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

Sagan’s primary thesis in The Demon-Haunted World is neither to decry human belief in pseudoscience, nor to declare the primacy of Science over Magical/Spiritual Thinking. The unifying idea of the work is that the verifying nature of the scientific method can also be converted into a mode of thinking about other realms of human life. Sagan turns his work into an example of his method, structuring chapters into the building blocks of his argument, displaying the proper method while teaching it.

Sagan softens this pedagogical approach by making himself part of the study. He stresses the importance of teaching the failed attempts of renowned scientists, so that people won’t be discouraged when they find out they perhaps have placed their beliefs in incorrect places. By recharacterizing missteps as simply part of the process, Sagan hopes to rid mistakes of their stopping power. Rather, mistakes give the active thinker another chance to improve knowledge and sharpen skeptical thinking skills. The most important thing is to perpetuate the process, to continue to practice skeptical thinking, to question all assertions, and to remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

The simplicity of Bacon's method and the fine edge of Occam's razor are models of scientific thinking, which remind us that science is not a close-ended process, but one of continual evolution and discovery.