Carl Sagan's last interview with Charlie Rose (Full Interview)

Carl Sagan is one of the preeminent astronomers of our time he is known for bringing the heavens to our living rooms with his PBS series cosmos his latest work is the demon haunted world science as a candle in the dark it explores the country's growing fascination with pseudoscience astrology of faith yields the supernatural and the like all superstitions that he says threatened to undermine true science I am pleased to have him here and I also take note of the fact that he is the David Duncan professor of astronomy and based sciences and director the laboratory for planetary studies at Cornell University distinguished Visiting science at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology and co-founder and president of the Planetary Society the largest space interest group in the world and a former Pulitzer Prize winner welcome back thank you - great to see you listen to this I hate to read too much but this is it's almost like they've been reading your book this is from the New York Times for Friday May 24 Americans flunk science a study finds less than half of all American adults understand that the Earth orbits the Sun yearly according to a basic science survey nevertheless there's enthusiasm for research except in some fields like genetic engineering and nuclear power that are viewed with suspicion only about 25 percent of American adults get passing grades in a National Science Foundation survey of what people know about basic science and economics I mean this is singing your song and well it's certainly what I'm talking about in in the demon world my feeling charlie is that it's it's not that pseudoscience and superstition and new-age so-called beliefs and fundamentalist zealotry are something new they've been with us for as long as we've been with a human but we live in an age based on science and technology with formidable technological powers science and technology are propelling us forward at accelerating rates that's right and if we don't understand it by we I mean the general public if it's something that oh I'm not good at that I don't know anything about it then who is making all the decisions about science and technology that are going to determine what kind of future our children live in just some members of Congress but there's no more than a handful of members of Congress with any background in science at all and the Republican Congress has just abolished its own office of Technology Assessment the organization that gave them bipartisan competent advice and Science and Technology they say we don't want to know don't tell us about science surprising because Gingrich is genuinely interested I think and he's behind notice as a you know out of his own intellectual curiosity does the president still have a science advisor yes he does John Givens and the Vice President his signs about new literary I guess scientific scientifically science maven I mean you you blast them all creationist Christian scientists who you say would rather allow their children to suffer then give them insulin or antibiotics astrologers come in for particular scorn on your part well I would say scorn just the derision during a more generous version that's boring and but what's the danger of all this I mean you know this is not the thing there's two kinds of dangerous one is what I just talked about that we've arranged a society based on science and technology there was nobody understands anything about science and technology and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is going to blow up in our faces I mean who is running the Science and Technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it and the second reason that I'm worried about this is that science is more than a body of knowledge it's a way of thinking a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility if if we are not able to ask skeptical questions to interrogate those who tell us that something is true to be skeptical of those in authority then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan political religious who comes ambling along it's a thing that Jefferson lay great stress on it wasn't enough he said to enshrine some rights in a constitution or a Bill of Rights the people had to be educated and they had to practice their skepticism and their education otherwise we don't run the government the government runs us Jefferson was amazing in his devotion to science when I think of Jefferson as this man who was illiterate and who was a passionate articulator of freedom but if you go to Monticello exactly what you appreciate is he was at heart a scientist a botanist an architect geologist geologist in and if you Meriwether Lewis as we know know from Stephen Ambrose yeah you know he wanted him to go out and do experimentations and explore and be skeptical and find answers to passages and explore the way exactly and there was also an economic Grail right there if the Northwest Passage was found Jefferson said that he was at heart a scientist that he would have loved to have been a scientist but there were certain events happening in America that called to him and so he devoted his life to that kind of relatives indeed so that generations later people could be scientists have we the point is made and maybe by you you know is it when's the last time we had a president who made a speech about science and women and may I say that you know it is this notion that that science is a lot of great interest to us in some sense that somehow we don't want to learn you see people read the stock market quotations and financial pages look how complex that is and because they know the direct connection to their own there's a motivation but they're capable large numbers of people people are able to look at sports statistics look how many people can do that understanding science is not more difficult than that it doesn't involve greater intellectual activity but the the thing about science is first of all it's after the way the universe really is and not what makes us feel good and a lot of the competing doctrines are after what feels good and not what what's true okay but you got a make I'm not sure you go this far with me but I mean there's a lot of that there's about feeling good and there's a lot of that that's about ogres pokers but at the same time you're millions of people who understand science does not prove religion but because religion is faith-based therefore you should do not deny the value of it because it is faith-based and not signed but let's let's look a little more deeply into that what is faith it is belief in the absence of evidence now I don't propose to tell anybody what to believe but for me believing when there's no compelling evidence is a mistake the idea is to withhold belief until there is compelling evidence and if the universe does not comply with our predispositions okay then we have the wrenching obligation to accommodate to the way the universe is you mean but I mean you so you step forward to say I deny all religion because I can't see who knows I intend no no no you see religious experience in the value of reaching for higher experiences let me say religion deals with history with poetry with great literature with ethics with morals including the morality of treating compassionately the least fortunate among us all these are things that I endorse wholeheartedly where religion gets into trouble is in those cases that it pretends to know something about science the science in the Bible for example was acquired by the Jews from the Babylonians during the Babylonian captivity of 600 BC that was the best science on the planet then but we've learned something since then Roman Catholicism Reform Judaism most of the mainstream Protestant denominations have no difficulty with the idea that humans have evolved from other creatures that the earth is 4.6 billion years old with the Big Bang I don't have any trouble with that the trouble comes with people who are biblical literalists who believe that the Bible is dictated by the creator of the universe to an unerring stenographer and so therefore then and has no metaphor allegory and from there they make their political and economic choices and social choices and scientific and scientific choices and scientific and that part of your problem with that idea anxiety is that because for the wrong reasons we make the wrong choices about science that's right so who is more humble the scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fal ability of all the human beings involved in the writing of this button I mean I accept that but I also the argue will be made by many is that you know you don't have to whether whether an act specific scientific actor took place as described by some some biblical writer is not is is not at the heart of the religious faith and religious experience some people agree with you and some people don't some people think that every jot and tittle in the Bible is essential you throw one thing away to allegory or metaphor then it's up to everybody to make their own decisions then how are we this a lot of this has to do with science in the United States are we different than our own nation absolutely not you can see this worldwide in India there's madness about astrology in Britain it's ghosts and Germany it's raised coming up from the earth that can only be detected by browsers every country has its its own specialties we we seem to be fascinated by UFOs right now but what does that work before you leave the other folks tell me about you and professor Mack John Mack is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard who have known for many years we were arrested together at the Nevada nuclear test site protesting us testing in the face of a Soviet moratorium on testing and many years ago he asked me what was there in this UFO business is there anything to it and I said absolutely nothing except of course for a psychiatrist he is a psychiatrist well he looked into it and decided that there was so much emotional energy in the reports of people who claim to be abducted that it couldn't possibly be some psychological aberration that it had to be true he believed his patients I do not believe his patients many of these stories are about waking up from a deep sleep and finding your bed surrounded by three or four short Durer gray and sexually obsessed beings who then take you to their spaceship after they slip of you through their work through your wall and perform overriding objective sexual experiments but here we have dr. Carl Sagan mm-hmm astronomer versus doctor John knowing doctor which is first on Mac Johnny Mac MD no question so what's problem how can he says how could how can scientists this is a scientist so no I'm asking how could I mean what do you think of this man coming to these absolutely is not using the scientific method in approaching his issue and when you constantly I mean I assume you come at him with both barrels in conversation and and in the demon in the world and he says he says I don't appreciate the emotional force you don't of these these reports but many people awaken from a nightmare with profound emotional force that doesn't mean that the nightmare is true would mean something went on inside our head you were making a point before I jumped to John Mack oh yeah what I wanted to say is going back to the question of of adequate evidence on something that's emotionally really really pulling you I I lost both my parents about twelve or fifteen years ago and uh I had a great relationship with them I really missed them I would love to believe that their spirits were around somewhere and I'd give almost anything to spend five minutes a year with them do you hear their voices ever sometimes about six or eight times since their death I've heard Carl just just in the voice of my father or my mother now I don't think that means that they're in the next room I think it means that I've had an auditory hallucination I was with them so long I heard their voices so often why shouldn't I be able to make a vivid recollection here's what's interesting about this for me I'm not you won't see this but I'll throw it at you anyway you convinced me a long time ago that it was arrogant for me or for anyone else to believe that there wasn't some life outside of our to exclude the possible to exclude the possibility was wasn't was to was an arrogance of intellect that we should not assume assume you couldn't prove it you didn't know it was there but the arrogance free right we don't know if it's there we don't know if it's not there let's and if you take that why can't you say there's a lot we don't know a power layer that wasn't what we don't know you know that's what I believe about but that doesn't mean that every every fraudulent claim has to be accepted we we demand the most rigorous standards of evidence especially on what's important to us so if some guy comes up to me in a channeler or a medium and said I can put you in touch with your parents well because I want so terribly to to believe that yeah I know I have to reach in for added reserves of skepticism because I'm likely to be fooled and much more minor to have my money taken what was it jay-z night was it yeah exactly she is a guy named Ram fuzz 10,000 years old or 35 35 yes and he tells you lots of things but nothing about what life was like thirty five thousand years ago Charlie McClane believes Shirley MacLaine believes that Ram pho was her brother things like the Loch Ness monster all that again oh this is it Agra all fakes I mean the most famous photograph has now been shown to be a fake but could there be a unknown mammal or even reptile of large dimension swimming in an Irish Scottish lake sure good that we don't know about sure the good who says no but nobody but the evidence does not support it does not demonstrate it so do we say Oh ridiculous you know we don't do that we say unproved which is a Scottish verdict some reviewers differ with your conclusions on this point that you seem to say it's growing this kind of pseudoscience and I'm sorry interim I don't weave this is part of being human humans have had this way of magical thinking through all of our history the problem is that today the technology has reach formable maybe even awesome proportions and so the dangers of thinking this way are larger not that this is a new kind of thing you are living with Milo dysplasia or I have been you have been it's in remission or you have well you know with with diseases of this sort and all cancers ants Devon there it's mild dysplasia is not exactly cancer the bone marrow but if untreated it inevitably leads to leukemia and the trouble with all these diseases is you never know that you've got every last cell you can only detect down to a certain level but down to the level that anybody can detect and in terms of how I feel and my stamina and all that it seems to be gone I'm very lucky because you had a sister who Salim assisting they are here to have a bone marrow transplant that's one and also the enormous advances in scientific in medical science in just the last few years if I'd had this thing five or ten years ago I would be dead sure as shooting and then finally the love and support of my family all of those have played a central role so you're optimistic I'm very optimistic or at least very hopeful and just share with us because of your your sense of language and and and your sense of understanding and being reflected in perspective what this what do you think about what does it do for you - I didn't have any Nordeste - you didn't want your death experience I didn't have a religious conversion but I thought about what it would be like to die certainly and what it would be like for my my family and and how much think about what it would be like for me because I don't think it's likely there's anything that you think about after you're dead Anna yeah yeah long dreamless sleep I'd love to believe the opposite but I don't know of any evidence but one thing hey Carl hey one thing that it has done is to enhance my sense of appreciation for the beauty of life and of the universe and the sheer joy of being alive you had a healthy portion of that before this but even you it happens too always no question no every moment lively every inanimate object and to say nothing of the exquisite complexity of living beings yeah you imagine missing it all and suddenly it's so much more precious may you live a long time thank you very much thank you treasure Jen here Carl Sagan science as a candle in the dark the title of the book is a demon haunted world thank you for joining us we'll see you next time you

Channel: bailesie

Views: 1,489,985

Keywords: carl, sagan, interview, world, science, cosmos, charlie, rose, demon, haunted, science as a candle in the dark

Id: U8HEwO-2L4w

Length: 20min 27sec (1227 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 19 2012