The Demon-Haunted World_ Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan [9]
[* Although it’s hard for me to see a more profound cosmic connection than the astonishing findings of modern nuclear astrophysics: except for hydrogen, all the atoms that make each of us up – the iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, the carbon in our brains – were manufactured in red giant stars thousands of light years away in space and billions of years ago in time. We are, as I like to say, starstuff.]
At the heart of some pseudoscience (and some religion also, New Age and Old) is the idea that wishing makes it so. How satisfying it would be, as in folklore and children’s stories, to fulfil our heart’s desire just by wishing. How seductive this notion is, especially when compared with the hard work and good luck usually required to achieve our hopes. The enchanted fish or the genie from the lamp will grant us three wishes – anything we want except more wishes. Who has not pondered – just to be on the safe side, just in case we ever come upon and accidentally rub an old, squat brass oil lamp – what to ask for?
I remember, from childhood comic strips and books, a top-hatted, moustachioed magician who brandished an ebony walking stick. His name was Zatara. He could make anything happen, anything at all. How did he do it? Easy. He uttered his commands backwards. So if he wanted a million dollars, he would say ‘srallod noillim a em evig’. That’s all there was to it. It was something like prayer, but much surer of results.
I spent a lot of time at age eight experimenting in this vein, commanding stones to levitate: ‘esir, enots.’ It never worked. I blamed my pronunciation.
Pseudoscience is embraced, it might be argued, in exact proportion as real science is misunderstood - except that the language breaks down here. If you’ve never heard of science (to say nothing of how it works), you can hardly be aware you’re embracing pseudoscience. You’re simply thinking in one of the ways that humans always have. Religions are often the state-protected nurseries of pseudoscience, although there’s no reason why religions have to play that role. In a way, it’s an artefact from times long gone. In some countries nearly everyone believes in astrology and precognition, including government leaders. But this is not simply drummed into them by religion; it is drawn out of the enveloping culture in which everyone is comfortable with these practices, and affirming testimonials are everywhere.
Most of the case histories I will relate in this book are American - because these are the cases I know best, not because pseudoscience and mysticism are more prominent in the United States than elsewhere. But the psychic spoonbender and extraterrestrial channeller Uri Geller hails from Israel. As tensions rise between Algerian secularists and Muslim fundamentalists, more and more people are discreetly consulting the country’s 10,000 soothsayers and clairvoyants (about half of whom operate with a licence from the government). High French officials, including a former President of France, arranged for millions of dollars to be invested in a scam (the Elf-Aquitaine scandal) to find new petroleum reserves from the air. In Germany, there is concern about carcinogenic ‘Earth rays’ undetectable by science; they can be sensed only by experienced dowsers brandishing forked sticks. ‘Psychic surgery’ flourishes in the Philippines. Ghosts are something of a national obsession in Britain. Since World War Two, Japan has spawned enormous numbers