Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by whoischels
The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
3.0
This was pretty good. I don't think it's quite as good as everyone says it, but that's due to the fact that the stuff he is saying in the book isn't really surprising 30 years later. Sagan's attitudes about improving scientific knowledge are sort of the de facto opinion for educated people now (or at least were when I was I was a kid, things have sort of slipped since then), and seeped into public opinion while I was growing up. It was sort of neat to realize that my middle school science teacher's whole vibe and philosophy was, in fact, clearly influenced by this book specifically. There was a lot I recognized.
It's depressing how prescient this book is. Sagan makes the case that we're sort of on the knife's edge of having scientifically-based public opinion, but could fall off into the sort of anti-science attitudes that have been so common over history. I think that has happened to some extent since he died. He talks about the alien abduction craze of the 80s, now we seem to have a corrollary in the types of demonic influences/manifestation videos you see on TikTok.
It's depressing how prescient this book is. Sagan makes the case that we're sort of on the knife's edge of having scientifically-based public opinion, but could fall off into the sort of anti-science attitudes that have been so common over history. I think that has happened to some extent since he died. He talks about the alien abduction craze of the 80s, now we seem to have a corrollary in the types of demonic influences/manifestation videos you see on TikTok.