In defence of Professor Cox

Writing in his news blog for The Telegraph, Brendan O’ Neill criticises Professor Brian Cox for espousing a “drab, down-to-earth belief that there isn’t much point to life” in his television series Wonders of the Universe. The idea of humanity as an “insignificant...cosmological accident” supposedly “chimes brilliantly with today’s rather downbeat view of humanity”. This charge is coupled with a similar criticism of Carl Sagan, for whom Cox expresses admiration in the latest episode ‘Falling’. According to O’ Neill “They see in the never-ending chasm of space, not worlds we should aspire to know and possibly conquer and colonise, but a big black challenge to the idea of human historic purpose.”

This is utter garbage.

In describing Einstein’s theory of gravity, and its incomplete nature, Cox speaks of the “beautiful place... on the border between the known and the unknown. That is the true wonder of the universe, there’s so much more left of it to explore.” This succinctly sums up Cox’s belief in the purpose of our existence and its trajectory. The question of our significance comes not from whether we are here by accident or design but how we meet our potential as intelligent beings. Our short existence and isolation on a cosmological scale should humble us, as well as promote the idea of how rare and precious our existence is, and the folly of damaging the planet that sustains our existence.

When Carl Sagan produced his television series Cosmos in 1980 he had cause to be downbeat about humanity. He expressed dismay for the Cold War arms race and the spectre of nuclear war that had brought global civilisation to “the edge of failure”. Even so he was optimistic that a fundamental change could occur to remove this threat, finding precedent for great social progress stretching back to the virtual abolition of slavery world-wide, and continuing today with increasing rights and freedoms for women. He summarised thus: “A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed. We are one planet.” It was for this reason that Sagan campaigned for the cameras of the Voyager 1 spacecraft to be pointed back towards earth, to take a picture of a pale blue dot from the edge of the solar system.

An objective criticism of Professor Cox and his series, albeit small, would perhaps be a tendency to portray prevailing theories, such as the heat death of the universe, as certainties. O’ Neill, however, seems more content to mock Cox’s appearance, including his “peverse....toothy grin” as “he tells us that one day the galaxy of Andromeda will collide with our own galaxy, creating a “beautiful collision of staaaars”, which, er, will bring about the heat death of our planet”, unwittingly revealing his own lack of scientific understanding in the process. His article is inaccurate and unfair, and firmly rooted in personal animosity, ignoring another explanation for the popularity of Professor Brian Cox like Carl Sagan before him: he’s intelligent, enthusiastic and a great communicator.