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

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD
President and chief spokesman, Grover Whalen - a former
corporate executive, New York City police chief in a time of
unprecedented police brutality, and public relations innovator. It
was he who had envisioned the exhibit buildings as chiefly
commercial, industrial, oriented to consumer products, and he
who had convinced Stalin and Mussolini to build lavish national
pavilions. (He later complained about how often he had been
obliged to give the fascist salute.) The level of the exhibits, as one
designer described it, was pitched to the mentality of a twelveyear-old.
However, as recounted by the historian Peter Kuznick of
American University, a group of prominent scientists, including
Harold Urey and Albert Einstein, advocated presenting science
for its own sake, not just as the route to gadgets for sale;
concentrating on the way of thinking and not just the products of
science. They were convinced that broad popular understanding
of science was the antidote to superstition and bigotry; that, as
science popularizer Watson Davis put it, 'the scientific way is the
democratic way'. One scientist even suggested that widespread
public appreciation of the methods of science might work 'a final
conquest of stupidity' - a worthy, but probably unrealizable, goal.
As events transpired, almost no real science was tacked on to
the Fair's exhibits, despite the scientists' protests and their appeals
to high principles. And yet, some of the little that was added
trickled down to me and helped to transform my childhood. The
corporate and consumer focus remained central, though, and
essentially nothing appeared about science as a way of thinking,
much less as a bulwark of a free society.
Exactly half a century later, in the closing years of the Soviet
Union, Ann Druyan and I found ourselves at a dinner in
Peredelkino, a village outside Moscow where Communist Party
officials, retired generals and a few favoured intellectuals had
their summer homes. The air was electric with the prospect of new
freedoms - especially the right to speak your mind even if the
government doesn't like what you're saying. The fabled revolution
of rising expectations was in full flower.
But, despite glasnost, there were widespread doubts. Would
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