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So he writes a book mocking people who believe they or others have meet or been kidnapped by aliens. but he wrote a bestseller about a women meeting aliens in the book Contact? What book did he write first?
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The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark,
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Michael
your use of "mocking" tells the world more about you and less about Sagan. "Demon Haunted world" is an essay. "Contact," is a novel.
Michael
Sagan doesn't mock people for their 'magical' beliefs, but he does point out the logical, and experimentally testable, fallacies in their thinking.
In common, I would think, with most astronomers, making contact with extra-terrestrials would have been a dream come true for Sagan. He doesn't, however, confuse his wishful thinking with reality.
Carl would encourage you to find out for yourself the dates of publication for those two books. Heck, you're already in an appropriate database to do the research! 😊
In common, I would think, with most astronomers, making contact with extra-terrestrials would have been a dream come true for Sagan. He doesn't, however, confuse his wishful thinking with reality.
Carl would encourage you to find out for yourself the dates of publication for those two books. Heck, you're already in an appropriate database to do the research! 😊
Dustin Hertel
1. The singular form is "woman" not "women."
2. Contact is a work of fiction. Demon Haunted World is not. I'm pretty sure Tolkein didn't believe dragons and wizards were real things either.
3. What you call "mocking" I call constructive encouragement to question beliefs.
2. Contact is a work of fiction. Demon Haunted World is not. I'm pretty sure Tolkein didn't believe dragons and wizards were real things either.
3. What you call "mocking" I call constructive encouragement to question beliefs.
Kristina Coop-a-Loop
I don't think you read either book. If you did, you would know how inaccurate your description of "mocking" is. Contact is not about a woman meeting aliens. That's just what you think it is, because you have clearly not read the book.
Lance Haley
Go back and carefully watch Contact again. You will notice that Sagan compares and contrasts the absurdities of religion (magical, unscientific explanations) with the certainties of science. The "aliens" did not contact one person - as is always the case with current claims of the "they beamed me up" crowd. They contacted us with a direct message encrypted in the universal language of math.
They essentially invited one of us to come visit them, so as to enlighten our species as to just how primitive our way of seeing reality was in the hopes that maybe we could take the next monumental leap in intellectual evolution. Metaphorically speaking, although we now knew the earth was neither flat, nor the center of the universe, our species was still living in a geocentric world. Paranoid that anything existing outside of earth was a threat to us, rather than an opportunity to expand our field of knowledge. Such a typical human response. Carl was so wise compared to most human beings.
Moreover, the aliens were not aliens afterall. Rather than our souls going to a heaven - as religion would have you believe, the essence of our energy is transported at death to another place in the universe. Paradoxically, our "higher selves" contacted us. If you think about the quantum world that science has now discovered, coupled with Einstein's Standard Model, this all makes sense. Energy is never destroyed. Just "reimagined".
As Sagan suggests in Contact, the real magic is in thinking about explanations for phenomenon in purely rational, logical scientific terms. Not some magical "guy in the sky" god(s). Reaching for a concept as highly advanced as universal consciousness requires a much greater level of thinking. One based in science and logic. Not some baseless cosmic debris (B.S.) like a daddy in the sky.
That's what Contact was all about.
They essentially invited one of us to come visit them, so as to enlighten our species as to just how primitive our way of seeing reality was in the hopes that maybe we could take the next monumental leap in intellectual evolution. Metaphorically speaking, although we now knew the earth was neither flat, nor the center of the universe, our species was still living in a geocentric world. Paranoid that anything existing outside of earth was a threat to us, rather than an opportunity to expand our field of knowledge. Such a typical human response. Carl was so wise compared to most human beings.
Moreover, the aliens were not aliens afterall. Rather than our souls going to a heaven - as religion would have you believe, the essence of our energy is transported at death to another place in the universe. Paradoxically, our "higher selves" contacted us. If you think about the quantum world that science has now discovered, coupled with Einstein's Standard Model, this all makes sense. Energy is never destroyed. Just "reimagined".
As Sagan suggests in Contact, the real magic is in thinking about explanations for phenomenon in purely rational, logical scientific terms. Not some magical "guy in the sky" god(s). Reaching for a concept as highly advanced as universal consciousness requires a much greater level of thinking. One based in science and logic. Not some baseless cosmic debris (B.S.) like a daddy in the sky.
That's what Contact was all about.
Angela Mitchell
You definitely didn't read this book.
1. TDHW is nonfiction; CONTACT is fiction. Comparing the two isn't really appropriate and is counterproductive.
2. Sagan didn't mock anyone in TDHW, and in the anecdote you describe, he isn't mocking people for believing in alien encounters, but for being gullible enough to do so with zero evidence or scientific proof. Nobody would have been happier than Sagan to be able to verify that actual contact had taken place.
3. Nobody was more dedicated in the search for extraterrestrial life than Sagan, who himself started SETI. "Contact" is his fictional exploration of what that encounter might have been like.
He wrote "Contact" many years before "The Demon-Haunted World."
1. TDHW is nonfiction; CONTACT is fiction. Comparing the two isn't really appropriate and is counterproductive.
2. Sagan didn't mock anyone in TDHW, and in the anecdote you describe, he isn't mocking people for believing in alien encounters, but for being gullible enough to do so with zero evidence or scientific proof. Nobody would have been happier than Sagan to be able to verify that actual contact had taken place.
3. Nobody was more dedicated in the search for extraterrestrial life than Sagan, who himself started SETI. "Contact" is his fictional exploration of what that encounter might have been like.
He wrote "Contact" many years before "The Demon-Haunted World."
John Dexter
can't differ a fiction from non-fiction?
Nick
Contact was a Novel. This book is a commentary about science and what some people choose to believe in its place. If it matters which book he wrote first, look it up. Not that hard of a thing to do.
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