Carl Sagan And The Invisible Fire-Breathing Dragon In My Garage
It’s apparently ten years ago that the great scientist, and gifted writer Carl Sagan died (give or take a few days). I don’t know a great deal about him, but I do know that he had a great mind and could craft wonderful, compelling and powerful arguments in such a way as to make them easily understood by the layman.
It wasn’t until I’d heard he died that I remembered one of the best books I’ve ever read — The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. In it, he discusses beliefs in new age phenomena, alien abductions and so on, and his problems with these.
But the two key things he does are to demonstrate to the readers how to carry out critical thinking to avoid being taken in by con-artists, and also a wonderful analogy to describe what is and isn’t science — that of an invisible fire breathing dragon.
If I were to claim that I had an invisible fire-breathing dragon in my garage, then Sagan said the scientists would look for evidence. If it produced footprints, or we could see or feel the fire, that would be evidence. It wouldn’t necessarily prove my dragon existed, but it would give us a starting point. If I could not provide footprints or evidence of fire, and then were to claim that I had an invisible, intangible, same-temperature as the surrounding air and invisible fire breathing dragon in my garage then you’d start to become more sceptical.
The argument he was making is that if we can’t provide testable evidence that something exists, then it’s not a scientific hypothesis. Which is the most elegant and simple dismantling of the whole idea of Intelligent Design/ Creationism that I’ve ever heard.
Carl may well have gone on to suggest that Occams Razor could be used to suggest that there is no need to believe in a deity, but my problem with this argument is that at various times in my life I have either had personal experiences or have heard first-hand accounts of other people’s experiences which seem to be inexplicable according to our current scientific belief. Similarly, just because I would agree with the principle of Occam’s Razor something that is more simple is more likely to be true, this doesn’t necessarily mean that it is.
Just ask that cat Schrodinger has been keeping a box all this time…
Then again, I believe Carl was an agnostic, and I don’t want to get into a discussion of religion again here anyway. What I am doing is dishing out credit to the late, and very great Carl Sagan, author of many many immensely readable books on science. If you’ve never read any, why not start with The Demon Haunted World? Or if you prefer shorter essays, Billions and Billions.
Carl Sagan. Astronomer, scientist, philosopher, and very, very clever man. November 9, 1934 to December 20, 1996.
Incidentally Carl, if you’re reading this, it turns out there is an afterlife. (Think about it!) I hope they’ve given you your own pet invisible fire breathing dragon and a garage to keep it in.
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