The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

by Carl Sagan

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the renowned astronomer and author of Cosmos comes a “powerful [and] stirring defense of informed rationality” (The Washington Post Book World) in a world where fake news stories and Internet conspiracy theories play to a disaffected American populace.

LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER • “Glorious . . . A spirited defense of science . . . From the first page to the last, this book is a manifesto for clear thought.”—Los Angeles Times

How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience, New Age thinking, and fundamentalist zealotry and the testable hypotheses of science?
 
Casting a wide net through history and culture, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutions. He examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies as witchcraft, faith healings, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today’s so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning, with stories of alien abduction, “channeling” past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. 
 
As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.

• ISBN10: 0345409469
• ISBN13: 9780345409461
• Publish Date: 25 February 1997 (first published 11 January 1996)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Ballantine Books Inc.
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 480
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780345409461

Reviews

[chetofuor]

‘Demon Haunted World’ by Carl Sagan was a bit of a let down.
I’ve always admired Sagan immensely, but it took me more than a year to read this one. I kept putting it off every other chapter, so I decided to just start from the beginning and read it until the end. ‘Demon Haunted World’ is a bible to the skeptics, where Sagan tries to convey the importance of the scientific method, education, and critical thinking.
To be honest, some of it’s chapters were either boring, dense or too patronizing. I feel like Sagan was preaching to the choir. I believe the people Sagan is trying to educate may just feel too defensive about his teachings, which kind of defeats the purpose of this book?
Either way, I’m still glad I stuck with it it till the end. There are still many great lessons and important insights to take from this book, even if at times its delivery wasn’t the best. I still recommend it for readers that are particularly interested in critical thinking.

[iroshan]

Little bit outdated. Sgu book is better now.

[empressbrooke]

For a while now, I've been saying that I need to start reading some non-fiction. For all the time I spend reading, some of that time should be spent learning about things that are new to me. But then I'd groan and say that I'm not yet far enough removed from being a student to be able to do that for fun.

A GoodReads friend recommended this one during a discussion of sleep paralysis and aliens, and I decided that I should approach this like ripping off a band-aid - I grabbed it off the library shelf and started reading it before my brain could realize what I was doing to it.

Luckily, Carl Sagan is wonderfully readable, and his excitement about science shines through every page. I love his balance of skepticism and wonder and his high regard for his field of study. He had me getting a bit sad when he discussed how American schools (mis)handle teaching math and science, and he made a comment that especially struck me: in history, in English, students are constantly exposed to the voices of the masters of the fields. But we're never given anything written by the people who love math and science. We learn numbers and formulas, but we don't learn to love them from the people who discovered those numbers and formulas. This rang especially true for me.

My only complaint is that the first 3/4 of the book is structured so that each chapter transitions into the next one quite smoothly, but the last quarter of the book jumps around a lot and doesn't seem to have as much focus as the first three quarters.