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

The Marriage of Scepticism and Wonder
Catholic clergy. No stuffy dismissal by a gaggle of scientists makes
contact with the social needs that astrology - no matter how
invalid it is - addresses, and science does not.
As I've tried to stress, at the heart of science is an essential
balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes - an
openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive,
and the most ruthlessly sceptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new.
This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense. The
collective enterprise of creative thinking and sceptical thinking,
working together, keeps the field on track. Those two seemingly
contradictory attitudes are, though, in some tension.
Consider this claim: as I walk along, time - as measured by my
wristwatch or my ageing process - slows down. Also, I shrink in
the direction of motion. Also, I get more massive. Who has ever
witnessed such a thing? It's easy to dismiss it out of hand. Here's
another: matter and antimatter are all the time, throughout the
universe, being created from nothing. Here's a third: once in a
very great while, your car will spontaneously ooze through the
brick wall of your garage and be found the next morning on the
street. They're all absurd! But the first is a statement of special
relativity, and the other two are consequences of quantum
mechanics (vacuum fluctuations and barrier tunnelling,* they're
called). Like it or not, that's the way the world is. If you insist it's
ridiculous, you'll be forever closed to some of the major findings
on the rules that govern the Universe.
If you're only sceptical, then no new ideas make it through to
you. You never learn anything. You become a crochety misanthrope
convinced that nonsense is ruling the world. (There is, of
course, much data to support you.) Since major discoveries in the
borderlines of science are rare, experience will tend to confirm
your grumpiness. But every now and then a new idea turns out to
be on the mark, valid and wonderful. If you're too resolutely and
uncompromisingly sceptical, you're going to miss (or resent) the
* The average waiting time per stochastic ooze is much longer than the age of the
Universe since the Big Bang. But, however improbable, in principle it might
happen tomorrow.
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