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WillowOne's Positions

The Demon-Haunted World

Overview

Subtitled Science as a Candle in the Dark, this is Sagan's defence of scientific thinking against pseudoscience, superstition, and credulity. It covers alien abduction, faith healing, witch trials, and the paranormal, and it contains the two pieces for which it is best remembered: the "dragon in my garage", a parable about claims that have been made immune to every test, and the "baloney detection kit", a checklist of habits for telling a good argument from a bad one. Sagan is gentle with believers and hard on the claims.

Notes

If I had to pick one book from this list to give to someone who wanted to understand how I think, it would be this one. The dragon in the garage is the unfalsifiable claim made vivid, and the baloney detection kit is most of the thinking tools in this vault in a single chapter. Sagan also makes the point, which I try to remember, that people who believe nonsense are not stupid and are not the enemy, and that the aim is to pass on the method rather than to win. It is a kind book about an unkind subject.

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