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

Acknowledgements
It has been my great pleasure over many years to teach a Senior
Seminar on Critical Thinking at Cornell University. I've been
able to select students from all over the University on the basis
both of ability, and of cultural and disciplinary diversity. We stress
written assignments and oral argumentation. Towards the end of
the course, students select a range of wildly controversial social
issues in which they have major emotional investments. Paired
two-by-two they prepare for a succession of end-of-semester oral
debates. A few weeks before the debates, however, they are
informed that it is the task of each to present the point of view of
the opponent in a way that's satisfactory to the opponent - so the
opponent will say, 'Yes, that's a fair presentation of my views.' In
the joint written debate they explore their differences, but also
how the debate process has helped them better to understand the
opposing point of view. Some of the topics in this book were first
presented to these students; I have learned much from their
reception and criticism of my ideas, and want to thank them here.
I'm also grateful to Cornell's Department of Astronomy, and its
Chair, Yervant Terzian, for permitting me to teach the course,
which, although labelled Astronomy 490, presents only a little
astronomy.
Some of this book has also been presented in Parade magazine,
a supplement to Sunday newspapers all over North America, with
some 83 million readers each week. The vigorous feedback I've
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