Sagan - The Demon-Haunted World

More praise forThe Demon-Haunted World

As I close this eloquent and fascinating book, I recall the final chapter title from one of Carl Sagans earlier works, Cosmos. Who Speaks for Earth? is a rhetorical question, but I presume to answer it. My candidate for planetary ambassador can be none other than Carl Sagan himself. He is wise, humane, witty, well read, and incapable of composing a dull sentence. I wish I had written The Demon-Haunted World. Having failed to do so the least I can do is press it upon my friends. Please read this book.

Richard Dawkins
The Times (London)

Sagan takes no prisoners. Unfailingly respectful of religion in general, he decries the love of ignorance at the heart of fundamentalism. Closely argued Entertaining A major salvo in the batttle against irrationality and superstition.

Albany Times Union

In Sagans characteristically elegant prose style, it offers a heavy dose of common sense. Every parent, teacher, clergyman, politician, and high school student should read it immediately.

Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

Skeptical books are comparatively rare. Rarer still are those of the caliber of Carl Sagans new work. Impressive Persuasive Brave.

Scientific American

Lithe, well-supported, sometimes quite wry, and altogether refreshing.

Booklist

One man is not content to go gently into the dark night of irrationality, and his lucid and lyrical voice fills the pages of an important new book, The Demon-Haunted World. A personal statement of one mans moving belief, wonderfully written.

Hackensack Sunday Record

SOME OTHER BOOKS BY CARL SAGAN

Intelligent Life in the Universe
(with I. S. Shklovskii)

The Dragons of Eden

Brocas Brain

Cosmos

Contact: A Novel

Comet
(with Ann Druyan)

A Path Where No Man Thought:
Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race
(with Richard Turco)

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors:
A Search for Who We Are
(with Ann Druyan)

Pale Blue Dot:
A Vision of the Human Future
in Space

A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group

Copyright 1996 by Carl Sagan

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: ADDISON-WESLEY PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC .: Excerpt from Lectures on Physics: Commemorative Issue 3 Volume Package by Richard P. Feyman, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands. Copyright 1964 by California Institute of Technology. Reprinted by permission of Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc. CROWN PUBLISHERS, INC .: Excerpt from The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology by Rossell Hope Robbins. Copyright 1959 by Crown Publishers, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.: Excerpt from On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies by Albert Einstein, from The Principle of Relativity: A Collection of Original Memoirs on the Special and General Theory of Relativity by H. Lorentz, A. Einstein, H. Minkowski, and H. Weyl. Reprinted by permission. ENCYCLOPDIA BRITANNICA, INC .: Perception in Encyclopdia Britannica, 15th edition. Copyright 1985 by Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc. Reprinted by permission. FMS FOUNDATION: Excerpt from Memory with Grain of Salt by Ulric Neisser (FMS Foundation Newsletter, vol. 2, no. 4). Reprinted by permission. INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CHIEFS OF POLICE : Excerpt from Satanic, Occult and Ritualistic Crime by Kenneth V. Lanning (The Police Chief vol. LVI, no. 10, October 1989). Copyright held by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, 515 N. Washington Street, Alexandria, VA 22314. Further reproduction without express written permission from IACP is strictly prohibited. Reprinted by permission. Journal of Abnormal Psychology: Excerpt from Close Encounters: An Examination of the UFO Experience by Nocholas P. Spanos. Patricia A. Cross. Kirby Dixon, and Susan C. DeBreul (vol. 102, 1993, p. 631). Reprinted by permission. Journal of American Folklore: Excerpt from UFO Abduction Reports: The Supernatural Kidnap Narrative Returns in Technological Guise by Thomas E. Bullard (vol. 102, no. 404, April-June 1989). Reprinted by permission of the American Anthropological Association. Not for further reproduction. H AROLD OBER ASSOCIATES, INC .: Excerpt from The Fifty-Minute Hour by Robert Lindner (Holt, Rinehart). Copyright 1954 by Robert Lindner. Reprinted by permission of Harold Ober Associates, Inc. PENGUIN UK: Excerpt from Buddhist Scriptures, translated by Edward Conze (Penguin Classics, 1959). Copyright 1959 by Edward Conze. Reprinted by permission. POINT FOUNDATION C/O BROCKMAN, INC . Excerpt from Confessions of a Parapsychologist by Susan Blackmore and excerpt from The Science of Spitituality by Charles Tart; both excerpts from The Fringes of Reason: A Whole Earth Catalog. Copyright 1989 by Point Foundation. Reprinted by permission of Point Foundation. P RINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS : Excerpt from Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain by William A. Christian, Jr. Copyright 1981 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press. RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS : Excerpt from from Science and Its Critics by John Passmore. Copyright 1978 by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Reprinted by permission of Rutgers University Press. TICKSON MUSIC : Three lines from CTA-102 by Roger McGuinn and Robert J. Hippard. Copyright 1967 by Tickson Music (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-97105

eISBN: 978-0-307-80104-3

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v3.1

TO TONIO,
MY GRANDSON .

I WISH YOU A WORLD
FREE OF DEMONS
AND FULL OF LIGHT .

We wait for light, but behold darkness.
ISAIAH 59:9

It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
ADAGE

It was a blustery fall day in 1939. In the streets outside the apartment building, fallen leaves were swirling in little whirlwinds, each with a life of its own. It was good to be inside and warm and safe, with my mother preparing dinner in the next room. In our apartment there were no older kids who picked on you for no reason. Just the week before, I had been in a fightI cant remember, after all these years, who it was with; maybe it was Snoony Agata from the third floorand, after a wild swing, I found I had put my fist through the plate glass window of Schechters drug store.

Mr. Schechter was solicitous: Its all right, Im insured, he said as he put some unbelievably painful antiseptic on my wrist. My mother took me to the doctor whose office was on the ground floor of our building. With a pair of tweezers, he pulled out a fragment of glass. Using needle and thread, he sewed two stitches.