A Classic About How Science Does (and Does Not) Work!October 17, 2008 Carl Sagan will most surely go down as one of the most poetic, and prolific, science popularizers of all time. This book, the last of his published before his death, is a brilliant enconium to science, and warning against pseudoscience.
The book can be divided into three seperate "sections": the first part of the book focuses on exploring all types of pseudoscience and showing how its proclomations are sloppy when compared with the scientific method. the second section focuses more on explaining how science works, and how we can use its method in our everyday lives. The third section is a warning against the "anti-intellectual" trend in schools, and cautions us to teach students from an early age the virtue of asking questions, being skeptical, and being innovative.
If the first "section" of the book - that debunking pseudoscience - had been written in the past five years, it most surely would have concentrated on psychics and clairvoyants. This pseudoscience has witnessed a great popularity of late. As it was written in 1995/96, however, Sagan's focus is primarily on the then-in-vogue pseudoscience of UFO's and belief in extra-terrestrial existence. While this makes the book feel somewhat dated (as beilef in ET is far less prevalent today), Sagan does a GREAT job walking us through the sloppy thinking involved, and why ET is not a sceince.
Sagan's focus on debunking psueodscientific belief in ET is also an interesting choice because Sagan was somewhat of a sympathizer with belief in ET. He certainly thought it was possible, and spent a large part of his career advocating the search for life on other planets. He is not railing against belief in ET, but hasty belief in ET without good evidence.
The section "section" of the book consists of one of the best explanations of the scientific process and how sceince works that I have ever seen outside of the abstruse philosophy of science texts. This is where the real "money is made," and one criticism I have of the book is that, as strong as this section is, it may have made more sense to put this section first and the excoriation of pseudoscience after.
Two chapters stand out from this section of the book. First, there is "The fine art of baloney detection," where Sagan lays down the "rules" of science - rules that, when followed, make it near impossible for bad "science" to make it through the steps of the scientific method. The second stand-out chapter is, "The marriage of skepticism and wonder," a philosophical reflection on the seeming conflict between sceintists' needs to be creative and accepting of new ideas, and scientists' need to stay conservative and skeptical. The best they can do, it seems, is to remind themselves of the necessity of both mindsets, so that if they find themselves favoring the one too much, they can quickly temper it. (Sagan does suggest, though, that a scientist is better off too skeptical than too gullible.)
Teh third "section," about the "anti-intellectual" trend in education and culture - is somewhat lackluster, probably because we have heard it so many times since 1996. It is hard to disagree with many of Sagan's conclusions, but as an astronomer, one does feel that Sagan steps far outside of his specialty. (I am a high school educator, and while I agree with many of Sagan's points, one cannot see some of them as completely unworkable. A science class relying exclsuively on lab experiments CAN lead to "hands on, minds off." I have seen it. One needs ot memorize facts in order to know waht to extract from labs.)
There are only a few criticisms I have of this book. First, as I mention earlier, the book may have done better by explaining what science is before excoriating things that are not sceince. Second, the book is quite meandering at times, and while Sagan may start a chapter talking about x, he often ends talking about z. This gets annoying over several hundred pages, and leads to an unfocused approach. Lastly, there are so many chapters dealing with the same or similar themes (many chapters on belief in UFO's, a few on belief in first-hand testimony), that the book suffers from a bit of redundancy at times.
Other than these, I whole-heartedly reccomend this book to anyone who wants to read a sparkling explanation of what science is, why it is important (albeit imperfect, like anything else), and why straying from it is always a risk.
Skeptics who don't know anything about the paranormal shouldn't be writing books on them!October 15, 2008 0 out of 16 found this review helpful
It annoys me when skeptics who don't know anything about the paranormal write books on them and pretend to be experts.
In this book, Sagan never even met any alien abductees, yet he devotes a whole chapter to them?
If you ask a real researcher like Bud Hopkins, who has interviewed hundreds of abductees, you'll learn a lot more than this pseudo-skeptic and scientist Sagan who is trying to bat out of his league.
These debunkers never present the best arguments from the paranormal believers/experiencers side. They just build up straw mens and knock them down.
Plus they insult our intelligence, with notions like astrology is all general hits that fit everyone. If that was the case, no one would believe in it. Duh! Truth is, they are not general hits, but highly specific.
The vedic version of astrology as well as the Chinese purple heart astrology, are even far more accurate and specific than the western astrology.
See my essay which exposes the fallacies and misinformation that skeptics spread about the paranormal, to get a dose of truth.
Also see my youtube channel where I expose some of the lies and misinformation James Randi spread about Uri Geller.
http://www.youtube.com/user/WWu777
Thanks, Winston
Required readingOctober 4, 2008 Carl Sagan provides a strong yet humane antidote against the effects of the soothesayers, crystal healers and entrail-readers. While he won't change their beliefs in the unproven and unprovable, and he can probably never drown out our somehow inborn fear of things that go bump in the night, many of us need a gentle innoculation against slopping thinking from time to time. Just such an innoculation is provided here, in a mixture of wonder, humility, and compassion that reminds us again why we still miss Dr. Sagan.
A must read bookSeptember 28, 2008 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book explains the reason why "intelligent" humans still believe in foolishness such as ghosts, demons, devils, gods and prayer. Turns out we aren't all that smart after all. It has the advantage of being the truth which some of us prefer to hear. As always, Carl Sagan was one of the most intelligent humans who has yet lived. May his tribe increase.
Changed my live and views! I love you Carl!September 7, 2008 2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This one book helped me to reject 9 years worth of silly occult beliefs. I suppose I didn't 100% believe them, but they were things I wanted to believe. I knew that this book would change me and for awhile I was even nervous to read it, but a few months ago, my time had come.
He spends a lot of time spent debunking claims of alien abductions, comparing the scenarios (nighttime, sexual coercion, etc) to descriptions of "demonic possessions" in the Middle Ages, and believes that aliens are just a later incarnation of demonic possessions, based on things that are more prevalent today. He also talks about how crop circles were admittedly a hoax--but I wonder how many people even know that? I think there are still some people who believe in them. And about the "classified information" on UFOs mostly being classified because it's about foreign relations, not extraterrestrial aliens.
He also talks about people's claims of psychic powers and how none of them have ever been proven. He talks about how it is easy to trick people into believing in psychic phenomenon, because people really want to believe in it, how people see patterns in things that have no pattern (this is an evolutionary trait), and how people select evidence that points to the conclusion they want, while ignoring the contrary evidence. I used to be interested in ESP quite a lot, but now, thanks in no small part to this book, I see it for the load of garbage that it is. Astrology is just generically positive traits that people attribute to themselves, dreams are entertaining but don't mean anything, and as for the "psychics" that I met, they've never given any proof. Some people pretend to be psychic to get your money (you'd be better off wasting your money on gambling, or even lapdances) and some people really do think they're psychic, but they're just flattering themselves. No one who's claimed telekinetic powers has ever offered a demonstration, so again I think they're either lying or hallucinating.
I felt very liberated after reading these things, and instead of the open-minded confusion that I used to feel about contradictory belief systems, suddenly everything was clear and made perfect sense.
Sagan does knock down psuedoscience and superstition, but I still think that he has an open mind. He admits to a feeling of "spirituality" even though he doesn't believe in actual spirits; it's more of just a cosmic feeling when thinking about the universe. He talks about how in science, a person must have both an imaginative mind and a cynical mind: you can imagine lots of explanations for things, but unlike in psuedoscience, you can't cling to these wild ideas after they've been proven wrong. He even admits to a minute possibility that a few "phenomena" could be true. Of course it would be awesome to live in a world where you can levitate and where crystals have special powers, but that doesn't mean I'm going to believe in it despite the evidence.
In the last few chapters, he writes about education declining in the US. This is relevant because he believes lack of education makes people more gullible toward outrageous (but appealing) claims, and more vulnerable to charlatans. He worries that our society is going downhill because of this decline in education and that it could have serious consequences. (Kind of like Idiocracy?) Well...I didn't do so spectacularly in math or science, but even just knowing basic things about the scientific method and rationalism is very helpful. Unfortunately, psuedoscience is just more flashy--but in the long run, some people will realize it's nonsense.
I recommend this book to everyone! Especially if you believe in any of the "phenomena" he's talking about!
