Once in about the year 2001 previous to the events of 9-11, I was in college and not enjoying the experience. I set foot into a store called On Cue which had an assortment of items such as cds and books and lava lamps. In a section, somewhat to my then irritation, marked metaphysics, was the book The Demon Haunted World I was a psychology major at that juncture, and the emphasis was on science and metaphysics was a naughty word. Surely, Sagan, preeminent among scientists would not have written a metaphysical book?

The book, when I read it then, had a huge impact upon me. It was not so much what it said, but rather that I believed much in an opposite way to what it was saying. The same was true of my psychology major which was part of my misery. What Sagan had to say about science became, to me, the exact sort of arguments as to why science could not work. I appreciated much of what Sagan was saying about the method, we simply disagreed on how and why and when it could be used and what the limitations of such a method were.

What I did not remember having read it again was all the alien abduction time and energy Sagan put into this book, along with fairly frequent allusions to Satan or Satanism or all the above. Nearly half the book is about this content. When someone spends that much time on trying to refute something, the old quote "Thou doth protest too much" comes to mind. Sagan, being a major part of the space community, was in a position to know some things others did not. Whether or not he neglects to mention those things or looked the other way is a matter of opinion on the basis of this book. At the very least, some large mechanisms of denial are present.

The book then, was metaphysical after all mostly because it is not resting on science to prove or disprove any of these claims, but it talks about how science ought to work or does work. A discussion of that sort is epistemological, which is necessarily metaphysical.

Likewise, Sagan finds himself in domains he does not fully understand. When he goes after astrology, it appears that he is going after a simple sun sign. A sun sign is no where near the operational definition of astrology just like the term mathematics does not fully describe quantum mechanics. One must learn quite a lot of very specific mathematics before one begins to be conversant on a quantum matter. Why then does Sagan not invest the time in properly defining astrology? Probably because he is using a straw man version to kick around. He's guilty of this several times over in this work.

What I noticed now, with the wisdom of twenty years added to my tenure on the planet in this work is that Sagan is struggling between his natural childhood inclination to believe in magical things, and the world of adults and what is real and pragmatic. The child Sagan grows up into an adult who though they might wish magical things were real, cannot find a platform on which to stand in order to substantiate their existence and so concludes no such things are real. Instead, the magic is transferred to the laws of nature and what one can do with them. These laws in Sagan's mind are codified within the body of Science.

Alas, the candle of science is not going to keep the demons away. For that, one is more likely to have success with a Bible. The reason science cannot keep the demons away is because it does not believe in them in the first place, which suits the demons just fine. Though Sagan takes careful pains to bash the Bible as being blood-thirsty, it occurs to me that nowhere did God suggest to Moses or Joshuah to build a hydrogen and/or an atomic bomb. No, it would seem those whispers were only heard by the God of Science, whoever or whatever that may be. When this bastard child that possibly destroys the whole globe was born, the scientists were lauded as heroes and geniuses. For every person science saves from death with penicillin, surely the potential to destroy the entire world of all living things negates the advance?

No one ought to go about life believing everything he or she is told. This includes works by scientists. If Sagan's book can withstand a scientific sort of scrutiny applied to it, would it not be the case that the work would pass his own test? And, on the other hand, if it does not, would that not mean it has failed in the endeavor it outlines? Herein lies the key. In the desperation to dismiss authority and find the limits of knowledge, one often finds themselves as an authority imparting knowledge. We become the shadow of the thing we were struggling to come to terms with. Unfortunately, Sagan does this.

Despite all this, however, I still found some gems in this book and again it has informed my thinking in a way it could not have done before and does not intend to do. Perhaps Sagan's book is close enough to some truths even if it is denying them that they sprout despite the wishes of the author. In that, I suppose Sagan would find himself in the company of Peter, and hopefully not in the company of Judas. ( )

The Demon Haunted World is pure Carl Sagan. A full volume of Mr. Sagan proving that he was not only smarter than most of us, he was wittier. This book is nothing more than several hundred pages of (I will say successfully) Sagan showing us that there can always be something other than blind belief and taking things at face value and the importance of contemplating them first. The dangers of not thinking and the importance of critical thinking. This book was published in the mid-90s shortly before his passing. He was correct on about the mental state of the world and the dangers of just being superficial in a superficial world. Mostly references and case studies from the pages of time he establishes more than a multitude of reasoning behind the ideas but does not forget to remind the reader that “Hey…I could be wrong about this…but just think about it before jumping to conclusions. Weigh your options, use a little common sense. Then and only then can you make an accurate assumption about said situation.” He does not call us idiots, he only says we act like them most of the time and cause more suffering and grief than is necessary in not only our life but those around us which at times can amount to a mountain of a snowball that takes everyone in its path to a icy grave.
The book is well written and deeply personal. He touches on the aspects of his youth, his family and the ideas that drew him to the stars. The stuff we are all made of. ( )

This is a tribute to clear thinking – to using the tools of scientific reasoning and plain old skepticism to pick out what's real from the hoaxes, scams, and pseudoscience around us. Since it was written almost thirty years ago the examples used in the first part of the book are dated – faces on Mars, crop circles, alien abductions – but the methods it promotes are as relevant today as they were then. Where it hits its stride is in the latter chapters that describe how intellectual curiosity and scientific research have historically built on each other to create applications that were initially unimaginable. In the acknowledgments section Sagan explains how this was written over the course of nearly a decade. As a result it’s not a book to rush through, in fact it’s one worth rereading. ( )

In a world of ungrounded thought, I feel comforted by Sagan's sagely, skeptical words. "Skepticism doesn't sell newspapers," he explains. He was heavily pro-science and upset about America's scientific illiteracy which fawns over fables and eschews facts. In this book, he takes no prisions from Atlantis and Lemuria, New Age pseudoscience, religious doctrinaire that attempts to validate themselves through prophecy, weeping paintings of the Madonna, Jesus' face on tortillas, fortune tellers (that btw target young women), psychics and channels including Ramtha, amulets, exorcisms, psychic surgery, witches, ghosts, flying saucers, astrology, reliance on prayer and miraculous healing, contradictory platitudes, and spiritual justifications for nearly any action.

"Some portion of the decision-making that influences the future of our civilization is plainly in the hands of charlantans," Sagan writes. "When we are self indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition."

Carl Sagan's question for a possible extraterrestrial was, "Please provide a short proof of Fermat's Last Theorem."

"How is it, I ask myself, that UFO occupants are so bound to fashionable or urgent concerns on this planet? Why not even an incidental warning about CFCs and oxone depletion in the 1950s, or about the AHIV virus in the 1979s, when it might have really done some good?"

Sagan thoroughly elucidates the most common strategies used to defend perilous fallacies of logic and rhetoric.

In this book, he includes some history of the founding father's of the U.S. who were "realistic and practical, wrote their own speeches, and were motivated by high principles." He also uses examples of leaders and events in Europe, Russia, and China, and how they thought in ways that were superior to the dreck we have spiraled down to. He admires Jefferson's response to the Sedition Act and Linus Pauling's stance against nuclear weapons and involvement in the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963. Sagan himself took an anti-nuclear stance.

Carl Sagan wisely implores us to question everything our leaders tell us.

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."

As far as Sagan's brief mention of drugs used for certain DSM diagnosis, the expert I defer to in that realm is Robert Whitaker and his book "Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill."

I read portions of Sagan's book over again, and skimmed a few parts that seemed a bit repetitive. Overall, a very worthy read that I give a strong five stars. ( )

A well-written reflection on the role of science in lighting our way through the darkness of religiosity, politics, and human folly. ( )