Talk:Carl Sagan

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Discussion of pantheism and Carl Sagan at: Talk:Carl Sagan/pantheism

Contents

[edit] Google's search results for Carl Sagan

When I type "Carl Sagan" into Google I get Wikipedia as the second result "Carl Sagan was an avid user of marijuana, although he never admitted this ... When the biography, entitled Carl Sagan: A Life, was published in 1999, ..." I know this is more of a Google issue, but I think the summary should reflect something about the Wiki article being about the man and not just about his marijuana use. Can there be a way to correct this?

[edit] Funeral March

I suggest the magic Vangelis Cosmos to sound perpetually at his page. --Javalenok 15:47, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

This sounds like an idea that could be applied to Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia. --JWSchmidt 15:51, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Carl Sagan/Subpages

I propose that all discussion from this page on the issue of how pantheism relates to Carl Sagan's views be moved to Talk:Carl Sagan/pantheism. JWSchmidt 19:20, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

.....AND that the discussion of pantheism be removed from this page.
.....And that people be requested to go to Talk:Carl Sagan/pantheism when they want to add new discussion of pantheism. Maybe there also needs to be Talk:Carl Sagan/cosmotheism or Talk:Carl Sagan/Attempts to cliam that Sagan was religious, a page that would cover all religions. JWSchmidt 14:16, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Oh, please. We're listing the nuclear winter in Iraq silliness but not saying what happened? Now I'm offended because he intruded into history, which he didn't understand. MichaelTinkler

"In a Nightline debate, Fred Singer predicted that on the contrary winds would dissipate the smoke within a few days."

Can anybody clarify this? I don't see how "dissipating" the smoke would ameliorate cooling effects.

Removed text:

During the Gulf War, Sagan predicted that smoke resulting from U.S. bombing of Iraqi oil and refining facilities would result in a condition similar to nuclear winter. In a Nightline debate, Fred Singer predicted that on the contrary winds would dissipate the smoke within a few days.

It's unclear where this is supposed to be going. Sagan made a prediction, someone else made a different prediction, and... what? Did the facts bear either of them out? --Brion

I guess where it is going is this: Sagan and Ehrlich's "nuclear winter" scenario always attracted a considerable degree of skepticism from other physicists, but like SETI (his other favourite project) was practically unfalsifiable. Sagan's prediction of 1991 being a "year without summer" on the basis of the same model, provided a way to falsify it. And it was very wrong - according to CRU data, 1991 was actually an unusually warm year. 203.51.99.36 10:56, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

[edit] No Gulf War Winter

The smoke had an effect on local, but not measurably on global climate, thus Sagan was demonstrably wrong on this. [1]

I don't know how fast the smoke was dissipated after the fires were extinguished, though.

Aragorn2 14:00, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)


"His father was a Jewish garment worker and his mother a housewife": this is awkward. Was his mother not a Jew? If the point is just to say that Carl Sagan was ethnicly a Jew, or was raised a Jew, let's just say it.

He was ethnically and culturally jewish. However, orthodox jews would not ever duly consider him to be a real jew, unless his mother was actually a jew.

His adopted religion, like Spinoza and Einstein before him, was actually a form of pantheism or cosmotheism.

According to a Cosmotheist Web site and dedicated to the late Dr. William L. Pierce:


"Cosmotheism is a religion which positively asserts that there is an internal purpose in life and in cosmos, and there is an essential unity, or consciousness that binds all living beings and all of the inorganic cosmos, as one."

"What is our true human identity is we are the cosmos made self-aware and self-conscious by evolution. "

"Our true human purpose is to know and to complete ourselves as conscious individuals and also as a self-aware species and thereby to co-evolve with the cosmos towards total and universal awareness, and towards the ever higher perfection of consciousness and being."[2]

Some quotes by Carl Sagan from his Cosmos TV series that do mirror the three Cosmotheist statements above are:

"The Cosmos is all that is, was, or ever will be." "The Cosmos is within all of us; we are all made of Star Stuff."


"We Humans have here on earth evolved consciousness and have gained some measure of understanding. We Humans are a precious form of matter, life, and which has been groomed by evolution to consciousness."

"We Humans are the legacy of 15 billion years of Cosmic Evolution." "We Humans are truely creatures of the Cosmos." "We are the way for the Cosmos to know itself".

If Sagan had been interested in adopting the God Hypothesis he would have said so after having said each of the above comments. However, as Sagan's work makes clear, he saw no utility in adopting the God Hypothesis and was not a "theist" of any kind. JWSchmidt 14:09, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)


Obviously, that "hypothesis" of JWSchmidt that Carl Sagan "would have said so" is just completely without any foundation in fact, and is just purely his own subjective and pov bias against the facts and Carl Sagan's own words. Carl Sagan was NOT any PERSONAL THEIST, but, his own words do clearly indicate that he was a IMPERSONAL THEIST, ie. a pantheist or a cosmotheist, and this is factually true whether JWSchmidt falsely claims that he wasn't or not.-PV


[edit] Truth in advertising

At the bottom of the Carl Sagan page is an external link to an article called Contact: A Eulogy to Carl Sagan by Ray Bohlin.

If you follow the link you can find at the end of Bohlin's article the following:

"Remember that enemies of the faith are lost and in need of a Savior. But even though they may be prayed for and witnessed to by colleagues up to the end, many, including Carl Sagan, will still, defiantly, die in their sins."

The entire article by Bohlin is an attempt to condemn Carl Sagan for being an irrational materialist, a faithless atheist and an "enemy of the faith".

I think it is useful to have this link. It demonstrates the kind of reaction that Carl Sagan provoked due to his philosophical orientation as a free-thinker. However, I think it would be appropriate to label the link with a warning to readers not to be misled by the title of the article.

eulogy. n : a formal expression of praise (to speak well of someone).

The title of the article might mistakenly be taken to suggest that Bohlin wrote a eulogy about Carl Sagan. However, the article simply describes the movie Contact as being a eulogy for Carl Sagan. I can accept this portrayal of the movie as "a fitting eulogy", even though the movie was constructed before Carl Sagan died. However, there is nothing in the title to warn the Wikipedia reader that Bohlin does NOT intend a formal expression of praise and that he instead provides a condemnation of Carl Sagan's religious views. JWSchmidt 02:13, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I agree. How do you suggest the link description should be changed?—Eloquence 05:41, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)
Maybe it would be helpful to change,
Analyzes Sagan's views from a Christian perspective.
to
Dr. Bohlin suggests that the movie Contact can serve as a fitting eulogy for Carl Sagan. Sagan's scientific approach to the question, "was the universe created?" is critically analyzed by Bohlin from his Christian perspective.
I was going to sleep on it. JWSchmidt 06:07, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Butt head?

Apple gave their product the title BHA "Butt Head Astronomer" as an internal company name, after CS prevented them from using "Carl Sagan". CS sued, but lost. BTAIM, Apple didn't name CS butt head, and I wouldn't call it a honour. So I've delete the line. Fen 09:48, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Citation

I've sourced the Sagan assertion, but I'm not familiar enough with Wikipedia to competently cite it. Here is the header, from Lexis. --12.208.150.136 02:05, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

CARL SAGAN, Plaintiff, v. APPLE COMPUTER, INC., Defendant
CV 94-2180 LGB (BRx)
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA
874 F. Supp. 1072; 1994 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 20154 
June 27, 1994, Decided  
June 27, 1994, FILED


Here's a quote from one of Sagan's article in Parade Magazine in March 1996 called "In the Valley of the Shadow", also published in his last book "Billions and bilions": "I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking."

"The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides."

His wife in the same book wrote that there was no religious awakening or anything like that, he remained true to his beliefs until the very end.

I think those prove that he was nothing but a model atheist. I think he would consider an insult putting anything else, especially in encyclopedia. --Spec 14:54, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I agree. Sagan only believed in God using Spinoza's definition, in the same sense that Einstein talked about God playing dice. If he spoke about the cosmos, it was only to establish a sense of scale, not to attribute the universe with a divinity or a real consciousness of its own. He was deeply critical of what he termed 'significance junkies'. --Fangz 18:51, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] The Faith Healers

Carl Sagan is listed as a coauthor of The Faith Healers, along with James Randi. I recently read this book, and don't recall Sagan as being a stated author. I believe he wrote the introduction. Any comments? Stormwriter 13:31, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I just checked my copy (which is the exact same edition as listed in the bibliography), and you are correct; Sagan only wrote the foreword. I guess this means it shouldn't be in the bibliography? Or should it perhaps be listed under a new subheading, like e.g. "literary contributions"? Mortene 16:01, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I went ahead and removed the reference. Stormwriter 18:49, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Sagan's swastika theory

Hello. I've moved some text about Sagan's swastika theory out of swastika and into Carl Sagan. Sagan's theory has appeared in swastika twice, I believe, and given Sagan's notoriety I'm sure it will appear again. However, since the theory is unsubstantiated it seems inappropriate to give it any prominence in swastika. Carl Sagan seems like its natural home, if it has one. I'll let the regular Sagan editors decide whether it merits treatment in Carl Sagan. Happy editing, Wile E. Heresiarch 17:16, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] (Non-existence of) Criminal Charges

"When the biography, entitled Sagan: A Life, was published in 1999, the marijuana exposure stirred some media attention, but no charges were laid by police." - but Sagan died in 1996, so surely there was never any question of criminal charges being raised? I didn't change this just in case I'm missing something obvious about US Criminal Justice, but surely the War on Drugs doesn't extend to dead people...

(The author of this entry appears to have some issue with cannabis or Sagan. There are THOUSANDS of celebrities and public figures around the world who have made statements about marijuana use and not been subject to criminal charges. DA's need evidence and cause. Perhaps author feels inclined to visit several hundred celebrity pages and add "Criminal Charges -- why weren't there any" for all of them?)

[edit] Nuclear Winter in Kuwait (Gulf War)

Can Wikipedia actually come out and say Sagan was wrong about his nuclear winter prediction about Kuwait? Or should we just cite newsman Ted Koppel as "asserting" that Sagan was wrong? In other words, do scientists generally acknowledge Sagan as wrong and Fred Singer right in this instance, or is it still controversial? --user:Ed Poor|Uncle Ed (talk) 22:07, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

It is probably not wise to call Sagan's prediction about the oil fires a "nuclear winter prediction". Clearly there was no thermo-nuclear war in Kuwait. In his book The Demon-Haunted World Sagan admitted (page 257) to being wrong about the amount of global cooling due to the fires. Memenen 18:44, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Request for references

Hi, I am working to encourage implementation of the goals of the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. Part of that is to make sure articles cite their sources. This is particularly important for featured articles, since they are a prominent part of Wikipedia. Further reading or "related books and media" is not the same thing as proper references. Those could list works about the topic that were not ever consulted by the page authors. If some of the works listed in that section were used to add or check material in the article, please list them in a references section instead. The Fact and Reference Check Project has more information. Thank you, and please leave me a message when you have added a few references to the article. - Taxman 17:52, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

I suggest using this method to compile references. Memenen 15:53, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Weasel Words - "On the other hand, there was some unease that the public would misunderstand some of the personal positions and interests that Sagan took as being part of the scientific consensus, rather than his own personal views. Some believe this unease to have been motivated in part by professional jealousy, that scientific views contrary to those that Sagan took (such as on the severity of nuclear winter) were not being sufficiently presented to the public." This should be cited as it appears to be an opinion - but whose? LaPalida October 25, 2006

[edit] Inflated Ego

I am removing the sentence, "Sagan was considered by some to have an inflated ego," from the Personality section. If the original author can justify this phrase -- and expand upon it in-article -- it may be usable. But as it stands the sentance seems like it functions as a way to subtley slip a NPOV statement into the article in the guise of POV.

It is also unclear what part of the "Personality" section the "inflated ego" phrase is in reference to -- being the first sentance of the section. Certainly, Sagan's marriages are not an indication of an inflated ego. I'd take offence at characterizing any religious belief, or lack thereof, as egoism.

The Apple lawsuits seem like the most relevent example, but the issue could be spun either way: as either a reasonable request or as vainity. Using the phrase here spins toward the later, and is probably inappropriate for an encyclopedia. Readers can draw their own inferences without guidence from the text. ~CS 18:11, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately, based on the fact that you deleted the remark without any comment in the article's audit trail, I reverted your change. I then saw this "talk" discussion. To prevent misunderstandings like this from arising in the future, you may want to always say something like "Deleted text; see talk page" in teh audit trail.
I'd revert my own reversion, but the Wiki database is acting up and I can't see your version in the article history right now. But I guess we can let whichever version stand while this all gets discussed here. (Personally, I suspect I agree with the "over-inflated ego" comment.)
Atlant 19:52, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
Thanks, Atlant. I went ahead and removed the line again (with additional notation in the history), as your objections stemmed more from confusion, and not from opposition to the removal. If anyone objects, we can discuss it here. If someone wants to provide content to the article which presents actual accusations about Sagan's ego -- or provide better examples -- he or she should go right ahead, but as it stands the comment appears to be out of a political problem with Sagan's actions and beliefs. I'm not certain "over-inflated ego" passes encyclopedic muster to begin with. Perhaps more delicate phrasing would be necessary as well. ~CS 04:41, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
One of the interesting things I read about Sagan (I think it is in the Poundstone biography, but I cannot find it in the index right now; however see this) is that he had a CV (Curriculum Vitae) that was several hundred pages long. I read that it included every (even casual) mention of him by any source that was ever printed. Memenen 16:29, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ann Druyan "leftist"?

I note that Sagan's third wife Ann Druyan is labeled a "leftist" in the article. No supporting reference is given, and her article doesn't mention this. While she may well describe herself as a leftist, it would be nice to have something a little more concrete. Standing on its own, it is hard to tell whether or not this is just a fact or some sort of POV remark from someone who disagrees with her. Gwimpey 00:09, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

I suspect that Ann Druyan might accept the label "leftist" with pride. She has always favored education, freedom, and reason as the engines of social change. Memenen 13:09, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
That comment sounds a bit biased in itself217.43.134.139 29 June 2005 15:34 (UTC)
I had in mind what I think is the original Western European meaning of the political "left"; those who favored "revolutionary" ideas like representative democracy rather than traditional systems such as monarchy. --JWSchmidt 29 June 2005 17:40 (UTC)

[edit] carl's religion

anybody know about carl's religion? i'm guessing he was strongly against the christian right - maybe even atheist/humanist?

He was very interested in many topics that are traditionally thought of as religious or spiritual matters. He was very skeptical about traditional organized religions as valid sources if insight into questions like: was the universe created? what was the origin of humans and all life on Earth? is there some form of life after death? what constitutes moral behavior? He defended (in print) other free-thinkers who have been persecuted by religious bigots. See his book: The Demon-Haunted World and this web page. Memenen 12:13, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Carl Sagan considered himself as a free-thinker. He definitely was NOT an atheist. However, he could have been an agnostic. Does anyone have any official reference to this? --Siva1979Talk to me 10:11, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I dont know how you can say that he was definitely not an atheist, and afterwards asking someone to give you a reference. If he was the author of the book "Contact" -and he was- there you have a very strong hint of what he thought about the subject.

Sagan did not describe himself, but I would classify him as an agnostic. He was knowledgable about many religions and considered various religious texts 'moral guides and great literature' (quote from 'The Demon Haunted World'), while continuously reminding people of what science can say about the universe. I wouldn't class him as an atheist. Concering Contact: recall that the final plot twist in the book is the heroine finding a message hidden in pi. It is never stated explicitly, but one possible implication is that it is a message from God. Anyone who is willing to accept that idea is not an atheist, because they admit that there is some possibility that God exists. Michaelbusch 20:10, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Quote from Ann Druyan: When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me -- it still sometimes happens -- and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don't ever expect to be reunited with Carl.[3] Atheism seems appropriate, or agnostic at the very least. --AWF
I attended the memorial and was the only journalist to write "Memorial in a Cathedral for an Atheist."
http://philosopedia.org/index.php?title=Carl_Sagan&action=edit&section=1
Warren Allen Smith, Founder, Philosopedia
The link Smith added is bad (Firefox opens it as a blank page). I've removed it. Michaelbusch 07:16, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

14 Feb 07 It comes up on my Firefox. Then use the total page, please:

http://philosopedia.org/index.php?title=Carl_Sagan

His wife, Ann Druyan, also was an atheist:

http://philosopedia.org/index.php?title=Ann_Druyan

Both Carl Sagan URLs also come up as blank pages on MS Explorer 6.0.2900 - Cgingold 16:57, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

It would help to click the blue line. Notice it's philosopedia.org - not .com (whether done on a Mac or a pissy)

Meanwhile, Sagan is not an American agnostic and it's not clear why he's listed as a Jewish American writer. Thanks. . . . —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Warren Allen Smith (talk • contribs).

I still get nothing. Sagan was an American and a self-described agnostic. He was Jewish by culture if not by belief. Sign your posts. Michaelbusch 19:07, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Note: this is Michaelbusch using Safari. Links still bad. 131.215.220.112 19:48, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

It is not clear why someone continues to object to including Sagan's wife's, Al Gore's, and the Episcopalians' public acknowledgement of Sagan's atheism - he was not an agnostic - at the St. John the Divine Cathedral memorial described at

http://philosopedia.org/index.php?title=Carl_Sagan

Again, I am signing that I am Warren Allen Smith, Founder of Philosopedia, at info@philosopedia.org /s/ wasm@mac.com I am copying this to Janet Asimov. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Warren Allen Smith (talk • contribs).

Your links are still bad. Sign your posts. Michaelbusch 19:14, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Note: classifying the religious beliefs of Carl Sagan is likely to be complicated, because his beliefs changed over the course of his life. You could make a reasonable case to put him in all of Jewish Scientists, Agnostic Scientists, and Atheist Scientists. Michaelbusch 20:41, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I fail to understand what is meant by "your links are bad" and "sign your posts." The "external link" to Philosopedia was to allow Wikipedia researchers to read the only journalistic account of Sagan's final memorial, which was packed with his family present. His wife (whom I will contact to report what now seems fissiparous because it's her family that has to fight such errors much as E. E. Cummings's family has to fight people who write e. e. cummings) and Isaac Asimov's wife often hear errors made about their husbands' religion (which in this case is lack of any religion and abundance of positive philosophic views). Philosopedia will of course list Sagan as an atheist, although you who are writing seem to say Wikipedia prefers listing him as a pantheist or whatever. My point is simply to direct researchers to what was said at his final memorial.

If all this is simpy a techy's problem, please be good enough to advise specifically how to make my links good and how to sign my posts. I have material about Thomas Mann, George Santayana, and dozens of others who have corresponded with me and could be "external links" also. If you wish, contact me directly at wasm@mac.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Allen_Smith —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Warren Allen Smith (talk • contribs).

To sign, follow the instructions on the bottom of the editing window: add '~~~~' at the end of your posts. 'Your links are bad' means exactly that: I have tried Safari and Firefox and other users have tried Explorer, and your links give only blank pages. I can only assume that this is a problem with the pages at your site. Michaelbusch 04:30, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Techy report: Yes, since February 13th there has been a problem at this end, one that is being resolved. Warren Allen Smith 02:54, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Sagan was a self-described agnostic, but not a traditional agnostic. He said that an atheist had to know that there is no God. "I think if that there is no evidence for it, then forget about it." He was very skeptic about organized (and all types of religion) as you had said. As his wife said neither she or Sagan believed in a traditional God. "But if by God means the set of physical laws, then there is such a God." He also said, that you didn't have any compelling evidence for the nonexistence of God you couldn't be an atheist. So he was an agnostic, who didn't believe in God. Sorry about my English, I'm Hungarian. --Starnold 19:21, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, it's too late to re-do his final memorial, at which MIT physicist Philip Morrison, Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, the director of the USSR's Space Research Institute, Vice Presdent Al Gore and the Sagan children and Ann his wife all celebrated the "memorial in a cathedral for an atheist." Labels have limitations, of course. If some people are happy defining God in a way a pure scientist would not, there's no law against it and it may help them continue their vested interests. See http://philosopedia.org/index.php?title=Carl_Sagan#Memorial_in_a_Cathedral_for_an_Atheist Warren Allen SmithWarren Allen Smith 14:31, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Planet Sagan

Does anyone know if the planet "Sagan" in Songs of Distant Earth was named after Carl Sagan? --Memenen 8 July 2005 20:10 (UTC)

[edit] Minor Suggestion about Choice of Words

"In The Demon-Haunted World, Sagan gave a list of errors he had made (including his predictions about the effects of the Kuwaiti oil fires) as an example of how science is tentative."

I propose that the last word in the above sentence "tentative" be replaced with "self-correcting." Though I suppose both are correct, tentative indicates hesitation and uncertainty. While uncertainty is an inherent (and fundamental in the case of quantum mechanics) property in science, I believe the point he was making is that science as a whole is self-correcting. That is, despite whatever errors or mistakes individual scientists make science as a whole approaches truth.

I agree. The original version said self-correcting. In Sagan's book "The Demon-Haunted World", Chapter 13, Sagan wrote that since scientists know that mistakes happen, science polices itself and corrects its own errors. In Chapter 14, in the pages leading up to his list of some of his own errors (including his prediction about oil fire smoke reaching the stratosphere and altering climate) he wrote, "Science is a collective enterprise with the error-correcting machinery often running smoothly." In "Cosmos", Sagan said, "There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That's perfectly all right; they're the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny." If you read the entire context of Sagan's list of his own errors in Chapter 14, it is clear that he was thinking about science as "self-correcting." --Memenen 04:39, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Billions and Billions phrase

The article states that Carl Sagan didn't use this as part of Cosmos, but he did write (Cosmos, p5) "A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars - billions upon billions of stars." - this is presumably the origin of the phrase and the entry on this page could be updated. --81.178.117.224 17:55, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Carl Sagan wrote the following in the first chapter of his book "Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium": "I never said it. Honest... I said 'billion' many times on the Cosmos television series... But I never said 'billions and billions.' ... But Johnny Carson - on whose Tonight Show I'd appeared almost thirty times over the year - said it." So, that's the origin of the phrase according to the man himself. --factorial 22:30, 19 Jan 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Demon Haunted World does not apply its own science tools to disproving ghost experiences

Late in his life, Sagan's books developed his skeptical, naturalistic view of the world. In The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, he presented tools for testing arguments and detecting fallacious or fraudulent ones, essentially advocating wide use of the scientific method. The book takes for granted as fact Sagan's personal belief, and does not use these tools to show, that all personal paranormal experiences related to evidence for life after death are psychiatric delusions. The compilation, Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the End of the Millennium, published after Sagan's death, contains essays written by Sagan, such as his views on abortion, and Ann Druyan's account of his death as a non-believer.

I believe the above paragraph needs the sentence I've highlighted, to portray points both ways about the book. Without this point, the book is just getting praised. A member who objects to the sentence but has not offered his own rewrite, has asked for it to be brought to discussion. I propose that putting it back on-page is allowed if there have been no answers here within a day. Tern, 10:04 Aug 22.

Tern, I appreciate that we disagree with the need for this sentence, but please do not misrepresent my edits. I have offered a rewrite, which exists as the article stands right now (8-22): Critics of The Demon-Haunted World complain that Sagan dismisses religious and spiritual experiences as delusions. I believe this succinctly makes the criticism of the book very clear.
Allow me to lay out my specific problems with the sentances as you've inserted them into the article:
  • A description of Sagan's book is not the place for criticism of Sagan's ideology. Sagan may, in fact, "take for granted" that experiences of paranormal activities are delusions -- but this isn't necessarily outlandish. The proper way to deal with a problem within the article is to offer lanague which makes it clear Sagan's views are not universally accepted. It is not appropriate to offer clearly biased statements against Sagan's lack of belief as "balance" for percieved inbalance.
  • I do not believe that, as the article existed, it was baised. The paragraph clearly stated the intent of Sagan's book: to use scientific principles in weighing potentially fallacious arguments. No agressive statements against paranormal experiences are made as the paragraph previously stood. The precieved bias seems to be an issue of disagreeing with skepticim. I do not believe that this paragraph is praising the book simply by lacking reference to other beliefs. I do think that the agressive language being inserted is a problem, as it does not relate directly to the content of the paragraph, it states an opinion of Sagan's work as a factual statement, and has heavily anti-nonbeliver overtones.
  • Loaded language. The sardonic use of the word "just," the judgemental phrase "takes for granted." Words like these make the additions seeme like they are intended to be an attack on Sagan and skepticism, not an attempt to improve the article. NPOV does not mean "balance": two equally heavy-handed or biased statements. It means approaching the article in as neutral and aloof a form possible. If criticism of Sagan's book is to be included, opinions should be stated clearly as opinions: "criticims of Sagan's book include"; and not as facts: "The book takes for granted." It seems to me that you want a "criticism" sub-topic in the article. If this is the case -- by all means, add one.
  • Form. Perhaps my biggest criticism for the inserted lines are simply that they are wordy and unclear. Both versions are run-on sentences. "The book for granted as fact" is not proper English. "Just," as used in the first edit is a colloquialism. "Psychiatric" and "delusion" are redundant. I'm pretty sure "paranormal" is a pejorative. Inserting the specific issues of "life after death" and "paranormal" when they are not addressed in the text before hand is poor form.
  • If I might embark on a slightly less serious tangent: Of course Sagan is dismissive of what he saw as superstitions. It is not necessary to insert statements to this effect in every article about outspoken atheists anymore than it is necessary to insert "...is dismissive of of non-Christians" in every article about an evangelical. The article is clear about Sagan's lack of religious beliefs, and it is clear that his worldview would be influenced by that. It is not necessary to bring repeated charges against him because of his ideology.
Finally, I don't think your call for a day-long discussion is a legitimate amount of time. While the internet may be instantanious, people's lives are not. It may take longer for a discussion to develop. ~CS 13:43, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
I’m sorry about the length of this reply to Tern (see above), but I want to give people who have not read the book a chance to judge the validity of Tern’s claim.
"The book takes for granted as fact Sagan's personal belief, and does not use these tools to show, that all personal paranormal experiences related to evidence for life after death are psychiatric delusions." (source: Tern, see above) What does it mean to say that a "book takes something for granted"? This would seem to mean that the book adopts a position with no explicit mention or analysis of the evidence that exists to either support or contradict that position. In the specific case of "The Demon-Haunted World" and life after death, what does Sagan do?
First, the issue of an after life is not a major part of the book. The book discusses beliefs in an after life as one of many popular beliefs for which there is not good scientific evidence. Sagan's most concentrated attention on the idea of life after death comes in Chapter 12, "The fine art of baloney detection". However, Sagan recognized death as a major human concern and as early as page 8 he is already discussing the importance of science as man's most successful way of dealing with disease and death. By the time Sagan reaches Chapter 12 he had already discussed many beliefs that have no significant objective evidence to support them including belief in: alien UFOs, magic, "recovered memories", miraculous apparitions, and the dangers of satanic witches. This all takes 200 pages and Sagan measures the objective evidence for such beliefs against the evidence for alternatives such as: UFOs do not involve alien beings, "recovered memories" are invented memories, apparitions are hallucinations. In each specific case, after discussing the evidence for the two different alternatives, Sagan asks, "Which is more likely?" He is asking the reader to make an informed decision. That is the main point of the book; that people become informed so that they can decide for themselves. Sagan is not in the business of taking anything for granted.
What does Sagan use as a starting place in Chapter 12 for introducing the issue of belief in life after death? He describes his own desire that he could contact his own dead parents and he writes, "Plainly, there is something within me that's ready to believe in life after death." Next, he says that this is not just him; a tendency towards belief in an afterlife is part of being human. Sagan mentions that sometimes in dreams he seems to have contact with his parents; a very emotional experience. Sagan points out that our readiness to believe in life after death leaves us open the dishonest "medium" who tells us what we want to hear- that contact with the dead is possible.
Sagan reminds us to look at the evidence. Is there verifiable evidence that any "medium" is passing along to us the words of a dead person? Sagan says that he is eager to find evidence for life after death. This echoes his well-known crusade to reveal any evidence of alien UFOs that might have been hidden by government secrecy. Sagan is not one to hide from evidence, but after reviewing the words of several "channelers," he says, all we get from "channelers" is, "banal homilies," and other unverifiable "puerile marvels". Sagan comments that it is common for people to believe and not question when they hear what they want to hear: tales of life after death and life eternal.
Chapter 12 then goes on to mention many other beliefs that have no significant objective evidence to support them and he launches into his presentation of a "baloney detection kit", a set of guidelines for judging if objective evidence supports a claim and if certain types of arguments for a belief are valid forms of argument. The topic of belief in life after death comes up once more, briefly, in Chapter 15. Chapter 15 is about the reactionary social forces that are aligned against science and the idea that human belief should be guided by objective evidence. Sagan makes the observation that belief in life after death can have benefits for societies, particularly in times of war. People who believe that we only have THIS life are more reluctant to fight and die than are people who believe that they will live again. Sagan always wants to understand why people believe things without needing objective evidence, and this observation about the sociology of belief in an after life completes Sagan's analysis. In the case of the very common belief in life after death, Sagan has identified three supporting reasons for such belief: we naturally want to believe, we have experiences that can be interpreted as contact with the dead (such as Sagan's own dreams) and cultures that promote belief in life after death may have a survival advantage. Note that objective evidence for life after death is not a reason for why people believe.
Next, we must ask, where is an account of, "Sagan's personal belief.....that all personal paranormal experiences related to evidence for life after death are psychiatric delusions"? At the start of Chapter 12, Sagan describes his attitude towards people who believe in life after death. He creates an imaginary example, a widow who "talks to" her dead husband. This is where Sagan says he understands such behavior and that such behavior is "about humans being human" and there is NO talk of "psychiatric delusions".
Sagan does not make much use of the term “delusion” in his book (it is not an item in the index). On page 173 he discusses a hypothetical situation in which a group of people believe that dragons exist even though the only existing evidence to support it seems to have been faked. Sagan writes, “Once again, the only sensible approach is to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same delusion.” In other parts of the book, he does discuss President Reagan’s habit of confusing movie plots with reality, invented witness testimony and reports of alien encounters and miraculous visions. As discussed above for his analysis of belief in an after life, Sagan tries to suggest reasons for such beliefs without calling them delusional. Our brains can fool us (due to fatigue, drugs, illness), some people get attention by inventing stories about unusual experiences, sometimes a kind of social hysteria takes over and people misrepresent natural events as supernatural, sometimes people invent and say what they think other people want to hear. Yes, sometimes people suffer from "psychiatric delusions" and a mental health problem might account for some strange beliefs (we now know that Reagan had Alzheimer disease), but Sagan knew that such disease is relatively rare and he did not make wholesale dismissals of common beliefs such as belief in life after death by blaming "psychiatric delusions."
Conclusion. For anyone who actually reads Sagan’s book, the statement, “The book takes for granted as fact Sagan's personal belief, and does not use these tools to show, that all personal paranormal experiences related to evidence for life after death are psychiatric delusions," can be seen to be a strange thing to say. First, as someone devoted to letting the objective evidence decide debates, Sagan is most careful not to push unsupported personal beliefs on the reader. He made a public career of science advocacy out of writing books that present evidence and reasoned arguments. Second, it is not clear exactly what Tern is trying to contribute to the article. Tern needs to identify a specific personal belief of Sagan and show us a specific place in the book where he “takes it for granted”. In particular, trying to be generous in interpreting the intent, Tern may be trying to imply that Sagan took for granted that there is no after life. Sagan’s discussion of the idea of an after life in “The Demon-Haunted World” (summarized above) shows that Sagan looked at the evidence and rationally based his belief on the facts. The entire book is about looking at evidence so that people can decide for themselves what to believe. Sagan does not seem to take anything about his disbelief in an after life for granted, nor does the book. It is true that Sagan does not “show, that all personal paranormal experiences related to evidence for life after death are psychiatric delusions." There is a simple reason for this. Sagan does not believe that “all personal paranormal experiences related to evidence for life after death are psychiatric delusions." If this is what Tern’s sentence is meant to imply, it is a misrepresentation of Sagan’s views. Tern’s desire to insert this sentence into the ‘’’Sagan’’’ article cannot be construed as “telling the other side of the story” or giving us a more complete view of the book. Tern’s claim/claims are not supported by the facts.
I have to add that Tern’s repeated insistence that the sentence is helpful to the article does not seem to be simple error or understandable confusion about the content of the book. Sagan’s free-thought approach is routinely attacked by reactionary institutions. There are many people who have never read Sagan’s books but have been told by “authorities” how to react to them. In particular, I have no doubt that some “Critics of The Demon-Haunted World complain that Sagan dismisses religious and spiritual experiences as delusions.” However, it is troublesome to leave such a complaint unanswered in the article. The idea that Sagan dismisses religious and spiritual experiences as delusions is intentionally misleading. Clearly there could be some religious and spiritual experiences that have been delusional and Sagan would be brave enough to label them as such. However, Sagan did not dismiss the phenomenon of religious and spiritual beliefs as being delusional. He admitted to having his own experiences that could be labeled as “spiritual” and he described such experiences as normal human experiences. An easy to misinterpret “hot button statement” like “Critics of The Demon-Haunted World complain that Sagan dismisses religious and spiritual experiences as delusions.” Has no place in the ‘’’Sagan’’’ article. I think it is troublesome that allowing such misleading statements into the article is viewed by some editors (sorry User:CS42) as a reasonable “compromise”. Allowing such a misleading statement is not reasonable.
Honestly, I'd rather no such sentance exist at all, and agree that a "Criticism" or "Reaction" section would be a far better procedure. I included the sentence as a temperary measure after Tern insisted that some version remain. It seemed a better alternative than to leave the clearly inappropriate and confusing lines intact. Otherwise, I concur with your analysis. ~CS 20:21, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
If we want to do things right, there should be an entire section in the article that discusses criticisms of Sagan and each complaint can be fully explored. I think this is justified in Sagan’s case because like other people who have questioned dogma, Sagan has become a target for criticism by reactionary forces. The Darwin article has a section called “reaction” where the voice of his critics is heard, and the ‘’’Sagan’’’ page could have something similar. I suggest we start such a “reactions” section and start by moving “Critics of The Demon-Haunted World complain that Sagan dismisses religious and spiritual experiences as delusions.” To that new section. I will be happy to write a critique of that criticism along the lines of what I wrote above. --JWSchmidt 20:11, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
  • The sheer length of these answers suggests a lot of defensive emotion has been unleahsed. So does attacking the opposition's character: in fact that is one of the unscientific methods of argument the book describes. Assuming that anyone who has disagreements with Sagan is a "reactionary force" - eh? That is doctrinal paranoia. It's treating science like religion, after you have made with no evidence personal attack on meof accusing me of opposing free thought. And the way you describe that is as a psychological assumption you make against anyone who disagrees with Sagan! - eh?
  • Not having chosen to buy the book I'll have to access a copy again to answer the demands for pinpoint references. Meanwhile, those who have copies could tell us whether they deny it is true that: every time the book mentions audio or visual experiences apparently associated with extracorporeal personalities, it describes a psychiatric episode as an explanation for them,and expects you to take that as the actual explanation. It does not,right there in the same point in the text, weigh the merits of the spirit explanation against the psychiatric explanation, for the particular experience, nor does it question the psychiatry is right. At one point - a stand-alone sentence,and notthe bit about his parents - it says that a spontaneous auditory hallucination of a voice can make people into strong believers in ghosts, but does not lift a finger to discuss the merits of calling it a hallucination.
  • I like the present "temporary" sentence, if "psychiatric" is added before "delusions". "treats" describes it better than "dismisses" and is less pejorative. The importamnt point I was originally trying to get at, was that the book does not attempt in any way to apply the baloney detection rules, Occam's razor, etc, to the psychiatric delusion theory of spiritual experiences. Failiure to apply his ideas consistently. If there is that failiure, it becomes one-sided to describe the book without saying so.
  • Sure Sagan analysed other sources of evidence on life after death, but not this one.

Tern, 00:56 Aug 23

If anything I wrote seems to be a personal attack on user Tern, I am sorry. I was trying to justify including in the article a new section for "reactions" to Sagan. There is often resistance within wikipedia for including such sections in articles. I tried to make the point that for some historical figures such as Sagan, a complete description of their importance in history should include reactions to their work. In my view, user Tern's sentence about The Demon-Haunted World fits into an identifiable pattern of reactions to Sagan's published ideas. I think that the Sagan article could benefit by explicitly including and discussing such reactions to Sagan's work. If user Tern rejects my characterization of the possible intent of "The book takes for granted as fact Sagan's personal belief, and does not use these tools to show, that all personal paranormal experiences related to evidence for life after death are psychiatric delusions." then I apologize for representing the sentence in an objectionable way. Tern has given (see above, 00:56 Aug 23) a self-characterization of the intent of the article contribution that is under discussion, and I accept that characterization. I still think it would be best to put contributions like Tern's in a new section of the article that would be specifically for complaints and other reactions to Sagan and his works. --JWSchmidt 14:09, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Good proposal if you've got material to write such a section with,from your knowledge of his critics. It means his work gets reviewed in a pro and con way. As an ideas man you'd expect him to favour that! tern 03:55, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Immanuel Velikovsky

The comments added by User:24.125.31.67 do not seem to agree with what is said about Sagan at the Immanuel Velikovsky article. --JWSchmidt 13:21, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I also find the added text to be unnecessarily disparaging and poorly written, but as a Sagan fan, perhaps I am just not capable of reading it objectively. If the text stays, "It could be argued" should be removed and the article needs to decide whether Sagan's response to Velikovsky was a "campaign" or a "debunking"; obviously I'd prefer the latter. —HorsePunchKid→龜 23:43, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
I posted a request for help at Talk:Immanuel Velikovsky. I have never read either Velikovsky or Sagan's analysis of Velikovsky. --JWSchmidt 00:21, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
I saw it over there. I read Sagan's stuff many years ago and I have reviewed some of it over the last coupld of days. Is there anything specific you need help with now? Bubba73 (talk), 04:53, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

As has been exhaustively documented by various Velikovskian societies, Sagan's AAAS piss-take of Velikovsky was egregiously wrong in almost every statement he made. (This is not to say that Velikovsky was right either, of course ;-) But at least he sincerely believed what he was saying, unlike Sagan's cynical hatchet job) There have been whole books published, dismembering Sagan's paper. If I wasn't at work this morning I'd look 'em up... ;-)--feline1 09:28, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I would like to see some specific examples: Velikovsky made claim X, Sagan said Y about X. We know that Y was a cynical hatchet job because Z. There have also been whole books published dismembering Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, that does not mean that they are featured on the Charles Darwin Page. --JWSchmidt 13:12, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Have a look at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1561840750/104-5591005-7998341?v=glance --feline1 14:26, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the link, feline1. I wish I had the time (and motivation, more unfortunately) to read the book, since the reviews are clearly quite mixed. It seems like this was (and remains!) a very polarizing issue. The section has to be substantially reorganized if the new text remains, since it was apparently just stuffed into the middle of the existing paragraph. Perhaps when this reorganization is done, the harshness ("frought [sic] with errors and logical fallacies") can be toned down. —HorsePunchKid→龜 14:40, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, the "was Velikovsky right?" debate is a rather open-ended one ;-) However, what is pretty unequivocable is that Sagan peppered his AAAS address with a lot of silly crowd-pleasing strawmen to poke fun at Velikovsky. He delivered them with such panache that he won most of the audience over (for the only other interpretation would have been that Sagan was dishonest) ... sadly this seems to have been the reality. For example he ridiculed things like V claiming plagues of frogs rained down from Venus - the audience lapped it up - but V, of course, had claimed no such thing. But Sagan cleared off before V could rebutt him, and the mud was already slung. It took Sagan two years to rewrite his AAAS philippic into a proper paper for the proceedings, as he had to remove all the muck ... many claim to have debunked his debunking in even this paper, however. But then that's where the fun really starts, a la Ginethals' book.--feline1 14:54, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Sagan's response to Velikovsky (I read the version published in Broca's Brain) is deliberately sarcastic; it is directed at a popular audience and, as Jerry Pournelle pointed out, Sagan filled the huge gaps in Velikovsky's arguments with his own, frequently amusing assumptions (usually clearly recognizable as such). Velikovsky's defenders then tried to use this as evidence that Sagan's arguments were fallacious, because for many of Sagan's claims, they said: "But we never said that .." They felt that science needed to catch up with them, not the other way around, and simply avoided discussing the ridiculous premises of Worlds in Collision (about interpretation of ancient texts, about probability of certain events, etc.), instead resorting to catch-all arguments like: "Sure, it looks unlikely today. But wouldn't that be true for any sequence of events?"

This makes it absolutely vital that we do not simply repeat claims that Sagan's arguments were fallacious, as this article previously did. That would be a bit like saying that A Modest Proposal is fallacious. It would be more accurate to see Sagan's review of Velikovsky as part scientific paper, part popular science lecture. It's a fair criticism to say that Sagan should have written just one or the other; Velikovsky's work is so shoddy that you don't need any calculations to disprove it to a rational audience, and he could have dismissed it in a few pages. His presentation in Cosmos was much more appropriate, if still a bit lengthy.

As it was, Sagan was dragged into a "debate" which to a large extent strengthened Velikovsky's followers, as they felt that "science" was doing a poor job debunking their made up theories. This is the reason why many biologists refuse to debate proponents of creationism (including its ID variant). But, it's a catch-22: If you get into a serious scientific debate, the pseudoscientist will use this as proof that he is a scientist, after all, his work is debated in scientific papers. If you don't, he will speak of repression and present himself as a heretic fighting a biased system. Perhaps Sagan was looking for a middle ground; effectively, what he got is the worst of both worlds.

Velikovsky has always appealed to those who want to see "real truths" in ancient sacred texts, waiting to be discovered. They associate some positive emotions with those texts, and wish to validate these emotions somehow. Velikovsky provides this validation under the guise of science. It is very similar to the "ancient astronauts" phenomenon, and it is no coincidence that both were discussed in the same book by Sagan.

Accordingly, the followers of Velikovsky often see themselves as a sort of avant-garde in science, the leaders of a revolutionary new thought model which unites religious and scientific truths (in actual fact, science itself already has subsumed as much truth from religious texts as is supportable by evidence). But we have to keep in mind that the part of Velikovsky's work discussed by Sagan is entirely rejected by the scientific community. Accordingly, we should present the views within the scientific community about Sagan's approach to Velikovsky. This would be more of a methodological analysis of debunking pseudoscience rather than a "point/counterpoint" presentation of Velikovsky's views. Such a point/counterpoint analysis, for all practical purposes, belongs into the article about Immanuel Velikovsky, not here.--Eloquence* 07:11, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Eloquence, you’ll have to do better than that! ;-) I appreciate this is only a Talk page, but you’re just blustering here really. Sagan *did* make errors in his scientific material - his flaws were not simply just in rhetorical strawman - the quote from the NASA scientist in the main article is a classic example of this. As for Velikovsky, you rail again him being "wrong" above without dealing with specifics, in terms of the physics that would be necessary to support his scenarios. Notwithstanding this being epistomologically dubious, it is also unnecessary: if one wants to pick holes in V’s work, the place to do it is in his treatment of literary and mythical sources, which is what he used to base his theories on. Various people have demonstrated the problems with his use of various sources, often with skillful and meticulous work - Sagan wasn’t one of them though, he was more just a p*ss artist.--feline1 08:36, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
As I have said, this is not the place to debate the merits or lack thereof of Immanuel Velikovsky's pseudoscientific works. Please read the section in Wikipedia:Neutral point of view about pseudoscience:
If we're going to represent the sum total of human knowledge, then we must concede that we will be describing views repugnant to us without asserting that they are false. Things are not, however, as bad as that sounds. The task before us is not to describe disputes as though, for example, pseudoscience were on a par with science; rather, the task is to represent the majority (scientific) view as the majority view and the minority (sometimes pseudoscientific) view as the minority view; and, moreover, to explain how scientists have received pseudoscientific theories. This is all in the purview of the task of describing a dispute fairly.
Pseudoscience can be seen as a social phenomenon and therefore significant. However, pseudoscience should not obfuscate the description of the main views, and any mention should be proportional to the rest of the article. [all emphasis mine]
Again, the right approach to this article is to spend more time describing the scientific reaction to Sagan's approach at debunking Velikovsky, specifically the methodological criticism thereof, not to give a point/counterpoint account of Velikovsky's pseudoscientific work. And again, it has to be absolutely clear that Sagan's response to Velikovsky's ideas was not a scientific paper, it was a chapter in a pop-sci book, with many of the simplifications and much of the humor that are typical for that form of writing. It was written mostly because Worlds in Collision became a beststeller, and Sagan saw it as a dangerous example of pseudoscience resonating with the masses.
Sagan quite solidly demolished Velikovsky's premises, but in the process also used arguments which could easily be deconstructed by the Velikovskians. The problem is that Sagan got lost in the detail of Velikovsky's work, rather than focusing just on its premises. Effectively, he fell into the trap of the "paradoxers", as Sagan himself called them. Most pseudoscience rests on fundamentally flawed premises -- creationism, homeopathy, Worlds in Collision -- but uses elaborate scenarios to justify these premises. Once you start debating these scenarios in detail, you are almost certain to lose through the aforementioned catch-22.--Eloquence* 09:10, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Eloquence, applying the pejorative label "pseudo-science" to Velikovsky's work is POV in the first place, and is entirely the point at issue! The whole point is that Sagan just decided to debunk V with sarcasm, (often getting his physics and maths wrong in the first place!), and failing to critique V's use of various humanities disciplines (archeology, linguisitics, history, comparative mythology etc etc) which were the *actual* basis for his ideas, not physics. It could be said that this was because Sagan had a view that "science" was superior to the humanities, and this 'arrogance' reduced the effectiveness of his intellect. This backfired on him (and science) as it was recognised by many of the public, making them disinclined to believe in "science" and more sympathetic to what Sagan was trying to debunk.--feline1 09:32, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
This is a talk page, we are exchanging points of view. The article should not state that Velikovsky's work is pseudoscience, but it should treat it accordingly, as described in the NPOV policy which I cited. As for Velikovsky's treatment of the humanities: Sagan wrote that he was impressed by it in a similar way some people from the humanities he spoke to were impressed by Velikovsky's treatment of physics (but thought his texual analysis was rubbish), but felt equally incompetent to comment upon it. Insofar as Sagan did in fact "get his physics and maths wrong", we should not simply assert this, but attribute it to scientific authorities. Things are rarely as simple as they seem in a soundbite, and Sagan wrote a response to Jastrow's critique and probably others; this, too, should be summarized and included.--Eloquence* 09:51, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Well, hmmm, ... I think I'd summarize it this way: if the main purpose of the article is ultimately to provide a short biography of Sagan, then a main thrust for this bit is: he was an advocate and populizer of "science" to the public, but he did appear to do it in a rather cavelier/"arrogant" way at times. His run-in with Velikovsky is a good example of this. Sagan's ego and/or belief that "science" was superior to the humanities led him to discourse at times in a less than rigorous way, and this actually backfired on his attempts to populize science - he turned off some of the public, making them think of "science" as some kind of experts' closed shop, protecting their own theories and ignorant of the insights of other disciplines. It is "true" that this occured, and whether or not Velikovsky was "right" or "wrong" is quite separate from that.
This is your personal view, and it has no place in the article as such.--Eloquence* 10:37, 3 October 2005 (UTC)


Auch fer goodnessakes - I'm not trying to push my personal view of Sagan - I'm suggesting that the article should be able to document a summary of the *public's* "personal views" of Sagan, in terms of Sagan trying to educate the public about "science", and his success or failure to do that, based on their reaction to him or perception of him as "arrogant". There clearly is a fair amount of documented evidence of this phenomenon - we had a link up there to a book about the Velikovsky example, no doubt there's other pertinant examples too which could be used.--feline1 10:58, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
That doesn't make much sense. "The public's personal views"? The question is: Did notable individuals portray Sagan as arrogant? If not, did some survey or poll show that many members of the general public perceived him in this way? Since "arrogance" is a fairly elastic term and easily taken as an insult, it is not something we can state or conclude as fact; it needs to be attributed to sources.--Eloquence* 11:28, 3 October 2005 (UTC)


it has nothing to do with "notable individuals", it has to do with the Joe Ordinary's whom Sagan wanted as an audience for his TV shows, books, articles, etc. The "fact" we want to document is not some subjective POV quality of Sagan, it is how *other people* regarded him: *that* isn't POV, it's widely recorded actuality--feline1 11:40, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
And your source for this is..?--Eloquence* 12:14, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
The Hackenthorpe Book of Lies--feline1 13:58, 3 October 2005 (UTC)


OK - there have been assertions made that Sagan did not make any errors of fact in his address at AAAS conference on Velikovsky, nor in the heavily-revised paper he provided for the proceedings 2 years later - that his only mistakes were in cheeky strawmen popularisations which apparently "don't count" in some way... I don't believe this is the case. I did some searching with people more knowledgeable on the subject than I:

- Shulamit Kogan (V's daughter, who had a degree in Physics) had a letter published in "Physics Today", Sept 1980, pointing out errors in Sagans "Analysis..." paper,

as did Leroy C Ellenberger (chemical engineer and editor of pro-Velikovskian 'Kronos' journal) (in "Physics Today" April 1981). NASA scientist Jastrow published his criticsm of Sagan (the stuff where he pointed out that Sagan had ignored gravity and 'Velikovsky was the better astronmer') in the New York Times in late 1979 and in "Science Digest", 1980, which was reprinted by the UK Society for Interdisciplinary Studies in their "SIS Review". Ginethal's book (see reference to Amazon above) contains further material and Kronos published a "Scientists Confront Scientists Who Confront Velikovsky" book as well. Peer reviewed scientific periodicals did not deign to publish corrections to Sagan, as the whole point of the AAAS seminar was to discredit V and therefore publishing things discrediting Sagan would have rather defeated the object!--feline1 14:28, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Some of Sagan's Errors

Here are some of the errors that Sagan made against Velikovsky. None of these imply that Velikovsky was necessarily correct.

  • At the AAAS meeting, Sagan presented the odds for the planetary encounters described in Worlds in Collision, as 1023 against. Two years later, Sagan provided his calculations, and the odds have decreased to about 1027 against.
    • Sagan assumes a grazing collision between Earth a Venus. Velikovsky writes of a near approach
    • Sagan assumes five or six consecutive collisions, and assumes that they are statistics independent events. This is like suggesting that each appearance of Halley's Comet is independent.
It doesn't really matter what the chances are, they're small no matter how you look at it. But if Venus did what Mr. V said then it is an exception to a few things: (1) NEwton's laws of motion, (2) Newton's law of universal gravitation, and (3) Einstein's general theory of relativity. Bubba73 [[User_talk:Bubba73|(talk)]]
  • Sagan corrects some of his predecessors (eg. Payne-Gaposchkin, Asimov) who had suggested that if the Earth had stopped liked Velikovsky suggested, then stalactites would break off, and people would go flying into space. Sagan correctly shows that if the Earth slowed to stop over the course of a few hours, the deceleration would be so slow that stalactites would not break, and nothing would fly off the Earth. But Sagan calculates the heat generated would cause an average temperature rise of 100K. Sagan concludes: "The oceans would have been raised to the boiling point of water, an event which seems to have been overlooked by Velikovsky's ancient sources."
    • In Worlds in Collision, there is an entire section titled "Boiling Earth and Sea".
But we know that didn't happen. Bubba73 [[User_talk:Bubba73|(talk)]] 05:30, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Sagan calculates that Velikovsky's comet produces an impossible 1028 grams of manna
    • Velikovsky suggests that Earth's encounter with Venus resulted in Manna raining down on the Israelites in the desert (as described in Biblical sources). Velikovksy assumed that hydrocarbon's originated the tail of the Venusian comet, oxidised in the Earth's atmosphere, and rained down as an edible carbohydrate.
    • Sagan's calculation is based on (a) the amount of manna required to feed hundreds of thousands of Children of Israel for forty years. (b) He estimates 100 kilograms per person per year, or 4000 kilograms per person in 40 years (c) This quantity is then multiplied over the entire surface of the earth (d) And then over the volume of the inner solar system
  • Sagan writes: "I find it odd that Velikovsky does not attribute the temperature of Venus to its ejection from Jupiter ... but he does not."
    • Velikovsky writes in Worlds in Collision "Venus experienced in quick succession its birth and expulsion under violent conditions; an existence as a comet on an ellipse which approached the sun closely; two encounters with the earth accompanied by discharges of potentials between these two bodies and with a thermal effect caused by conversion of momentum into heat; a number of contacts with Mars and probably also with Jupiter. Since all this happened between the third and the first millennia before the present era, the core of the planet Venus must still be hot"
    • Sagan then goes on to calculate the temperature of Venus, if it had received its extra heat only from a close approach to the Sun, and reaches a figure of 79K
  • Sagan writes: "The planet [Venus] is cratered, and, perhaps, like parts of the Moon, saturation cratered ... These craters ... are produced almost exclusively by impact ... Now the colliding objects cannot have arrived at Venus in the last ten thousand years; otherwise the Earth would be as plentifully cratered ... the cratering process on Venus must have taken billions of years."
    • Venus has a fewer number of small craters than any other planet. Ref

--Iantresman 22:37, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

But it doesn't matter. First, you're ignoring the gas planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; and who knows about Pluto. So you're looking at Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars only. Mercury has no atmosphere to protect it and Mars has very little. Venus' atmosphere is many times denser than Earth's. The point is that if what Mr. V says is true, then Venus probably wouldn't have any impact craters. Bubba73 [[User_talk:Bubba73|(talk)]] 05:30, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
See List of craters on Venus. Also see Venus for a description of how its thick atmosphere prevents the formation of craters less than 3 km across. Also, read the part where the surface is hundreds of millions of years old - directly contradicting Mr. V. Bubba73 (talk), 16:02, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
1023 vs. 1027. Velikovsky's "prediction" that Venus was ejected from another planet and passed near Earth several times was typically vague. Sagan tried to make reasonable estimates of how likely such a history of Venus might be. Making several different calculations of this type is not an "error".
"independent events" There is no reason to think that Velikovsky's proposal of repeated close contacts between Earth and Venus could be accounted for by a regular cometary orbit. In the absence of an identified regular orbit for the "cometary Venus", there was nothing unreasonable in Sagan assuming independent events required to cause each Earth-Venus interaction.
In Worlds in Collision, Velikovsky writes of "Venus was a comet" .. "Venus was more of a comet than a planet", which does seem reasonable to me, to treat it as a comet and to assume dependent events. --Iantresman 08:52, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
"The oceans would have been raised to the boiling point of water, an event which seems to have been overlooked by Velikovsky's ancient sources." <-- Sagan's point was that if close approaches of Venus caused the events suggested by Velikovsky, there should have been many more global events and catastrophic effects that one should expect to have been included in the ancient texts used by Velikovsky as "evidence".
Worlds in Collision is packed with ancient references to catastrophism. Velikovsky's sequel, Earth in Upheaval is packed with geological evidence. --Iantresman 08:52, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
amount of manna. The point is, it is hard to find any mass calculation that would be consistent with conversion of a presumed "cometary tail" of Venus into manna. Why call Sagan's calculation erroneous without offering an alternative?
That's the point, Sagan's criticism is based on assumptions that Velikosky did not make. --Iantresman 08:52, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
"Venus has a fewer number of small craters than any other planet" This does not contradict Sagan's point. The thick atmosphere of Venus limits small crater formation. Due to volcanic activity, most of the surface of Venus is several billion years younger than the surface of those moons and planets that have not had volcanic activity. None of this changes the fact that the surface of Venus is too ancient to have been formed after Velikovsky's proposed origin of the planet within historical times. --JWSchmidt 01:06, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Sagan claimed that Venus would be "saturation cratered". This does seem to be a direct contradiction of the facts. --Iantresman 08:52, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Oh for goodness sakes, I appreciate you are the president of the Carl Sagan fan club - nonetheless, not even Sagan himself disputed that these were errors on his part.--feline1 08:15, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
He probably said that about Venus's craters before we knew. If he was wrong about that, it doesn't mean that he was wrong about Mr. V. Bubba73 [[User_talk:Bubba73|(talk)]] 05:37, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
suggestion to Iantresman; There is a huge amount of information available about the craters of Venus, but nobody has taken the time to include a detailed summary this information on wikipedia. The few paragraphs here could be expanded to an entire article. Why not start a wikipedia article that reviews in greater detail the published data for impact craters on Venus? The main goal of the article could be explaining the basis of an estimated age of the surface as being several hundred millions of years old. Then the readers of wikipedia can decide for themselves if Velikovsky's "young Venus" theory is better than an "old Venus" theory. --JWSchmidt 14:04, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
I am not supporting Velikovsky's view here. I'm just saying that Sagan's argument, that Venus must be old because it covered in craters is wrong, on two counts (1) Cratering does not nessarily imply age (2) Venus was not heavily cratered. Deos this mean that Velikovsky has the better theory> No. --Iantresman 14:45, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
If you have a published article that supports your view of the data, I'd like to see it. I'm not an astronomer, but from what I have seen of the Venus impact crater data, it is reasonable to conclude that the surface of Venus is ancient and its features do not indicate that Venus was recently ejected from a larger planet. --JWSchmidt 16:01, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Sagan wrote: "The planet [Venus] is cratered, and, perhaps, like parts of the Moon, saturation cratered". My view is that Sagan was presenting this arguement as evidence that Venus is old. Sagan was wrong. Venus is not heavily cratered. I agree that whether Venus is heavily cratered or not, this does not necessarily support an old or young Venus. Having said that, others have suggested that cratering implies age. See for example:

--Iantresman 20:05, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Weasel criticisms

Moved from the article:

Critics of The Demon-Haunted World complain that Sagan dismisses religious and spiritual experiences as delusions.

This is not a very valuable statement, because it tells us nothing beyond what we might expect anyway. I don't mind a section discussing criticisms of Sagan from a religious perspective, but these should be properly attributed to specific notable sources.--Eloquence* 10:14, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I disagree, to me it seems a perfectly reasonable and succint summary of some common criticisms of Sagan's work, and you seem to be on some pro-Sagan fan-boy crusade, under the thinly veiled guise of "removing POV". There is a big difference between the voice of a wiki article being POV, and the wiki article neutrally reporting common POVs regarding the article's subject.--feline1 12:13, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
"Pro-Sagan fan-boy crusade"? That is bordering on a personal attack; please avoid such language. Furthermore, it was you who used language such as "p*ss-artist" to describe Sagan; I have not used similarly emotive positive language, so the moniker seems to be entirely unjustified. I have no objection against reporting common POVs if they are properly attributed and sourced. If they are as common as you claim, that should not be hard to do.--Eloquence* 12:18, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
"a perfectly reasonable and succint summary of some common criticisms of Sagan's work". Please read the section of this page called "Demon Haunted World does not apply its own science tools to disproving ghost experiences". Sagan did not dismisses religious and spiritual experiences as delusions. If the article had a "criticisms" section, this criticism could be listed there and identified for what it is: misinformation invented by Sagan critics. --JWSchmidt 13:50, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
"Sagan did not dismisses religious and spiritual experiences as delusions" -

er, so what? the article didn't say that, it claimed that critics regularly accused him of doing so. Can you not see the logical distinction?--feline1 13:56, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

"Can you not see the logical distinction?" I can. I never said that the article says that Sagan dismissed religious and spiritual experiences as delusions. --JWSchmidt 16:44, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

As for protesting that I'm making personal attacks on you: well sorry for a little flip remark, but in all seriousness, I do have concerns about your conduct on this article - you seem to be steam-rollering into an existing well-established piece, cutting out material which you disagree with from your own POV, and querying it on the Talk page *after* you've done the edit, not before. Anyone who suggests a different text, you dismiss them with cries of "where's your reference". The material in question re: attitudes to Sagan seems to be quite widespread and so it seems entirely likely that "proper" references can be tracked down if needs be (I provided one Amazon link to an entire book on the subject, for goodness sake!) Instead you seem to have to no patience or inclination to track down references or gain consensus (or use the edit history feature to ascertain who wrote the material you disagre with, and get them to clarify) - you seem to be intent on just making your own rather biased edits. However, Carl Sagan isn't a subject I know enough about to start reverting things on you, so I'll merely give me views here in the talk page.--feline1 15:44, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

This is a featured article; as such, it meets the highest standards of quality of the Wikipedia community. It's not acceptable to simply insert potentially false information into the article and wait until someone digs up the references to prove it right. But it's not just that a lack of citation for disputed facts degrades the quality of the article, it's also that it violates one of our established stylistic guidelines: Wikipedia:Avoid weasel terms. Our goal is to transmit useful information, not to placate the religious right.
The fact that some religious people objected to Sagan's views on religion -- and not just in The Demon-Haunted World -- is fairly self-evident; some religious people object to pretty much everyone's view on religion, when expressed. The question is, was it particularly notable in this case, was it specific to The Demon-Haunted World, was it specifically the religious right, the New Age people, or who, what did they object to, when did they say it, what was Sagan's response to it, if any, and so on.
And Sagan was far from one-dimensional on the matter. An interesting essay by him on religion is part of Billions and Billions, titled "Religion and Science: An Alliance"; he had a strong interest in establishing connections with religious leaders and showing them that there was no need for scientists to be dismissive of religion, or religion to be dismissive of science. His conflicts with religion were in the area where religion made factual, testable claims about reality; he argued that such claims merit examination.
This is information that would actually help the reader as opposed to merely telling them that the sun rises in the morning. Rather than a mere "Criticism" section full of soundbites out of context, this could then become a "Clashes with religion" section. There are other interesting stories to tell here, for example, the reaction to the Pioneer plaque because it displayed human genitals.
If you want to examine conduct, examine your own; you are the one who seems intent on keeping highly questionable information in a featured article under the premise that Carl Sagan was a "p*ss artist" and is widely regarded as "arrogant", basing this of very little knowledge about Sagan, as you admit. I commend you for not beginning an edit war, but you have not brought much useful information to the table yet either, instead resorting to attacks against those who have actually done work on the article (more than 30 edits in my case, including the featured article nomination and preparation for it).--Eloquence* 17:29, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

"track down references" I agree with User:HorsePunchKid that the book Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky seems to be a questionable source of insight into the scientific validity of Sagan's comments on Velikovsky's ideas. If there were a valid scientific point made by catastrophists in refuting Sagan's views, then it should be possible to cite a peer-reviewed scientific publication as a reference. If we are seeking consensus, I think that User:Eloquence has expressed reasonable positions. --JWSchmidt 16:44, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

LOL - as we all know, Asaac Azimoz will be ice-skating in hell (etc etc) before a "peer-reviewed scientific publication" prints a prints a pro-Velikovsky piece at the expense of Sagan.

I suggested the option of finding a peer-reviewed reference as a standard option that works well for many science-oriented wikipedia articles. If you feel that you have identified some sort of systemic bias in the peer-review process that prevents some valid arguments from being published, then you can describe the arguments here; that was my original request (higher up on this page). --JWSchmidt 22:54, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Except that the peer-review process is inherently biased (the first two references are peer-reviewed). See:

--Iantresman 14:36, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] reading about the "encounter" between Sagan and Velikovsky

I have taken the time to read about the "encounter" between Sagan and Velikovsky. Sagan was very involved with the emerging planetary science of Venus and the rest of the solar system. Velikovsky was trying to defend his previous "theories" against the large amounts of new data from planetary science that did not support his "theories". Below, I summarize particularly the debate over Velikovsky's idea that Venus originated as an ejected object from Jupiter.

[edit] Velikovsky's claims

Periodic close contacts with a Venus (which had been ejected from Jupiter) had caused the Exodus events (c.1500BC) and Joshua's subsequent "sun standing still" incident. (source)

In his 1974 AAAS talk Velikovsky mentioned both his idea of electromagnetism controlling planetary orbits and he said that a greenhouse effect cannot account for the high temperature of Venus. He thought that the high heat of Venus must have been residual from a catastrophic ejection of Venus from Jupiter. (source))

Velikovsky talked about his previously proposed idea that hydrocarbons from Jupiter would be found in the clouds of Venus (he also had claimed that some of the hydrocarbons of Venus had been deposited on Earth in historical times when a "cometary Venus" repeatedly passed Earth).

[edit] Sagan's comments made at the AAAS meeting

One of Sagan's points was that the small magnetic fields of planets could not produce Velikovsky's orbital changes for planets.

Sagan was later criticized for having used (in his critique of ejection of Venus from Jupiter) a slightly wrong value for the escape velocity of Jupiter. In my view, these and other quibbles raised by Velikovsky supporters have been thrown up as a smoke screen and do not invalidate the thrust of the points Sagan made.

Sagan asked Velikovsky about the hydrocarbons of Venus. Velikovsky replied that there were many possible hydrocarbons that were compatible with spectroscopic data for Venus. Saga suggested that sulfuric acid clouds account for the data. Later Velikovsky asked Sagan if there might not be some hydrocarbons on Venus. Sagan asked how much.

Velikovsky seemed to suggest that the hydrocarbons would have been on Venus thousands of years ago (after ejection from Jupiter) and that they would have burned up by reacting with oxygen, so it does not matter how much hydrocarbon is eventually detected on Venus today. This was part of the Velikovsky idea that carbohydrates produced from the oxidation of components of Venus' atmosphere turned into biblical manna.

Sagan made several comments about Velikovsky's manna idea, including calculations of the amount of material that would have been required and he asked if Velikovsky's idea could account for the exact biblical details of the manna story. Sagan was clearly skeptical about the way Velikovsky made use of only those ancient writings (and his translations of them) that supported his ideas.

Inorganic molecules like sulfuric acid are still thought to be responsible for Venus' clouds. It seems like Velikovsky supporters no longer want to talk about manna.

It should also be mentioned that after 1974, the structure of the surface features of Venus were found to be consistent with an ancient existence, and do not indicate a recent molten period associated with recent catastrophic ejection from another planetary body.

There was also discussion raised by Velikovsky of how scientists had often changed their ideas about the planets (for example, switching from predicting nitrogen in the Venus atmosphere to reporting carbon dioxide). Sagan made the point that this is how science works- it follows the evidence. Velikovsky seemed to claim that he himself never had made an incorrect prediction about the planets and that his method of reading ancient writings about astronomical events was the secret to his success. Sagan suggested that the "successes" came from vague predictions that were later fit to new data, in the same way that fortune tellers gain the confidence of their clients. (source)

[edit] In my view

In my view, Sagan was perfectly reasonable in his evaluations of Velikovsky's planetary speculations. Having read about the "encounter" between Sagan and Velikovsky, I find the claims that "Sagan's AAAS piss-take of Velikovsky was egregiously wrong in almost every statement he made" and that Sagan provided only a "cynical hatchet job" to be wrong.

I think the comment of Robert Jastrow (that is currently in the Sagan article) should be placed in a section of the article called "reactions" or "complaints" against Sagan. This would provide a place to explain the context of Jastrow's statement and why it is irrelevant to the larger debate about how Sagan treated Velikovsky's planetary speculations.

--JWSchmidt 18:23, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Velikovsky was trying to defend his previous "theories" against the large amounts of new data from planetary science that did not support his "theories".

Sorry, but that is ass backwards! V's "Worlds in Collision" had been a bestseller in 1950... unsurprisingly, 20 years later, the kerfuffle had died down somewhat - but as various probes explored the solar system, sending back "surprising" new data, Velikovsky and his followers seized on these, claiming that V's theories had *predicted* the probe findings. V was not "defending his theories", he was trumpeting his success!! In the early 70s, some pro-Velikovskian journals sprang up and had tens of thousands of subscribers, and various Velikovsky conferences were held on US campuses. By 1974, the AAAS decided this was getting a bit out of hand a decided to do something about it - hence their V conference. Otherwise do you think they'd have risked giving him any more of the oxygen of publicity?? V naively believed they were coming to discuss his theories on an equal footing, when of course they were coming to debunk them.

The debate about Venus is ultimately a bit pointless. It's a fairly commonly accepted idea these days that cometary bodies have menaced Earth within human memory (AD dark ages and all that...) - V's particular heresy was to claim the comet settled down and became Venus. There is no need to use celestial mechanics to debunk this - simply read V's train of logic/sources in Worlds in Collision, and it turns out the ENTIRE identification hinges on a reference to a lost medaeval Latin text by "Rockenbach", called "De Cometis". It is tenous at best. Sagan could have dismissed V's entire Venus theory in 5 minutes flat by attacking that, but instead he didn't want to cross interdisciplinary boundaries and preferred to make jokes about frogs whilst getting his maths wrong.

As for your claim that " Sagan was clearly skeptical about the way Velikovsky made use of only those ancient writings " - this is si mply wrong - Sagan is on record as saying something like (I paraphrase from memory slightly) "My own position is that if even 10% of the agreement between the historical/mythical sources V has presented is true, then there is something to be explained" --feline1 19:39, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

They were "trumpeting his success" in the same way a fortune teller does after making a vague statement that "amazingly" matches some aspect a person's life. I'm not impressed. Yes, people who hear what they want to hear will lap up what hucksters like Velikovsky offer; that is why Sagan had to publically challenge Velikovsky. I urge all wikipedia editors to read the transcript of Sagan at the AAAS meeting. The file is long but just search through it for "Sagan". He was his usual skepticl self and centered on dealing with evidence. --JWSchmidt 02:22, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
It's not a question of you being impressed! It's just the truth of what happened - no matter how irksome you may personally find it, in the early 70s, thousands of people in the US (particularly students on campuses) became very sympathetic to Velikovsky's ideas, and regarded the "scientific establishment" as having treated him unfairly. (And boy, did V milk his martyr status!). That is why the AAAS set up that conference!! As an enthusiastic "populizer of Science" with a capital S, Sagan was keenly involved. However the *fact* is that, with a substantial proportion of the acolytes that the AAAS was trying to wean off Velikovsky, Sagan's conduct completely backfired and merely made them all the more convinced that the "establishment" was not treating V fairly. This is a fact (there are still books being published on this gravy train today, years after both Sagan and V have passed away, for goodness sakes - cf the Ginethal book). It is completely irrelevant that you personally have a pejorative attitude to Velikovsky and don't personally find that Sagan's proselytizing of Science was diminished - what this objective encylopedia article could usefully note is that for many of his key target audience in a showcase example like this, Sagan shot himself in the foot. No-one else on the AAAS panel that day came in for such stick. Sagan got himself demonised with that audience the same way Harlow Shapley and Celia Payne-Gaposhkin did in the 1950s.--feline1 08:35, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
reply to feline1: There is no point in being overly dramatic. I am not in denial over the "truth". There is no need for you to keep repeating that Velikovsky had and still has followers. That is not a matter of debate. I also have never denied that Velikovsky was treated unfairly by some elements of the "establishment". In particular, the idea that Harlow Shapley would try to influence the publication of one of Velikovsky's books seems absurd. You state that my opinions about Velikovsky are irrelevant. I think you are wrong. I am trying to participate in a decision about what to put in the Carl Sagan article. There has been an attempt to insert into the article a claim that Sagan did not behave as a scientist should in confronting Velikovsky. I have looked at both Velikovsky's "science" and the claims that Sagan did not treat Velikovsky fairly and I am not impressed with either. This is my judgment as a scientist and has nothing to do with me being irked or in any other emotional state that you might imagine. Sagan set up the AAAS confrontation because large amounts of data for the solar system had become available and he knew it would be useful for the public to be allowed to compare how scientists systematically use such data to build our understanding of the solar system to how Velikovsky was selectively "trumpeting his success" whenever there was some trivial and irrelevant match between new data and one of his "predictions". I think you are wrong that "Sagan's conduct completely backfired". The storm of protests thrown up by Velikovsky supporters after the AAAS meeting was just smoke and mirrors, ment to impress the gullible. As I said, I am not impressed. Sagan acted as he should have acted to expose shoddy "science". I agree with User:Eloquence that Velikovsky's type of science can best be classified as pseudoscience. You think that "Sagan shot himself in the foot", but I think you are wrong. My view is that it best to openly discuss bogus claims that are passed off as science, even if it means that you stir up a swarm of religious fanatics. You claim that it is irrelevant that I "have a pejorative attitude to Velikovsky", but I think you are wrong. Velikovsky's approach to "science" invites criticism and I think it is a mistake to avoid providing the criticism it is due. It does not bother me that there are people who respond to the criticism by saying "We are being atacked again by the nasty athiest scientists!". You characterize Sagan as "proselytizing of Science", but I am familiar with attempts of religious zealots to pass off Sagan's actions in terms of religion. Defending science is not promoting religion. You seem to be advocating that the Carl Sagan article mention the fact that by confronting religious zealots you give them additional motivation for their zeal. This is a fundamental sociological fact that fits well in the Religion article. Maybe you should go there and add a small footnote to the 1974 AAAS meeting as an example. --JWSchmidt 13:58, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
There is no point in being overly dramatic." - you would prefer me to write in boring and turgid style? ;-) 'I am not in denial over the "truth".' - Well, you DID incorrectly claim that V was backpedalling to save his theories in the light of new space probe evidence, which is the exact opposite of the actual scenario, misprepresenting why the AAAS came about at all! I didn't say you were in denial, I just said you were wrong ;-)

Moreover, you keep framing this in terms of religious fundamentalism or somesuch, you obviously have a bee in your bonnet about this particular discourse. Velikovsky was a zionist, but seldom brought "religion" per se into his books (other than discussing various ancient religous texts, including the Bible - but this was always in the course of providing physical explanations of the phenomena described in them)... I don't really see what aethism vs religion has to do with any of this particularly. The fact is that half a dozen people spoke at that AAAS conference, but only Sagan's conduct got people's hackles up. Only Sagan peppered his address with jibes about frogs. Only Sagan whizzed off after he spoke and refused to participate in Q&A sessions. Only Sagan took two years to rewrite his address into a completely different paper. Perhaps he was the only one to have his own TV show too, I dunno... Ultimately I do feel he had a weasel streak in him, which sometimes helped him get his messages across, but sometimes backfired on him.--feline1 14:38, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

"I just said you were wrong". I never said that Velikovsky was "backpedalling". I said that Sagan knew that observations of the planets did not support Velikovsky's "theories"; Sagan recognized that this presented an opportunity to debunk Velikovsky and show how his sort of pseudoscience differs from science.
"framing this in terms of religious fundamentalism". Some people have tried to interpret Velikovsky as having provided a way to use scientific results to "proove" that miraculous biblical stories are factual accounts of global catastrophic events. I'll admit that some people just want to make money off of Velikovsky. However, I think that Velikovsky would never have entered into the main stream of public awareness if his ideas did not appeal to religious fundamentalists who hope to show that everything in the bible is literal truth. This is not a bee in my bonnet. It is all the creation of the fundamentalists.
"had a weasel streak in him" Do you have evidence that Sagan did not have a valid reason for leaving the AAAS meeting before the evening session? The fact that he had to leave the meeting early was openly announced at the start of the meeting and is not unusual for busy scientists.
"Sagan whizzed off after he spoke and refused to participate in Q&A sessions". Sagan participated in Q&A with Velikovsky at the session where they both gave their talks.
"Only Sagan took two years to rewrite his address into a completely different paper" When Sagan spoke at the meeting he explained how what he had originally thought of as a simple exrcise in discussing the planetary science of Venus grew into a larger project that covered much of Velikovsky's body of work. He found it impossible to limit himself to debunking one small aspect of Velikovsky when there was so much more to be done. That a busy scientists would take the required time to comprehensively confront Velikovsky is to his credit. --JWSchmidt 16:05, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
"However, I think that Velikovsky would never have entered into the main stream of public awareness if his ideas did not appeal to religious fundamentalists who hope to show that everything in the bible is literal truth" - possibly - I don't know, I don't live in America, here in the UK your whole "religious fundamentalism" thing is much less of a phenomenon... V was certainly not a religious fundamentalist himself though.--feline1 16:35, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Nuking the Moon

No reference to the works of Sagan in the secret project to "nuke the moon", in the 50's?

http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/nuke_moon_000514.html

[edit] Scientific achievements

This sectuion seems to be disturbingly small for such a notable scientist. Is this all that Sagan actually did with his academic life?
21:13, 29 January 2006 User:Arundhati bakshi

the second sentence appears to be a cynical attack. and it is a logical fallacy: post hoc ergo propter hoc. because some article (a wikipedia bio) lacks some information it cannot be assumed, or even reasonably conjectured, that such information (scientific achievements in his career) does not exist. it merely indicates that the achievements section should be updated. http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/post-hoc.html

Geez. It was obviously a figure of speech - the writer clearly knew that Sagan HAD done much more than that. Is this what your logical thinking come to, rendering you unable to interact with other plain-language humans? (btw feel free to consider this question a "cynical attack")

[edit] Awards - 2 entries corrected (removed)

removed : Hugo Award - 1998 - Contact Hugo Award - 1997 - The Demon-Haunted World

In validating a bio quotation for Sagan, I visited the Hugos website and the two citations above (from Wikipedia) are not correct. The only Hugo Award shown for Carl Sagan on the official Hugos site is: "1981 - Non-Fiction Book: Cosmos by Carl Sagan "

Reference: World Science Fiction Society | World Science Fiction Convention The Hugo Award Science Fiction Achievement Award) : http://worldcon.org/hugos.html The Hugo Awards By Year : http://worldcon.org/hy.html

[edit] Minor link removal

Link has been removed. The link does not appear authoritative. In addition, the author makes claims which are false (notably that Sagan "never admitted to ever making an error"). Finally, the page is riddled with spelling and grammatical mistakes. I'd also question linking the band Sagan, but one removed link a day is enough for me. Thoughts?

Upon reading the previous discussion page I think that this may thrust this Velikovsky/Sagan issue back to the forefront. Is there a better link that could be submitted that would offer the same critical tone while containing fewer errors and spelling mistakes?

[edit] Ann Druyan

I'm sorry if this has been discussed before, but this text is found within the article under the section "Social Concerns":

'Sagan became more politically active after marrying fellow scientist Ann Druyan'

I was under the impression that Ann Druyan was a writer and not a scientist. I did a search for a biography on Google and could not find any information supporting her being a scientist. I also looked for her CV, but could not find it. Can anyone more "in the know" provide a source for this?

"Education: Attended New York University on and off from 1967 to 1971, but left before graduating to launch a career as a novelist"[4] --JWSchmidt 16:27, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I will take the link provided by JWSchmidt to indicate that Ms. Druyan was indeed not a scientist. I will replace the text "fellow scientist" with "novelist" 65.78.8.9 06:40, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cosmos most watched TV show?

A recent edit to the article says that Cosmos is the most-watched TV show. This link doesn't list it. It might be the most watched PBS TV show. I'm leaving it in for now, pending a citation. Bubba73 (talk), 02:49, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Various 'credible' websites like NASA, [5], [6] and [7] say it's the most watched TV show of all time. I added these links to the article. Sheehan 10:34, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Thank you, that supports what I thought. The first link (NASA) says "became the most watched show in public television history". Here in the U.S., we have "commercial television", which means all of the commercial networks. We also have "public television" whish is partly sponsered by the governement, partly by the viewers, and partly by businesses. There were no commercials on public TV until recently. "PBS" is the Public Broadcasting Service in the US. The number of viewers of "public TV" is small compared to commercial TV, so the article needs to state that Cosmos was the most watched show on Public Broadcasting Service. I'll make htat change. Bubba73 (talk), 16:53, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

i think carl sagan is a great man and i remember seeing him on t.v and i think it is brave for the world to keep him iin mind i'm 12 years old and doing a project about because are school is named after him.

[edit] Sagan viewing computer science as "pseudoscience"

In the Personality section, there is the statement: "... and he was displeased at being associated with what he considered pseudoscience," (regarding the law suit with Apple). Is there any reference or evidence of this? Working heavily on planetary exploration missions, it would be assumed that he would have an appreciation of computer science (assuming this is what the statement refers to), or generally computers, given astronomy's heavy reliance on them. Further, I remember reading his appreciation and encouragement of the further development of computer science as a field of study from the 1971 conference in Soviet Armenia by the USSR Academy of Sciences as well as the U.S. Academy of Sciences, including that the field would contribute and aid the technological capabilities of planetary/space exploratiion. Or is this not what the statement is referring to? If so, perhaps this statement should be less vague about the matter. C.J. 16:17, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for describing a possible source of confusion about that part of the article. This anecdote is meant to illustrate that Sagan was apparently somewhat protective of his reputation and unwilling to have people poke fun at his scientific interests. It was a practice at Apple to have some internal project names that are associated with fringe science. Sagan was interested in SETI, research that some have called pseudoscientific. Sagan struggled to get funding for SETI and was sensitive to efforts to label SETI as fringe science. This had nothing to do with Sagan's attitudes with respect to computers. Sagan did not like the idea of his name and his interests (like SETI) being linked with fringe science or pseudoscience (except in the context of his efforts against pseudoscience). --JWSchmidt 03:36, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
I think the disassociation with pseudoscience is based on the "Cold Fusion" and "Piltdown Man" code names rather than Apple's actual activities. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.126.143.65 (talk) 00:24, 18 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Sagan now in heaven?

In the Conversations with God books by Neale Donald Walsch, God claims that Sagan went to heaven after his demise. Is Neale writing from his own imagination or is the statement true? Any comments? --Siva1979Talk to me 10:15, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Are you serious? How could it be verifiably true? Assuming, even, there is an existence of a "heaven"? Your question is absurd, and I don't see how it relates, in any sense, to any serious nature of the article. Furthermore, I don't see how this Walsch person would be able to make any statement of any individual soul's placement in some afterlife. C.J. 19:53, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
If Carl Sagan were able to comment, he would doubtless demand verifiable proof of his alleged current location. This claim is just the imaginings of a religious believer.
Atlant 12:16, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
You could be right. But by stating this, you have implied that the whole Conversations with God books are just from the imagination of Neale Donald Walsch. --Siva1979Talk to me 17:41, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Was there ever any doubt? only nutters or believers would think otherwise--LexCorp 22:20, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
There is a contradictory source of comparable scholarly credibility. In the last entry of The Onion: Our Dumb Century, the Rapture happens at the turn of the millenium, Ralph Reed and Jerry Falwell ascend to heaven, and Sagan makes some regretful comments from Hell, where his skull is being used as a chalice by Lucifer. Or something like that. - Reaverdrop 06:06, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Oh yeah, there was also an Onion article soon after his death in which his restless ghost returns to warn the president of Cornell to seek out a magic amulet that will ward off superstition. Can there be any doubt that The Onion is at least as intimately in contact with God as Neale Donald Walsch? - Reaverdrop 06:08, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, first of all, if you're talking about the christian concept of heaven, probably not. However, one could argue that Carl Sagan tried to make this earth as close to a heaven as he could in his lifetime. And, he saved countless lives by using the nuclear winter thing to convince Defense Department hawks that nuclear war wasn't winnable. He certainly inspired millions with his books and TV appearances. I count him as the major reason why I decided to become a scientist when I was a kid. Does that make him angelic? Does it make him a god? A saint? Or just a seriously awesome guy whose contributions will not be fully appreciated for many decades to come? I favour the latter, but I guess it's up to you to decide. Wandering Star 04:01, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Interesting philosophical question, but please remember Wikipedia:No Original Research. Michaelbusch 04:15, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Needs a better picture

I mean, come on, can't anyone find a better (resolutionwise) picture then the one presented now? 82.166.89.110 06:35, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree, but this is the fault of the template listing his birthplace, birth-date, etc. C.J. 19:56, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] other TV productions

Does anyone remember in the early 80s a TV program of Carl at some seminar, where he was lecturing on the dangers of nuclear war, and the potential resulting nuclear winter? This is a (possibly paraphrased) quote from what I remember him saying

"The extinction of the human species is a terrible thing. The extinction of the human species means you have made meaningless the life of everyone that has ever lived, and the life of everyone that would have lived...."

I have his lecture on betamax tape I think.

[edit] Legacy

The part "legacy" was poor and almost offensive, I think the legacy of Sagan is more deeper and important than simply a movie and a musical group. Somebody fix that.--Robotkarel 20:49, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

During 1991-1997 I was a graduate student at Cornell University (where Sagan taught). I remember VERY well reading an earlier report in the local cornell press (earlier would be during 1993-1995 I would say) about Sagan's ultimately fatal disease, indicating that several other people in the same building or lab as Sagan had developed cancers...and that this was maybe going to be looked into as to whether there was a common root. Well, the next story about Sagan (in the cornell press --must have been either cornell chronicle or a similar publication) did not mention that.. the ultimate stories about his death, didn't either. I wish I could find (I might still have somewhere) the original paper of that story with that clipping, and give the exact reference...It's much too easy to not investigate this but if anyone cares about the truth, I urge those with the time and resources to investigate, find that original story, and research whethere was was ultimately anything to the speculation. I'm actually at cornell again this year (sabbatical visiting prof position) but can't just walk up to random stranger and sound like I'm making an accusation, if I have time to research it in the local libraries I will, but it's going to be a busy year with projects so I'm hoping a sagan fan is out there who might reserach this (if you find something out, contact me via barzilai.org) in which case it should be added to the wikipedia entry, if/when anything is found with citations... thanks,

--Harel 04:42, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

How can an article reach the featured status if it requires cleanup at the same time? Daniel Šebesta (talk • contribs) 15:39, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

  • It doesn't require cleanup. Deltabeignet 01:57, 23 June 2006 (UTC)'

[edit] Sojourner Quote

n an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise entitled "Terra Prime", a quick shot is shown of the relic rover Sojourner, part of the Mars Pathfinder mission, placed by a historical marker at Carl Sagan Memorial Station on the Martian surface. The marker displays a quote from Sagan: "Whatever the reason you're on Mars, I'm glad you're there, and I wish I was with you."

Out of curiosity, is the quote actually there, in real life? Mysticflame 05:41, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm wondering this too. --Mike Schiraldi 06:03, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Apple Law Suit

I thought the article made Sagan seemed outraged at the fact that Apple was using his name in private as a clandstine name for secret projucts so I added the fact that it wasn't untill Apple started pushing the product as "Project Sagan" that he become angry.

"was being used by Apple to sell a product" <-- this seems to contradict what is already in the article: "the project name was strictly internal and never used in public marketing". --JWSchmidt 05:48, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree, and reverted the recent addition out again. Maybe we should mention the revised code name: "BHA -- Butt-Headed Astronomer"? ;-)
Atlant 13:04, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I added the fact that Apple was using his name as a joke to make "billions and billions" for Apple and removed the "in honor" bit. It conincides with the refrence already in exstence so the change seemed to fit like the perfect puzzle piece. ::Antiproconist 1:52 PM, 31 July 2006

[edit] More Problems with the "Personality" Page

In editing both the "billions and billions" joke and Sagan's dislike of being assocated with "Cold-Fusion" is covered. When posted only the "billions and billions" joke is covered. Sagan not wanting to be associated with what he considered to be psydosciences (excuse my spelling) is completly cut and the article crashes into his relgious ideas. Does anyone know why?

Antiproconist

From the article: "Sagan is regarded by most as an atheist, agnostic, or pantheist (According to Atheism Central for Secondary Schools)."

Carl Sagan wrote extensively about his views on religion. What is the point of manufacturing claims about how "most" regarded his views on religion and try to pass this off as some kind of encyclopedic information about his personality? As far as I can tell the cited reference says nothing about pantheism, nor is it a scholarly account of Sagan's views on religion. It cites no references. At best it can be cited by Wikipedia as the opinion of Pat Duffy Hutcheon.

"Sagan is regarded by most as an atheist, agnostic, or pantheist (According to Time Magazine, dated 12 December 1996)."
This AOL page is not a serious source. If there was an article in Time, say who the author was, what pages it was on, and provide a direct quote linking Sagan to pantheism. I still want to know why Wikipedia should ignore what Sagan wrote about religion and try to create a statement about how "most regarded" him. --JWSchmidt 06:27, 11 August 2006 (UTC)


From the article: "Isaac Asimov described Sagan as one of the only two people he ever met who were just plain smarter than Asimov himself. The other was computer scientist Marvin Minsky (See The International Background of Competitive Intelligence)."

If someone wants to create a section for the article called, "What other people said about Sagan", then go for it, but please cite verifiable sources. The cited webpage from a commercial website provides no references and does not even list an author.
--JWSchmidt 23:07, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

"Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do not exist, and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world objectively, fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature part of nature."

It was requested that there be evidence that Sagan said this. Here are a few places where this quote can be found:

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

As far as I can tell, none of these websites (above) cites a source that explains the origin of the quote. Wikipedia includes only verifiable information. Blogs and websites are often not reliable sources. A website that does not cite sources is not a verifiable source. I agree that this sounds like something Sagan might have said, but we should be able to cite the original source if it was published. If he said it in public we should be able to figure out when and where. I wish I still had my copy of "Contact"....I wonder if it might be in there. Why can't we use the {fact}} tag to prompt readers to help find the source? --JWSchmidt 01:46, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding the Velikovsky debate

Velikovsky's theory was examined in Cosmos and the point Carl Sagan was trying to make was that all theories deserved to be evaluated according to the scientific method. No theory, however outlandish, should simply be dismissed or ridiculed because doing so runs the risk of missing important insights. Science is not immune to orthodoxy. I did not see or read about the conference referred to in the discussion on this talk page. It would appear Carl Sagan gave in to temptation and used humour instead of following his sober advice to the letter. Pendragon39 08:54, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Maybe "all scientific theories deserved to be evaluated according to the scientific method". Critics of pseudoscience do not introduce the humor; humorous outcomes are a natural result of the practice of pseudoscience. If you throw away the error correcting methods of science you stop doing science and end up believing in errors, often they are silly errors. People who do something silly look silly, particularly if they seem to be unaware that they are silly. Science is a human activity. Humor is part of human life. Often humor can get people to think when a logical argument does not. I think you have to ask if Sagan was making fun of honest scientific theories or if he was discussing the humor that is inherent in pseudoscience. It is a common tactic for pseudoscientists to try to elevate their work to the status of science and then call "foul" when they are laughed at. Belief in things such as infallible revelation is not a valid foundation for a scientific hypothesis or theory. It is a matter of taste when it comes to using humor to deal with people who take themselves too seriously. Many scientists just ignore pseudoscience and hope it goes away. Sagan decided to confront pseudoscience, including its humorous aspects. --JWSchmidt 14:42, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
That people react by seeing humour doesn't affect Sagan's original point. Humour and emotional reactions are not part of the scientific method. Seeing something as silly does not get people to think - it gives them an excuse to ignore and dismiss. Pendragon39 00:55, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sagan Involved in Project A119

Does anyone have a source for this? It seems unlikely Sagan would have been involved in a top secert air force project while still in school. I am going to delete it if no one can come up with anything. Daniel J. Leivick 00:36, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

There are two references in the Wikipedia article on A119. One of these is a space.com article, which lists Carl as being involved. It is in turn derived from a [to the editor in Nature], in which Leonard Reiffel, who was in charge of A119, described Carl's involvement to correct a perceived error by one of his biographers. According to Reiffel, he hired Carl, then a graduate student, to model the effects of an atomic detonation on the Moon, on the recommendation of Gerard Kuiper. While this may seem unusual, it is not unprecedented. Various grad students worked on the Manhattan Project, for example. On a more prosaic level, a great deal of space-related research has historically been deemed restricted, although not classified or top secret. Michaelbusch 04:17, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sagan refference in "White and Nerdy" video

In the video of the song "White and Nerdy" by "Wierd Al" Yankovic, Al, when walking through a comic book store, is wearing a shirt that says "Carl Sagan is my homeboy." Would it be worth mentioning that in the Legacy section, or would that be a small enough refference not to be mentioned? FVZA_Colonel 13:03, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

It is not worth mentioning. If we did, the number of equally significant references would be several hundred.Michaelbusch 20:07, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
After thinking about it briefly I came to the same conclusion, for much the same reasons. Thank you for responding. FVZA_Colonel 13:39, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comments on Sagan's Cosmos Series

I have recently seen some of the episodes of Cosmos that are being rerun on The Science Channel. Am I the only one who finds these shows almost completely lacking in Science material? I am a heavy fan of Science related shows on tv and articles on wikipedia but I find the Cosmos episodes so slow in scientific material to almost put you to sleep. Part of the issue is his habit of hanging on his words and drawing out his sentances to great lengths. I see the article saying how great Cosmos was but it appears to me to be just a below average science show. I was thinking of adding something regarding this to this page or the Cosmos page. Any comments? Ergzay 02:19, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that Cosmos is now dated, so that some amount of the science in it has ceased to be as impressive as it was originally. Another aspect is that science television programs have evolved greatly since then, so if you are comparing Cosmos only to newer material, your judgement will be biased. Most programs are much narrower in scope, as well. Also, your objections to the show seem to be the style of the presentation, rather than the content. Stating the popularity of Cosmos here is not a problem, because it was indeed very popular. Judging Cosmos as 'below average' is a problematic statement at best, because comparing it to later programs is not necessarily meaningful and others may contest your assessment of the style.Michaelbusch 03:10, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Archive Request

Could someone please archive the bulk of this page and then remove this section? Thanks. Michaelbusch 03:10, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sagancruft

In 2004, the electronic music group Sagan released the CD/DVD "Unseen Forces." The music was accompanied by a DVD which featured humorous music video format homages of many of the historical sketches from Cosmos.

That's a cruft too far. I've removed it because it has only a very tenuous connection with Sagan. --Tony Sidaway 10:49, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] It has been pointed out that...

It has been pointed out that Sagan wasn't being logically consistent.

If this is the case, then someone will have to find whoever pointed it out and cite that. Also it's probably better to avoid "pointed out" because it assumes opinion as fact (See Weasel words). --Tony Sidaway

[edit] Civil Disobedience

The recent additions to this section are interesting, but the long discussion of history seems excessive and redundant with the rest of the article. I suggest reversion. Michaelbusch 22:47, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Michael, I suggest you actually take the time to read the relevant section from the page I directed your attention to in my edit summary (Wikipedia:Revert), which I am posting here, so you have no excuse for not reading it and taking it to heart.
==When to revert==
===Do's===
See also Wikipedia policy should follow the spirit of ahimsa
  • Reverting is a decision which should be taken seriously.
  • Reverting is used primarily for fighting vandalism, or anything very similar to the effects of vandalism.
  • If you are not sure whether a revert is appropriate, discuss it first rather than immediately reverting or deleting it.
  • If you feel the edit is unsatisfactory, improve it rather than simply reverting or deleting it.
===Dont's===
  • Do not simply revert changes that are made as part of a dispute. Be respectful to other editors, their contributions and their points of view.
  • Do not revert good faith edits. In other words, try to consider the editor "on the other end." If what one is attempting is a positive contribution to Wikipedia, a revert of those contributions is inappropriate unless, and only unless, you as an editor possess firm, substantive, and objective proof to the contrary. Mere disagreement is not such proof. See also Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith.
  • Generally there are misconceptions that problematic sections of an article or recent changes are the reasons for reverting or deletion. If they contain valid information, these texts should simply be edited and improved accordingly. Reverting is not a decision which should be taken lightly.
To which I would add the following:
Reverting is never an appropriate substitute for expending the time and effort necessary for thoughtful and respectful editing (and discussion) of material that has been labored over by another editor. Reverting is the lazy person's response to complex and time-consuming issues, and is, in fact, inversely commensurate with the effort that was required to produce the material that's being reverted. 30 seconds versus 90 minutes: hardly a fair exchange — and extremely disrespectful.
By now it should be apparent that I am really offended by the way you've dealt with this. When I asked you to avail yourself of the talk page, I was expecting that you would at least have the decency to give me some sort of thoughtful discussion of what your specific concerns were, and possibly (hopefully) some sort of apology for your inconsiderate action. Instead, you essentially repeated the same vague (and unpersuasive) generalities that you had already written in your edit summary, and again resorted to calling for reversion of the entire section. That is just not acceptable.
How is it possible that you have made a very considerable number of WP edits, but haven't yet bothered to learn how to work with other WP editors in a collegial fashion? I am truly mystified. I always do my very best to engage other editors with real respect for the work they've put into their writing (even when it's somewhat mediocre). In contrast, your decision to dispose of my work with the simple expedient of reverting it, was no better than common, garden-variety vandalism. Please take a minute, or an hour, or however long it may take you to put yourself in my place, and imagine how it felt to have someone come along and (presto!) revert an entire section that I had taken great care to write and find links for — as casually as flushing a toilet. That was certainly the last thing I expected to see when I took a quick look at my watchlist this afternoon. Quite an unpleasant surprise, and not my idea of a Thanksgiving treat.
So, where does that leave us? If you actually want to put in the time to have a serious discussion of what I wrote, then please show me that you deserve my respect as a fellow WP editor by (at the very least) acknowledging that you've handled this badly. I don't believe in demanding apologies (seems to undercut the whole idea), but it would certainly be welcome — and appreciated.
Craig Gingold - Cgingold 08:40, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I apologize for the offense. I have read and understood the policies. But I feel that the article was fine to begin with and now it has paragraphs of redundancy added (i.e. why do we need summaries of 1980's politics when all that is being discussed is Carl climbing a fence?). As I said above, the material is interesting, but not appropriate for the article. Consequently, I could have edited it directly, but the edits I would have made would have been almost equivalent to reversion. I apologize again for giving offense, but I have only tried to be honest. Michaelbusch 16:46, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your response, Michael (and for your personal note on my talk page). Obviously, I don't agree with your feeling that "the article was fine to begin", or I wouldn't have added the new material in the first place. Even after a third read through of related material elsewhere in the article, I am scratching my head over your reiterated claim of "redundancy" — I still haven't found any. The new material is not merely "interesting", but necessary: it provides the context that makes it possible for readers to (more fully) grasp the significance of Sagan's actions during this period. If there is a particular word or phrase that really, really bothers you, I'm certainly willing to discuss your concerns. Beyond that, it seems to me that you should be able to live with what I've added. Cgingold 22:26, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I can certainly live with it. Like so many things, we can agree to disagree. Michaelbusch 22:29, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] References

Review of two biographies in: Clark R. Chapman (2000). "Two Views of a Star's Life". Science 287 (5450): 46 - 47. DOI:10.1126/science.287.5450.46.

A short biography is available at: Owen Gingerich (1999). "Carl Sagan". PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 143 (4): 712-716.

[edit] Extraordinary claims

In this part, under Personality, is it worth scrapping the Truzzi reference and mentioning David Hume's "That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish[.]"? Perhaps they're not related, it just struck me as being earlier than the Laplace principle. Leon 21:48, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] External links...

What happened to the ELs?? I'd be the first to admit they needed a trim, but I went on a wikibreak and now someone seems to have deleted almost all of them. (And several of the deleted itesm seemed rather useful to me). Mikker (...) 17:28, 10 February 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Graduate students

It'd be nice to add a section listing his former graduate students (i.e., Steve Squyres)... changcho (13-II-2007)

[edit] Sagan and marijuana use

According the BBC, "For much of his adult life, Sagan used marijuana and believed that it gave him many of his best ideas." [12] Perhaps it should be mentioned in the article that his use of marijuana and his strong advocacy of evolutionary ideas may have been related. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.205.191.56 (talk) 23:15, 22 February 2007 (UTC).


They probably were related - I dimly recall reading that Sagan (as Mr X) said he did his best thinking while high. -- Pookington

[edit] Merge from Minimum deterrence

Someone has proposed that Minimum deterrence be merged here. I disagree, and think it should have it's own article. I'll delete the merge tag in a few days if I don't hear any objection. --Selket Talk 21:43, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

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