If we resolutely refuse to acknowledge where we are liable to fall into error, then we can confidently expect that error — even serious error, profound mistakes — will be our companion forever. But if we are capable of a little courageous self-assessment, whatever rueful reflections they may engender, our chances improve enormously.
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It is a supreme challenge for the popularizer of science to make clear the actual, tortuous history of its great discoveries and the misapprehensions and occasional stubborn refusal by its practitioners to change course. Many, perhaps most, science textbooks for budding scientists tread lightly here. It is enormously easier to present in an appealing way the wisdom distilled from centuries of patient and collective interrogation of Nature than to detail the messy distillation apparatus. The method of science, as stodgy and grumpy as it may seem, is far more important than the findings of science.— Carl Sagan, ‘The Most Precious Thing’. In: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, 1996.1(ch1)
One of the great commandments of science is, ‘Mistrust arguments from authority’. … Authorities must prove their contentions like everybody else. This independence of science, its occasional unwillingness to accept conventional wisdom, makes it dangerous to doctrines less self-critical, or with pretensions to certitude.
— Carl Sagan, ‘Science and Hope’. In: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, 1996.1(ch2)
Carl Sagan poses near the Viking probe – Death Valley – California
© NASA/Novapix / Bridgeman Images
Image: Voyager Golden Record