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

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD
world. Penguins on the dimly lit Antarctic ice; okapi in the bright
African veldt; a family of gorillas, the male beating his chest, in a
shaded forest glade; an American grizzly bear standing on his hind
legs, ten or twelve feet tall, and staring me right in the eye. These
were three-dimensional freeze-frames captured by some genie of
the lamp. Did the grizzly move just then? Did the gorilla blink?
Might the genie return, lift the spell and permit this gorgeous
array of living things to go on with their lives as, jaws agape, I
watch?
Kids have an irresistible urge to touch. Back in those days, the
most commonly heard two words in museums were 'don't touch'.
Decades ago there was almost nothing 'hands-on' in museums of
science or natural history, not even a simulated tidal pool in which
you could pick up a crab and inspect it. The closest thing to an
interactive exhibit that I knew were the scales in the Hayden
Planetarium, one for each planet. Weighing a mere forty pounds
on Earth, there was something reassuring in the thought that if
only you lived on Jupiter, you would weigh a hundred pounds.
But sadly, on the Moon you would weigh only seven pounds; on
the Moon it seemed you would hardly be there at all.
Today, children are encouraged to touch, to poke, to run
through a branched contingency tree of questions and answers via
computer, or to make funny noises and see what the sound waves
look like. Even kids who don't get everything out of the exhibit,
or who don't even get the point of the exhibit, usually extract
something valuable. You go to these museums and you're struck
by the wide-eyed looks of wonder, by kids racing from exhibit to
exhibit, by the triumphant smiles of discovery. They're wildly
popular. Almost as many of us go to them each year as attend
professional baseball, basketball and football games combined.
These exhibits do not replace instruction in school or at home,
but they awaken and excite. A great science museum inspires a
child to read a book, or take a course, or return to the museum
again to engage in a process of discovery - and, most important, to
learn the method of scientific thinking.
Another glorious feature of many modern scientific museums is
a movie theatre showing IMAX or OMNIMAX films. In some
cases the screen is ten storeys tall and wraps around you. The
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