Kenneth C. Zirkel / Wikimedia
Carl Sagan
Very associated with astronomy and science in general, the American cosmologist took human irrationalism seriously. And so left some ideas… different. Now recovered.
When talking about Carl Sagan, There is talk about astronomy, cosmology, and science in general.
Astronomo, cosmologist, American scientific writer and promoter. A passionate communicator for planetary science who brought more people to the world science created stakeholders.
Among his lasting legacy, he dropped phrases like “imagination is more important than knowledge” – what he did not imagine is that his knowledge would be recovered in 2025.
It is known because the site recalled this week this thinker, which took irrationalism seriously. More concretely your book.
In this book, Carl Sagan suggests that our daily thinking derives a lot from metaphors, mythology and superstition.
But in the same work, also predicted a future in which the US would enter a period of terrible decline.
Citing: “I have a feeling about a America in my children or grandchildren – when the US is a service and information savings; when almost all industries have migrated to other countries; When impressive technological powers are in the hands of very few, and no one represents the public interest can even understand the issues; When the people have lost the ability to define their own agendas or question with knowledge who is in power; When, grabbing our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties are declining, unable to distinguish between what makes us feel good and what is true, we slide, almost without realizing it, back to superstition and the darkness…”.
Defender of science as a path of progress, Carl Sagan feared that “the candle in the dark” of science was erased by “The disqualification of America…”.
Some stupid USA that would be “more evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the sound bites 30 seconds (now reduced to 10 seconds or less), programming for the smallest common denominator, gullible presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of Celebration of ignorance…”.
Carl Sagan wrote this book in 1995. He died in 1996.
He had no opportunity to live the age of social networks and global scale misinformation. A “late, perhaps terminal sign of the decline of scientific thinking,” says Open Culture.
Prophecies, some will say.
