Carl Sagan – Prophetic Last Interview Carl Sagan (1995)

Prophetic last interview | Carl Sagan

Transcript

My feeling, Charlie, is that pseudoscience, superstition, new-age so-called beliefs, and fundamentalist zealotry are not new. They’ve been with us as long as we’ve been human. However, we now live in an age driven by science and technology, with formidable technological powers. Science and technology are propelling us forward at accelerating rates.

If we—the general public—don’t understand this, if it’s something we say, “Oh, I’m not good at that, I don’t know anything about it,” then who is making the decisions about science and technology? These decisions will determine what kind of future our children will live in. Just a few members of Congress? But there are only a handful of Congress members with any background in science at all. And recently, the Republican Congress even abolished its own Office of Technology Assessment—the organization that provided bipartisan, competent advice on science and technology. It’s as if they’re saying, “We don’t want to know. Don’t tell us about science.”

The danger of this is twofold. First, we’ve arranged a society that’s based on science and technology, yet nobody understands much about it. This combustible mixture of ignorance and power is bound to blow up in our faces sooner or later. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don’t know anything about it?

The second reason I’m worried is that science is more than just a body of knowledge. It’s a way of thinking—a way of skeptically interrogating the universe while understanding human fallibility. If we can’t ask skeptical questions and challenge those who claim something is true, if we can’t be skeptical of those in authority, then we are vulnerable to the next charlatan—whether political or religious—who comes along.

This is something Jefferson stressed. It wasn’t enough, he said, to enshrine rights in a Constitution or a Bill of Rights. The people had to be educated, and they had to practice their skepticism and their education. Otherwise, we don’t run the government—the government runs us.

Posts where this video is embedded

•  Conclusion: Two Pillars of Truth Critical thinking - a civic duty
•  Introduction: Two Pillars of Truth The convergence of science and philosophy in the pursuit of knowledge
•  Pseudoscience and Its Dangers Misinformation and its impact on society
•  Recognising New Age Mumbo Jumbo Understanding and avoiding deceptive New Age ideas

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