The Demon-Haunted World

Summary

1995 book by Carl Sagan The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is a 1995 book by the astronomer and science communicator Carl Sagan. (Four of the 25 chapters were written with Ann Druyan.[1]: x ) In it, Sagan aims to explain the scientific method to laypeople and to encourage people to learn critical and skeptical thinking. He explains methods to help distinguish between ideas that are considered valid science and those that can be considered pseudoscience. Sagan states that when new ideas are offered for consideration, they should be tested by means of skeptical thinking and should stand up to rigorous questioning. Sagan explains that science is not just a body of knowledge, but is a way of thinking. Sagan shows how scientific thinking is both imaginative and disciplined, bringing humans to an understanding of how the universe is, rather than how they wish to perceive it. He says that science works much better than any other system because it has a "built-in error-correcting machine".[2]: 27 Superstition and pseudoscience get in the way of the ability of many laypersons to appreciate the beauty and benefits of science. Skeptical thinking allows people to construct, understand, reason, and recognize valid and invalid arguments. Wherever possible, there must be independent validation of the concepts whose truth should be proved. He states that reason and logic would succeed once the truth was known. Conclusions emerge from premises, and the acceptability of the premises should not be discounted or accepted because of bias. Dragon in my garage[edit] As an example of skeptical thinking, Sagan offers a story concerning a fire-breathing dragon who lives in his garage. When he persuades a rational, open-minded visitor to meet the dragon, the visitor remarks that they are unable to see the creature. Sagan replies that he "neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon". The visitor suggests spreading flour on the floor so that the creature's footprin...