Thoughts on “The Demon Haunted World” by Carl Sagan

Photo by Guerretto.

The Demon-Haunted World is a collection of essays by the late Carl Sagan. Most of it is on the perils of pseudo-science or antiscience. The book opens with Sagan being driven to an event by a guy who’d like to talk about science, but then talks about Atlantis, ESP, Aliens and so on. Sagan’s response on eeach occasion being that the evidence really isn’t there.

As we drove through the rain, I could see him getting glummer and glummer. I was dismissing not just some errant doctrine, but a precious facet of his inner life.

And yet there’s so much in real science that’s equally exciting, more mysterious, a greater intellectual challenge-as well as being a lot closer to the truth. Did he know about the molecular building blocks of life sitting out there in the cold, tenuous gas between the stars? Had he heard of the footprints of our ancestors found in 4-million-year-old volcanic ash? What about the raising of the Himalayas when India went crashing into Asia? Or how viruses, built like hypodermic syringes, slip their DNA past the host organism’s defenses and subvert the reproductive machinery of cells; or the radio search for extraterrestrial intelligence; or the newly discovered ancient civilization of Ebla that advertised the virtues of Ebla beer? No, he hadn’t heard. Nor did he know, even vaguely, about quantum indeterminacy, and he recognized DNA only as three frequently linked capital letters.

Mr. “Buckley” – well-spoken, intelligent, curious – had heard virtually nothing of modern science. He had a natural appetite for the wonders of the Universe. He wanted to know about science. It’s just that all the science had gotten filtered out before it reached him. Our cultural motifs, our educational system, our communications media had failed this man. What the society permitted to trickle through was mainly pretense and confusion. It had never taught him how to distinguish real science from the cheap imitation. He knew nothing about how science works.

The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. p4.

I think the above passage illustrates two key points about antiscience. One is that science has revealed an incredible universe of possibilities. But the other is that often it is not a matter of trivial opinion, but a core belief of people. In the closing chapter of the book Sagan cites Jefferson and argues that the skill of thinking critically about evidence isn’t merely desirable, it’s central to any functioning democracy.

Yet many people are sceptical about the validity of science. ‘Science’ told us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, though it has yet to explain how they could also vanish into thin air. It would appear that science is merely another way of explaining the world, like mysticism. If that is the case you’d have to argue that it’s an unattractive alternative to the New Age. I gave a talk a couple of years back on ways of knowing which I thought was to the wrong audience. They weren’t fools, but they were cynical on the value of science. As one person put it, science places limits on humans, while for alternative ways of knowing the only limit is the human imagination. In many ways you could argue that science has been unsuccessful. If it’s so great then how come we haven’t found Atlantis, aliens or ways of communicating with ghosts? Hundreds of Americans are abducted by aliens each year. You’d think at least one network would by now have managed to create a cellphone which can dial from orbit. The usual put down from the most extreme anti-scientists is the quote from Shakespeare:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Hamlet (I, v, 166-167)

How can you respond to that?

One answer might be to point out that the smallpox virus didn’t dream, and so the vaccine might be regarded as a Good Idea. However there is another quote that might illustrate the power of science:

The universe is not only queerer than we imagine, it’s queerer than we CAN imagine.

JBS Haldane

Sagan shows this beautifully in the Demon-Haunted World. A virus shaped like a hypodermic needle that enters DNA? What twisted mind would dream that? For the antiscientists the limit on their claims about nature is the human imagination, for scientists even imagination isn’t a limit. You’re reading words composed in my head in the UK, stored in the USA and read where ever you are, using either subatomic particles hitting phosphors in a screen or being directed through liquid crystals. LCD may be a simple acronym, but the amazing thing about liquid crystals isn’t that they’re the oddest things in the universe, but that they’re not. There are many things even stranger.

Perhaps science, by adhering to nature, does place limits on possible claims, but any good narrative is created not by opportunity but by restrictions and obstacles. The tale of scientific advance is epic in scale and, I hope, we’re still in the opening chapter.

It’s also something that matters. The closing chapter of The Demon-Haunted World is Real Patriots ask questions. It starts with the quote:

It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.

US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson 1950

Without the ability to critique the word of those of government then we lose our ability as an electorate to govern. We lose democracy and government becomes an oligarchy or monarchy where people rule by virtue of family connections, such as having the right father, rather than through the will of an informed people. While you may not agree with the scientific method as being applicable to all things, show me the formula for love, we live in a time when major decisions are taken on a ‘scientific’ basis. In such a place it is desirable for people to take time out to make science publically accessible.

The knee-jerk reaction after a public figure dies is that they were irreplaceable or a great loss. But reading through The Demon Haunted World:mrgreen:

it is clear Sagan’s death was a great loss. Hopefully he’s not irreplaceable. —–