Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

Antiscience
records. You cannot even ask questions of the participants. Every
one of them is dead.
But for many questions in science, you can rerun the event as
many times as you like, examine it in new ways, test a wide range
of alternative hypotheses. When new tools are devised, you can
perform the experiment again and see what emerges from your
improved sensitivity. In those historical sciences where you cannot
arrange a rerun, you can examine related cases and begin to
recognize their common components. We can't make stars
explode at our convenience, nor can we repeatedly evolve through
many trials a mammal from its ancestors. But we can simulate
some of the physics of supernova explosions in the laboratory, and
we can compare in staggering detail the genetic instructions of
mammals and reptiles.
The claim is also sometimes made that science is as arbitrary or
irrational as all other claims to knowledge, or that reason itself is
an illusion. The American revolutionary, Ethan Allen - leader of
the Green Mountain Boys in their capture of Fort Ticonderoga -
had some words on this subject:
Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider
whether they argue against reason with or without reason; if
with reason, then they establish the principle that they are
laboring to dethrone: but if they argue without reason
(which, in order to be consistent with themselves they must
do), they are out of reach of rational conviction, nor do they
deserve a rational argument.
The reader can judge the depth of this argument.
Anyone who witnesses the advance of science first-hand sees an
intensely personal undertaking. There are always a few - driven by
simple wonder and great integrity, or by frustration with the inadequacies
of existing knowledge, or simply upset with themselves for
their imagined inability to understand what everyone else can - who
proceed to ask the devastating key questions. A few saintly personalities
stand out amidst a roiling sea of jealousies, ambition, backbiting,
suppression of dissent, and absurd conceits. In some fields,
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