Science Is A Way To Not Fool

I Worry That, Especially As The Millennium Edges Nearer, Pseudo-science And Superstition Will Seem Year By Year More Tempting, The Siren Song Of Unreason More Sonorous And Attractive.

It Is Sometimes Said That Scientists Are Unromantic, That Their Passion To Figure Out Robs The World Of Beauty And Mystery. But Is It Not Stirring To Understand How The World Actually Works — That White Light Is Made Of Colors, That Color Is The Way We Perceive The Wavelengths Of Light, That Transparent Air Reflects Light, That In So Doing It Discriminates Among The Waves, And That The Sky Is Blue For The Same Reason That The Sunset Is Red? It Does No Harm To The Romance Of The Sunset To Know A Little Bit About It.

The Difference Between Physics And Metaphysics Is Not That The Practitioners Of One Are Smarter Than The Practitioners Of The Other. The Difference Is That The Metaphysicist Has No Laboratory.

Accommodation To Change, The Thoughtful Pursuit Of Alternative Futures Are Keys To The Survival Of Civilization And Perhaps Of The Human Species.

Coal, Oil And Gas Are Called Fossil Fuels, Because They Are Mostly Made Of The Fossil Remains Of Beings From Long Ago. The Chemical Energy Within Them Is A Kind Of Stored Sunlight Originally Accumulated By Ancient Plants. Our Civilization Runs By Burning The Remains Of Humble Creatures Who Inhabited The Earth Hundreds Of Millions Of Years Before The First Humans Came On The Scene. Like Some Ghastly Cannibal Cult, We Subsist On The Dead Bodies Of Our Ancestors And Distant Relatives. - Dr. Carl Sagan