As is well known to Skeptical Inquirer readers, critics of alien abduction claims have raised numerous problems with them (most tellingly in a NOVA special broadcast on PBS in February 1996), including the questionable reliability of hypnotically enhanced memory, the lack of physical evidence, and the similarity of many such stories to known sleep disorders. The most notable criticism, however, is the lack of third-party witnesses to any of the supposedly thousands (or even millions) of abductions allegedly occurring each year in the United States alone. With Witnessed, Hopkins believes he has now presented the case that will end such criticisms.

The supposedly witnessed abduction of Linda occurred around 3:15 a.m., November 30, 1989, five months after Linda first contacted Hopkins (after she read his popular second book, Intruders) and began attending one of his abductee support groups. The day after the incident, Linda reported to Hopkins that she saw a strange figure in her bedroom. The details came out in a hypnosis session held several days later: Linda was floated out through the closed window of her high-rise apartment and into a brightly lit UFO hovering outside.¹ Hopkins reports that at this time the only unusual part of Linda’s experience was a verbal exchange she held with the aliens aboard their ship, apparently in their tongue: “NOBBYEGG.” “NO KAVE. KAVE.” “NOBBYEGG.” “NO. KAVE.” Because it was otherwise so typical, Hopkins filed Linda’s story away, where “it was nearly forgotten in the torrent of subsequent cases.”

Then in February 1991, he received a letter signed by two men who, using only the first names “Richard” and “Dan” (also pseudonyms), claimed to be police officers who witnessed Linda’s abduction from their police car, which had stalled near the Brooklyn Bridge. Richard and Dan stated they did not know if Linda was still alive, and they felt they had to contact someone to relate their experience from fifteen months before. Richard and Dan later contacted Linda at her apartment, without needing instructions from Hopkins on how to reach her.²

After Hopkins’ and Linda’s checks with the New York Police Department raised questions about whether Richard and Dan were really police officers, Richard and Dan wrote to Hopkins to admit that they were really security officers who had been guarding a VIP, and that the VIP also observed the abduction that night. Later, the story develops that all three of these men were kidnapped as well and transported to a beach where they watched Linda (identified by the aliens as “The Lady of the Sands”) dig sand samples with several aliens. Part of the ludicrous proof for this bizarre scene is Richard’s claim that he and Dan had to help the sand-covered VIP off the roof of their car after the encounter was over. Seemingly, the aliens were too inept to return the important passenger to the interior of the car and instead just dropped him onto the roof. While Hopkins refuses to identify this VIP in his book, calling him simply “The Third Man,” as early as 1992 several UFO newsletters and many mainstream magazines and newspapers revealed that he is allegedly Javier Perez de Cuellar, then Secretary-General of the United Nations. It should come as no surprise that neither the former Secretary-General nor the United Nations has any memory or record of his car having stalled at that time or place, much less of an alien kidnapping.

Other “witnesses” soon followed. Several months after Richard and Dan’s first letter, “Janet Kimball” wrote Hopkins saying she too observed the abduction when her car, along with many others, stalled on the Brooklyn Bridge. In her letter to Hopkins, Janet describes the other people on the bridge screaming in terror at the sight of the UFO. This was followed in 1993 by telephone conversations with a man named Frank Turner (his real name), who had been researching the then public Linda case and whose aunt, Cathy Turner, claimed to have seen a bright red UFO over a building in New York, but no abduction. Cathy Turner could not remember the exact year or month she saw the UFO (only that it was after 1988) or exactly what bridge she was on when she saw it. In fact, even Hopkins admits that her first guess that she was on the Brooklyn Bridge would have put her facing in the wrong direction to have seen Linda’s UFO, so Hopkins decides she was really on the elevated FDR drive. With further similar “corrections” to Cathy Turner’s scanty report, Hopkins convinces himself that it provides corroboration for Linda’s case.

Linda’s story doesn't end with mere alien abductions, however. In addition to her problems with extraterrestrial kidnappers, Linda has also been abducted off the streets of New York several times by Richard and Dan, with Dan, apparently obsessed with Linda, attempting on one occasion to drown her. Linda was even hit by a car while being chased by Dan through Manhattan, though unfortunately no accident report or witness to this incident is ever mentioned. Indeed, the sole evidence for these human abductions is a set of photographs of Linda running on a beach,³ an alleged tape recording of Linda and Dan, and the testimony of a bodyguard (provided by Hopkins) who says he saw the grey surveillance van that supposedly is driven by accomplices of Richard and Dan and follows Linda about, though even he admits that there is no real evidence that the van has any connection to Linda. Not surprisingly, with such “evidence” Linda has never reported these crimes to the police or any other investigative agency.

There are many fundamental problems with the story of Linda’s abductions (by aliens and humans), leaving many troubling, unanswered (or unsatisfactorily answered) questions. How, for example, did Richard, Dan, and Janet Kimball know to contact Hopkins, since at the time, the case was on Hopkins’ backburner and no one had publicized his involvement in the case? Why didn't any of those other people stalled on the Brooklyn Bridge report this amazing incident? Indeed, why didn't any of the other people who were surely on the streets at that hour in ever busy New York (including drivers going to and from the New York Post’s nearby loading dock) or the twenty-four-hour security guards from Linda’s apartment building report this blindingly bright UFO? Richard, in fact, claims that he, Dan, and the “Third Man” were not alone but were accompanied by fifteen other people, including “[t]wo U.S. government officials, two foreign Statesmen, [and] one World Leader.” Who were these people? Is there any proof of their witnessing this amazing event or of at least having suffered a delayed transit on November 30, 1989? Hopkins either ignores such questions or provides airy dismissals or silly solutions. For example, as one explanation for the lack of other witnesses, Hopkins says the aliens used their power to make themselves selectively invisible or to selectively “switch off” the consciousness of witnesses. Then why didn't they use complete invisibility or “switching off” to avoid all witnesses? Hopkins speculates that the whole abduction was “an overt attempt to affect the thinking of governments worldwide.” Then why not directly contact various governments or at least stage the event for maximum exposure instead of in the earliest hours of the day using partial invisibility or “switching off"?

The ultimate problem with Witnessed, however, is that Hopkins’ claim of independent witnesses proves to be unsupported. Magazine and newspaper articles report that Perez de Cuellar has denied several times that he ever witnessed any such occurrence.⁴ As for the two prime witnesses, Richard and Dan, no one other than Linda and members of her family have ever met them, nor has any independent confirmation been found to prove they even exist. Hopkins’ only contact with them is through anonymous letters and tapes mailed to him or provided by Linda. While Hopkins did meet Cathy Turner and speak to her on the telephone, Hopkins also reports she died in 1994, so unless an able psychic is available, her testimony will be hard to obtain. Hopkins also met Janet Kimball (once), but Omni magazine reported in 1994 that shortly thereafter she refused to discuss the case further, even with Hopkins. Saucer Smear, a popular UFO newsletter, further reports that Janet Kimball has also died (requiring even more contact with the beyond to find confirmation of Linda’s story). As it finally develops, Witnessed provides no confirmed, independent witness for its story, and so the very fact that is supposed to make this book the final proof that alien abductions are real events proves to be illusory.

Evidently realizing that he has a problem, Hopkins tries to buttress the case with other “corroboration,” mainly from other abductees’ recollections under hypnosis. One woman, “Erica,” says she saw Linda’s UFO while being floated, upright, together with numerous other people, to another UFO waiting on the banks of the East River. That Hopkins would present such a ridiculous tale as corroboration of his main claim shows with even greater force the lack of independent evidence for the claims in Witnessed and, since this case is supposed to be the “most important in recorded history,” alien abduction claims as a whole. The real question raised by Witnessed is not whether Hopkins has finally proven that alien abductions are real events, but rather, how much longer will the alien abduction craze last in the face of a continuing lack of evidence?

Notes

1. Not surprisingly, Hopkins discovers that this is but one of many alien encounters experienced by Linda.
2. There is an interesting inconsistency between Linda’s recounting of her abduction and that of these two witnesses. Under hypnosis, Linda stated that there were five aliens in her apartment before she was transported out the window. In their letters and talks with Linda, Richard and Dan reported only three aliens floating to the craft with Linda. Where were the other two during the abduction? Did they, like a burglar recently sentenced here in Houston, decide to raid their victim’s refrigerator and do some laundry using her washer and dryer?
3. The contents of these photographs contradict Linda’s story of how they were taken. According to Linda, Dan had kidnapped her to a beach house and insisted she put on a nightgown like the one she wore on the night of her (now) famous abduction. She says she put the gown on over her clothes (she was wearing blue jeans) and fled down the beach, when the pictures were taken. Dan later tackled her in the surf and pulled off her wet jeans. The photographs, however, clearly show that Linda is not wearing jeans under her gown.
4. See e.g., Patrick Huyghe, “The Great High Rise Abduction,” Omni, April 1994, and Jim Schnabel, “They're Coming to Take Us Away,” The Independent, January 2, 1994.

1. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The discovery that there are other intelligent beings in the universe — and, as a corollary, that life and intelligence can and has evolved at locations other than Earth — and that, moreover, these beings are visiting Earth on a semi-regular basis in spacecraft that seem to defy the laws of physics as we now know them, would unquestionably rank as the greatest discovery in the history of science, and most definitely is an extraordinary claim. Therefore, in order for me to accept it, you must produce extraordinary evidence. What might this evidence be? For one thing, the aliens themselves. Not some story where someone says that someone says that someone says that they saw aliens, but the actual physical aliens themselves, where I and other trustworthy and competent scientists and individuals can study and communicate with them. I'd like to examine their spacecraft and learn the physical principles under which it operates. I'd like a ride on that spacecraft. I'd like to see their star charts and see where the aliens come from. I'd like to know the astronomical, physical, chemical, and biological conditions of their home world and solar system, and how they compare with and contrast with ours. If possible, I'd like to visit their home world, and any other worlds that might be within their sphere of influence. In other words, I want the aliens visible front and center, where there can be no reasonable doubt as to their existence. Stories about “lights” or “things” in the sky do not impress me, especially when such reports come from people who have no idea of the vast array of natural and man-made phenomena that are visible in the sky if one would only take the time to look.
2. The burden of proof is on the positive. If you are making an extraordinary claim, the burden is on you to produce the extraordinary evidence to prove that you are correct; the burden is not on me to prove that you are wrong. Furthermore, you must prove your case by providing the direct and compelling evidence for it; you can't prove it by eliminating a few token explanations and then crying, “Well, what else can it be?”
3. Occam’s Razor: If one is confronted with a series of phenomena for which there exists more than one viable explanation, one should choose the simplest explanation which fits all the observed facts. It is an undeniable fact that many people have seen, or at least claimed to see, objects in the sky and on the ground for which they have no explanation. But it is also an undeniable fact that people can make mistakes about their observations. It is an undeniable fact that reports can come from people who are unaware of the various phenomena that are visible in the sky and from people who are not equipped or trained at making reliable scientific observations. It is an undeniable fact that a person’s preconceived notions and expectations can affect his/her observations. It is an undeniable fact that some people will lie and will create hoaxes for any one of various reasons. Taking all these undeniable facts together, the simplest explanation — to me, anyway — for the UFO phenomenon is that every report is either a hoax or is a mistake of some sort. If this explanation is incorrect, then you have to increase the sphere of undeniable facts; and for this, see points 1) and 2) above.

To me, it seems extremely likely that life has started and evolved at other sites throughout the universe, quite possibly in a great number of places. It also seems rather possible that, at some of those sites, evolution has created an intelligent species which has developed technology far in advance of our own and which might be capable of interstellar space flight. Despite the incredible distances between stars, and despite the vast dispersion in evolutionary states that must exist throughout the sphere of races that have achieved some sort of sentience, it is possible — although, to me, extremely unlikely — that one or more of these races has visited Earth within the relatively recent past. Indeed, I would be absolutely ecstatic if any such visits have taken place. No one would be happier than me to meet with and converse with these beings and, I dare say, there are very few people who are better prepared intellectually and emotionally to deal with this prospect if it were to occur. But again, I want the direct evidence for their existence; I want the aliens themselves. I don't want to hear stories about some “thing” that some person somewhere might have seen.

As a lifelong amateur astronomer, as a professional astrono-mer, as someone who has read countless science fiction stories and scientific essays, I have devoted my life to unraveling the secrets of the universe and to pushing humanity and humanity’s knowledge as far into space as I can. (This is my reason for claiming that there are few people in the world who are better prepared than I am to meet with an alien race; if there is any human being who could meet with alien beings, it would be someone like me.) At the same time, I suspect there is hardly anyone who watches and studies the sky more than I do, and while I have almost continuously observed the sky for most of my lifetime, I have yet to see a single object for which there was not a prosaic explanation. I have seen such diverse phenomena as: fireballs, rocket launches, satellite re-entries, comets, auroras, bright planets, novae, orbiting satellites, ionospheric experiments, high-altitude balloons — all of which have been reported as “UFOs” by uninformed witnesses. If indeed there are alien spacecraft flying around Earth with the frequency with which UFO devotees are claiming, then I must ask how come I have never seen anything remotely resembling such an object, while at the same time I have managed to see all these various other types of phenomena.

In summary, I consider it likely that there are advanced alien races somewhere “out there,” and I remain open to the possibility that, unlikely as it may seem, one or more such races could be visiting Earth. But if so, where are they? If they possess the technology capable of traveling interstellar distances, then they are so far ahead of us that there can be no reason for them to be afraid of us. If they wish to hide from us, they could do so easily; if they don't wish to, then they have no need to play games with us and only show themselves to a few unwitting individuals. Let them reveal themselves to humanity at large, to our scientists, and to me.

A little over six years ago, I attended the twenty-fifth annual Nobel conference, the only program outside of Sweden and Norway sanctioned by the Nobel Foundation. It was entitled, “The End of Science?” John Horgan, senior writer for Scientific American, has recently written a book of the same name (Horgan 1996). The subject of both of these inquiries is not the impending solution of certain scientific problems, but the impending dissolution of science itself. What prompted these projects is the growing belief that science is not the royal road to the truth. There is a view abroad in the land that science is more of an ideology than a methodology, and thus that it cannot legitimately claim to have a corner on reality. No one expresses this view more pugnaciously than the late philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend. He writes:

Science is much closer to myth than a scientific philosophy is prepared to admit. It is one of the many forms of thought that have been developed by man, and not necessarily the best. It is conspicuous, noisy, and impudent, but it is inherently superior only for those who have already decided in favour of a certain ideology, or who have accepted it without ever having examined its advantages and its limits. And as the accepting and rejecting of ideologies should be left to the individual it follows that the separation of state and church must be complemented by the separation of state and science, that most recent, most aggressive, and most dogmatic religious institution. Such a separation may be our only chance to achieve a humanity we are capable of, but have never fully realized. (Feyerabend 1975, 295)

In Feyerabend’s view, science is a religion, for it rests on certain dogmas that cannot be rationally justified. Thus, accepting it requires a leap of faith. But just as government has no business teaching religion in the public schools, it has no business teaching science either. In a truly democratic society, people would be as free to choose their epistemology as their political party.

The Nobel prize-winning physicist Sheldon Glashow spoke at the twenty-fifth Nobel conference in an attempt to counter these sorts of claims. His response consisted of the following “cosmic catechism”: “We believe that the world is knowable, that there are simple rules governing the behavior of matter and the evolution of the universe . . . . [and that] [a]ny intelligent alien anywhere would have come upon the same logical system as we have to explain the structure of protons and the nature of supernovae. This statement I cannot prove, this statement I cannot justify. This is my faith” (Glashow 1989, 24). Instead of refuting Feyerabend, however, Glashow vindicated him. For he admitted that his belief in the objectivity of science is simply a matter of faith. It’s no wonder that science’s stock has fallen so precipitously in recent years.

Scientists’ ignorance of the philosophical underpinnings of their enterprise has not gone unnoticed. In 1986, biology Nobelist Sir Peter Medawar commented: Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be, and he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed: solemn because he feels he ought to declare an opinion; shifty-eyed because he is wondering how to conceal the fact that he has no opinion to declare. (Quoted in Theocharis and Psimopoulos 1987, 595)

Scientists are a philosophically naive lot. But this naivetë does not come without a price. Because most scientists can't justify their methodology, Feyerabend’s claims have gone largely unanswered. As a result, Feyerabend’s position has become prominent in both academia and the public at large. This has arguably led not only to the rise of pseudoscience and religious fundamentalism, but also to a shrinking pool of scientific jobs and research funds. As physicists T. Theocharis and M. Psimopoulos lament in their article “Where Science Has Gone Wrong”:

Having lost their monopoly in the production of knowledge, scientists have also lost their privileged status in society. Thus the rewards to the creators of science’s now ephemeral and disposable theories are currently being reduced to accord with their downgraded and devalued work, and with science’s diminished ambitions. (Theocharis and Psimopoulos 1987, 595)

The rise of Feyerabend’s view of science, they claim, is the “most fundamental and yet the least recognized cause” of the decline in science funding in the West. So don't let anyone tell you that philosophy has no practical import. If Theocharis and Psimopoulos are right, philosophy has put a number of scientists out of work.

Feyerabend once proclaimed that scientists “have more money, more authority, more sex appeal than they deserve, and the most stupid procedures and the most laughable results in their domain are surrounded with an aura of excellence. It is time to cut them down in size, and to give them a more modest position in society” (Feyerabend 1975, 304). It appears that he has done just that.

How did this happen? Why is science increasingly viewed as a failed ideology rather than as an epistemological ideal? Let’s take a closer look at the arguments underlying Feyerabend’s position.

Popper, Induction, and Falsifiability

Ironically, one of those most responsible for the diminished view of science is one who was firmly convinced of its superiority: Sir Karl Popper. Although Popper believed that scientific theories were better than nonscientific ones, he argued that the traditional inductive conception of science was mistaken.

According to inductivism, scientific method consists of three steps: (1) observe, (2) induce a hypothesis, (3) confirm the hypothesis through additional observations and tests. Popper objected to all three of these steps on the grounds that scientists do not — and cannot — follow them.

Popper found the notion that scientific inquiry begins with an observation ludicrous. He writes:

Twenty-five years ago I tried to bring home the same point to a group of physics students in Vienna by beginning a lecture with the following instructions: “Take pencil and paper; carefully observe, and write down what you have observed!” They asked, of course, what I wanted them to observe. Clearly the instruction, “Observe!” is absurd. (It is not even idiomatic, unless the object of the transitive verb can be taken as understood.) Observation is always selective. It needs a chosen object, a definite task, an interest, a point of view, a problem. (Popper 1965, 46)

For Popper, a scientific investigation begins with a hypothesis. For without a hypothesis to guide research, scientists would have no way of distinguishing relevant from irrelevant data.

Popper also objected to the view that enumerative induction was used to generate scientific hypotheses. Many theories, such as the atomic theory, the genetic theory, and the gravitational theory, postulate entities or forces that are not mentioned in their data. Consequently, they cannot be arrived at through enumerative induction.

Finally, he claimed, no universal generalization can be conclusively confirmed, for we can never be sure that we have examined all the relevant data. It is always possible that we will discover something that will overturn even the most well-established theory. Thus, he viewed science as the attempt to falsify rather than verify hypotheses. Besides, he thought, finding confirming instances of a theory is far too easy (Popper 1990, 104—10).

The most significant problem for inductivism, however, was first recognized by eighteenth-century empiricist David Hume. Hume noted that enumerative induction rests on the principle that the future will resemble the past. But this principle cannot be proven deductively, for it cannot be deduced from self-evident truths; and it cannot be proven inductively, for that would beg the question. So if science rests on induction, it rests on a dogma. And if it rests on a dogma, it is not a purely rational enterprise. So there may be more to Feyerabend’s position than mere posturing.

By construing science as the attempt to falsify rather than verify hypotheses, Popper thought that he could avoid the problem of induction and distinguish real science from pseudoscience. The success of a test does not entail the truth of the hypothesis under investigation. But, he believed, the failure of a test does entail its falsity. So if science is viewed as a search for refutations rather than confirmations, the problem of induction drops out and the mark of a scientific theory becomes its ability to be refuted. Thus we have Popper’s famous demarcation criterion: a theory is scientific if it is falsifiable. If there is no possible observation that would count against it, it is not scientific.

It was soon realized, however, that hypotheses can no more be conclusively falsified than they can be conclusively verified, for a hypothesis cannot be tested in isolation. Physicist-philosopher Pierre Duhem and logician Willard Van Orman Quine have convincingly demonstrated that hypotheses have testable consequences only in the context of certain background assumptions. If a test fails, it is always possible to maintain the hypothesis in question by rejecting one or more of the background assumptions.

Moreover, Popper’s demarcation criterion is far too weak to distinguish science from pseudoscience. According to Popper, a theory is scientific as long as there is some possible state of affairs whose actual occurrence would refute the theory. By this criterion, however, astrology, creationism, and Immanuel Velikovsky’s theory of planetary development would all be scientific theories, for they all imply propositions that could turn out to be false. Popper’s demarcation criterion, therefore, lets in too much; it grants scientific status to theories that don't seem to deserve it.

Thus we have arrived at an impasse. We can't establish science’s superiority by viewing it as an attempt to verify theories through induction, and we can't establish its superiority by viewing it as an attempt to falsify theories through deduction. Perhaps Feyerabend is right that there is no way to prove the superiority of science.

Kuhn, Paradigms, and Relativism

Philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn and Feyerabend argue that neither verification nor falsification can establish the objectivity of science because both assume that data are independent of theory. They claim, on the contrary, that all observation is theory-laden, for all perception involves conceptualization. Since each theory manufactures its own data, there is no neutral data that can be used to adjudicate among competing theories. As a result, theories are “incommensurable.”

Kuhn and Feyerabend see science primarily as a puzzle-solving exercise. The rules for solving particular puzzles are contained in a “paradigm.” A paradigm defines for scientists what sorts of puzzles are worth solving and what sorts of methods will solve them. From time to time, however, certain puzzles or “anomalies” arise that cannot be solved within the existing paradigm. When the cognitive dissonance created by these puzzles becomes too great, the scientific community undergoes a “paradigm shift.” Kuhn describes the effects of a paradigm shift this way:

Examining the record of past research from the vantage of contemporary historiography, the historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them. Led by a new paradigm, scientists adopt new instruments and look in new places. Even more important, during revolutions scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before. It is rather as if the professional community had been suddenly transported to another planet where familiar objects are seen in a different light and are joined by unfamiliar ones as well. Of course, nothing of quite that sort does occur: there is no geographical transplantation; outside the laboratory everyday affairs usually continue as before. Nevertheless, paradigm changes do cause scientists to see the world of their research engagement differently. In so far as their only recourse to that world is through what they see and do, we may want to say that after a revolution scientists are responding to a different world. (Kuhn 1970, 111)

In Kuhn’s view, scientists don't discover the nature of reality; they create it. There is no way the world is, for each paradigm makes its own world. It’s easy to see why such views raise questions about the end of science. If there is no truth with a capital “T,” then, of course, it makes no sense to say that scientists have a monopoly on it.

To determine whether we should we accept this view of science, we need to examine its implications.

If what we perceive is determined by the paradigm we accept, then it should be impossible to perceive anything that doesn't fit our paradigm. But if it’s impossible to perceive anything that doesn't fit our paradigm, it’s impossible for there to be any anomalies. And if it’s impossible for there to be any anomalies, it’s impossible for there to be any paradigm shifts. So if we accept Kuhn and Feyerabend’s theory of perception, we must reject their history of science.

Moreover, recent neurophysiological research has shown that all perception does not involve conceptualization. Psychologist Edward Hundert explains:

If someone loses the primary visual cortex (say, because of a tumor), they lose their vision; they go almost totally blind. But if they just lose the secondary or tertiary visual cortex, they manifest an unusual condition called visual agnosia. In this condition, visual acuity is normal (the person could correctly identify the orientation of the “E’s” on an eye chart). But they lose the ability to identify, name, or match even simple objects in any part of their visual field. . . . This model can be translated into psychological terms as endorsing a functional distinction between “perception” (input analysis) and “cognition” (central processing). . . .

It is easy to see the evolutionary advantage of this whole scheme, with its “upward” input analysis: if our transducers were hooked directly to our central systems, we would spend most of our time seeing (hearing, etc.) the world the way we remember, believe, or expect the world to be. The recognition of novelty — of unexpected stimuli — has extremely obvious evolutionary advantage, and is made possible only by the separation of transducers and central systems by “dumb” input analyzers. (Hundert 1987, 413, 420—21)

Neurophysiological research suggests that not all observation is theory-laden, for there are two types of observation: discrimination and recognition. Recognition may involve the use of concepts, but discrimination does not. For if it did, we could never perceive anything new.

Finally, if all research is conducted within a paradigm, then Kuhn’s and Feyerabend’s research itself must have been conducted within a paradigm. But if their research was conducted within a paradigm, its results cannot be considered to be universally true. We can say of Kuhn’s findings, then, what Feyerabend says of science in general, namely, that “it is inherently superior only for those who have already decided in favour of a certain ideology.” The proper response to a Kuhnian or a Feyerabendian, then, is the one that philosopher Alan Garfinkle gives to the relativists in his philosophy classes: “You may not be coming from where I'm coming from, but I know relativism isn't true for me” (quoted in Putnam 1981, 119).

Much more could be said on this topic. But it’s important to realize that scientists need not recite a catechism when faced with claims of the sort made by Kuhn and Feyerabend.

Science, Justification, and Belief

We are justified in believing something to be true when it provides the best explanation of the evidence. Science is superior to other methods of inquiry because it usually provides better explanations than they do. The goodness of an explanation is determined by the amount of understanding it produces, and the amount of understanding an explanation produces is determined by how much it systematizes and unifies our knowledge. The extent to which an explanation does this can be determined by appealing to various criteria of adequacy such as simplicity, scope, conservatism, and fruitfulness. No one wants to hold unjustified beliefs. The problem is that most people never learn the difference between a good explanation and a bad one. Consequently they come to believe all sorts of weird things for no good reason.

Must science come to an end? Not necessarily. But unless scientists become more philosophically sophisticated, their apologetics will continue to ring hollow. And unless our educational system focuses more on teaching students how to think than on what to think, our populace will become increasingly credulous. Scientists and educators alike need to realize that the educated person is not the person who can answer the questions, but the person who can question the answers. In our age of rapidly changing information, knowing how to distinguish truth from falsity is more important than knowing what was once considered true and false. Only a person who knows the difference between a justified and an unjustified belief can truly appreciate the value of scientific inquiry.

References

• Feyerabend, Paul. 1975. Against Method. London: Verso.
• Glashow, Sheldon. 1989. We believe that the world is knowable. New York Times, October 22.
• Horgan, John. 1996. The End of Science. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.
• Hundert, Edward. 1987. Can neuroscience contribute to philosophy? In Mindwaves, edited by Colin Blakemore and Susan Greenfield. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• Kuhn, Thomas S. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Popper, Karl. 1965. Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. New York: Basic Books, Inc.
• —. 1990. Science: conjectures and refutations. In Philosophy of Science and the Occult, edited by Patrick Grim. Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Putnam, Hilary. 1981. Reason, Truth, and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Theocharis, T. and M. Psimopoulos. 1987. Where science has gone wrong. Nature 329 (October).

Due to its almost unprecedented intrinsic brightness at the time of its discovery by Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp in July 1995, Comet Hale-Bopp has stimulated enormous scientific and popular interest. The comet has also recently stimulated a goodly amount of irrational and pseudoscientific speculation. Astronomer and co-discoverer Alan Hale considers the comet’s forthcoming nearest approach an opportunity for public education in science. We invited him to put the interest surrounding Comet Hale-Bopp into scientific perspective and to comment on the various sensational claims accompanying it. We also publish his “An Astronomer’s Personal Statement on UFOs”.

— Kendrick Frazier, Editor

Few sights in the nighttime sky can be more awe-inspiring than that of a bright comet. Consisting of a bright, diffuse, circular patch of light — the head, or “coma” — accompanied by a ghostly tail which may stretch across a considerable span of the heavens, such objects definitely rank among the most noticeable, and the most beautiful, of any of the celestial phenomena we encounter. The relative rarity with which a bright comet may appear in our skies — about once every one to two decades, on the average — ensures that, when they do appear, attention is paid to them.

To our ancestors of a few centuries ago, who did not have available the knowledge of the universe’s workings that we have today, such a sight must truly have been remarkable. More often than not, a bright comet would almost seem to appear “out of nowhere,” be visible in the skies for perhaps two to four weeks, then disappear again “into nowhere.” It was only natural for our ancestors to associate the appearance of comets with whatever misfortunes were occurring on Earth — of which there is never a shortage — and to interpret them in line with their particular religious beliefs and mythologies. For example, a bright comet (apparently the Great Comet of 1680) caused a handbill bearing the following text to be circulated among the Christians in eastern Europe:

Herewith is represented the fearful celestial phenomenon and other events . . . by which Almighty God terrified dear Hungary, and at the same time admonished Christendom to penance. . . . The star pointed toward Moravia, its tail toward Turkey. The star was very large and bright, not like fire but white like moonlight. The tail was curved with serpentine bends like a lightning flash. It was pierced by several arrows, and toward the end of the tail was something like a Turkish feather fan. The tail itself terminated in seven points directed toward Turkey. There was a crown over the end of the tail, while another crown surrounded by clouds was to be seen below the midpart of the comet. Close by appeared the heads of two Turks and some moon-like faces that were partially ball-like. . . . We are sure that the celestial phenomenon was a terrible New Year’s admonition, the interpretation of which we will leave to Omniscient God, Whose grace gives us vigilant hearts, withdraws all miseries from our cottages, and Who turns the threatening arrows against the enemies of His church. . . .

We have learned much about these visitors in the centuries since the above handbill was issued. In the early eighteenth century the British astronomer Edmond Halley applied the laws of gravitation as worked out by his friend Isaac Newton and determined that at least one comet appeared to be making periodic visits to our skies, a supposition that was spectacularly verified when this comet returned in 1759. Since that time, well over a hundred other comets have been observed to make repeat appearances in our skies, and periodic elliptical orbits have been computed for numerous others, establishing beyond all doubt that comets are bona fide members of the solar system, like the planets with which we are perhaps more familiar.

The advent of larger telescopes and, in the late nineteenth century, astrophotography has revealed that comets are far more common visitors than were first thought; up to two dozen or more may make their passages through the inner solar system during any given year. (The overwhelming majority of these are faint objects that require large telescopes in order to be detected, although well-equipped and knowledgeable amateur astronomers should be able to view two or three comets during any given clear night, on the average.)

The physical nature of comets was a matter of much conjecture for some time, with the most prevalent idea, proposed by American astronomer Fred Whipple in the early 1950s, being that a comet could be described as a “dirty snowball,” a solid object composed of a mixture of water ice, various other frozen volatile substances such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and others, and significant amounts of interplanetary dust grains. Recent detailed studies of comets, foremost among them being the flybys of Halley’s Comet in 1986 by the European Space Agency’s Giotto spacecraft along with several other missions, have revealed that Whipple’s “dirty snowball” model was essentially correct, with a variety of other substances, including various organic compounds, being present within the nuclei of comets as well. Most scientists today accept the idea that comets are “leftovers” from the solar system’s planetary formation process four and a half billion years ago, and, as a result, comets are now intensely scrutinized for any clues they might offer as to the physical and chemical conditions that were prevalent at that time.

With all the knowledge about comets that we have gained during the past few centuries, one would think that there would no longer exist any reasons to fear these visitors into the inner solar system. Unhappily, this has not been the case, as the twentieth century has seen its share of “comet madness.” The return of Halley’s Comet in 1910 sparked much mass panic, especially once astronomers pointed out the possibility that the earth might pass through a portion of the comet’s tail. While a comet’s tail does contain gases that might be considered “poisonous” — cyanogen, for example — the material in the tail is so rarefied that it would make a good vacuum by terrestrial standards. Although this was clearly pointed out to the general public in 1910, it did not prevent outbreaks of hysteria from erupting over parts of the world, nor did it prevent several enterprising entrepreneurs from earning brief fortunes by selling “comet pills” and the like. More recently, the appearance of Comet Kohoutek in 1973 inspired several apocalyptic proclamations by certain religious groups, statements which in retrospect seem even more ridiculous than they otherwise would have in light of the comet’s failure to achieve its expected brilliance. (Comet Kohoutek, to be sure, was an exceptionally rewarding object from a scientific perspective, even if it did disappoint the casual viewer.)

We are now seeing a resurgence of “comet madness” accompanying the impending appearance of Comet Hale-Bopp. In some ways this object, discovered by myself and Arizona amateur astronomer Thomas Bopp in July 1995, is unusual; its intrinsic brightness appears to be one of the highest ever recorded for a comet, and its discovery when located well beyond the orbit of Jupiter and over a year and a half away from its passage through the inner solar system is almost unprecedented in the history of these objects. Nevertheless, a seven-foot-tall human being is still a human being, and likewise Comet Hale-Bopp, despite its apparent large size and brightness, is no less and no more of a “dirty snowball” than are any of the other two dozen or so comets that will pass around the sun in 1997. Many of the chemical constituents that were detected in previous comets have now been detected in Hale-Bopp, and the evolution of its activity level has more or less followed the expectations that were derived from studies of earlier comets.

Much of the “comet madness” associated with Comet Hale-Bopp focuses on the fact that its appearance coincides rather closely with the end of the second millennium which, despite the fact that this is an arbitrary point in time, is being viewed by a disturbingly large segment of the public as an omen of significant upheaval (see the article by Lee Loevinger in the January/February Skeptical Inquirer.) Several Christian fundamentalists have proclaimed that Hale-Bopp could be one of the "signs of the end times” as foretold in several New Testament prophecies, and some have gone so far as to suggest that Hale-Bopp might be the star “Wormwood” discussed in Revelation 8:10-11. (For the record, Hale-Bopp comes nowhere near the earth during its passage through the inner solar system; at closest approach, to occur on March 22, 1997, the comet is 1.3 astronomical units — 122 million miles, or 197 million kilometers — from our planet.) Several New Age devotees have claimed they have found references to Comet Hale-Bopp within the writings of Nostradamus and within various Native American legends. Whatever the source of the "prophecy,” Hale-Bopp’s appearance three years before the end of the millennium is generating an apocalyptic upswelling on a scale rarely seen since the era epitomized by the Hungarian handbill discussed above.

Another source of the “comet madness” centered around Hale-Bopp is tied to the ongoing belief among a significant fraction of the public that Earth is being visited in large numbers by extraterrestrial aliens. (As one radio host recently and appropriately described to me, this seems to be the “new mythology” that is replacing the older religion-based myths.) Almost from the time of Hale-Bopp’s discovery there have been claims that Hale-Bopp is some kind of alien “mother ship” or, at the very least, is “under intelligent control.” Some of these claims have been based upon reputed “course corrections” that the comet has allegedly undergone since its discovery. Many of these claims have not been restricted to the tabloid media but instead seem to have undergone widespread dissemination among the more “mainstream” elements of the press and have consequently become fairly widespread among the public.

Like many such pseudoscientific claims, there is an element of truth contained within these. The “course-corrections” claim very possibly arose from the fact that the initial calculations of Hale-Bopp’s orbit, based upon extremely limited data and labeled as “highly uncertain” when they were published, differed in some particulars from the more definitive orbits published subsequently. (This is not at all unusual, incidentally, and has happened with numerous other comets.) Also, cometary orbits do experience slight changes as a result of planetary perturbations and also through the process of outgassing, which tends to produce tiny rocket-like effects acting upon the comet’s icy nucleus. To my knowledge, this phenomenon, described under the term “nongravitational forces,” has not yet been observed in Hale-Bopp, although it surely must be occurring at a level too low for us to detect at this time.

A recent incident illustrates just how widespread this belief that aliens are associated with Hale-Bopp has become. On November 14, 1996, an observer in Houston obtained electronic images through his telescope showing an alleged “mysterious Saturn-like object” following the comet. That same evening, this individual appeared as a guest on the Art Bell radio show, a nationwide call-in program that could perhaps be charitably described as “tabloid” radio (see Robert Sheaffer’s “Psychic Vibrations” column, this issue). There apparently was speculation on this program that the “Saturn-like object” was in fact an alien spacecraft, four times larger than Earth, following along behind the comet. Despite the absurd nature of these claims, this story was picked up by several elements of the “mainstream” press, and throughout the following day I was contacted by numerous radio and television stations from around the country soliciting my comments on the “mysterious spacecraft” following “your comet.”

My investigation of this took me first to the World Wide Web homepage of the Houston photographer, which contained several apocalypse-suggestive statements about Hale-Bopp as well as numerous allegations of government coverups and conspiracies (including references to known “fringe” writers like Richard Hoagland and Zecharia Sitchin). These strongly suggested that this individual was predisposed to come to “strange” conclusions about the comet. Even more important, once I was able to examine the images in question, and could match the surrounding star field with a photograph of the same region of the sky taken during the course of the Palomar Sky Survey in the early 1950s, I found that the location of the “Saturn-like object” coincided perfectly with a bright 8th-magnitude star that the comet just happened to be located next to on the night in question. The "Saturn-like rings” extending from the “object” were apparently nothing more than a diffraction effect, a common occurrence with over-exposed stellar images on astronomical photographs. (It has also recently come to light that the particular CCD — charge-coupled device, an electronic detector — camera used to take the photographs in question is of a type that is highly sensitive to infrared wavelengths, and that the star in question is a red giant and consequently more luminous in the infrared than in the visible part of the spectrum.)

Numerous other astronomers who investigated this came to the same conclusion I did, and in an effort to redirect the flood of inquiries I was receiving I posted the results of my explanation, along with the appropriate photographs, on the Hale-Bopp homepage (http://www.halebopp.com). My explanation there apparently generated an enormous amount of discussion on the Art Bell program and elsewhere, and led to a large amount of surprisingly vicious “hate mail” being sent to www.halebopp.com, as well as numerous accusations that I am involved in the “conspiracy” that is “hiding information” about Hale-Bopp. (For the record, I continue to be an all-but-unemployed astronomer, and I have not received a single government paycheck for any involvement I have had with this comet!) This claim of an alien spacecraft following Hale-Bopp has refused to die since that time, with one persistent claim being that a “famous astrophysicist . . . affiliated with a top-ten university” has verified the existence of this object and would announce it via a major press conference (which has now been “imminent” for almost a month as of this writing). What I've found most fascinating are the numerous falsehoods that are being written about me — for example, the claim that I have “changed my story” and am no longer claiming that the “Saturn-like object” was a background star, but instead am offering some other “explanation.”

Although I find this entire episode of the “Saturn-like object” and all the other pseudoscientific claims surrounding Comet Hale-Bopp quite amusing, the fact that claims such as these receive such widespread acceptance among large segments of the general public is not something that we scientists and rationalists should dismiss lightly. This whole phenomenon of “Hale-Bopp madness” strikes me as a glaring example of the scientific illiteracy that pervades our society and that has been addressed many times in the pages of this magazine and so eloquently by Carl Sagan in The Demon-Haunted World. The numerous scientific and technological challenges that our society will be faced with during the years and decades ahead are too important and too complex to be adequately met and dealt with by a population that cannot distinguish between legitimate science and the pseudoscience that is so prevalent now. It is imperative that we, the scientists and rationalists of today, diligently work toward alleviating this scientific illiteracy, a quest that has become even more important due to the recent losses of such prominent voices for rationalism as Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan.

Fortunately, I believe that Comet Hale-Bopp provides a unique and perhaps unprecedented opportunity to work toward this goal. The comet is already attracting an enormous amount of attention from the nonscientific world, and this can only be expected to increase as it makes its passage through the inner solar system during the coming few months. (At this writing the comet is continuing to brighten more or less “as it should,” and thus the prospects for a spectacular display continue to be encouraging, although one should keep in mind that a Kohoutek-like performance is still very much within the realm of possibility.)

When Hale-Bopp is brightest, it should be easily visible to the unaided eye of anyone in the world, and at that time perhaps the best thing we can do is to encourage everyone simply to look! I have challenged numerous “believers” of an extraterrestrial object following Hale-Bopp not to take my word for anything, but to go out and look at the comet for themselves and see if there is indeed any "object” accompanying it. (As I write this, the comet is slightly beyond the orbit of Mars, and already any spacecraft “four times larger than Earth” would be among the brightest objects in the nighttime sky.)

And while we're at it, let’s encourage those who are gazing cometward to take a few moments to look at some of the other wonders of the universe around us and point out to them that there is far more to be in awe of in the real world than there could ever be in the pseudoscience we are encountering today. Recently, on a radio talk show where I had asserted that there is no spacecraft following Hale-Bopp and that if any listeners doubted me they should go look at the comet for themselves, the program’s host told me that I was "taking all the fun out of this.” Hale-Bopp is an opportunity to show our fellow citizens of Earth that the pursuit of knowledge of the real world and universe around us is far more “fun” than pseudoscience could ever be.

Sagan’s award-winning 1980 TV series Cosmos and best-selling book by the same name turned the ebullient planetary astronomer into an international celebrity. The thirteen-part TV series explored scientific understanding of fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution from the Big Bang to the origin of life and human consciousness.

Sagan’s presentation of his subject was so fascinating and comprehensible that Cosmos attracted an audience of over half a billion people in sixty countries. The book from the series spent seventy weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, including fifteen weeks at number one.

Sagan’s career as a popularizer began in the early 1970s when he started publishing science books aimed at a lay audience and made his first of twenty-five appearances on NBC’s The Tonight Show. His book The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1978.

He continued his work as a popularizer of science and critical thinking right up until the end of his life. In his article in the March 10, 1996, Parade magazine, titled “In the Valley of the Shadow,” he spoke movingly of his illness and his attitude toward death as a nontheist and skeptic: “I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.

“The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.”

Despite Sagan’s fame as popular writer and TV personality, his main career was in science and academia. From 1971 until his death, Sagan was professor of astronomy and space science and director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University. His main research interests, resulting in hundreds of journal articles, were in planetary atmospheres, the greenhouse effect on Venus, the origin of life on Earth, and the possibilities of extraterrestrial life and intelligence.

Five years ago the American Astronomical Society presented Sagan its Masursky Award for “his extraordinary contributions to the development of planetary science. . . . As a scientist trained in both astronomy and biology, Dr. Sagan has made seminal contributions to the study of planetary atmospheres, planetary surfaces, the history of the Earth, and exobiology. Many of the most productive planetary scientists working today are his present and former students and associates.”

He contributed to the Mariner, Viking, Voyager, and Galileo planetary exploration missions that opened new planetary worlds to our view and helped devise the interstellar messages carried aboard the Pioneer 10 and 11 and Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft. NASA twice awarded him medals, one for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and one for Distinguished Public Service.

Said NASA administrator Dan Goldin at Sagan’s death: “As much as any scientific figure of our time, Carl described for an entire generation—the generation of the space age—the true wonders of the universe around us.”

“Sagan understood the need to bring science into American living rooms, to show its relevance to our everyday lives, and to share the excitement and discovery,” said Neal Lane, director of the National Science Foundation.

In 1994, the National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s most august group of scientists, presented Sagan its Public Welfare Medal, given to “honor extraordinary use of science for the public good.” Said Academy president Bruce Alberts: “In the public view, Carl Sagan’s name may be associated more with science than that of any other living U.S. scientist. This award clearly honors a very distinguished individual who has played a critical role in promoting the understanding of science worldwide.” One of Sagan’s colleagues at Cornell University, Yervant Terzian, said Sagan was “the best teacher of science in the world.”

Sagan actively supported the work of CSICOP and was a great fan of Skeptical Inquirer. In 1987 at CSICOP s conference in Pasadena, he was given CSICOP s In Praise of Reason Award. In 1994 CSICOP created the Isaac Asimov Award in honor of Asimov’s extraordinary contributions to science and humanity. The first recipient of this award was Carl Sagan. It was presented at the 1994 CSICOP Conference in Seattle. The award is in recognition of an individual who throughout his or her life has shown outstanding commitment and ability in communicating the achievements, methods, and issues of science to the public.

When told that the first Asimov award would be presented to Carl Sagan, Janet Asimov said, “There is no one better qualified for the CSICOP Isaac Asimov Award than his good friend and colleague Carl Sagan. Isaac was particularly fond of Carl. He was also in awe of Carl’s genius, and proud that he was so adept at communicating science to the public through speaking, writing, and the visual media.”

In his keynote address at the Seattle conference, Sagan spoke to an audience of more than a thousand. He spoke about his love of science and the importance of the popularization of science: “Science is still one of my chief joys. The popularization of science that Isaac Asimov did so well—the communication not just of the findings but of the methods of science—seems to me as natural as breathing. After all, when you’re in love, you want to tell the world. The idea that scientists shouldn’t talk about their science to the public seems to me bizarre.”

Paul Kurtz, chairman of CSICOP, said, “Carl Sagan was one of the leading scientific skeptics in the world and a critic of antiscientific and irrational attitudes, and perhaps the leading proponent of the scientific outlook and the methods of science. His untimely loss is deeply felt by the scientific and academic community.”

In his last book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Sagan wrote:

I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us—then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.

The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.

Said Kurtz: “I am afraid the world has just become a bit darker.”

Carl Sagan is survived by his wife Ann Druyan; two former wives; his sister, Carl Sagan Greene; five children; and a grandson. He will be fondly remembered and sorely missed. Donations in Carl Sagan’s name can be made to: The Children’s Health Fund of New York (317 East 64th St., New York, NY 10021) or The Carl Sagan Memorial Fund (The Planetary Society, 65 N. Catalina Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91106).

Skeptical Inquirer invited friends and colleagues of Carl Sagan and others whose lives he touched to share their thoughts about his life and work with our readers. Here are some of those tributes. More will appear in our next issue.

Richard Dawkins

In my review for The Times of London of The Demon-Haunted World, I mentioned a chapter heading of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. “Who Speaks for Earth?” I went on that it was “a rhetorical question that expects no particular answer, but I presume to give it one. My candidate for planetary ambassador, my own nominee to present our credentials in galactic chancelleries, can be none other than Carl Sagan himself. He is wise, humane, polymathic, gentle, witty, well-read, and incapable of composing a dull sentence.”

In the Financial Times this year, I described him as “a beacon of dear light in a dark world of alien abductions and ‘real-life X-files,’ of psychic charlatans and New Age airheads, of fatcat astrologers giggling all the way to the millennium.” I met him only once, so my feeling of desolation and loss at his death is based entirely on his writings. Carl Sagan was one of the great literary stylists of our age, and he did it by giving proper weight to the poetry of science. It is hard to think of anyone whom our planet can so ill afford to lose.

Richard Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. His latest book is Climbing Mount Improbable (W. W. Norton, New York).

Arthur C. Clarke

I was very sad to hear of Carl’s untimely death. Though I was aware of his medical problems, recent reports had indicated that he was making a steady recovery.

My friendship with Carl, who in Japan would be regarded as a national treasure, began more than thirty years ago: for my account of our adventure at the 1964 New York Worlds Fair, see Roddy McDowall’s Double Exposure, Take Three: A Gallery of the Celebrated with Commentary by the Equally Celebrated (William Morrow, 1992).

Carl was a superstar in that difficult art where many otherwise capable and brilliant scientists are miserable failures: popular science communication. The book and TV series Cosmos still remain one of the most widely distributed and admired efforts to interpret the momentous findings and achievements of the space age.

In his later books, such as Pale Blue Dot and The Demon-Haunted World, he took on—ably and daringly—the pseudoscience and nonscience that rots the American mind, ranging from creationism and alien abductions to beliefs in astrology. At a time when The X-Files and its clones dominate the airwaves, Carl’s loss is doubly tragic.

I ended my tribute to Carl in Double Exposure by recalling a more recent encounter I had via satellite with him and Stephen Hawking: “After a quarter of a century, Carl hasn’t mellowed much. I’m sure he’d still be happy to give God a little helpful advice on how the universe ought to be designed.”

I only wish I could believe that he’s doing this right now.

Arthur C. Clarke’s science fiction novels and stories and his nonfiction writing on space technology and the future have been influencing audiences and policymakers worldwide for half a century.

Martin Gardner

Carl Sagan was one of those rare working scientists who was also a superb science writer and who believed it was his duty to enlighten the general public about the wonders of the universe and of life on one of its smallest planets. I recall a time when he delivered a paper at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science denouncing Velikovsky as an ignoramus. He was roundly criticized by his colleagues. They said he had demeaned his reputation as a serious astronomer by wasting time on so frivolous a matter.

Now that irrational beliefs are more prevalent than ever, scientists are finally beginning to understand what Sagan tried to tell them. They have a responsibility to combat the increasing flood of bogus science in bookstores and on magazine stands, on movie and television screens, and even in courses offered by top universities. Carl’s last book, The Demon-Haunted World, is a brave and powerful indictment of America’s dumbing down, a vigorous plea for better science education. Carl, R.I.P. You fought a great fight and left the world healthier and wiser than it would have been without you.

Martin Gardner’s latest books are The Night Is Large: Collected Essays 1938-1995, and Weird Water and Fuzzy Logic: More Notes of a Fringe-Watcher.

David Morrison

Carl Sagan did more than any other individual in this century to bring science to the public in a way that was consistently honest, thoughtful, and humane. Carl was a natural teacher, always ready to explain and defend his ideas. I never saw him asked a question that he was not willing to answer in a serious, thoughtful way, and I never saw him face a question that he had not already considered. He believed that everyone could understand science and should be interested in it. His faith in the power of human thought did not falter, even in the face of massive misinformation and unreason.

Carl was immensely influential in guiding public opinion on science, especially on planetary exploration. He participated in and chronicled the history of the space age, thoughtfully considering the issues of why we explore and how we can use our knowledge of the planets, and of the balance between robotic and human exploration strategies. Carl often pointed out that ours is the only generation to experience the transformation of the planets from mere specks of light into real worlds, each with its own unique geology, atmosphere, and even potential for life. When he was a young assistant professor his popular public lectures at Harvard College Observatory were entitled “Planets are Places,” a commonplace idea now, but a step of imagination then. His final book on space science, The Pale Blue Dot, summarized the exploration of eight planets and more than fifty moons, placing our own blue Earth in its cosmic perspective. He will be remembered best as the person who interpreted this generation of exploration for the public, and who helped create a new way to think about our own planet.

Carl’s final book, The Demon-Haunted World, was a passionate defense of scientific skepticism and an attack on pseudoscience. The fact that this book was considered controversial and received less acclaim than many of his expository writings about science demonstrates how badly such works are needed. Understanding the nature of science and the way scientists view the world is more difficult for most people than absorbing and appreciating the facts of science. I fear that we will miss Carl’s presence in this area more than any other. His uncompromising integrity and the respect with which the public viewed him were bulwarks against the tides of unreason. Let us use Carl’s memory as a weapon in the struggle against pseudoscience, recalling the way he worked out problems as well as the eloquence with which he articulated the discoveries of science.

David Morrison, Director of Space at NASA Ames Research Center, was one of Sagan’s first graduate students.

James Randi

Another of my giants has fallen. When Dick Feynman died in 1988, it was a terrible blow. In 1992, Isaac Asimov left us, and I was devastated. Now that Carl Sagan is gone, I feel even more deserted by my very limited spectrum of heroes. I feel anger and sorrow equally. Every four years, it seems I lose a valuable part of my existence.

My first meeting with Carl was when we lunched in New York City and he gave me his candid opinion of my first book, The Magic of Uri Geller. He found it, he said, rather poorly organized and lacking in documentation. I had to agree that he spoke sooth, and explained that I’d bashed it together within six weeks as a rush job for the publisher. It was felt that Gellers career was pretty well over, only two years after he first appeared on the scene, because the public would soon tire of the novelty. Therefore, my book was expected to have a very short life. Carl and I had many opportunities after that to recall just how wrong we’d been, in both those respects. But he provided me with a powerful comment on the book.

Carl was one hell of a speaker. Audiences always reacted positively to his message, and he handled questions—even very belligerent ones—with calm and incisiveness. I always envied his control in the face of idiocy and his patience with the uninformed.

As a teacher, he constantly instructed his students to “look into it” and “find out,” rather than merely telling them solutions. I observed him with awe as he worked at Cornell when I was privileged to be consulted about the design of his Critical Thinking course. His constant good humor, sincere smile, and very expressive hands and face, all made him a fine teacher and public speaker, a convincing explainer of the beauty and importance of science.

Carl was a trifle annoyed that he had been credited with saying, “Billllyuns and billllyuns of stars!” He claimed that he’d never uttered the words, and that Johnny Carson had first used them in a parody of him. Carl’s extensive exposure on the Carson show and his electric presence made him into one of the highest-paid lecturers on the circuit, and literally a household word. In my extensive travels, I’ve always earned jealous admiration from my association with Carl and with Martin Gardner. One Swiss scientist told me, “I’d kill just to meet either of them!” He hyperbolized only a bit, I’m sure.

I once discussed the Cosmos series with Carl, and with a mighty sigh he told me he’d had no idea of what the director and editors of the material intended to do with the many shots of him staring off at far horizons while shielding his eyes with his hand to his brow. “One more shot of me standing in a cardboard spaceship and musing over the future,” he growled, “and I’d have had a minor fit of artistic revolt!” Even with the several minor failings of the series—all of editing and direction—Cosmos was by far one of the most effective vehicles of the time for bringing science to public. I know of many persons who were first made aware of the true nature of science by watching and enjoying Cosmos.

In The Demon-Haunted World Carl expresses, in one of the most moving and compelling selections from his work, his deep concern over the increasing temptation of pseudoscience, superstition, and unreason, especially as the new millennium approaches: “Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us—then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.” When these take over, “The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.”

Well, dammit, one of those candles has gone out. The burden now falls on us to provide as much light as we can generate, to banish the darkness and make sure it docs not triumph over us. If you ever doubt that your voice is needed to bring a little rationalism or truth to others who may need it, re-read these words of Carl Sagan. The demons must not be permitted to rise. We owe that much to the memory of this fine man.

James Randi, conjuror and investigator of psychic claimants, is author of Flim-Flam! and An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural.

Jill Tarter

All of us working on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) owe a special debt of gratitude to Carl Sagan; sadly, we can no longer look forward to repaying that debt in person. The best possible form of repayment would have been to present the extraordinary evidence required to support the extraordinary claim that we share our universe with other intelligent creatures from worlds beyond Earth. Such evidence still eludes us. Its discovery (we hope) lies in the future, and Carl Sagan, the man, now lies in the past. But Carl Sagan, the ultimate skeptic, will go forward into the future. Each student he taught, each colleague he worked with and challenged, each person who has read his final book, The Demon-Haunted World, will have experienced firsthand the best possible example of what it means to embrace the scientific method. To the extent that they follow this example and pass it along to their students and colleagues, they insure that Carl’s passion for science and his message about the difference between evidence and belief will go forward into the future, to the benefit of all.

Jill Tarter is director of the SET/ Institutes privately funded Project Phoenix in Mountain View, California, and a CSICOP fellow.

Paul Kurtz

Carl Sagan was not only a good friend, but one of the strongest proponents of CSICOP on the national and international scene. A charter fellow of CSICOP, Carl was ever willing to criticize claims of the paranormal.

I can attest to his personal courage and independence. In 1975, I organized a protest among scientists—the first of its kind—to the widespread growth of astrology and issued a statement, “Objections to Astrology,” co-authored by Harvard astronomer Bart Bok and science writer Lawrence Jerome, and endorsed by 186 leading scientists from the National Academy of Sciences, including 19 Nobel Prize winners. Carl declined to sign it, because of its tone. Although a strong critic of astrology, he thought the statement would be ineffective. The next year, however, when we founded CSICOP, he accepted my invitation to become a fellow and joined with enthusiasm.

The following year I invited him to respond to an article by Immanuel Velikovsky in a special issue of The Humanist I was editing on the topic, “Controversies on the Borderline of Science.” His article, tided “Analysis of Worlds in Collision,” sharply criticized Velikovsky. I remember how angry Velikovsky became with me for giving space to Sagan. For years Carl had been receiving vituperative attacks from the cult of Velikovsky; they had never forgiven him for his criticism of Velikovsky at an AAAS meeting in 1974. But Carl never wavered in his readiness to attack junk science and paranormal claims.

Carl volunteered his services to CSICOP time and again. He was the keynote speaker at two of our national conferences—in Pasadena in 1987 and Seattle in 1994—and we bestowed our In Praise of Reason and Isaac Asimov awards on him. And he took every occasion that arose to defend skepticism as essential to the process of scientific inquiry. One article he wrote for Parade magazine that extolled CSICOP brought in thousands of new subscribers. In his personal correspondence and meetings with me, he was effusive in his praise, but he was also ready and able to offer constructive criticism of us and make suggestions about topics that we should investigate. He always insisted that we be fair and impartial in our analyses.

At his sixtieth birthday celebration in 1994, of which Barry Karr, executive director of CSICOP, and I attended, Carl again criticized pseudoscience and defended constructive skepticism. Although Carl Sagan was a resolute proponent of the scientific outlook and scientific methodology throughout his life, he was open to creative new theories on the frontiers of science; but he insisted that these be corroborated by the evidence. For example, although he argued that the search for extraterrestrial life is a great adventure for the human spirit, he was skeptical of those who proclaimed that UFOs were from outer space.

In the last months and weeks before his death, he hoped that the latest therapies of medical science might stem his illness and save his life. Alas, he did not survive. His death is a profound loss to CSICOP and the entire skeptical movement.

Paul Kurtz is founder and chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.

Alan Hale

I first met Carl Sagan at a DPS (Division of Planetary Sciences/American Astronomical Society) meeting during the late 1980s, when I stopped him after he’d given a paper and asked if he could stand to meet one more graduate student “who had always wanted to meet Carl Sagan.” Despite the fact that he was on his way to an impending engagement, he took a few moments of his time to discuss some details of his paper with me. Since that time I had the privilege of meeting and chatting with Dr. Sagan at other conferences, and while the moments I had with him were usually quite brief, they are moments I treasure.

Carl Sagan’s tireless and dedicated work toward answering some of the most basic questions as to who and what we are served as a significant inspiration to me to take up the search myself and make my own contributions toward understanding these questions. Through his work on the Viking and Voyager missions, and his efforts to understand the formation of solar systems and the very origins of life itself, he has helped enormously in unraveling the mysteries of the universe around us. We have all benefited from the humbling, yet awe-inspiring, view of the universe his work has helped reveal to us.

All his scientific achievements notwithstanding, I believe Dr. Sagan’s most important contribution lies in his dedication to sharing that view of the universe with the lay public of our society. In a world awash in scientific illiteracy and pseudoscientific nonsense, his was a solid and unmistakable voice of science and reason. As we enter the twenty-first century facing a host of scientific and technological challenges that we are only now beginning to fathom, his was a voice that we could ill-afford to lose. It is incumbent upon those of us who remain to carry on the torch of reason, and to bring about the vision of the future that Carl Sagan instilled in the minds of those who so admired him.

Alan Hale is co-discoverer of Comet Hale-Bopp and is director of the Southwest Institute for Space Research in Cloudcroft, New Mexico.

Christopher Chyba

Everywhere in the universe Carl Sagan looked, he saw possibilities for life. But consider several of Carl’s most important contributions to planetary science. At the outset of his career, he demonstrated that a runaway greenhouse effect would raise Venus’ temperatures to hundreds of degrees above the boiling point of water—making life (as we know it) nearly impossible there. He later went on to show that the seasonal color changes on Mars that had been observed from Earth were probably due to global dust storms, rather than (as had been previously proposed) an expanding and receding seasonal wave of vegetation. Finally, in later research, he discovered the “early faint-Sun paradox,” demonstrating that, assuming our own Sun had evolved like a typical G-class star, it would have been substantially fainter at the time of the origin of life on Earth, so the early Earth would have been much colder. Without a higher greenhouse effect on early Earth, or some other mechanism, surface temperatures would have been too cold for liquid water to exist, and therefore inhospitable for life. A similar problem would have existed for early Mars.

Each of these discoveries shares one characteristic: It makes life or the origin of life in our own solar system seem significantly less likely than would otherwise have been the case. These results obviously flew in the face of Carl’s well-known enthusiasm for the possibility of extraterrestrial life. But they were the conclusions to which the data and his research led him. Again and again as a scientist, he followed his own admonition to be especially skeptical when one’s deepest hopes or fondest wishes were at stake.

Christopher F. Chyba received his Ph.D. under Carl Sagan at Cornell University. He is now an assistant professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona.

Leon M. Lederman

I can think of no major problem influencing humanity, in personal lives, in communities, the nation, and the planet, that is not, in some deep way, influenced by our scientific age and which cannot be illuminated by a grasp of science—science as a way of thinking, science as a clarifier of issues. Carl Sagan understood this and used his great talents as an erudite and vibrant communicator. He set an awesome example for all of us. Scientists must embed communication as an essential part of their métier. The greater the scientist, the more important is this ethic.

By his own passion for planetary science, by his active concerns in national science policy, and by his unique and heroic efforts in public understanding, Carl Sagan has set new standards for the conduct of scientists.

We need a Carl Sagan Award for Public Understanding of Science. Friends of Carl, industry, and concerned citizenry should be able to assemble the endowment for a substantial annual award to call attention to and fan the flame that Carl Sagan kindled.

Leon M. Lederman is director emeritus of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and a 1988 Nobel laureate in physics.

Clifford A. Pickover

I mourn the passing of Carl Sagan with great sadness. Sagan helped us understand the universe both through his television series Cosmos and his many publications describing worlds beyond our own as well as the worlds within ourselves. As I grew up, Carl Sagan was an inspiration, and now that my own popular science books are taking off, I feel an emptiness that I can’t share new projects with him. Strangely, just today I received galley proofs of my book The Alien IQ Test in which I had a humorous chapter devoted to the abduction of Carl Sagan by aliens. Sadly, the humor now seems misplaced, and I’ve asked Basic Books to remove the reference to Dr. Sagan before the book’s publication this spring.

These days perhaps one measure of a science-popularizer’s greatness is the number of wonderful web pages devoted to him or her on the World Wide Web. There are thousands of sites mentioning Carl Sagan or discussing his ideas. These sites, along with his books, will continue to reverberate long after his death. (I have gathered together links to some these thought-provoking Sagan sites on my home page at http://spron.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/home.htm.)

We are all molded and remolded by those who have inspired us, and though their lives may pass, we remain, nonetheless, the products of their influence. No one as fascinating as Sagan can ever cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark upon it forever.

Clifford A. Pickover, of the IBM Watson Research Center, is the author of a dozen popular science books including Black Holes: A Traveler’s Guide and Keys to Infinity.

John Allen Paulos

Carl Sagan and I corresponded a few times in recent years, and his death prompted me to reread his letters. In one written just after a Washington Post article had discussed the snideness sometimes directed toward scientific popularizers, he asked about my experiences with the phenomenon. With characteristic simplicity he wondered, “I’m interested in understanding this very peculiar sense that these subjects (science and mathematics) are to be kept for an elite.” Sagan reached expansively beyond the elite. Through his pioneering and exuberant efforts, a whole generation has glimpsed some of the power and beauty of scientific ideas and become wary of the ubiquitous quackery that too many scientists leave uncontested for fear of being labeled a popularizer. This fear is based on a confusion. The opposite of a popularizer is not an eminent researcher (which, of course, Sagan also was) but an unpopularizer (a common breed of scientist, unfortunately). Carl Sagan will be missed by many of us, and retroactively perhaps, if there are sentient beings elsewhere, by many others as well.

John Allen Paulos is a CSICOP fellow and the author of Innumeracy and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper.

Chip Denman

I was an undergraduate at Cornell, where Sagan taught. Even in the mid ’70s, Sagan was widely known to the public as an eloquent advocate of science and reason. Even before Cosmos, he was recognized from his appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, an avid amateur astronomer. And Sagan was also regarded as one of the best teachers on campus. I regret that I did not take his ASTRO 101; my friends who did enjoyed it and him a great deal.

At one time I considered pursuing astronomy as a field of study. Our undergraduate astronomy club held a meeting in which Sagan came to talk about how best to prepare for a career in astronomy. There were no more than twenty of us in a generic classroom. Sagan draped himself across the desk at the front of the room and just chatted casually. His advice: don’t take undergraduate astronomy courses—those were mainly meant for dabblers, to please the masses. Instead, he urged, study math and physics, the essential tools for serious astronomy. So I did, as a double major. I eventually realized that I was enjoying the math more than the physics, and so, one course short of the physics requirement, I dropped physics and doubled up on the math. I filled the hole in my schedule with courses in probability and statistics—and almost at once I found that this was the focus I had been searching for.

So, I did not become an astronomer. But Sagan’s friendly advice to this young undergraduate indirectly brought me to my chosen field of mathematical statistics. I owe him much for that.

Others sometimes criticized Sagan for being a “popularizer”—as if that were a bad thing! I wish science had more who were even half as effective. As I became publicly active in the promotion of science and skeptical thinking, Sagan continued to inspire. Shortly after the founding of the National Capital Area Skeptics in 1987, I attended my first national conference sponsored by CSICOP. Sagan was the keynote speaker; his words were full of urgency, tempered with humor. I have found myself reaching back and quoting him when I’ve needed a nugget of skeptical thought that would make sense to a reporter or an audience. Few had his ability to make skepticism sound so sensible, natural, and necessary.

The public no longer has him to reach out to them from their Sunday papers, where few scientists dare to tread, and to thrill them with the excitement of good science and good thinking. I am sad for that.

Chip Denman is manager of the Statistics Laboratory at the University of Maryland, where he also teaches “Science and Pseudoscience” for the University Honors Program. He is past-president of the National Capital Area Skeptics.

Shawn Carlson

I didn’t know Carl Sagan personally, but like many of his admirers, I sullenly followed the progress of his terrible illness. After seeing his last appearance on the news show Nightline, when he was physically weak and displaying the devastating effects of chemotherapy, I guessed that the end would come soon. And yet when the sad news of his death did arrive a few weeks later, it moved me far more than I ever thought it would.

We all know of Sagan’s accomplishments as a researcher and of his unparalleled stature as the “showman of science” (to quote Time magazine). But if historians mark only these, they will be selling his legacy far short. The ultimate measure of a great life lived is the impact one has had on other lives. And by this accounting, Carl Sagan was a great man indeed. His life and works will ultimately contribute to far more good in the world than even he could have known.

I was still an undergraduate when Cosmos, perhaps Sagan’s greatest masterpiece, first aired. It was quite unlike any documentary I had ever seen. Sagan’s passion for science shined through. And his eloquence at translating scientifically obtuse concepts for the masses was, for me, inspirational. I loved it! Indeed, Cosmos helped inspire me to become a science writer. As I see it, every column I write for Scientific American propagates a little more of Sagan’s influence.

I’m confident that dozens of other science writers were equally inspired, and for all of their work Sagan deserves a little credit. Further, there must be hundreds of working scientists whose passion for science was sparked, or at least helped along, by Sagan’s zeal. And with hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide, Sagan’s Cosmos advanced science literacy tremendously. Indeed, if Clarence (the sprightly angel from It’s a Wonderful Life) could show us what the world would have been like had Carl Sagan never been born, I’m quite sure we would find it a markedly poorer place; less literate with far fewer eyes turned skyward.

Shawn Carlson writes “The Amateur Scientist” department for Scientific American magazine and is the founder and executive director of the Society for Amateur Scientists.

Nicholas Humphrey

I think of Carl Sagan in the summer of 1987 at the Moscow conference of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. He spoke out with his matchless combination of authority and passion against the self-perpetuating absurdities of the Cold War, the folly of the arms race, and the irrationality of the policy of nuclear deterrence. He had been doing some sums: by his calculation, the total defense expenditure by the United States since the end of World War II would by now be enough to buy up every saleable object on the North American continent—every building, every work of art, every TV set, every automobile, every silk stocking, and every stand of timber. Meanwhile half the world was starving. Sagan’s quiet anger at the situation he described, and his own determination to use all his powers to change it, spread to everyone in his large audience—and perhaps it also spread beyond. Gorbachev received a delegation from the conference that same day and listened thoughtfully as they pressed for the Soviet Union to take the initiative toward disarmament. Within a few months the process had begun. Sagan was a model of the socially responsible scientist. He loved truth, beauty, and life, whether at the level of science or public policy, and hated superstition, narrow-mindedness, and false prophecy. He was one of those rare people capable not only of interpreting the world but of changing it: and he did both.

Nicholas Humphrey, author of Consciousness Regained: A History of the Mind and Soul Searching, is a professor of psychology at the New School for Social Research, New York.

Daniel R. Alonso

I am a federal prosecutor. I also was a student of Carl Sagan’s at Cornell in the fall of 1986. Just last week, a friend and I were discussing which living American we admired most. Without hesitation, I named Carl Sagan, which might have struck my friend as odd. After all, it’s not often that a lawyer reserves his greatest admiration for a scientist.

To me, it made perfect sense. As a federal prosecutor, I am very much in the business of skepticism. It’s my job not to take things at face value, but instead to investigate in a logical and thorough manner, hoping to arrive finally at the truth. It also made sense because I was fortunate to have known briefly the man I admired so much, as I was his student. The skills Carl Sagan taught me—both personally and through his writings—have served me well in my chosen profession.

In the fall of 1986, I told Professor Sagan that I wanted to be a prosecutor and asked him to recommend me for law school. He graciously agreed, but not before dissecting my intended career choice in ten different ways and ruminating about it for a while. As those who knew him much better than I did surely know, this was his usual way, and it had its intended effect in this case of really making me think about where I was headed.

In my work today, I do quite a bit of dissecting and ruminating of my own. Thinking about Professor Sagan ten years later, I’m pleased that he was there to share my career choice with me and impart me with skills I needed to succeed. Now, as I continue down my own path, I think fondly of my Cornell professor, who was taken from us all—lawyers, scientists, and many others—long before his time.

Daniel R. Alonso is an assistant United States attorney in New York City

Javier E. Armentia

I remember, in 1980, that man on the screen, waving his hands, explaining astronomy as no one before had done on TV. I was studying physics, and he convinced me to become an astronomer. So he did for many of my colleagues and many of my students. Later I discovered the writer, the skeptic, the scientist . . . and he again convinced me of many things. No doubt we will miss Carl Sagan. But I know that his work and his life have been of great influence to many people: we, those who must continue working to popularize science, skepticism, and critical thinking.

Javier E. Armentia is president of Alternativa Rational a las Pseuaociencias (ARP) and director of Planetario de Pamplona, Pamplona, Spain.

Barry Williams

Australian Skeptics

I am sure that all Australian skeptics and all who experienced the feelings of wonder and love of science that he inspired will feel deeply the loss of Carl Sagan. He was truly a frontline warrior in the battle against ignorance, superstition, and the “armies of the night.” He was far too young to have left the scene and, although I never had the pleasure of meeting him, I will miss him.

Swedish Skeptics

Carl Sagan’s books have had a major impact in Sweden, both through translations and in the original English. There are few other writers of popular science who have reached as many enthusiastic readers in our country. To us in the Swedish Skeptics, his writings have been a constant source of inspiration. And they will continue to be so, for Carl Sagan was a man whose influence will last much longer than his own life.

For the board of the Swedish Skeptics. Per-Olof Hulth (chairman) and Sven Ove Hansson.

Michael D. Sofka

I had the great pleasure of hearing Carl Sagan speak in 1994 at the State University of New York at Albany. This was just before the publication of Pale Blue Dot, and his talk included a short reading from that book about the Voyager photograph of Earth. In this photograph, taken at Sagan’s insistence, Earth was a single pixel—a pale blue dot. “On [that dot] everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. . . . The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.” Carl Sagan saw the big picture.

More important, Carl Sagan was passionate about bringing the big picture to others. He was above all else a teacher, and I think an extraordinary one. After his talk, he sat down and for nearly an hour took questions from the audience. People lined up at the microphone to ask him about life on other planets, UFOs, the nature of science, and his views on religion. I sat there in awe.

Sagan looked perfectly at ease, in his natural environment, while answering those questions. And what questions they were! Many of them would have left me, and I suspect most readers, exasperated.

In The Demon-Haunted World Sagan said there is no such thing as a dumb question. He really believed this. Never did he show a lack of patience. Never once did he answer in a way that would make the questioner feel silly. He used each question to teach something. He might say that he didn’t know the answer, “but, let me tell you a related story,” and he would proceed to use the question as a jumping point for something better. The questioner always seemed satisfied. We skeptics lost a friend. But more, we lost a teacher.

Mike Sofka is president and co-founder of the Inquiring Skeptics of Upper New York.

Mark Boslough

One week before Carl Sagan’s death I visited a friend who is a professor at a large Southwestern university. We stayed up late that night talking about our research and sharing our gripes about the lack of support for science and the decay of education standards. My friend pointed out that his university prioritizes athletics above all else. Unfortunately, he said, that’s the sensible thing to do because such a large fraction of the applicants say that they are interested in the school because of its basketball team. He went on to tell me that when he was a post-doc at Cornell, many students there said they chose to apply because of Carl Sagan’s presence. We laughed at the irrelevance of both of these reasons, but later I remembered that Cornell was one of the few graduate schools to which I applied twenty years ago, shortly after the Viking mission landed robots on Mars. Science may never surpass basketball in the hearts of most school administrators, but the fact that a scientist can serve as a university recruiting device should give us all hope.

Mark Boslough is a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories, specializing in large-scale impacts.

Colin Groves

Carl Sagan was a leading scientist and one of the world’s foremost science communicators. His books and television programs were required fare for everyone interested in whatever branch of science. His successes in swaying doubters and waverers may relate both to his scientific rigor and to his deeply humane personality, which shone through his presentations and his writings. Scientists, educators, and skeptics everywhere will miss him greatly.

Colin Groves is in the Department of Archeology and Anthropology at Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.