Hulu cosmos a spacetime odyssey
As David Sessions at The Daily Beast points out, “What Cosmos doesn’t mention is that Bruno’s conflict with the Catholic Church was theological, not scientific, even if it did involve his wild-and occasionally correct-guesses about the universe.”Ĭosmos certainly likes its edgy outsiders-those willing to question conventional wisdom and the “thought police.” But maybe now it’s the one squelching the free flow of ideas. Powell, writing for the science publication Discover, enumerates several instances where Cosmos misleads its viewers on Bruno’s story, whose list of heresies apparently goes well past just scientific musings (most of which had, incidentally, already been voiced without the Church bringing out the torches). We’re told that that theory threw him into conflict with the era’s “thought police,” the Catholic Church, and that he was eventually burned at the stake for heresy.īut Corey S.
Always there’s an undercurrent of we know better now.Īn example: In the premiere episode, Tyson dives into the history of Giordano Bruno-a Catholic friar who had the audacity to suggest that the sun was just an ordinary star and that the universe was infinite. Sometimes it’s patronizing, gazing back at the ancients who worshipped the sun. It marvels (using our earlier analogy) at the workings of the oven … its switches, its knobs, its gas-fired power … while disregarding (or dismissing) what we Christians would say is the most inspirational aspect of the cookie: the skill and care of the Baker. Evolution and an almost infinitely ancient universe is a given.Ĭosmos is meant to inspire-but in a solely secular-scientific way. Foul language is restrained to very mild profanities.īut in the midst of this journey, audiences are given a litany of scientific “facts” that sidestep the idea of a Creator and will exclude Creationists. There is no sex (though there are hints of lust in the animated stories), little violence (though the occasional animated character dies). Through beautiful computer renderings, we witness the birth of supernovas, the dance of atoms and a whole host of weird and wild things. In animated snippets, viewers see critical moments in science history, when thinkers made important discoveries or crucial connections. Tyson is a genial and gracious host who takes us, via CGI spaceship, around the world, around the galaxy and through time itself. It is science as understood and disseminated by the modern mainline scientific establishment. Narrated by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of New York City’s Hayden Planetarium, Cosmos is a grounded layman’s exploration of this wondrous universe of ours.
#Hulu cosmos a spacetime odyssey series
Cosmos, a reboot of sorts of Carl Sagan’s famous PBS series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, is a science show, after all-and science, by its nature, is not prone to dabble in the supernatural. And creationists will also have reason to push back against the baking temperature and time settings.Īll of this is, perhaps, to be expected. Nothing about the Baker who put the cookies in it.
The conflict we so often feel between the two is simply the result of us not fully understanding how the appliance operated (and science, by its own admission, is constantly redefining itself) or fully understanding God (because God is inherently beyond our mortal comprehension).įox’s 13-episode documentary Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, then, is a show that’s all about the oven. I see the oven in which the universe rose, and I see the Baker, or Creator behind it all.
When I think of the sometimes contentious conflux of faith and science, that’s what I see. Others might simply say, “My Aunt Edna made them for me.” Or my daughter or husband or someone else who had been so kind. That is how that cookie came to be, they might say. They would probably mention the baking it underwent in an oven at a precise temperature for a set time. Some might talk about the flour and milk and sugar inside each one, mixed just so. Nice, right? But how would you say that cookie came to be? Say you’re reading this at your computer, and there’s a warm, homemade chocolate chip cookie on a plate beside you.