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A review by nilla_
The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan
5.0
My lifetime doesn’t overlap with Carl Sagan’s. I knew of him as a respected scientist and author, but most of that information came from other scicomm enthusiasts - from work by Ann Druyan or from acknowledgement by the pop scientists that populated my childhood, like Bill Nye or Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
But in reading this book I was reminded of the wonder of the written word, and the way it can resurrect someone who may physically be long gone. I miss Carl Sagan now. I briefly lived his hopes for dissemination of the scientific method and I cried a little as his descriptions of the issues within science hit a little too close to home. (Please put out good vibes for me to get into a grad program with funding, as much as both Sagan and I agree there’s little evidence to suggest that would help.) I am glad he never saw the rise of Internet-driven conspiracy theories, although I do believe he would have been able to predict their advent.
On an unrelated note, it was fascinating to read nonfiction work from twenty-five years ago: references to the discovery of DNA structure without a single reference to Franklin, in an otherwise actively inclusive work; description of American deficit in education presented as shocking information instead of a general truth we’ve reluctantly accepted; discussion of Isaac Asimov and Linus Pauling and Stephen Jay Gould as contemporaries. Wild.
But in reading this book I was reminded of the wonder of the written word, and the way it can resurrect someone who may physically be long gone. I miss Carl Sagan now. I briefly lived his hopes for dissemination of the scientific method and I cried a little as his descriptions of the issues within science hit a little too close to home. (Please put out good vibes for me to get into a grad program with funding, as much as both Sagan and I agree there’s little evidence to suggest that would help.) I am glad he never saw the rise of Internet-driven conspiracy theories, although I do believe he would have been able to predict their advent.
On an unrelated note, it was fascinating to read nonfiction work from twenty-five years ago: references to the discovery of DNA structure without a single reference to Franklin, in an otherwise actively inclusive work; description of American deficit in education presented as shocking information instead of a general truth we’ve reluctantly accepted; discussion of Isaac Asimov and Linus Pauling and Stephen Jay Gould as contemporaries. Wild.