The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

by Carl Sagan

We can pray over the cholera victim, or we can give her 500 milligrams of tetracycline every 12 hours.

In hunter-gatherer, pre-agricultural times, the human life expectancy was about 20 to 30 years. That’s also what it was in Western Europe in Late Roman and in Medieval times. It didn’t rise to 40 years until around the year 1870. It reached 50 in 1915, 60 in 1930, 70 in 1955, and is today approaching 80 (a little more for women, a little less for men). The rest of the world is retracing the European increment in longevity. What is the cause of this stunning, unprecedented, humanitarian transition? The germ theory of disease, public health measures, medicines and medical technology. Longevity is perhaps the best single measure of the physical quality of life.

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Pseudoscience speaks to powerful emotional needs that science often leaves unfulfilled.

When we are self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition.