Summary Of Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World

In The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Emmy and Pulitzer Prize winning Carl Sagan takes on all comers in the realm of pseudoscience. Witchcraft, faith healings, astrology, superstition, creationism, alien abductions, ESP and telekinesis are just some of the many celebrated fallacies that have their feet held to the fire. This is not the same fire the ancient Greek god Prometheus ‘brought to mankind’. It’s the fire of science and skeptical thinking. Sagan’s predominant message throughout the book is that America's obsession with science fiction and popular myth has curtailed the growth of the United States as a scientifically literate society. “The siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong but a dangerous plunge into darkness that
In so doing, Sagan also explains how the scientific method is used to advance humanity's knowledge, and why science is the best way to understand the world around us. Sagan presents science as a body of knowledge, a way of thinking and an attempt to understand the world. He explains how scientists must be both extremely imaginative and extremely skeptical, that scientific discovery always contains some uncertainty, and that even scientific mistakes can help advance knowledge. He is also careful to stress that science is far from a perfect instrument – citing multiple failures of his own - it’s just the best tool available.
Sagan jumps right in with both feet in Chapter 1 (The Most Precious Thing), recounting a story of the cab driver "William F. Buckley” he once met. "Buckley" is interested in things like the lost continent of Atlantis, UFO abductions, Nostradamus and other propositions. Sagan gently and patiently explains to him time after time that there is no evidence to back up any of his theories. As it finally sinks in, “Buckley’s” face droops lower and lower, sadly