Outwardly, he seems likeable enough, but I just get this feeling that there's something really hollow, really rotten with Tyson and his contemporaries. Tyson, more salesman than scientist, pitches a painless, consumable simplification of 'science' as pretty pictures and flowery quotes against the backdrop of the 'science'-and-'progress'-as-instruments-of-secular-salvation metanarrative. Tyson bashes religion and philosophy as distractions at best and militant enemies of 'progress' at worst, creating and feeding divisions that need not, and really can not, exist.
Tyson detracts from the actual practice of science by taking the frustrating, often dead-ending, enormously challenging, and humbling field and reducing it to a series of fashionable, empty, dumbed down, and easily consumed facts, pictures, and platitudes. Almost anyone actually attracted to science by his efforts would likely get quickly frustrated by how mind-numbingly difficult and boring it is. Furthermore, Tyson's efforts create more people with a "let's get high and look at pictures of space" attitude (e.g. the "I fucking love science" Facebook page) and/or a "I heard quantum mechanics sort of explained once, so now I know everything" attitude than a "let's actually work for years in hope of some slight advance in our field that may or may not be a wrong turn in a maze that may or may not have an exit" attitude.
Tyson himself is exactly like his narrative. Tyson has taken the easy way out in his career, doing little actual science1 in favor of popularized 'scientific' evangelization. Why slave away doing the hard work of science when you can get rich and famous doing easy work in the name of science's shallow artifice?
1It's been 21 years since Tyson was last lead author on a published scholarly paper. It's been 16 years since his last "real" scientific paper publication.
Can someone expound on his "disparaging of philosophy" ?
http://theweek.com/article/index/261042/why-neil-degrasse-tyson-is-a-philistine
1. Uhhh... religion IS a distraction at best and a militant enemy of progress at worst.
2. We absolutely do need division between proponents of religion and those who oppose it. You think that belief systems that rely on the willful relinquishment of rational thought can be fought effectively with politeness? Let me go have a nice, quiet discussion with a member of Al Qaeda about how I think Allah does not exist. We'll see how THAT goes.
3. Good. I'm glad Tyson is making important scientific discoveries easy to digest for the poor little tykes whose parents are endlessly filling their heads with Bronze Age hogwash.
Continuing proof that anyone who believes that there is such a thing as "progress" doesn't have an opinion worth listening to.
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