“The Demon-Haunted World”. Can Democracy Survive Scientific Ignorance?
One of the most insightful communicators of science to grace this planet was Carl Edward Sagan. He grew up in Brooklyn’s Bensonhurst neighborhood, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. He became one of the foremost astrobiologist, astrophysicist, cosmologist and author and science communicator the United States has ever produced. He published more than 600 scientific papers and 20 books, many for non-scientists. He narrated and co-wrote the American public television series “Cosmos: A personal Voyage, the most widely watched series in the history of public television. He was a professor at Harvard, but in 1976 he saw the light and moved to Cornell where he was the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences. He won a Pulitzer Prize and received the highest award of the National Academy of Sciences for “conveying the wonder, excitement and joy of science… to explain difficult concepts in understandable terms is a magnificent achievement.” He wrote that we have achieved a circumstance in which the world is dependent on science and technology in almost every area, manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, education, medicine, government, and increasingly so, but we have a society in which very few understand science. This he posits is a prescription for disaster. What would he say to see a devotee of QAnon elected to the United States Congress?
In 1655, Thomas Ady published a book in London entitled A Candle in the Dark attacking the witch hunts, then prevalent as a way to explain the inexplicable, for example epidemics and destructive storms. The witchmongers said witches must exist, arguing “how else could any of these things be or come to pass?” Microbiology and meteorology, Sagan reminds us, are able to explain events that then were a justification for burning women at the stake. Ady, also, predicted in 1655 that “the Nations (will) perish for lack of knowledge.” Sagan posited in his text A demon-haunted world (1) that “in times of scarcity, during challenges of self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished role in the cosmic place or purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us--then, habits or thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.” Think MAGA! Think Klu Klux Klan! Think QAnon, a conspiracy theory in which its adherents believe that Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton, among many others, represent a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who molest and in some cases kill and eat their victims to extract a life-extending chemical. The anti-vaxxer movement has serious fallacious elements as does the anti-public health movement.
Superstition and ignorance still pervade our world. Consider the belief that 13 is an unlucky number. Buildings are built with a sequence of an 11th, 12th, 14th, 15th floors and so designated in the elevator controls. Fountainview Gonda West, my six-floor senior living community, has no apartment 113, 213, 313, 413, 513 or 613 designated. I assume for fear a prospective resident would not select an apartment number ending in 13. Of course, in the former example and all other, the designated 14th floor is the actual 13th. Like it or not, whoever casts their evil spell on its inhabitants will not pay attention to the number assigned but to the actual floor it represents. Palmistry, numerology, astrology, Ouija boards, and reading tea leaves as harbingers of future events are still prevalent and astrology is given credence by its vague forecasts being published in newspapers. One can only hope that education coupled with an increasing dependence on science will eventually tip the balance significantly to the point that the overwhelming fraction of our society are moved by verifiable facts and feel the need to see and evaluate the evidence before believing nonsensical or irrational claims.
1. Carl Sagan. The demon-haunted world. Science as a candle in the dark. Random House, New York, 1995
Written January 2021