Essay on "Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle"

Essay 4 pages (1275 words) Sources: 1

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan makes a number of astute observations in his book the Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. However, there are a few occasions on which the author misinterprets some information, its importance, and its effects upon the greater world. One of the most salient of these examples is his viewpoint on the influence of television in relation to science and its effect upon an increasingly global audience. Within "Significance Junkies," one of the twenty five different chapters in this manuscript that consists of an independent essay (although many of them allude to points made in previous essays), the author bemoans the fact that true science, powered by skepticism and a reliance on the scientific method, is not represented on television, which instead only glorifies pseudoscience, speculation, hearsay, and a distortion of myriads of scientific facts and premises. No one can dispute this fact. However, the author concludes that the overall impact of this distortion of science on television is that it keeps people away from this field due to its misrepresentation, effectively alienating both science and those who could potentially work in this field. On this point, Sagan is wrong. Due to the intense amount of interest generated by the far reaching and largely preposterous claims of science on television, even greater amounts of people will become interested in independent scientific phenomena and the field in general, producing an opposite effect of what Sagan claims television is doing.

Sagan will be the first to concede that the study of true science, in many respects is boring -- based on intense scrutiny of even the most obvious seeming of facts and a skepticism that is bent on empirically testing virtually all things. Such meticulousness and the level of tediousness involved in it does not make for compelling television. The author alludes to this fact in the following quotation, in which he presents a hypothetical situation involving one of the many pseudoscience television programs popular at the time of his writing. "If there is a mundane scientific explanation and one which requires the most extravagant paranormal or psychic explanation, you can be sure which will be highlighted" (Sagan 351). In this passage, Sagan denotes that scientific explanations are "mundane." Mundane television does not make for very many viewers. The author would probably have readily agreed on this point, and the consequences for advertising and the potential revenue problems that boring television would inevitably bring.

Yet the point that the author does not address is the positives associated with the degree of sensationalism that such pseudo-scientific programs produce. For one, they allow for a wide audience to view issues that are in some way related to science. So what if the science is misrepresented and distorted? These programs can still serve as the gateway to the world of science for the simple fact that they assist in cultivating an interest in phenomena and occurrences that can only be fully invested via the usage of the scientific method. The programs the author mentions do not provide very many accurate answers or explanations for phenomena that can easily be explained via science. But they generate the interest in viewers who may one day draw inspiration from such captivating, entertaining programs, and take up science in order to investigate similar occurrences.

What is interesting about this point that Sagan largely misses is the fact that an alternate interpretation of some of his passages actually implies the degree of inspiration pseudoscience programs may spawn upon observers. Take the following quotation as an example. "The style-setting series 'In Search of . . .' begins with a disclaimer disavowing any responsibility to present a balanced view of the subject. You can see a thirst for wonder here tempered… READ MORE

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