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

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The Wind Makes Dust
[T]he wind makes dust because it intends to blow, taking
away our footprints.
Specimens of Bushmen Folklore,
W.H.I. Bleek and L.C. Lloyd,
collectors, L.C. Lloyd, editor (1911)
[E]very time a savage tracks his game he employs a
minuteness of observation, and an accuracy of inductive and
deductive reasoning which, applied to other matters, would
assure some reputation as a man of science . . . [T]he
intellectual labour of a 'good hunter or warrior' considerably
exceeds that of an ordinary Englishman.
Thomas H. Huxley, Collected Essays,
Volume II, Darwiniana: Essays
(London: Macmillan, 1907), pp. 175-6
[from 'Mr Darwin's Critics' (1871)]
Why should so many people find science hard to learn and
hard to teach? I've tried to suggest some of the reasons - its
precision, its counterintuitive and disquieting aspects, its prospects
of misuse, its independence of authority, and so on. But is
there something deeper? Alan Cromer is a physics professor at
Northeastern University in Boston who was surprised to find so
many students unable to grasp the most elementary concepts in his
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