ly, this will be to their eter­nal woe at the field of Vigrid! All gods, jotun, trolls, elves, dwarves, and men must die, and then there is Rag­narok and the fires of Mus­pel­heim for all who defy Surt and ignore the warn­ings in the Edda of Snori Sturlu­son, as do all who believe the Chris­t­ian lie of few­er than Nine Worlds.

  • renato says:

    AS TO EVOLUTION, EVEN A SIMPLE MIND FACING THE EVOLUTIONARY THEORY WOULD ASK: WOW! — HOW COME PARTICLES AS ATOMS FORM MOLECULES , PROTEINS AND BODIES WHICH ARE THEN SHAPED FROM FISHES TO BIRDS, WORMS, MOSQUITOES AND COCKROACHES, and BATS, along with mil­lions of BACTERIA and VIRUSES. AND NOT ONLY THAT, BUT ALSO MAKING THEM MALE AND FEMALE !!! AND THEN MAKES MALES AND FEMALES TO ATTRACT EACH OTHER VIA SMELLS, HORMONS AND, TO SAY THE LEAST… LOVE! WOW! JUST IMAGINE: SIMPLE PARTICLES THAT STARTED WITH ONE SINGLE ATOM OF HIDROGEN AND EVOLVED TO SOMETHING THAT ENDED ENCOMPASSING SOMETHING SO ETEREAL AS LOVE! CAN YOU IMAGINE ALL THAT WITHOUT A SUPER MIND PROJECTING IT ALL? AND THEN YOU DARE COMING OUT SAYING YOU DO NOT BELIEVE IN GOD? COME ON MAN! TRY TO MAKE A WHITE BEAR evolv­ing FROM A WHITE MOUSE, OR VICE-VERSA, AND THEN YOU MAY GAIN SOME CREDIT. OTHERWISE, SUCH THEORY ON EVOLUTION IS JUST AN AWKWARD FAIRYTALE! GOD KNOWS! P.S.: A TIP FOR FREE — TRY AS HARD AS POSSIBLE TO LOOK INSIDE YOURSELF AND THEN YOU WILL HAVE A CHANCE TO GET A GLIMPSE AT GOD!

  • John Williams says:

    One won­ders why some peo­ple both­er watch­ing a video like this if the mind is closed.Don’t for­get that evo­lu­tion devel­oped over 4 bil­lion tears and Sagan con­densed it into 8 min­utes. All ques­tions could not be answered in that time.

  • Julie Biddle says:

    So many mis­in­ter­pret the process of evo­lu­tion. No, we are not descend­ed from chim­panzees, gib­bons, bono­bos, or any oth­er liv­ing species of ape, BUT we and all of the apes are descend­ed from a crea­ture that resem­bled all of us.

    Over time, as suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tions devel­oped muta­tions some devel­oped larg­er brains and lost their tails while oth­ers kept their tails and did­n’t devel­op larg­er brains.

    I rarely see this explained very clear­ly.

  • Kurt Schmedel says:

    l ful­ly believe in evo­lu­tion and always will.
    To all oth­ers… Here’s a thought. lf God is so pow­er­ful, what makes you think that God did­n’t cre­ate evo­lu­tion? So every time you dis­avow even the pos­si­bil­i­ty of evo­lu­tion, you dis­avow God.
    l think it’s time to repent.

  • Albert says:

    To deprive chil­dren of a well round­ed edu­ca­tion ‑all things con­sid­ered is to rob them of think­ing.

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