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

The Wind Makes Dust
mode of explanation, an alternative to divine intervention, was
productive and new. Likewise, in the history of ancient Greece,
we can see nearly all significant events driven by the caprice of the
gods in Homer, only a few events in Herodotus, and essentially
none at all in Thucydides. In a few hundred years, history passed
from god-driven to human-driven.
Something akin to laws of Nature were once glimpsed in a
determinedly polytheistic society, in which some scholars toyed
with a form of atheism. This approach of the pre-Socratics was,
beginning in about the fourth century BC, quenched by Plato,
Aristotle and then Christian theologians. If the skein of historical
causality had been different - if the brilliant guesses of the
atomists on the nature of matter, the plurality of worlds, the
vastness of space and time had been treasured and built upon, if
the innovative technology of Archimedes had been taught and
emulated, if the notion of invariable laws of Nature that humans
must seek out and understand had been widely propagated - I
wonder what kind of world we would live in now.
I don't think science is hard to teach because humans aren't
ready for it, or because it arose only through a fluke, or because,
by and large, we don't have the brainpower to grapple with it.
Instead, the enormous zest for science that I see in first-graders
and the lesson from the remnant hunter-gatherers both speak
eloquently: a proclivity for science is embedded deeply within us,
in all times, places and cultures. It has been the means for our
survival. It is our birthright. When, through indifference, inattention,
incompetence, or fear of scepticism, we discourage children
from science, we are disenfranchising them, taking from them the
tools needed to manage their future.
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