Carl Sagan, a renowned popularizer of science, continued to advocate for public scientific understanding until his death in 1996. In his final years, he expressed concern over the decline of scientific thinking in America, particularly within political spheres. His last interview revealed a deep worry about the disconnect between science and the public, emphasizing that ignorance combined with power could have dire consequences. He argued that science is not merely knowledge but a critical way of thinking that interrogates the universe and promotes educated discourse in democracy.
We've arranged a soci­ety on sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy in which nobody understands any­thing about sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, and this combusti­ble mixture of igno­rance and pow­er soon­er or lat­er is going to blow up in our faces. I mean, who is running the sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy in a democ­ra­cy if the peo­ple don't know any­thing about it.
And the sec­ond rea­son that I'm wor­ried about this is that sci­ence is more than a body of knowl­edge. It's a way of think­ing.
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