gilda_elise

How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutions.

Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.

It’s rather disturbing when a book written in 1996 is discussing problems that are very much problems today. Inadequate education for many, the denigration of science and the rise of pseudoscience, the lack of critical thinking, are things we’ve been grappling with for over thirty years and seem to be no closer to a solution.

In this book Sagan describes in detail the root of many of those problems, and, perhaps, a way to deal with them. But time has shown that we haven’t dealt with them, and so the tragedy within its writing is plain to see. Indeed, it seems to have gotten worse.

There is a great deal to digest in this book, and sometimes it can be overwhelming. But it’s well worth reading. Sagan had a lot to say, and was the best at making what he had to say understandable.

I wish he would have lived longer. I wish we would have listened to him.