Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD
In the jury selection process, the court needs to be reassured
that the verdict will be based on evidence. It makes heroic efforts
to weed out bias. It is aware of human imperfection. Does the
potential juror personally know the district attorney, or the
prosecutor, or the defence attorney? What about the judge or the
other jurors? Has she formed an opinion about this case not from
the facts laid out in court but from pre-trial publicity? Will she
assign evidence from police officers greater or lesser weight than
evidence from witnesses for the defence? Is she biased against the
defendant's ethnic group? Does the potential juror live in the
neighbourhood where the crimes were committed, and might that
influence her judgement? Does she have a scientific background
about matters on which expert witnesses will testify? (This is often
a count against her.) Are any of her relatives or close family
members employed in law enforcement or criminal law? Has she
herself ever had any run-ins with police that might influence her
judgement in the trial? Was any close friend or relative ever
arrested on a similar charge?
The American system of jurisprudence recognizes a wide range
of factors, predispositions, prejudices and experiences that might
cloud our judgement, or affect our objectivity, sometimes even
without our knowing it. It goes to great, perhaps even extravagant,
lengths to safeguard the process of judgement in a criminal
trial from the human weaknesses of those who must decide on
innocence or guilt. Even then, of course, the process sometimes
fails.
Why would we settle for anything less when interrogating the
natural world, or when attempting to decide on vital matters of
politics, economics, religion and ethics?
If it is to be applied consistently, science imposes, in exchange for
its manifold gifts, a certain onerous burden: we are enjoined, no
matter how uncomfortable it might be, to consider ourselves and
our cultural institutions scientifically and not to accept uncritically
whatever we're told; to surmount as best we can our hopes,
conceits and unexamined beliefs; to view ourselves as we really
are. Can we conscientiously and courageously follow planetary
motion or bacterial genetics wherever the search may lead, but
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