The Demon Haunted World - Science As A Candle In The Dark - By C

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The Demon Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark

By: Carl Sagan

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General Information

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Type.................: AudioBook

Platform.............: Any MP3 Player

More Info............: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469




Title................: The Demon Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark

Artist...............: Carl Sagan

Year.................: 1995

Genre................: Speech

Comment..............: Complete and Unabridged AudioBook

Duration.............: 14 Hours 20 Minutes

Number of Songs......: 1 Single MP3 File



Genre................: Non-Fiction / Philosophy of Science



Audio Format.........: MP3

Bitrate..............: 96 Kbps CBR

Source...............: Tape (With Audio Quality Edits and Silence Removal)

Recording............: Audio Cassettes Recorded Using Audio Record Wizard 3

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Release Notes

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Amazon.com

Carl Sagan muses on the current state of scientific thought, which offers him

marvelous opportunities to entertain us with his own childhood experiences, the

newspaper morgues, UFO stories, and the assorted flotsam and jetsam of

pseudoscience. Along the way he debunks alien abduction, faith-healing, and

channeling; refutes the arguments that science destroys spirituality, and

provides a "baloney detection kit" for thinking through political, social,

religious, and other issues.



From Publishers Weekly

Eminent Cornell astronomer and bestselling author Sagan debunks the paranormal

and the unexplained in a study that will reassure hardcore skeptics but may

leave others unsatisfied. To him, purported UFO encounters and alien abductions

are products of gullibility, hallucination, misidentification, hoax and

therapists' pressure; some alleged encounters, he suggests, may screen memories

of sexual abuse. He labels as hoaxes the crop circles, complex pictograms that

appear in southern England's wheat and barley fields, and he dismisses as a

natural formation the Sphinx-like humanoid face incised on a mesa on Mars, first

photographed by a Viking orbiter spacecraft in 1976 and considered by some

scientists to be the engineered artifact of an alien civilization. In a

passionate plea for scientific literacy, Sagan deftly debunks the myth of

Atlantis, Filipino psychic surgeons and mediums such as J.Z. Knight, who claims

to be in touch with a 35,000-year-old entity called Ramtha. He also brands as

superstition ghosts, angels, fairies, demons, astrology, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness

monster and religious apparitions.



From Library Journal

In a chapter entitled "Science and Hope," Sagan (Pale Blue Dot, Random, 1994)

writes: "This book is a personal statement, reflecting my lifelong love affair

with science." Accordingly, he deplores pseudoscientific thinking and the

credulous beliefs that emerge from it. Today, when science is critical for

solving the world's problems, many people, instead, trust astrology and New Age

spiritualism. Likewise, surveys reveal that a majority of Americans believe that

Earth is regularly visited by space aliens. Using basic tools of

science?empiricism, rationalism, and experimentation?Sagan debunks these and

other common fallacies of pseudoscience. In doing so, he speculates as to how

such beliefs arise. Some of his explanations are not entirely convincing (are

alien-abduction tales really modern versions of medieval myths?), but he handles

them with empathy so as to not demean the intelligence of true believers. The

best chapters examine the state of science education and technical literacy in

America and suggest an agenda for improving both. Still, Sagan's theme is

important, and his popularity might lure some readers from the UFO and occult

books cluttering so many library and bookstore shelves. For public and

undergraduate libraries.



The New York Times Book Review, James Gorman

While he touches on various sorts of pseudoscience and antiscience, including

repressed memories of all sorts, creationism, belief in miracles and, to his

credit, the claims of tobacco companies that cigarettes have not been shown to

be harmful, Mr. Sagan's primary target is the widespread belief in alien

abductions . . . he is seldom wrong . . . [and] he always writes clearly.



From Booklist

Sagan has devoted himself to the noble mission of rousing us from our stuporous

neglect of science. His accessible and passionate books about the cosmos, our

origins, and space exploration (Pale Blue Dot ) open doors of perception into

exciting realms many nonscientists simply avoid. In his newest book, Sagan

conducts a vigorous inquiry into why science is so "hard to learn and hard to

teach" and asks why so many people embrace the sort of "pseudoscience"

associated with New Age beliefs or served up in the pages of tabloids.

Widespread scientific illiteracy and a dearth of critical thinking are "perilous

and foolhardy," Sagan tells us, and that's obviously true. To show us just how

deluded we can be, Sagan tackles the popular belief in extraterrestrials and

alien abduction stories, debunking a number of half-baked but commonly held

assumptions simply by asking commonsensical questions. He moves on to the whole

"recovered memory" debacle, then segues into a very convincing discussion of

hallucinations. Ultimately, he links today's aliens with yesterday's demons in

this lithe, well-supported, sometimes quite wry, and altogether refreshing

performance. Stick to the facts, Sagan tells us, "There are wonders enough out

there without our inventing any." There are wonders within, too, all we need to

do is learn to use them.