Wonder and Skepticism

Last night I suddenly wanted to listen to Carl Sagan's last address to the Committee for the Scientific Investigation for Claims of the Paranormal (now known as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry).   I needed to hear Sagan's voice, his particular blend of awe, humor, and bracing rationality.   In this particular speech he shares his introduction to science, particularly astronomy, comments on its value (practical and personal), and reflects on how the values of skepticism might be communicated more broadly, warning against an attitude of arrogance on the part of those who consider themselves rationalists.

"I'm always amazed that there is another area that I'd never thought of -- crop.circles.  Aliens have come and made perfect circles and mathematical equations...in wheat!. Who would have thought it? Or they've come and eviscerated cows -- on a large scale, systemically. Farmers are furious. I'm just always impressed by the depths of inventiveness that the new stories that are debunked in Skeptical Inquirer reveal...but then on more sober reflection, it seems to me the stories are fantastically unimaginative. That compared to the stunning, unexpected stories of science across the board, they have a kind of dreariness to them, a lack of imagination, a human chauvinism to them.   That's all they can imagine extraterrestrials doing? Making circles in hay?"


"...the last way for skeptics to get the attention of those people is to belittle, or condescend, or to show arrogance toward their beliefs. They are not stupid; it is a problem of society more than anything else. If we bear in mind human frailty and fallibility, we will have compassion for them. [....]  The one deficiency which I see in the skeptical movement is an us-versus-them [attitude]...a sense that We have a monopoly on the truth, all these other people who believe in these stupid doctrines are morons or worse -- that's it, if you'll listen to us, if not, to hell with you -- that is nonconstructive. That does not get our message across. That condemns us to permanent minority status. "

Ad Astra Per Aspera

A reading from Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, set to utterly perfect music.

We were hunters and foragers -- the frontier was everywhere. We were bounded only by the earth, and the ocean, and the sky. The open road still softly calls; our little terraqueous globe is the madhouse of those hundred thousand, millions of worlds. We, who cannot put even put our own planetary home in order, riven with rivalries and hatreds, are we to venture out into space? 

 By the time we're able to settle even the nearest planetary systems, we will have changed., The simple passing of so many generations will have changed us. Necessity will have changed us. We're... an adaptable species.  It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri, or the other nearby stars --  it will be a species very like us, but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses. More confident, far-seeing, capable, and prudent. For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness.

What new wonders, undreamt of in our time, will we have wrought in another generation, and another? How far will our nomadic species have wandered by the end of the next century, and the next millennium? Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds in the solar system and beyond, will be unified -- by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge whatever life may be, the only humans in all the universe come from Earth.

They will gaze up and strain to find the Blue Dot in their sky. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings -- how many rivers we had to cross before we found our way.

====================

Varieties of Scientific Experience

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
ed. Ann Druyan, © 2006
304 pages

In 1985, Carl Sagan delivered a series of lectures to the University of Glasgow on the general subject of natural theology, or rational bases of religion.  Not being a religious man, Sagan’s own lectures (“A Search for Who We Are”)  probe for the instincts that give rise to religion, compare them to man’s search for knowledge through science, and suggest that in ways religion has been superseded by the scientific enterprise.  This is the record of a naturalist’s examination of religion, and his failure to be convinced. But unlike the works produced by the ‘new atheism’, Sagan’s approach is without bellicosity.. He doesn't savage religion in the manner of Christopher Hitchens, or cold-bloodedly shoot it down in the manner of Richard Dawkins.  He begins by talking about subjects that seem to be unrelated – UFOs, for instance --  before skillfully guiding the chat toward more relevant material; having appealed to the readers’ skepticism regarding prehistorical aliens, for instance, he merely suggests it be directed towards another subject: miracles, say.  His conclusions are not pompous accusations and grandiose speeches: they are the gentle question, the urging to follow a thought or an instinct through to its conclusion. It strikes me as a potentially effective way to create room for skeptical thought in a religious mind, but there are limits. Sagan never touches on his own religious experience, but his biographies suggest he grew up in a secularized Jewish home, with no meaningful belief in deity or religious practice. For the religious reader, Sagan's argument may lack some strength  he explains what he imagines religious conviction to be based on, but as an outsider his reach is limited.  Religion has a power beyond the mental distractions Sagan catalogs here, the feelings of warm-fuzziness and wonder. At one point he refers to the Christian sacrament of wine and the native American use of peyote to generate religious hallucinations, but a sip of wine at the Communion table is hardly comparable to mind-altering substances.  Sagan isn't an opponent of religion; he hails it as a potential source of moral order, especially in the dark times of the Cold War.  He thinks it should know its place, however, that faith should cede victory to the scientific method in realms like the acquisition of knowledge.  The deeply religious will find his argument reductionist; is there nothing more to life than that which can be measured and weighed?  Sagan's strength here is arguing for more skepticism in everyday affairs, but I think he misses in his  simplistic appraisal of religion.

Contact

Contact
© 1985 Carl Sagan
432 pages

"We could be in the middle of an intergalactic conversation -- and we wouldn't even know." - Michio Kaku, "Our Place in the Universe".

Dr. Eleanor Arroway, known as "Ellie" to her few intimates, is long accustomed to being marginalized. She's a woman in a field dominated by men, and her interest in using radio telescopes to search for intelligence life in space further isolates her. Even those who take note of her brilliance do so only to suggest that perhaps she's wasting her time looking for "little green men".

And then....the signal. Steadily pulsing, it cannot be tracked to a satellite in Earth orbit, nor is the region of space it appears to emanate from a source of pulsars. This signal comes from outside -- and it comes with purpose. The initial signal contains prime numbers, but as Ellie and her coworkers begin to dissect the data, they find a recording of the first signal from Earth to find its way into space -- and then, The Message, a massive transmission of data that unites the world's scientific, political, and economic authorities as they search for the Message's meaning.

While Contact is in part a science fiction tale that depicts humanity's first contact with extraterrestrial life, Sagan also offers a story about the human search for meaning. He does this by bouncing the nonreligious Ellie, who finds meaning in science, off of Christian guru and television personality Palmer Joss,  who sees a transcendental deity and revealed truths as the source of ultimate meaning. Later, Sagan puts Ellie into the position of defending what might be called a religious experience.

To my knowledge, Contact is Carl Sagan's only fictional work.  I first read it in 2005 or 2006, and Sagan's depiction of radio astronomy changed the way I thought about extraterrestrial life. In the years since, my readings in astronomy and physics have convinced me that Sagan's Contact scenario is more likely than say First Contact. Contact is among the more interesting novels I've read, and it's one I can recommend. While the opening premise is interesting by itself, the role of scientific wonder and the advocation of the human spirit make it all the better.

"She had studied the universe all her life, but missed the clearest message: for small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love." - 429


Related:

• Contact, a film adaption of the book that stars Jodie Foster. Although it takes a few liberties with the plot , the visuals are solid and the acting makes even the more despicable characters fun to watch. The intro, in which the camera soars through space, following the advance of Earth's oldest television transmissions, is particularly memorable. 
• The Symphony of Science videos, all starring Sagan in part. "Our Place in the Cosmos" has a line that neatly refers to the pretext of Contact. 

Are we all alone, or are there others standing by.

Waiting to see what we will do, how hard we'll try?

It costs a lot to live, even more to fly.

Kindly send a prayer my way while I shoot up in the sky.

We'll send the best from Earth, to find out what it's worth.

We'll send the best from Earth, to find out what it's worth.

- "Others Standing By", Prometheus Music

The Cosmic Connection

The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective
© 1973 Carl Sagan
273 pages

Carl Sagan penned The Cosmic Connection in the interests of communicating his own exhilaration at the human exploration of space. He begins by expressing his appreciating for being alive when he was, at such a unique point in history when human beings were capable of and willing to explore the solar system: no other generation will visit the planets Sagan and his colleagues did for the first time. The book almost seems a collection of essays at times, united only by the common topic of astronomy and space exploration, but Sagan does weave inter-essay references into a few of them, particularly towards the end. Although some essays are more technical than others, the book should be readable for even lay persons. I would recommend it particularly to astronomy buffs and Sagan fans.

The Demon-Haunted World

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

© 1995 Carl Sagan

457 pages

Carl Sagan's Demon-Haunted World is a classic of the modern skeptical movement. I initially began to phrase that "will be considered", but quickly changed it: if a skeptical website or blog has a list of reccommended books, chances are good that Demon-Haunted World will be on the list along with Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things. Sagan is perhaps best known for his work with Cosmos: while a scientist himself with experience in the Voyager and Mariner projects, Sagan made a career out of popularizing science. In The Demon-Haunted World, Sagan writes on the importance of science education and more importantly -- the mindset behind science. "Science is not just a body of knowledge," he writes here and commented in an interview, "It is a way of thinking. It is a way of of skeptically interrogating the universe with an eye for human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those of authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan -- political or religious -- who comes ambling along."

The importance of science education and a scientific/skeptical worldview are two themes here, but another that underlies them is the wonder of science. While he applies skepticism to UFO sightings, crop circles, and faith-healers in the book, Sagan writes that perhaps these things stem from an appetite for wonder that people do not realize can be found in the world of science. Part of one chapter seems to come from his lecture "Wonder and Skepticism", which you can listen to here following an interview with his co-author, colleague, and wife Ann Druyan. Sagan does not only advocate a scientific worldview on the basis that it increases our well-being or is simply useful: as he cautions in an introductory chapter, "We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces." Like Erich Fromm in The Sane Society, he cautions that change is not only useful here, but necessary.

It was lovely to revist Carl Sagan: his joy at the natural world and being able to think about it intelligently are compelling and contagious, as I found when I first read him in 2006.

Related:

• The Sounds of Sagan: various recorded interviews and music files that relate to Sagan in some way. Some of the songs are from Cosmos. One particular favorite is #7, "When Carl Sagan Died".
  
• Point of Inquiry featured Carl Sagan's last address to CSICOP after an interview with his wife, Ann Druyan.
• Celebrating Sagan, a Sagan-themed blog.
• The Official Carl Sagan Website
• Carl Sagan on Wikiquote
• Carl Sagan on Wikipedia
• Reading from Pale Blue Dot (a favorite)
• "Who Speaks for Planet Earth?"
• On the Day Carl Sagan Died (news clips announcing his death)
• Ted Turner interviews Sagan (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5)

This Week at the Library (10/9)

Books this Update:

• Me of Little Faith, Lewis Black
• When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris
• Surviving Auschwitz, Primo Levi
• Carl Sagan: A Life, Keay Davidson

I began this week with Me of Little Faith, which is a book about comedian Lewis Black’s experiences with religions and the paranormal. Black is a comedian often featured on The Daily Show who hosts his own show on the Comedy Central channel called The Root of All Evil. It’s not anti-religious, which came as a surprise to me given his comedy routines. Black was raised Jewish and considers himself a Jew even though he doesn’t follow Judaism. This makes him a “cultural Jew”, which Black says sounds like a name for some sort of yogurt. Black begins by describing growing up in a family of “cultural Jews”, then moves on. The book is a book of comedy, so there’s no real organization to it. Black describes his experiences and knowledge of various religious entities (Jonestown, Oral Roberts, Mormons, the Amish, televangelists), reflects on religions’ various effects, and provides personal anecdotes to give the reader a feel for Black’s own religious beliefs. As far as I could figure, he believes in a god, believes in ghosts, believes some people are gifted with psychic abilities, and is easily impressed by astrological coincidences. He mentions experiences he’s had -- seeing things while visiting the Farm, seeing things while being touched by a guru, etc. A large part of one chapter comes from his “Red, White, and Screwed” show; a clip of which you can see here.

Next I read David Sedaris’ When You Are Engulfed in Flames. Sedaris is a comedian, one I became familiar with thanks to NPR. He often appears on the show “This American Life”, and when he read from Me Talk Pretty One Day, I was so amused that I had to go find the book. I ended up reading all of his humor books, and I looked forward to this new one with great anticipation. It was not disappointing. Sedaris’ particular style of humor is as ever delightful. If you want to listen to Sedaris reading from one of his books -- and thus get an idea for what is included -- click here for one of my favorite readings. That’s a short version: you can watch the longer version here.

Also this week I read Surviving Auschwitz, which is the story of an Italian man named Primo Levi who was captured by fascists while hiding in the countryside of Italy. Owing to his Jewish ancestry, he was sent to Auschwitz. Because he was captured in 1944, he was only forced to spend a year in the work-camp. While the SS had suspended mass killings by this point -- wanting to maintain as much of a work force as possible to help with the war effort -- death was still common. Levi describes the work details, the infirmary, the rituals of life in the camp. It’s an interesting read.

To finish the week’s reading off, I read Carl Sagan: A Life by Keay Davidson. The book is a large biography of Sagan, host of Cosmos and an astronomer associated with the Mariner and Voyager projects. He’s one of my favorite people to learn from, and as such I enjoyed this biography very much. The book does not shy away from Sagan’s failings, which I appreciate. Reading the book is a bit like reading about science, skepticism, and psuedo-science from the 1950s to the 1960s. Here are a few Sagan-related links:

1. Celebrating Sagan
2. "Pale Blue Dot"; Sagan reading from Pale Blue Dot. Beautiful video.
3. "Wonder and Skepticism", parts 1 and 2. His last lecture.
4. Ted Turner interviews Carl Sagan, part 1. You can find the rest from there.
   

Pick of the Week: When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris

Next Week:

• The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampusa. This book is another book for school.
• Banquets of the Black Widowers, Isaac Asimov. Given how much I enjoyed the first two books in the Widowers series, I’m sure I’ll enjoy this one.
• The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’, Bill Zehme. I read this book in early 2005 and am anticipating a good re-read.
• Sinatra: the Artist and the Man, John Lahr

This Week at the Library (12/10)

Life at college tends to cut into my reading time. I'm not particularly caught up in doing any one thing, but there are a multitude of little affairs -- going to classes, working, practicing German, studying, club meetings -- that add up. Consequently, I'm not able to read through a given list as quickly as I used to be able to. My most recent reading:

- Broca's Brain by Carl Sagan
- The Assault on Reason by Al Gore, Nobel Laureate
- The End of Faith by Sam Harris
- And The Darwin Awards, edited by Wendy Nortcutt.

When I visited the campus library to obtain Broca's Brain, I had to go upstairs. The layout is very dense up there, and I was momentarily confounded by the Library of Congress system. While I looked around for the Sagan book, my eyes fell upon The Darwin Awards. The Darwin Awards, for those of you who don't know, are given to people to remove themselves from the human gene pool in incredibly stupid ways. The awards (given posthumously, of course) are so named because the removal of these genes are said to aide the human race in evolving. I visit the website on a regular basis, and I was delighted to discover this book, which is a compilation of submitted stories. The stories contained therein are hilarious.

After I finished The Darwin Awards, I was very eager to begin former Vice President Gore's book The Assault on Reason. Gore begins by explaining how the culture of television has negatively impacted the democratic process, leaving Americans entertained but uninformed. Then begins the book proper. Some of the topics Gore addresses are "The Politics of Fear", "The Politics of Wealth", "Blinding the Faithful", and "The Assault on the Individual". You can probably figure out what these chapters are about. "The Assault on the Individual" deals with the abuses the Constitution has endured in the past six years under the reign of You-Know-Who*. "Blinding the Faithful" concerns how those in the right wing have used Christians in America to come to power. Of course, there's no way I'm going to feel sorry for fundamentalist Christians who continue to be duped by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. I used to be one of `em. I say if you find a supporter of the current president, ask them about the Military Commissions Act and the Patriot Act. Their faces will go blank. They'll have no idea what you're talking about. The same is true of Executive Order 9066.

After finishing The Assault on Reason (which I would recommend), I read Sam Harris' The End of Faith. This book was one of the first to be written when rationalism and atheism started coming into vouge a few years ago. The book doesn't just attack fundamentalism (Christian and Islamic) and promote rationalism and compassion-based ethics; it contains a good deal of philosophy. I enjoyed the book, although it wasn't quite what I expected. My favorite part of the book was when Harris compares faith to a rhinoceros. In Harris' words, a rhinoceros won't do any real work for you, but up close it demands your attention.

Finally, I read Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. This book was written by Carl Sagan, so as you can imagine I enjoyed it. The book strikes me as a collection of individual essays rather than one tightly-focused book. In one chapter, Sagan gives the biography of Albert Einstein. In another, he muses on the role science fiction plays in affecting people's ideas about science. The subjects are varied, and most are interesting. Given how different each chapter is from the other, I think it's safe to skip a chapter that focuses on something the reader isn't personally interested in.

Pick of the Week: The Assault on Reason. The Darwin Awards was a hilarious book, but I prefer substance over amusement.

This week's reading: unknown. I haven't really determined what all I want to read this week. I know I'll be reading Mephisto by Klaus Mann for my German History class, and I'll also be reading England in the Time of Chaucer by Roger Hart. I may also do some reading in the direction of my research papers.

This Week at the Library (11/9)

This Week at the Library (11/9)

Currently Listening To: "Waking Up in the Universe", Richard Dawkins


" It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it. " - Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot


Last week I checked out Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Shelters of Stone by Jean M. Auel. I had only half-finished Shelters the week before, and aimed to finish it -- which I did. I also finished The Deathly Hallows, which finishes the Harry Potter series. I had to wait almost an entire week to get it after I finished Half-Blood Prince. (I have been informed by friends who had to wait years between books that I "suck".) If you've not read Half-Blood Prince and plan to do so, kindly close your eyes and scroll down for a few seconds so that your reading experienced is ruined.

I kept thinking of the book as The Deathly Hollows; I thought that one of Harry's friends were going to be killed as he and the rest of Dumbledore's Army fought the forces of Lord Voldemort in some wooded area. As it turns out, the "Deathly Hallows" are three artifacts/relics that all have something to do with death. Actually, only two of them can be sensibly tied to death; associating the Invisibility Cloak with death is a bit of a stretch. In The Deathly Hallows, Harry and friends are supposed to be hunting for Hocruxes that contain bits of Voldemort's soul so that they can kill him off for good. I don't want to reveal too much of the plot, but every thing ties together. I was not particularly surprised by the ending, but I enjoyed it.

As mentioned, I also finished Shelters of Stone. I predicted that Jondolar would have to choose between his community and the woman he loves; well, he doesn't. In The Shelters of Stone, Ayla and Jondolar settle into life among the Zelandonii. Ayla tells the story of her life (the one she told several times in book three and the one she told too many times to count in book four). The reaction among Jondolar's people is pretty much the same as with everyone else; everyone is impressed with the exception of one or two jealous or tradition-bound people. Ayla once again draws some flak when she announces that she was raised by the Clan (the Clan being "primitive" Neanderthals and the Zelandonii being the "intelligent" Cro-Magnons). She makes a few petty enemies, gets mated to Jondolar, and has a baby. That's it. This book's lack of a real plot would be baffling if I didn't know that it's the fifth part of a sixth series. While the rest of the books can stand alone by themselves, though, I don't think this one can. I wouldn't read it without reading some of the others, just so that it makes some sense. It's nice to learn about the customs of these people, but there's no plot-driven story that is developed through the book. Auel simply tells what happens to Ayla once she and Jondolar arrive back at his home; the months recorded here are as uneventful as a few months in an average person's life. I am hoping that Ayla's petty enemies were being introduced in this book to serve some more dramatic purpose in the sixth, final, and yet to be released book.

Finally, I read Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot. I have now officially read every one of his books with the exception of the one on the nuclear winter. While I am morbidly interested in the effects of nuclear winter, I think the only nuclear attacks we'll ever really worry about are those that take place at the hands of Islamists with their addled minds set on dreams of Heaven. I may read it later on, though, just to say that I've read everything written by Carl Sagan. I recently watched an "old" interview (1989) between himself and Ted Turner. The entire interview is on YouTube, and you can begin watching it by clicking here. In the second clip, Turner brings up nuclear winter. While the interview is now nearly twenty years old, ridiculously enough we're still facing the same problems -- global warming, inadequate health care, and a woefully uneducated populace. Sagan even mentions that a sizeable percentage of U.S. students couldn't locate their own country on a map; deja vu, anyone?

I enjoyed Pale Blue Dot enormously. That goes without saying; the book is by Carl Sagan. I think the book might dethrone Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors as my favorite Sagan book; we'll see as time goes by. The book is primarily concerned with humanity's role among the stars. A few weeks ago (before I checked the book out) I added a video onto my MySpace profile. Sagan's words in the video feature in the beginning of the book. Toward the end of the video, he says that astronomy is a "humbling experience". This is how he begins the book, by illustrating through a history of astronomy the various ways that humanity's arrogance has been checked by further knowledge of our cosmic insignificance. Sagan moves on to explain how we started to explore the solar systems and goes into detail on how particular parts of the solar system formed; he talks about the natural history of Venus that can be deduced through the available evidence, for instance. The book covers all manner of subjects, all of them tied in some way to astronomy. While I think the book could be enjoyed by anyone, I would especially recommend it to people interested in astronomy like myself. I also want to recommend another video.

A couple of months back, I somehow encountered Prometheus Music, which produces songs dealing with humanity's adventures in space flight. "Surprise!" is about Sputnik, for instance. My favorite song is "Fire in the Sky". I happened to find a visual history of space flight set to the song -- I hope you enjoy.

Pick of the Week: Despite the fight Deathly Hallows put up, I have to say that my favorite reading for this week was Sagan's Pale Blue Dot.

I also began reading Only Yesterday. I'm not reading it in book form, but online. I can't find a copy of the book in any of the nearby libraries, and I've been wanting to read the book for two years. Because of this, I have overcome my aversion to e-books and started to dig in. So far it's fantastic.

This week, I plan to read Richard Dawkins' The River Out of Eden. Despite my enormous affection for Dawkins, I have actually only read three of his books -- Unweaving the Rainbow, The Ancestor's Tale, and The God Delusion. I've tried twice to read The Selfish Gene, but genetics bores me. With that in mind, it seems ridiculous that I am reading another of his books about genetics. I plan to read the book largely because of the fact that I'm familiar with and enjoy reading Dawkins' works. I love watching interviews with the man, and I'm hoping that this book is as engaging as he is in interviews.

Dawkins was featured in a panel of interviewees that I watched a few days ago. Another of the panelists was Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who wrote about her experiences as an ex-Muslim emigrant to Europe in the book Infidel. I'm interested in her story, so I'll be reading the book this week.

So, this week:
- Only Yesterday, Frederick Lewis Allen
- The River Out of Eden, Richard Dawkins
- Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali