Sagan is a world full of demons. Carl Sagan A world full of demons. Science is like a candle in the dark

"A world full of demons" - latest book Carl Sagan, astronomer, astrophysicist and outstanding popularizer of science, published after his death. This book, dedicated to one of his favorite topics - the human mind and the fight against pseudoscientific stupidity - is a kind of summary of all his work. Myths about Atlantis and Lemuria, faces on Mars and encounters with aliens, magic and reincarnation, clairvoyance and Bigfoot, creationism and astrology - Sagan consistently and mercilessly exposes the myths created by ignorance, fear and self-interest. This book is a skeptic's manifesto, a textbook of common sense and the scientific method. A bright, deeply personal text is not only a battle with pseudoscience, but also an amazing picture of the formation of a scientific worldview, greatest discoveries and devotees. Science for Sagan is pure joy, it is amazing in itself. To take just a few facts: all information about a person is contained in every cell of the body; quasars are so far away that their light began to radiate towards the Earth even before it was formed; all people are relatives and descend from the same ancestors who lived several million years ago. Science opens up unprecedented possibilities, and humanity has long no longer needed to invent idols for itself and allow itself to be manipulated. 3rd edition.

CARL SAGAN

A WORLD full of DEMONS:

The science- like a candle in the dark

2014

To my grandson Tonio.

I wish you to live in a world full of light and free from demons

We wait for the light, but we live in darkness.

Isaiah 59:9

Do not curse the darkness - light at least one candle.

Proverb

Preface.

MY MENTORS

Stormy autumn day. On the street, fallen leaves swirl in funnels of small tornadoes, each hurricane lives its own life. It's good to be at home, warm and safe. Mom is cooking dinner in the kitchen. Older guys, from those who bully kids with or without reason, will not penetrate our apartment. It hadn't even been a week since I got into a fight - I forgot who it was, probably Snooni, who lived on the fourth floor - swung like hell, and my fist hit the glass window of Schechter's Pharmacy.

Mr Schechter was not angry. “It doesn't matter, I'm insured,” he consoled, pouring a terribly stinging antiseptic over my wrist. Then my mother took me to the doctor, to the office on the first floor of our house. The doctor pulled out a piece of glass stuck in his hand with tongs, took a needle and thread and put two stitches.

"Two seams!" my father repeated with delight that evening. He understood the seams: his father worked as a cutter at a garment factory, with a huge, scary-looking saw, he cut out ready-made forms from a high pile of fabric - backs, for example, or sleeves for ladies' coats and suits - and then these patterns were sent to women who sat in endless rows at sewing machines. My father was pleased: finally I got angry, and anger helped me overcome my natural timidity.

Sometimes it's really good to give back. I did not plan such a surge of rage, it came flooding by itself. A second ago, Snoony was shoving me - and now my fist is smashing into Mr. Schechter's window. I hurt my wrist, my parents made unexpected medical expenses, I smashed a window, and no one got mad. Snooni and he suddenly became my friend.

I tried to think about this lesson. It was much more pleasant to think about it in a warm apartment, looking out of the living room window at Lower Bay, than to go down to the street, risking new adventures.

Mom, as usual, changed clothes and put on makeup for the arrival of her father. The sun was setting. Mom came up to me, and together we looked at the surging waters.

There people fight and kill each other,” she said, pointing with a wave of her hand to the other side of the Atlantic. I looked as closely as I could.

I know, I replied. - I see them.

You don't see anything. It’s very far away,” she objected sternly, and went back to the kitchen.

How does she know whether I see those people or not, I thought. Narrowing my eyes, I imagined I could make out a narrow strip of land on the horizon, and there tiny figures were pushing and shoving each other and fighting with swords, like in my comics. But maybe mom is right? Maybe it's just my imagination, something like nightmares, from which I still sometimes woke up at night - my pajamas were soaked through with sweat, my heart was pounding desperately?

In the same year, on one Sunday, my father patiently explained to me what role the zero-tenens plays in arithmetic, taught me difficult to pronounce names big numbers and proved that largest number does not exist ("You can always add one more"). Suddenly, as a child, I was impatient to write out all the numbers in a row from one to a thousand. There was no paper in the house, but my father had cardboard boxes that the laundry put in shirts. I enthusiastically began to implement my plan, but, to my surprise, things did not go so quickly. I was only writing out the first hundreds when my mother announced: it's time to wash my face for bed. I got desperate. I won't go to bed until I reach a thousand. Father, an experienced peacemaker, intervened: if I go to the bathroom without whims, he will write for me for the time being. My grief was immediately replaced by stormy joy. When I got out, washed up, my father was already approaching 900, and I managed to get to 1000 thanks to only a slight delay from the usual time for bedtime. Since then, huge numbers have retained their charm for me.

And back in 1939, my parents took me to the World's Fair in New York. There I had a vision of an ideal future that science and advanced technology were supposed to provide us with. Solemnly they buried a time capsule filled with modern items in the ground to teach the descendants from the distant future - oddly enough, it was assumed that they would know little about the people of 1939. The “world of the future” will be clean, well-equipped, and, as far as I could understand, there will be no trace of the poor.

Current page: 1 (total book has 30 pages) [accessible reading excerpt: 7 pages]

Carl Sagan
A world full of demons. Science is like a candle in the dark

Translator Love Sums

Editor Artur Klyanitsky

Project Manager I. Seryogina

Correctors M. Milovidova, S. Mozaleva, M. Savina

Computer layout A. Fominov

Cover designer Y. Buga

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* * *

To my grandson Tonio. I wish you to live in a world full of light and free from demons

We wait for the light, but we live in darkness.

Isaiah 59:9

Do not curse the darkness - light at least one candle.

Proverb

Foreword
My mentors

Stormy autumn day. On the street, fallen leaves swirl in funnels of small tornadoes, each hurricane lives its own life. It's good to be at home, warm and safe. Mom is cooking dinner in the kitchen. Older guys, from those who bully kids with or without reason, will not penetrate our apartment. It hadn't even been a week since I'd gotten into a fight—I forgot who it was, probably Snooni, who lived on the fourth floor—and swung like hell, and my fist hit the glass window of Schechter's Pharmacy.

Mr Schechter was not angry. “It doesn’t matter, I’m insured,” he consoled, pouring a terribly stinging antiseptic over my wrist. Then my mother took me to the doctor, to the office on the first floor of our house. The doctor pulled out a piece of glass stuck in his hand with tongs, took a needle and thread and put two stitches.

Sometimes it's really good to give back. I did not plan such a surge of rage, it came flooding by itself. A second ago, Snoony was shoving me, and now my fist hits Mr. Schechter's window. I hurt my wrist, my parents made unexpected medical expenses, I smashed a window, and no one got mad. Snooni and he suddenly became my friend.

Mom, as usual, changed clothes and put on makeup for the arrival of her father. The sun was setting. Mom came up to me, and together we looked at the surging waters.

“There people fight and kill each other,” she said, gesturing to the other side of the Atlantic with a wave of her hand. I looked as closely as I could.

“I know,” I replied. - I see them.

- You don't see anything. It’s very far away,” she objected sternly, and went back to the kitchen.

How does she know whether I see those people or not, I thought. Narrowing my eyes, I imagined I could make out a narrow strip of land on the horizon, and there tiny figures were pushing and shoving each other and fighting with swords, like in my comics. But maybe mom is right? Maybe it's just my imagination, some kind of nightmares that I still wake up from sometimes at night - my pajamas are soaked through with sweat, my heart is pounding desperately?

* * *

That same year, one Sunday, my father patiently explained to me the role of the locum tenens in arithmetic, taught me the hard-to-pronounce names of large numbers, and proved that there is no largest number ("You can always add one more"). Suddenly, as a child, I was impatient to write out all the numbers in a row from one to a thousand. There was no paper in the house, but my father had cardboard boxes that the laundry put in shirts. I enthusiastically began to implement my plan, but, to my surprise, things did not go so quickly. I was only writing out the first hundreds when my mother announced: it's time to wash my face for bed. I got desperate. I won't go to bed until I reach a thousand. Father, an experienced peacemaker, intervened: if I go to the bathroom without whims, he will write for me for the time being. My grief was immediately replaced by stormy joy. When I got out, washed up, my father was already approaching 900, and I managed to get to 1000 thanks to only a slight delay from the usual time for bedtime. Since then, huge numbers have retained their charm for me.

And back in 1939, my parents took me to the World's Fair in New York. There I had a vision of an ideal future that science and advanced technology were supposed to provide us with. They solemnly buried a time capsule filled with objects of modern times in order to teach descendants from the distant future - oddly enough, it was assumed that they would know little about the people of 1939. The “world of the future” will be clean, well-equipped, and, as far as I could understand, there will be no trace of the poor.

"See the sound," called one of the fair's amazing inscriptions. Indeed, when the tuning fork was struck with a hammer, a graceful sine wave appeared on the oscilloscope screen. “Hear the light,” another poster said; and exactly when a beam of light fell on the photocell, a crackling sound was heard, similar to that heard from our Motorola receiver, if, turning the knob, you get between the radio stations. The world was full of wonders that I had never known before. How can sound turn into a picture, and light into noise?

My parents were by no means scientists, they were not even close to science. But they almost simultaneously instilled in me doubt and amazement, that is, those two modes of thought, hardly compatible, from which scientific method. My parents had just come out of poverty, but when I told them that I would become an astronomer, I received their unconditional support, even if they hardly guessed what an astronomer was doing. My parents never once advised me to quit stupidity and study to be a doctor or a lawyer.

I would love to commend the elementary, middle, or high school teachers who inspired me to turn to science, but I never had such teachers. We recited by heart periodic table elements, fiddled with levers and inclined planes, remembered that photosynthesis takes place in green leaves, and learned the difference between anthracite and bituminous coal. But there was no inspiring amazement, just as there was no hint of the evolution of ideas, not a word about those errors that were once generally accepted. In high school, laboratory classes began with a predetermined result - you won’t get it, you won’t get a good mark. Personal inclinations, intuition, the desire to test - and even disprove a hypothesis - were by no means encouraged. It always seemed that the most interesting chapters in the textbook were the appendices, but the school year invariably ended before the hands reached these optional pages. Remarkable books on the same astronomy could be found in the library, but not at school. Long division was learned by heart like a set of rules, more like a recipe, without any explanation why such a set of ordinary divisions, multiplications and subtractions leads to an answer. High school extraction square root was presented with such reverence, as if the eleventh commandment, proclaimed from Mount Sinai. The main thing is to get the right answer, and do not care that you did not understand anything. In my second year of algebra, the class was taught by a strong teacher, from whom I learned a lot of knowledge, but he was rude and often brought my classmates to tears. I kept my interest in science in my school years only thanks to books and scientific (and also science fiction) magazines.

All dreams came true at the university: there I met mentors who not only understood science, but also knew how to explain. I was lucky to be in one of the best educational institutions at the time, the University of Chicago. The "core" of our physics department was Enrico Fermi, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar taught us the elegance of mathematical formulas 1
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910–1995), American astrophysicist and theoretical physicist, laureate Nobel Prize in Physics (1983).

About chemistry, I had the good fortune to talk with Harold Ury 2
Harold Ury (1893–1981), American chemist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the isolation of deuterium (1934).

And in the summer I had an internship in biology with Hermann Müller 3
Hermann Müller (1890–1967), geneticist, Nobel Prize winner (1946).

At Indiana State University, he studied planetary astronomy with the only specialist in this subject at that time, Gerald Kuiper. 4
Gerald Kuiper (1905–1963) Dutch-born American astronomer who proposed (1951) that solar system does not end with Neptune, but extends much further. Edgeworth-Kuiper band modern ideas, has up to 70,000 celestial bodies.

Kuiper taught me to "count on the back of an envelope." An idea came to your mind - you take out an old letter, turn on the knowledge of fundamental physics and sketch on the back of the envelope (somehow, approximately) a series of equations, substituting the numbers that seem most likely to you, and see if the answer is similar to the one you expected. If it doesn't work out, look for another theory. With this method, any nonsense was cut off immediately, as if with a wave of a knife.

At the University of Chicago, I was also fortunate in that we studied under the liberal arts program of Robert Hutchins, according to which the exact sciences were perceived as an integral part of the magnificent mosaic of human knowledge. The future physicist was supposed to know the names of Plato and Aristotle, Bach, Shakespeare, Gibbon, Malinovsky, Freud - the list is far from complete. IN primary course astronomy, the geocentric system of Ptolemy was presented so convincingly that many students were ready to renounce allegiance to Copernicus. The teachers of the Hutchins program were not required, as in modern American universities, to have a high scientific status, on the contrary: teachers were valued precisely as teachers for their ability to teach and inspire the younger generation.

In this wonderful environment, I began to fill in the gaps school education. Many secrets - by no means only scientific ones - have cleared up. And I saw with my own eyes that incomparable joy experienced by a person who managed to lift the curtain a little more over the structure of the Universe.

I have forever retained my gratitude to the people who taught me in the 1950s, and I tried to convey my admiration to each of them. And yet, looking back at my life, I will repeat again: the most important thing I learned not from school mentors and not even at the university, but in that significant 1939 from my parents, who knew nothing about science.

Chapter 1
most precious

Compared to reality, our entire science is primitive and childish, but it is the most precious thing we have.

Albert Einstein (1879–1955)

He was waiting for me at the plane with a cardboard in his hands, on which my name was written. I flew to a conference of scientists and TV presenters. We had to fight on a seemingly hopeless project: how to increase the level of non-fiction broadcasts through commercial channels. The organizers sent a driver for me.

– Can I ask you something? he said as we waited for my luggage to arrive.

- Yes please.

- Does it bother you that your name is the same as that famous scientist?

I didn't realize right away. He's joking, right? Finally, everything fell into place.

“I am him,” I admitted.

He hesitated, then apologized with a grin:

- You'll forgive me. Here I am constantly suffering from such a coincidence. Thought you had the same problem.

Holding out his hand, he introduced himself:

“I am William F. Buckley.

(William F. Buckley is my stand-in. In fact, my driver turned out to be the namesake of a well-known, contented, militant TV reporter, and I guess he got a lot of teasing about it.)

We got into the car - there was a rather long way ahead - the wipers clicked rhythmically, and the driver continued the conversation: he was glad that I turned out to be “that famous scientist”, he had a lot of scientific questions. May I ask? Yes please.

Thus the conversation began. However, in my opinion, not quite scientific. William F. Buckley wanted to talk about frozen aliens hiding at the San Antonio Air Force Base, about contact with spirits (unfortunately, the spirits came across more and more uncommunicative), about magic crystals, the prophecies of Nostradamus, astrology, the Shroud of Turin ... And I have to was to disappoint him in everything:

“The evidence is poor,” I said, “and there are much simpler explanations.

In his own way, this man was widely educated. He delved into all the nuances of the theory of the "perished continents" of Atlantis and Lemuria. He knew for sure that underwater expeditions were about to be equipped, they would find the collapsed columns and broken towers of great civilizations, whose fragments have been contemplated for many millennia only by luminescent deep-sea fish and a giant kraken. 5
Kraken is a mythical sea monster, a gigantic cephalopod, known from the descriptions of Icelandic sailors, from whose language its name comes from.

And although I believed that the ocean still held many secrets, I also knew that there were no oceanographic or geophysical data in favor of the theory of Atlantis and Lemuria. From the point of view of science, these "continents" never existed. And so I told my companion, although I did not want to disappoint him.

We were driving through the rain, and the driver was gloomy before our eyes. I disproved not just a wrong theory - I deprived his spiritual life of some precious facet.

But in true science there are also many secrets, where you can find even greater inspiration and delight, a challenge to human strength and at the same time get closer to the truth. Was this man aware that in the cold rarefied gas of interstellar space, molecules were scattered that could form protein, the basis of life? Did he hear that four million years old volcanic ash showed the footprints of our ancestors? About how, when India and Asia collided, the Himalayas shot up to the skies? Does he know that viruses are like syringes - they inject their DNA bypassing the defense mechanisms of the host organism and change the reproductive mechanisms of the cell. And what about the search for radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations? And the newly discovered ancient city of Ebla 6
The city of Ebla existed on the territory of modern Syria in the middle of the III millennium BC. e.

Where did they find inscriptions extolling high quality beer produced in Ebla? No, he did not even have a remote concept of quantum uncertainty, and DNA was for him only a mysterious abbreviation that often catches his eye.

Mr. Buckley - intelligent, inquisitive, talkative - remained a complete ignoramus about modern science. He was gifted with a keen interest in the wonders of the universe. He wanted to understand science. The trouble is that "science" got to him, passing through unsuitable filters. Our culture, our education system, our media have let this man down. Only fiction and nonsense seeped into his mind. Nobody taught him to distinguish genuine science from a cheap fake. He had no idea about the scientific method.

Hundreds of books have been written about Atlantis, a fictional continent that allegedly existed 10,000 years ago in Atlantic Ocean, or according to the latest version in Antarctica. The author of this myth is Plato, who referred to the traditions of distant ancestors. IN modern books with unconditional certainty, the highly developed technologies of the Atlanteans, their ethics and spirituality are described, and the tragedy of the continent that sank along with such a remarkable civilization is lamented. A new age Atlantis, a "legendary civilization of the highest sciences", was formed, where they mainly fiddled with crystals. Katrina Raphael wrote a trilogy about crystals 7
The Teachings of Crystals (1985) is a book by Katrina Rafael, Director of Public Health at the Center for Natural Medicines and Alcohol Rehabilitation. It is "part of the sacred knowledge about the use of crystals and stones for healing and expansion of consciousness."

And she laid the foundation for a boom of crystals in America: Atlantean crystals read and transmitted thoughts, stored ancient history and became a prototype Egyptian pyramids. Of course, these revelations are not supported by any evidence. Although part of the crystal craze may be due to a recent genuinely scientific discovery: seismologists have discovered that the Earth's inner core may be a single perfect crystal of iron molecules.

Few authors, such as Dorothy Vitaliano in Legends of the Earth, try to find a rational grain in this legend, suggesting that we are talking about an island in the Mediterranean Sea that was destroyed by a volcanic eruption, or about ancient city, which, as a result of an earthquake, collapsed into the Gulf of Corinth. Such an event could in fact give rise to the myth of Atlantis, but we are not talking about the death of an entire continent with a mysterious, incredibly ahead of its era civilization.

And in vain we will search in public libraries, popular magazines and prime-time broadcasts for data on the structure seabed, about plate tectonics, about sea charts, quite convincingly proving that between Europe and America there never existed a mainland or a huge island.

Any amount of questionable information is bait for the gullible. It is much more difficult to hear skeptical, restrained statements. Skepticism is not for sale. A lively and inquisitive person who relies on popular culture and draws his information about Atlantis from it is a hundred, a thousand times more likely to stumble upon an uncritically transmitted myth than a sober and balanced analysis.

Perhaps Mr. Buckley should have been more wary of popular culture, but there is nothing to reproach him for: he only assimilates what the most accessible media present to him as the truth. He is naive, but does that give anyone the right to systematically deceive and mislead him?

Science appeals to our curiosity, delight in the mysteries and miracles. But pseudoscience awakens exactly the same enthusiasm. Scattered, small populations of scientific literature leave their ecological niches, and pseudoscience immediately takes over the vacated place. If it were conveyed to everyone that no statements should be taken for granted without sufficient evidence, there would be no room for pseudoscience. But popular culture has a sort of Gresham's law. 8
Gresham's law (also known as the Copernican-Gresham law) is an economic law that states: "Money artificially overvalued by the government displaces money artificially undervalued by it." It is usually formulated as "Cheap money will crowd out expensive money."

: bad science crowds out good science.

There are a huge number of smart, even I would say, gifted people in the world who are obsessed with a passion for knowledge, but their passion has remained unclaimed. Studies have confirmed the "scientific illiteracy" of approximately 95% of Americans. Exactly the same percentage were African Americans who could not read before civil war when the vast majority of them were in slavery and severe punishments were provided for teaching a slave to read. Of course, any criteria for illiteracy in relation to language skills or scientific knowledge is somewhat arbitrary, but 95% of illiterates is extremely serious.

Every generation laments the decline educational standards. One of the oldest texts in human history, written in Sumer some 4,000 years ago, convicts the younger generation of blatant ignorance compared to the fathers. 2,400 years ago, the aging, grouchy Plato defined scientific illiteracy in The Laws (Book VII):

Who can't count to three, can't tell odd numbers from even numbers, or can't count or tell day from night at all, who isn't at all familiar with the revolutions of the sun and moon and other stars... All free people, I think, should know about these areas science no less than any child in Egypt learns along with the alphabet. In that country, for the benefit of children, arithmetic games were invented to make learning fun and enjoyable ... I ... late in my life was surprised to learn of our ignorance in these matters, and it seems to me that we are more like pigs than husbands, so I am ashamed not only of myself, but of all Hellenes.

I do not presume to judge to what extent ignorance of mathematics and other sciences contributed to the decline of ancient Athens, but I clearly see how dangerous the consequences of scientific illiteracy in our time are more dangerous than ever before. Only criminal stupidity can explain the indifference of the townsfolk to global warming, the decrease of the ozone layer, atmospheric pollution, the accumulation of toxic and radioactive waste, the erosion of the fruitful layer, the destruction of tropical forests, and the rapid growth of the population. If we cannot produce the high-quality and inexpensive goods that everyone wants, the industry will migrate to other countries and enrich other parts of the world. Try to imagine the social consequences of nuclear and fusion energy, supercomputers, the accelerated flow of information, abortion, the use of radon, massive strategic arms reduction, drug addiction, government spying on citizens, television high resolution, airport security, use of fetal tissue, increased medical costs, addiction to junk food, drugs to treat manic episodes, depression, schizophrenia, animal rights, superconductivity, a pill that eliminates the effects of sexual intercourse, theories of hereditary tendency to antisocial behavior , creation space stations, flying to Mars, discovering a cure for AIDS and cancer.

How can we influence politics, how can we govern own life if we do not understand the forces acting in the world? As I write this, Congress is deciding to dissolve the Bureau of Technology Assessment, the only organization charged with advising the Senate and Congress on scientific and technical matters. The competence and integrity of this body have been tested by years of exemplary work. Of the 535 members of Congress, hardly 1% has any idea about science. Our last academic president 9
Although Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter received a good scientific education. Britain can be proud of its learned prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. In her youth, she studied chemistry under the guidance of Nobel laureate Dorothy Hodgkins and therefore, as prime minister, achieved a complete and final ban on harmful freon.

Apparently it was Thomas Jefferson 10
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) - 3rd President of the United States, one of the authors of the Declaration of Independence.

How do Americans deal with these issues? How are people's representatives trained? Who makes these decisions and on what basis?

* * *

Hippocrates of Kos is recognized as the father of medicine. 2500 years later, we still remember his name, if only because doctors take (albeit in an edited form) the "Hippocratic Oath". But Hippocrates has won our respect even more by his unswerving desire to rid medicine of superstition and turn it into a true science. Here is a characteristic passage for him: “People consider epilepsy a divine disease, because they do not understand its causes. But if we begin to call everything divine that we do not understand, how much then will there be divine? We are not ready to admit our ignorance in many areas, we prefer to declare that there is a lot of "incomprehensible" in the Universe. "God in the gaps" - everything that we have not yet been able to understand is attributed to him. As medicine improved, people understood more and less attributed to divine intervention both in the causes and in the cure of disease. Accidents during childbirth and infant mortality have decreased, life expectancy has increased, and the quality of life thanks to medicine has greatly improved for all the billions of people inhabiting the Earth.

Hippocrates applied the scientific method to the diagnosis of disease. He insisted on the need for careful examination: “Leave nothing to chance. Don't overlook anything. combine different methods observations. Do not rush". The thermometer had not yet been invented, but Hippocrates had already drawn temperature curves typical of various diseases. He demanded from doctors the ability to decipher the prehistory of the disease from the symptoms and predict its further course. He valued honesty above all else and readily recognized the limitations of medical knowledge. He did not try to hide from readers and posterity that he could not save half of his patients. There were not many options at his disposal: from medicines only laxative, emetic and narcotic drugs, and he could also resort to surgery or cauterization. But medicine in the ancient world continued to develop rapidly until the fall of Rome.

After the fall of Rome, the center of medical knowledge is transferred to the world of Islam, and the Dark Ages begin in Europe. Anatomical knowledge and surgical skills are largely lost, all relying on prayers and miracles. There are practically no secular doctors, doctors-scientists; conspiracies, potions, horoscopes and amulets were used. It is forbidden to dismember corpses, i.e. medical practitioners cannot gain knowledge about the device human body. Scientific research frozen in place.

The same is happening throughout the Eastern Roman Empire with its capital in Constantinople. Here is how Edward Gibbon describes it:

For ten centuries not a single discovery has been made for the glory of man or for the good of mankind. Not a single idea was added to the speculative constructions of antiquity; patient and diligent students dogmatically drummed what they learned into the next, equally servile generation.

Until the New Age, even the best representatives of medicine could do little. The last representative of the Stuart dynasty on the British throne was Queen Anne. For 17 years (it was at the turn of the 17th-18th centuries), she became pregnant 18 times, but only five children were born safely, and only one of them survived the time of infancy, but this royal offspring also died in childhood, even before the coronation of Anna in 1702. It is unlikely that Anna suffered from some kind of genetic disease, and she was provided with the best doctors found in Europe.

Gradually, medicine learned to deal with diseases that ruthlessly cut off so many children's lives. The discovery of bacteria, the simple idea that doctors and midwives should wash their hands and sterilize instruments, proper nutrition, public health and hygiene measures, antibiotics, drugs, vaccinations, the discovery of the structure of DNA, molecular biology, and now gene therapy - in modern world(at least in developed countries) parents have a much better chance of raising each newborn than was the ruler of one of the most powerful nations in Europe at the end of the 17th century. We have completely got rid of smallpox, the regions where there is a danger of catching malaria have noticeably decreased. The life expectancy for children with leukemia is increasing every year. With the help of science, hundreds of times more people can be fed on Earth than a thousand years ago, and the conditions for their existence have become much better.

Read a prayer over a cholera patient or give him 500 mg of tetracycline and cure him in 12 hours? (To this day, there is a kind of religion - Christian Science - that does not recognize any germs: they pray over the sick, and if prayer does not help, believers would rather let their child die than give him an antibiotic.) You can treat a schizophrenic with psychoanalysis as much as you like, or you can prescribe 300 to 500 mg of clozapine per day. Scientific methods of treatment are hundreds, thousands of times more effective than alternative ones. And even when an alternative method seems to help, we cannot be sure of its merits: spontaneous remissions even of cholera and schizophrenia happen, and without prayers and psychoanalysis. To give up the achievements of science means to sacrifice not only air conditioners, players, hair dryers and sports cars.

Until a person has mastered Agriculture, the average life expectancy of a hunter-gatherer was approximately 20–30 years. This remained the forecast for Western Europe in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Up to 40 years, the average life expectancy increased only by 1870. In 1915 it was already 50 years, in 1930 - 60 years, in 1955 - 70 years, and now it is approaching 80 (slightly more for women, slightly less in men), and the rest of the world is pulling up after Europe and the United States. What was the cause of this remarkable, unprecedented breakthrough that has improved the condition of mankind so much? Discovery of pathogenic bacteria, public health system, advanced medical technology. An increase in life expectancy is directly related to an increase in its quality - it is rather difficult to improve the quality of life of a dead person. The most precious gift of science to mankind is literally the gift of life.

However, microorganisms can mutate, and new diseases spread like wildfire. There is a constant struggle between the new "weapons" of viruses and bacteria and the response of mankind. In this competition, we cannot be satisfied with the creation of new drugs and methods, we need to penetrate deeper and deeper into the very nature of life, we need fundamental research.

So that the world does not die from overpopulation, by the end of the 21st century. between 10 and 12 billion people are expected, we need to invent reliable and effective methods food production, i.e., improve the seed fund and irrigation methods, develop new fertilizers and pesticides, transportation and storage systems. Along the way, we will have to develop and inculcate methods of contraception, achieve full equality for women, and raise the standard of living of the poorest sections of the population. Is this feasible without science and technology?

Of course, science and technology are not a cornucopia from which cherished gifts will be poured onto the world. Scientists have created nuclear weapon, but what is there - they grabbed politicians by the breasts and insisted that their people (one or another) must certainly be the first in this race. And they produced 60,000 bombs. In the years cold war US scientists, Soviet Union, China and other countries willingly exposed their own citizens to radiation, without even warning them about it, just to succeed in the nuclear race. To Tuskegee 11
The Tuskegee Study was an infamous medical experiment that ran from 1932 to 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama. A study of the stages of syphilis in 600 sharecroppers (21 of whom were not infected before the start of the experiment) is considered the most infamous biomedical study in the United States.

Doctors assured a control group of veterans that they were treating them for syphilis, when in fact they were giving them a placebo. The cruelties of Nazi doctors have long been exposed, but our technologies have distinguished themselves: thalidomide 12
The sedative and hypnotic thalidomide between 1956 and 1952 caused the birth of many children with genetic abnormalities.

Freon, agent orange, water and air pollution, the extermination of many animal species, powerful factories that can completely ruin the planet's climate. Approximately half of the scientists work at least part of the time for a military order. A few outsiders still valiantly criticize the flaws of society and give advance warning of coming man-made disasters, but the majority either compromise their conscience, or quite willingly serve corporations, or work on weapons of mass destruction, not caring at all about the long-term consequences. Technogenic risks generated by science itself, the confrontation between science and traditional wisdom, the apparent inaccessibility of scientific knowledge - all this inspires people with distrust and turns away from education. There is a perfectly reasonable reason to be afraid of scientific and technological progress. The image of the mad scientist dominates popular culture: on a Saturday morning kid's show, some white-coated jerks are jumping around, and the Doctor Faust plot is duplicated in a plethora of films, from those dedicated to Dr. Faust himself to his colleagues Frankenstein and Strangelove. 13
Strangelove is a character in Stanley Kubrick's comedy Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Fall in Love atomic bomb» (1964).

Let's not forget Jurassic Park 14
The famous sci-fi film by Steven Spielberg.

CARL SAGAN

A WORLD full of DEMONS:

The science - like a candle in the dark

2014

To my grandson Tonio.

I wish you to live in a world full of light and free from demons

We wait for the light, but we live in darkness.

Isaiah 59:9

Do not curse the darkness - light at least one candle.

Proverb

Preface.

MY MENTORS

Mom, as usual, changed clothes and put on makeup for the arrival of her father. The sun was setting. Mom came up to me, and together we looked at the surging waters.

There people fight and kill each other,” she said, pointing with a wave of her hand to the other side of the Atlantic. I looked as closely as I could.

I know, I replied. - I see them.

You don't see anything. It’s very far away,” she objected sternly, and went back to the kitchen.

* * *

"See the sound," called one of the fair's amazing inscriptions. Indeed, when the tuning fork was struck with a hammer, a graceful sine wave appeared on the oscilloscope screen. "Hear the light," another poster read; and exactly when a beam of light fell on the photocell, a crackling sound was heard, similar to that heard from our Motorola receiver, if, turning the knob, you get between the radio stations. The world was full of wonders that I had never known before. How can sound turn into a picture, and light into noise?

My parents were by no means scientists, they were not even close to science. But they instilled in me, almost simultaneously, doubt and amazement, that is, those two modes of thought, hardly compatible, from which the scientific method is born. My parents had just come out of poverty, but when I told them that I would become an astronomer, I received their unconditional support, even if they hardly guessed what an astronomer was doing. My parents never once advised me to quit stupidity and study to be a doctor or a lawyer.

I would love to commend the elementary, middle, or high school teachers who inspired me to turn to science, but I never had such teachers. We memorized the periodic table of elements, fiddled with levers and inclined planes, memorized that photosynthesis takes place in green leaves, and learned the difference between anthracite and bituminous coal. But there was no inspiring amazement, just as there was no hint of the evolution of ideas, not a word about those errors that were once generally accepted. In high school, laboratory classes began with a predetermined result - you won’t get it, you won’t get a good mark. Personal inclinations, intuition, the desire to test - and even disprove the hypothesis - were by no means encouraged. It always seemed that the most interesting chapters in the textbook were the appendices, but the school year invariably ended before the hands reached those optional pages. Remarkable books on the same astronomy could be found in the library, but not at school. Long division was learned by heart like a set of rules, more like a recipe, without any explanation why such a set of ordinary divisions, multiplications and subtractions leads to an answer. In high school, the extraction of the square root was presented with such reverence, as if the eleventh commandment, proclaimed from Mount Sinai. The main thing is to get the right answer, and do not care that you did not understand anything. In my second year of algebra, the class was taught by a strong teacher, from whom I learned a lot of knowledge, but he was rude and often brought my classmates to tears. I kept my interest in science in my school years only thanks to books and scientific (and also science fiction) magazines.

All dreams came true at the university: there I met mentors who not only understood science, but also knew how to explain. I was lucky to get into one of the best educational institutions of that time - the University of Chicago. Enrico Fermi was the “core” of our physics department, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar taught us the elegance of mathematical formulas, I had the good fortune to talk about chemistry with Harold Ury, and in the summer I had an internship in biology with Hermann Muller at Indiana State University, while I studied planetary astronomy from the only one in that the time of a specialist in this subject - Gerald Kuiper.

At the University of Chicago, I was also fortunate in that we studied under the liberal arts program of Robert Hutchins, according to which the exact sciences were perceived as an integral part of the magnificent mosaic of human knowledge. The future physicist was supposed to know the names of Plato and Aristotle, Bach, Shakespeare, Gibbon, Malinovsky, Freud - the list is far from complete. The geocentric system of Ptolemy was presented so convincingly in the initial course of astronomy that many students were ready to renounce allegiance to Copernicus. The teachers of the Hutchins program were not required, as in modern American universities, to have a high scientific status, on the contrary: teachers were valued precisely as teachers for their ability to teach and inspire the younger generation.

Translator Love Sums

Editor Artur Klyanitsky

Project Manager I. Seryogina

Correctors M. Milovidova, S. Mozaleva, M. Savina

Computer layout A. Fominov

Cover designer Y. Buga

Foundation for Nonprofit Programs "Dynasty" founded in 2002 by Dmitry Borisovich Zimin, Honorary President of VimpelCom.

To my grandson Tonio. I wish you to live in a world full of light and free from demons

We wait for the light, but we live in darkness.

Do not curse the darkness - light at least one candle.

Proverb

Foreword

My mentors

Stormy autumn day. On the street, fallen leaves swirl in funnels of small tornadoes, each hurricane lives its own life. It's good to be at home, warm and safe. Mom is cooking dinner in the kitchen. Older guys, from those who bully kids with or without reason, will not penetrate our apartment. It hadn't even been a week since I'd gotten into a fight—I forgot who it was, probably Snooni, who lived on the fourth floor—and swung like hell, and my fist hit the glass window of Schechter's Pharmacy.

Mom, as usual, changed clothes and put on makeup for the arrival of her father. The sun was setting. Mom came up to me, and together we looked at the surging waters.

“There people fight and kill each other,” she said, gesturing to the other side of the Atlantic with a wave of her hand. I looked as closely as I could.

“I know,” I replied. - I see them.

- You don't see anything. It’s very far away,” she objected sternly, and went back to the kitchen.

How does she know whether I see those people or not, I thought. Narrowing my eyes, I imagined I could make out a narrow strip of land on the horizon, and there tiny figures were pushing and shoving each other and fighting with swords, like in my comics. But maybe mom is right? Maybe it's just my imagination, some kind of nightmares that I still wake up from sometimes at night - my pajamas are soaked through with sweat, my heart is pounding desperately?

I would love to commend the elementary, middle, or high school teachers who inspired me to turn to science, but I never had such teachers. We memorized the periodic table of elements, fiddled with levers and inclined planes, memorized that photosynthesis takes place in green leaves, and learned the difference between anthracite and bituminous coal. But there was no inspiring amazement, just as there was no hint of the evolution of ideas, not a word about those errors that were once generally accepted. In high school, laboratory classes began with a predetermined result - you won’t get it, you won’t get a good mark. Personal inclinations, intuition, the desire to test - and even disprove a hypothesis - were by no means encouraged. It always seemed that the most interesting chapters in the textbook were the appendices, but the school year invariably ended before the hands reached these optional pages. Remarkable books on the same astronomy could be found in the library, but not at school. Long division was learned by heart like a set of rules, more like a recipe, without any explanation why such a set of ordinary divisions, multiplications and subtractions leads to an answer. In high school, the extraction of the square root was presented with such reverence, as if the eleventh commandment, proclaimed from Mount Sinai. The main thing is to get the right answer, and do not care that you did not understand anything. In my second year of algebra, the class was taught by a strong teacher, from whom I learned a lot of knowledge, but he was rude and often brought my classmates to tears. I kept my interest in science in my school years only thanks to books and scientific (and also science fiction) magazines.

Carl Sagan A world full of demons. Science is like a candle in the dark

* * *

Foreword My mentors

* * *

Chapter 1 most precious

* * *

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Carl Sagan
A world full of demons. Science is like a candle in the dark

Foreword
My mentors

Chapter 1
most precious