Jul 22, 2008 Posted by Nancy Williams on Jul 22, 2008 in Recommended Books, Science, Skepticism | 0 comments

The Demon-Haunted World – Carl Sagan

I am a podcast addict as any of you who know can attest. I listen to an awful lot of podcasts about an awful lot of things, but my particular favourites are podcasts dealing with science, scepticism (or skepticism depending on which side of the pond you are from), astronomy, rationalism, evolutionary biology and critical thinking. In all of them, I kept hearing mention one book – The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. I knew of Sagan anyway, having seen video of him and heard him recorded, but I had never actually sat down to read one of his books. When I finally got my hands on a copy I began to discover what all of the hype was about.

I think it is safe to say that Sagan is one of the fathers of the sceptical movement. But there is nothing about how he writes that suggests cynicism, dismissiveness or arrogance. This book, which deals particularly with the phenomenon of alleged UFO abductions to a large extent, but traverses through witchcraft, critical thinking and the need for education, the wonder of science and the absolutely incredible scope of the universe. Did Sagan know that this was the last book he was going to write? Deep down he may have, as all of us are only on this earth for a short time, but you would never be able to tell. This book is suffused with such optimism and determination, it is as if it has been written at the beginning of his long career rather than at the end.

What I enjoyed so much was the questions he poses throughout the book. They are all logical, reasonable questions which, if faced, would surely show the conspiracy theorists, irrational thinkers and fantasy prone personalities that there was another possibility for what they thought they knew. I didn’t detect any frustration in the questions thought – they were simply a string of things to consider. If there was one point perhaps I did detect the frustration in the author, it would have been in the chapters where he lamented the poor education of children of today. I think he hoped that the children he saw around him would pick up the mantle and ask the same questions that he was posing when he was no longer there to pose them.

The Demon Haunted World cannot be taken in with one single reading. Although I have completed it, I barely scratched the surface. The chapter on logical fallacies alone deserves going back to again and again, but there has been so much included in the pages that a single reading simply could not do it justice. I leave the book sitting by my bed to dip into every now and then, but I will sit down and read it in its entirety several times over. It should be a compulsory text in schools, simply to give children the ability to question. No amount of technology, internet, gadgets or developments can alter the fundamental human need for that if we really are to go forward into the unknown future.

Other Reviews

http://www.skepdic.com/refuge/sagan.html
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/10/16/232052.php

Rating: 10/10
ISBN: 978-0-345-40946-1
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Year: 1996
Date Finished: 11 July 2008
Pages: 457
Challenges: