
By: Sheppard Gordon
Re: Sagan-Chicago Tribune

 SAGAN MAKES THE CASE FOR UNDERSTANDING SCIENCE
 04/01/96
 Chicago Tribune
   The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
   By Carl Sagan
   Random House, 437 pages, $25.95

   `I'm frequently asked," Carl Sagan writes in his latest book, " `Do
you believe there's extraterrestrial life?' I give the standard
arguments--there are a lot of places out there, the molecules of life
are everywhere, I use the word billions, and so on. Then I say it would
be astonishing to me if there weren't extraterrestrial intelligence, but
of course there is as yet no compelling evidence for it.

   "Often, I'm asked next, `What do you really think?'

   "I say, `I just told you what I really think.'

   "Yes, but what's your gut feeling?"

   "But I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about
understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as
tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble. Really,
it's okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in."

   The astronomer believes in evidence. "The Demon-Haunted World" tells
the basis of his belief, how the methods of science can help us find
truth, why ignorance of science is not just sad but dangerous, and why
science and democracy are partners in humanity's progress.

   Sagan sees an increasing tendency of people to take refuge from the
terrors of the world in pseudoscience, which wraps a coat of pretended
objectivity about a heart of "wishing will make it so."

   The very fabric of modern civilization is deeply dependent on science
and technology, Sagan notes, yet understanding of them seems to be ever
declining. That "combustible mixture of ignorance and power" frightens
him for the sake of both science and democracy.

   In discussing the particulars of the danger, Sagan examines the UFO
and alien-abduction phenomena. He does not doubt the personal beliefs of
those who say they have been the subject of unwelcome attentions from
small gray creatures with big eyes. But he argues that such stories are
based in hallucinations or visions of a type well known back to medieval
days. Admitting that we don't know how people come to believe they've
had an alien encounter is much preferable to accepting such experiences
as real, Sagan writes.

   Sagan lays out in just a few pages his "tools for skeptical
thinking." If everyone used these tools, he argues, we'd be safer from
charlatans and delusions.

   Sagan also defends the idea of objective reality, describes the
unique combination of skepticism and wonder that marks real science, and
suggests that the excitement you can see in the eyes of small children
at a museum shows that science holds a natural attraction for us.

   In his last chapter Sagan writes: "Like it or not, we are stuck with
science. We had better make the best of it. When we finally come to
terms with it and recognize its beauty and its power, we will find, in
spiritual as well as in practical matters, that we have made a bargain
strongly in our favor."

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