The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

A cri de ceour in favor of the scientific method, and completing the Enlightenment's haphazard hold on our culture!! I CAST THEE OUT, DARK SHADOWS OF AUTHORITARIANISM AND WOO!

In a way, this book is a spiritual ancestor of Conspirituality, another book that covers similar themes of anti-scientific social ape nonsense and its ramifications throughout society and politics - though in the post-Covid age.

THIS book, by the very lauded Carl Sagan, is, in many ways, a very 90s book. So I actually struggled through the first half of it. I would rate the first half 2 stars (!). But I just cannot tolerate chapter upon chapter of garbage - and Sagan spends MANY chapters debunking UFOs, crop circles, the X-Files (!), and other super outdated 90s woo. He then spends a fiery chapter on Medieval witch hunts, and his clear-eyed assessment of them as expressions of patriarchal power and control, chef's kiss. But then it's back to alien abduction stories. Mannnn...

I mean. I guess his argument is that humans' capacity to engage in woo is (a) directly tied to our social ape ancestry, and thus (b) TIMELESS. Oh, how I wish he had lived miraculously until now - so he could lock arms with Tony Fauci and fight the forces of anti-vax fear-mongering. Because, indeed, 1995 Sagan predicts 2025 America dismally well. And his tight linking of Enlightenment ideals - the scientific method AND “liberte, egalite, fraternite” (aka social justice) - was just, mwah, so heartening. Thank you!! We must bang this drum again and again and again!!!

Indeed, the second half of the book was much more exciting - and got me very amped up. He circles back to witch hunts (damn the patriarchy!), laments education and the cultural caricatures of scientists (mad scientists, nerds, etc), ponders the link between literacy/education and civic empowerment and democracy, and - single tear - envisions various utopian scenarios of e.g. our political leaders being intelligent and informed and comfortable with uncertainty. SOB.

By the end, I was:
- Ready to re-read Ted Miguel's research on modern witch hunts (and how they occur more often during periods of food insecurity...): http://emiguel.econ.berkeley.edu/research/poverty-and-witch-killing/
- PUMPED to dust off all my pop quantum mechanics books so I could go “whoooooa”
- PUMPED to read about “scientism” as well (sorry, Carl!!!)