“The more astronomers look for other worlds, the more they find that it is a crowded and crazy cosmos. They think planets easily outnumber stars in our galaxy and they are even finding them in the strangest of places.Carl Sagan used his idea of a Pale Blue Dot to conceptualize the loneliness of the earth, unique and lost in the vast, barren cosmos. It is arrogant to think that humans are of any value in such a huge, dead and uncaring system, he suggested. There is no reason to think that humans have any significance, when they are so alone. The Pale Blue Dot was a metaphor for Materialism and by extension, Atheism.
And they have only begun to count.
Three studies released Wednesday, in the journal Nature and at the American Astronomical Society's conference in Austin, Texas, demonstrate an extrasolar real estate boom. One study shows that in our Milky Way, most stars have planets. And since there are a lot of stars in our galaxy — about 100 billion — that means a lot of planets.
"We're finding an exciting potpourri of things we didn't even think could exist," said Harvard University astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger, including planets that mirror "Star Wars" Luke Skywalker's home planet with twin suns and a mini-star system with a dwarf sun and shrunken planets.
"We're awash in planets where 17 years ago we weren't even sure there were planets" outside our solar system, said Kaltenegger, who wasn't involved in the new research.”
What Sagan was appealing to was Scientism. He thought that what he observed, telescopically, was the scientific Truth which should be applied to everyone’s worldview.
The recent discoveries, just outside of Sagan’s lifespan, of “more planets than stars”, possibly 100’s of billions in our galaxy alone, illuminates the fallacy of relying on science to provide metaphysical answers for questions outside the ability of science to actually address. Sagan had made an improper deductive leap, one designed to satisfy his existing worldview, an exercise in rationalization to support a presupposed conclusion. He deduced that a lack of knowledge of other planets meant a lack of planets, a logical slip with a huge impact on the thought process of many people.
If one were to follow Sagan’s reasoning – and one should not – then the existence of billions of planets means the opposite of Sagan’s claim for purposes of worldviews.
But Scientism is not a proper brick for the construction of knowledge of why what is, is.
What the scientists should be presenting is not false deductions. They should present the objective process of logical deduction based on axiomatic groundings which is embedded in the scientific method, and the contingency and probabilism inherent in every scientific finding. And I suspect that many of them do just that. But it is the Sagans and Dawkinses who promote Scientism and Atheism who get the headlines and coverage, as they prescribe their Scientistic ideology.
Contingency and probabilism demonstrate that science is not the authority that some of its practitioners seem to crave. The appeals to Dawkins and Sagan et al are Appeals to Authority of the worst kind: false authority. That authority is seemingly addictive to those who indulge in it; after all, no one would have heard of either Sagan or Dawkins had they stuck to actual science.
Scientism is no less an ideological evangelism than is an old time tent camp revival.
None of the new findings indicate, yet, that life exists beyond earth. But it is not impossible, especially if one grants that life need not necessarily be anything like our own. But the point here is that science doesn’t know, and virtually every question answered by science opens another batch of questions. Thinking that science is an authority on every question is not justified, especially considering that there are few questions that science has actually settled. Even Einstein’s universal speed limit of light speed, C, is now being questioned, and Einstein doubtless would approve. That’s how real scientists behave.
And, to be fair, one should still watch Cosmos. A wonderful program, as long as you have a good awareness of materialist philosophy and can ignore those bits. :)
ReplyDelete"earth, unique and lost in the vast, barren cosmos."
ReplyDeleteCan you give us a quotation where he said this?
"It is arrogant to think that humans are of any value in such a huge, dead and uncaring system, he suggested."
"are of any value"? Please give me the quotation that gives you the impression that Sagan suggested humans were not of any value. The most famous paragraph of the book suggests humans have the utmost value and should have the utmost value to themselves as they live on this planet.
"If one were to follow Sagan’s reasoning – and one should not – then the existence of billions of planets means the opposite of Sagan’s claim for purposes of worldviews.
Have you read the book? It's hard to find a random page without mention of billions of planets.
virtually every question answered by science opens another batch of questions.
That's a good thing not a bad thing.
"Thinking that science is an authority on every question is not justified, especially considering that there are few questions that science has actually settled."
Tautologically, science is done on scientific subjects. So what? That a lot of subjects.
And settled? Is that what science is meant to do?
And, to be fair, one should still watch Cosmos. A wonderful program, as long as you have a good awareness of materialist philosophy and can ignore those bits. :)
Why bother? If you hate materialism and science and would rather hold airy-fairy supernatural unfalsifiable beliefs then why even bother? Maybe a invisible supernatural wizard is creating false images for Sagan's telescope and there's nothing out there. Supernaturalism destroys every piece of knowledge.
Watcher,
ReplyDeleteHere is the famous statement by Sagan:
(Speech at Cornell, 1994)
http://www.bigskyastroclub.org/pale_blue_dot.htm
""We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
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 in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
We are reduced to a mote of dust. The metaphor is clear, and he continues, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark."
How much more clear could it be? It oozes with nihilism; the earth and its humans could not have less value. The Pale Blue Dot is a value statement. There is no science being revealed; rather science is being ideologized. He is not presenting pure, objective fact; he is presenting an emotion-based metaphor for the valuelessness of earth and its inhabitants, which he then turns around with his own particular moral statement, a non-scientific conclusion of personal moral opinion, which he issues under his own assumption of personal moral authority.
(continued)
(Continued)
ReplyDelete"Tautologically, science is done on scientific subjects. So what? That a lot of subjects.
And settled? Is that what science is meant to do? "
You seem to wholly and completely miss the subject, which is the misuse of science. Misuse in pursuit of ideology, rather than pursuit of objective knowledge.
When science is used to make moral declarations, it is out of bounds. Since you use the term "falsifiability" then surely you understand that?
"Why bother? If you hate materialism and science and would rather hold airy-fairy supernatural unfalsifiable beliefs then why even bother? Maybe a invisible supernatural wizard is creating false images for Sagan's telescope and there's nothing out there. Supernaturalism destroys every piece of knowledge."
Materialism is not science; science is a wonderful pursuit, unless it is contaminated with Materialism and/or science worship. Science is a discipline, and is unassociated with Scientism, which is a false religious belief, not a discipline.
There is no knowledge destroyed by denying Materialism except the unsupportable belief in the ideology of Philosophical Materialism. Disciplined, grounded thought shows that to be the case clearly.
The idea which you hold that science is mutually exclusive with deductive projections based on empirical observations speculating on areas not accessible to science is not supportable, either scientifically, nor philosophically, nor logically.
That idea is purely ideological. In other words, it is a faith statement with no evidence for support.
He is not presenting pure, objective fact; he is presenting an emotion-based metaphor
ReplyDeleteThe "Reflections" chapter of the book that this speech is based on is not meant to be the pure objective fact. It's his reflections, his thoughts. Sagan is a human being. He had emotions. He had opinions. And this is as far from nihilism as you can get.
"It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience... To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
"science is a wonderful pursuit, unless it is contaminated with Materialism"
ReplyDelete???
Science (systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation) without materialism?
Science need materialism or else every question could be answered by 'invisible wizard did it'.
As I said, the nihilism is converted to a moral statement at the end. Sagan is revered as a scientist-Atheist. He starts his lecture with science. He ends it with his personal morality. He has every right to his own opinion.
ReplyDeleteBut to elevate him to a voice of scientific authority in support of Materialism is an error. And his "lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark" metaphor, used to paint the picture of desolation, is incorrect, scientifically. And that is the point.
I have slacked off in my typing and it has lead to this confusion:
ReplyDeleteScience is voluntarily materialist; it doesn't address issues which it cannot measure. It is functionally limited to space-time, mass-energy, and does not address issues outside those boundaries.
Philosophical Materialism is a belief system, which says that there is no existence which is not material. It offers no proof for this assertion, and when pressed, Philosophical Materialists tend to deny that any evidence is required for their belief. It is, therefore, a belief system without evidence: a faith. It is a subset of Atheism, or Atheism is a subset of Philosophical Materialism, depending on how you look at it.
I will try to remember to type out the full nomenclature: Philosophical Materialism.
watcher,
ReplyDeleteWould you not agree that it would be absurd for a person to suggest that, since microscopes have unparalleled success in revealing the world of microbes, that therefore the only thing that exists are microbes? And when someone presents evidence for other things, the microscopist insists that if it can't be put under the microscope, then it's worthless as evidence?
So it goes with scientism. The view that whatever the natural sciences reveal to us is all that is real.
Sagan is a atheist hero. A gentle pot-smoker father figure that tells his child like atheist followers that they are made out of star dust. A angel of light that drags science-scum to Hell to burn with him.
ReplyDeleteI love that he is wrong but atheists won;'t throw out his rubbish books. It proves that atheists don't like facts. How does this taste atheist liars?
Sagan was and is wrong.
I thought science was self correcting!
Throw out Sagan!
Storm,
ReplyDeleteYour continuing invectives have resulted in you being removed from commenting here.
Stan, watcher:
ReplyDeleteMy home's library is filled with Sagan's books.
All I have to say, is that it seems that Sagan used to be a more balanced preacher in the beggining, but from the early works of Cosmos and on, those thick books and the preaching just border to ideological pursuits, at the point where such are more impositive rather than an honest enquiry.
That's the problem nowadays. I love Science, but Science is what it is, it is not authority of secular or religious organizations.
When secular organizations accept and co-opt Science as the authority for knowledge, scientism becomes obvious, but at the high price of hampering scientific progress... Parapsychology is one of the most hampered because of ideological pursuits, but the problem is not limited to it, research in Physics is also not in a good shape, because positive expermiental evidence for Cold Fusion and Free Energy is being ignored (I'm not saying both are 100% True, just that positive experimental evidence is being censored), among other cases.
It is an action no different than the Spanish Inquisition in essence (Lets call it "Witch-hunting"), but instead of killing, is suing and/or censoring anyone (that also means, leaving scientists jobless or even in jail) who disagrees at the ideology and in consequence, making their lives just more cumbersome (which I think is sometimes, even more painful in the long run).
It happens with many scientific disciplines:
1) One example is the unfair blacklisting practices done at arX(chi)iv.
2) The huge quantity of useless legal arrangements being done by the American Atheists foundation just to impose their ideologies down the throats of any American citizen with differing worldviews (note that I'm not from USA).
3) Quackpotwatch Unveils the work of a corrupt Physician called Stephen Barrett, and some other coleagues done with his organization. One of their deeds was to put an innocent man in jail.
Kind Regards.