Carl Sagan on science, scrutiny and a lot else besides

 

Gosh -- this is impressive.  What an intelligent, wise and compassionate man he was....... in this interview he makes a multitude of hugely important points with extraordinary lucidity.  And I think he is spot on when he bewails the lack of understanding of science (and respect for evidence) across society.  In the context of this blog, we are talking archaeology and the manner in which fantasy has replaced careful evidence-based assessments of what is on the ground.  Things have not improved since 1996 -- in fact they have got worse.  In the interview he also bewails the lack of intelligent and informed scrutiny of those who insist on making headline-grabbing claims about the importance of their work.  Sounds familiar?

There is just one point on which I would have parted company with him, if I was to have met him face to face.  That is on the manner in which he occasionally conflates science and technology. In my mind the two are NOT the same, even though they are related.  You can be a brilliant technologist and a lousy scientist, as Arpad Pusztai pointed out many years ago.  And one of the big problems with archaeology right now is that archaeologists use "scientific techniques" (and work with others who have new methods of looking at things and analysing sediments and organic remains, for example) and then pretend that because they have complex diagrams and vast data bases, they are in possession of "the truth" when in fact they are fooling themselves and the rest of us........

Anyway, please watch the interview!