source file: mills2.txt Date: Sat, 15 Mar 1997 13:52:58 -0800 Subject: relativity and understanding and Sagan From: Gary Morrison -------------------- Begin Original Message -------------------- Message text written by Neil H: "condescension present, in the form of Sagan, which seemed to say, "there, there, don't take that mystical crap too seriously;" in fact, I do know Sagan represented a philosophy which I find ludicrous, namely that there is no ultimate Creator, and those who believe so are a little, shall we say, "old fashioned", or something to that effect." -------------------- End Original Message -------------------- That could perhaps be true, but I read Carl Sagan a little differently. He was outspoken against religious fanaticism, meaning cases where people hurt others or the environment - in the ecological or social senses of the word - in the name of a religious belief. He was similarly outspoken against the nationalistic and technological equivalents of that sort of fanaticism, including for example wars driven by little more than national pride, or using superior technology to obliterate a civilization. As with our friend John C., Sagan was also down on pseudoscience, meaning cases where people use incompletely or misdirectedly, or give the impression of using, scientific methodology to advance a cause they are particularly fond of. A common example is citing evidence in favor of a conclusion while (whether intentionally or not) ignoring evidence to the contrary. Also common is citing evidence based upon sample sizes that are insignificant statistically. Many pseudoscientific cases are also presented with an attitude suggesting that their conclusion cannot be refuted. Carl Sagan's attitude in matters where we just simply have no reliable objective information about a question, or where the question is clearly arbitrary from a scientific perspective is a different matter. I personally never got the impression of a condscending attitude toward those who take a position such matters based solely upon a personal preference or intuition of whatever sort. His choices of music and sounds to put onto his Voyager record, for example, were based upon very open and tolerant attitudes toward human diversity. I have long wondered what Sagan would have had to say about Xenharmonics. I suspect not much really, in the sense that I suspect that he didn't have much experience with music as a whole. Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sat, 15 Mar 1997 22:55 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA25345; Sat, 15 Mar 1997 22:55:18 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA25346 Received: from by ella.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) id NAA12353; Sat, 15 Mar 1997 13:53:16 -0800 Date: Sat, 15 Mar 1997 13:53:16 -0800 Message-Id: <199703151651_MC2-12A6-99EB@compuserve.com> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@ella.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@ella.mills.edu