Neil deGrasse Tyson makes the complex science of astrophysics accessible and interesting to people who, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t otherwise think about or much less learn about it. I find NDT fascinating because of his status as a public intellectual using modern media as a means of advancing his ‘brand’. But come to think of it, what even is his brand? Is he an astrophysicist, entertainer, or something entirely different? Connecting back to the central theme of my blog, I want to understand how NDT embodies the concept of free speech in the 21st century as way to position himself as a modern public intellectual.
Before I explore these questions further, I think that it’s important to examine why he became an astrophysicist in the first place. A kid from the Bronx, NDG was first exposed to the cosmos upon a visit to the Hayden Planetarium in the American Museum of Natural History. Surprisingly enough he wasn’t initially sold on the idea. In an interview with Stephen Colbert he admitted that when he first saw the projection of stars in the planetarium he thought it was all hoax. For a kid who had never before left New York City, doubting the authenticity of what was being displayed was logical. The only things resembling stars would be the flashing lights of planes passing overhead. It wasn’t until he was nine years old when little Neil was convinced of a universe lying behind the black veil of the city night. Hiking in Pennsylvania he witnessed the universe. Not from a projector, but from light traveling from stars hundreds of millions of years old in galaxies infinitely far away.
At this moment he knew his calling was in the ever-expanding realm beyond the sky. This ‘awakening’ is an attribute that I believe makes NDT a compelling public intellectual. Today, the majority of people live in urban areas. In all likelihood a large portion of this population may have never been exposed to the cosmos. In that way NDT is compelling because of how relatable he is to the common modern citizen. Like them, he too had no exposure to the cosmos for a large portion of his childhood. NDT uses his platform as a way to educate and open our eyes to the universe above is. He is a great storyteller. The way he explains astrophysics primes us to think about our place in the cosmos. As NDT likes to say ‘we are all star dust.’ Learning about the universe is a way to retrace our collective ancestry. In this way he comes across more like a historian than a scientist who spends all of his time researching and laboring over studies. But isn’t that an essential part of being a public intellectual; the whole being an intellectual?
December 20, 1975 was when NDT first met Carl Sagan. The original astrophysics celebrity’s credentials are vast. To highlight a few, he taught astronomy at Cornell, edited the scientific Journal Icarus, and worked on robotics missions for NASA. But what he was most well-known for were his appearances on national TV, which included hosting the original Cosmos Spacetime Odyssey Series. NDT’s application to Cornell for an undergraduate physics degree prompted an invitation to visit Sagan, which he describes as a turning point in his life.
At the end of the day, he drove me back to the bus station. The snow was falling harder. He wrote his phone number, his home phone number, on a scrap of paper. And he said, "If the bus can't get through, call me. Spend the night at my home, with my family." I already knew I wanted to become a scientist, but that afternoon I learned from Carl the kind of person I wanted to become. He reached out to me and to countless others. Inspiring so many of us to study, teach, and do science. Science is a cooperative enterprise, spanning the generations.
While this meeting was influential on NDT’s life, it clearly was not enough to sway him away from pursuing an Ivy league degree in Cambridge instead of Ithaca. I think Carl would have sealed the deal if he had just offered to drive him home.
Carl Sagan was first and fore most an academic scientist. Conducting research was a core responsibility, but just as important was inspiring others to enter the field or at the very least interest them enough to have a desire to learn. I think this relates to arguments surrounding the validity of America’s anti-intellectualism mentioned in Professor Mack’s essay “Are Public Intellectuals A Thing of the Past?”
Academic institutions wield enormous financial, technological, and cultural power—and the fact that, more generally, education continues to be the centerpiece of some of our most cherished social myths (i.e., “the “American Dream”)—are both powerful reasons to doubt that Americans suffer from some instinctive hostility to intellectuals. Two, what is sometimes identified as anti-intellectualism is in fact intellectual—that is, a well articulated family of ideas and arguments that privilege the practical, active side of life (e.g., work) over the passive and purely reflective operations of the mind in a vacuum.
Any argument for the public intellectual that, like Donatich’s, rests the assumption that common citizens are forever childlike and must be led by a class of experts is politically corrosive and historically dangerous.
I interpreted the extracted portion of the text to represent how curiosity and intellectual advancement is a core attribute of the American experience. Institutions of higher education are respected as instruments used to advance the American Dream. People’s engagement with the content and idea these institutions produce is correlated to how relevant these ideas are to their lives. The more relevant the more engaged. People have the autonomy to decide what content to consume in their lives. Therefore, Sagan or Tyson’s popularity did not stem from them thinking astrophysics was important, but instead from the public believing it was.
So, how does a kid from South Central Los Angeles get engaged with astrophysics? At face value, this is a field of study that has no intersection with his daily city life. He may have never seen a constellation in the sky before. Thanks to the internet he may have gone YouTube and watched the NDT Hot Ones episode or listened to a Joe Rogan Podcast NDT was featured on. In all of these mediums he always talks about the cosmos. There is a lot to be said about his role as a self-promoter. You can’t go online and search anything related to the universe and not have his name pop up. I think this is large part due to how applicable the message behind his content is to a wide array of topics.
The content, while centered around the universe, establishes the role science plays in our daily lives. This is an important story to tell because it reengages people with the natural sciences and how they dictate life on Earth. As we enter a critical inflection point in the history of our planet with ever increasing climate inflicted changes occurring around the world, having people learn about this is very important. I’d therefore argue that a public intellectual’s greatest value add is making large and abstract concepts easily digestible by the general population. Ultimately the study of the cosmos brings home the point that we are this tiny blue dot surrounded by vacuum of space. We only have one planet. We should therefore treat it and everything on it with respect.
In many ways, I think that what NDT does is similar to what a priest does, only with a far larger congregation. This is not a particularly original comparison as it is mentioned in Professor Mack’s essay titled “Wicked Paradox: The Cleric as Public Intellectual.”
Nearly every significant movement for social reform in American history was either started or nurtured in the church. Labor reform, the abolition of slavery, the temperance movement, women’s suffrage, public welfare, prison reform, the civil rights movement, the War on Poverty—each of these began as matters of conscience for early supporters.
If we interpret the role of a priest literally, then their tasks should be limited to conducting mass, listening to confessions, and reading excerpts from the Bible. But how do those activities relate to and impact the congregation? How do you keep them engaged and willing to internalize the word of God? You explain how God is a part of everyone’s life. The same is true for science. For the most part people acknowledge its existence, but understanding its relevance to one’s life is critical to in internalizing its importance and thus learning more about it. NDT has the interactive impact of a priest with the influence of the Pope. As a modern public intellectual, technology has enabled him to have this vast reach while simultaneously impacting so many on a personal level.
He is beholden to the laws of science but free to express them in any way he sees fit. That’s not to say that he should or would profess concepts and ideas deduced using non-scientific methodologies. His academic and research credentials are vast. He has published 15 books, was part of the NASA advisory council, and today heads the Hayden Observatory. These accomplishments and accolades clearly validate his status as an intellectual.
Something that I think is important to clarify is the even though his career in the public realm seemingly overshadows these aforementioned accomplishments, that in no way diminishes their validity. It only demonstrates his ability to tell effective and compelling stories about the research he conducts. What separates him from intellectuals with the same ‘story-telling gift’ is that he lives in an era where the public expands the entire world. I’m sure that throughout history there have been many scientists with compelling explanations of the research they conduct, but their audience would be limited to their colleagues. Thanks to technology NDT is one of the first global scientific intellectuals; or dare I say the Universal Intellectual.
So, is Neil deGrasse Tyson a scientist, entertainer, or something entirely different? As a public intellectual, he is both a scientist and an entertainer, but he is also an advocate for learning. With the internet, learning is no longer isolated to the classroom. His appearances on multiple forms of mass media recruit more people to follow his messaging. In 2017, NDT posted a video onto his YouTube channel Startalk titled Science in America. When posting this video on Facebook he said that this video contains “what may be the most important words I have ever spoken." In the 21st century many people fail to accept science as truth. The sooner people acknowledge that that science is true, regardless of if they believe in it, the sooner society can come to a consensus on how to solve the large-scale problems that face us. Here he sounds like political figure advocating for systemic change in society. More specifically, the universal acceptance of the science on which his field of study is built on. I think that he uses his platform and right to free speech as a way to show that science is fundamental to our life. His message is that by learning about and accepting science as emergent truth we can better understand and improve the world we live in.
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