Talk:Carl Sagan/Archive 4

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Minor link removal

Robert Anton Wilson's "The Astronomer Who Abolished Gravity" from Cosmic Trigger 3.

Link has been removed. The link does not appear authoritative. In addition, the author makes claims which are false (notably that Sagan "never admitted to ever making an error"). Finally, the page is riddled with spelling and grammatical mistakes. I'd also question linking the band Sagan, but one removed link a day is enough for me. Thoughts?

Upon reading the previous discussion page I think that this may thrust this Velikovsky/Sagan issue back to the forefront. Is there a better link that could be submitted that would offer the same critical tone while containing fewer errors and spelling mistakes?

Ann Druyan

I'm sorry if this has been discussed before, but this text is found within the article under the section "Social Concerns":

'Sagan became more politically active after marrying fellow scientist Ann Druyan'

I was under the impression that Ann Druyan was a writer and not a scientist. I did a search for a biography on Google and could not find any information supporting her being a scientist. I also looked for her CV, but could not find it. Can anyone more "in the know" provide a source for this?

"Education: Attended New York University on and off from 1967 to 1971, but left before graduating to launch a career as a novelist"[1] --JWSchmidt 16:27, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I will take the link provided by JWSchmidt to indicate that Ms. Druyan was indeed not a scientist. I will replace the text "fellow scientist" with "novelist" 65.78.8.9 06:40, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Cosmos most watched TV show?

A recent edit to the article says that Cosmos is the most-watched TV show. This link doesn't list it. It might be the most watched PBS TV show. I'm leaving it in for now, pending a citation. Bubba73 (talk), 02:49, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Various 'credible' websites like NASA, [2], [3] and [4] say it's the most watched TV show of all time. I added these links to the article. Sheehan 10:34, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, that supports what I thought. The first link (NASA) says "became the most watched show in public television history". Here in the U.S., we have "commercial television", which means all of the commercial networks. We also have "public television" whish is partly sponsered by the governement, partly by the viewers, and partly by businesses. There were no commercials on public TV until recently. "PBS" is the Public Broadcasting Service in the US. The number of viewers of "public TV" is small compared to commercial TV, so the article needs to state that Cosmos was the most watched show on Public Broadcasting Service. I'll make htat change. Bubba73 (talk), 16:53, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

i think carl sagan is a great man and i remember seeing him on t.v and i think it is brave for the world to keep him iin mind i'm 12 years old and doing a project about because are school is named after him.

Sagan viewing computer science as "pseudoscience"

In the Personality section, there is the statement: "... and he was displeased at being associated with what he considered pseudoscience," (regarding the law suit with Apple). Is there any reference or evidence of this? Working heavily on planetary exploration missions, it would be assumed that he would have an appreciation of computer science (assuming this is what the statement refers to), or generally computers, given astronomy's heavy reliance on them. Further, I remember reading his appreciation and encouragement of the further development of computer science as a field of study from the 1971 conference in Soviet Armenia by the USSR Academy of Sciences as well as the U.S. Academy of Sciences, including that the field would contribute and aid the technological capabilities of planetary/space exploratiion. Or is this not what the statement is referring to? If so, perhaps this statement should be less vague about the matter. C.J. 16:17, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for describing a possible source of confusion about that part of the article. This anecdote is meant to illustrate that Sagan was apparently somewhat protective of his reputation and unwilling to have people poke fun at his scientific interests. It was a practice at Apple to have some internal project names that are associated with fringe science. Sagan was interested in SETI, research that some have called pseudoscientific. Sagan struggled to get funding for SETI and was sensitive to efforts to label SETI as fringe science. This had nothing to do with Sagan's attitudes with respect to computers. Sagan did not like the idea of his name and his interests (like SETI) being linked with fringe science or pseudoscience (except in the context of his efforts against pseudoscience). --JWSchmidt 03:36, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I think the disassociation with pseudoscience is based on the "Cold Fusion" and "Piltdown Man" code names rather than Apple's actual activities. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.126.143.65 (talk) 00:24, 18 March 2007 (UTC).

Indeed, the pseudoscience concern was related to names like "Cold Fusion" and Piltdown Man". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.79.147.61 (talk) 23:57, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Sagan now in heaven?

In the Conversations with God books by Neale Donald Walsch, God claims that Sagan went to heaven after his demise. Is Neale writing from his own imagination or is the statement true? Any comments? --S iva1979^{Talk to me} 10:15, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Are you serious? How could it be verifiably true? Assuming, even, there is an existence of a "heaven"? Your question is absurd, and I don't see how it relates, in any sense, to any serious nature of the article. Furthermore, I don't see how this Walsch person would be able to make any statement of any individual soul's placement in some afterlife. C.J. 19:53, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

If Carl Sagan were able to comment, he would doubtless demand verifiable proof of his alleged current location. This claim is just the imaginings of a religious believer.

Atlant 12:16, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

You could be right. But by stating this, you have implied that the whole Conversations with God books are just from the imagination of Neale Donald Walsch. --S iva1979^{Talk to me} 17:41, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Was there ever any doubt? only nutters or believers would think otherwise--LexCorp 22:20, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

There is a contradictory source of comparable scholarly credibility. In the last entry of The Onion: Our Dumb Century, the Rapture happens at the turn of the millenium, Ralph Reed and Jerry Falwell ascend to heaven, and Sagan makes some regretful comments from Hell, where his skull is being used as a chalice by Lucifer. Or something like that. - Reaverdrop 06:06, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh yeah, there was also an Onion article soon after his death in which his restless ghost returns to warn the president of Cornell to seek out a magic amulet that will ward off superstition. Can there be any doubt that The Onion is at least as intimately in contact with God as Neale Donald Walsch? - Reaverdrop 06:08, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, first of all, if you're talking about the christian concept of heaven, probably not. However, one could argue that Carl Sagan tried to make this earth as close to a heaven as he could in his lifetime. And, he saved countless lives by using the nuclear winter thing to convince Defense Department hawks that nuclear war wasn't winnable. He certainly inspired millions with his books and TV appearances. I count him as the major reason why I decided to become a scientist when I was a kid. Does that make him angelic? Does it make him a god? A saint? Or just a seriously awesome guy whose contributions will not be fully appreciated for many decades to come? I favour the latter, but I guess it's up to you to decide. Wandering Star 04:01, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Interesting philosophical question, but please remember Wikipedia:No Original Research. Michaelbusch 04:15, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Needs a better picture

I mean, come on, can't anyone find a better (resolutionwise) picture then the one presented now? 82.166.89.110 06:35, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree, but this is the fault of the template listing his birthplace, birth-date, etc. C.J. 19:56, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

other TV productions

Does anyone remember in the early 80s a TV program of Carl at some seminar, where he was lecturing on the dangers of nuclear war, and the potential resulting nuclear winter? This is a (possibly paraphrased) quote from what I remember him saying

"The extinction of the human species is a terrible thing. The extinction of the human species means you have made meaningless the life of everyone that has ever lived, and the life of everyone that would have lived...."

I have his lecture on betamax tape I think.

Legacy

The part "legacy" was poor and almost offensive, I think the legacy of Sagan is more deeper and important than simply a movie and a musical group. Somebody fix that.--Robotkarel 20:49, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

During 1991-1997 I was a graduate student at Cornell University (where Sagan taught). I remember VERY well reading an earlier report in the local cornell press (earlier would be during 1993-1995 I would say) about Sagan's ultimately fatal disease, indicating that several other people in the same building or lab as Sagan had developed cancers...and that this was maybe going to be looked into as to whether there was a common root. Well, the next story about Sagan (in the cornell press --must have been either cornell chronicle or a similar publication) did not mention that.. the ultimate stories about his death, didn't either. I wish I could find (I might still have somewhere) the original paper of that story with that clipping, and give the exact reference...It's much too easy to not investigate this but if anyone cares about the truth, I urge those with the time and resources to investigate, find that original story, and research whethere was was ultimately anything to the speculation. I'm actually at cornell again this year (sabbatical visiting prof position) but can't just walk up to random stranger and sound like I'm making an accusation, if I have time to research it in the local libraries I will, but it's going to be a busy year with projects so I'm hoping a sagan fan is out there who might reserach this (if you find something out, contact me via barzilai.org) in which case it should be added to the wikipedia entry, if/when anything is found with citations... thanks,

--Harel 04:42, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup

How can an article reach the featured status if it requires cleanup at the same time? Daniel Šebesta (talk • contribs) 15:39, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't require cleanup. Deltabeignet 01:57, 23 June 2006 (UTC)'

Sojourner Quote

n an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise entitled "Terra Prime", a quick shot is shown of the relic rover Sojourner, part of the Mars Pathfinder mission, placed by a historical marker at Carl Sagan Memorial Station on the Martian surface. The marker displays a quote from Sagan: "Whatever the reason you're on Mars, I'm glad you're there, and I wish I was with you."

Out of curiosity, is the quote actually there, in real life? Mysticflame 05:41, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm wondering this too. --Mike Schiraldi 06:03, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

He did indeed say this as part of a greeting to future adventurers to Mars. It was great how they worked that into Star Trek so well, especially considering the beginning of his greeting. Enjoy

Media:sagan_martian_greeting.ogg --Pkeogh 16:43, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Apple Law Suit

This entire section does not belong in an article summarizing Carl Sagan's life. For those readers interested in the rest of his life, there is so much information to distill down into a readable wiki article, this section should not be included as it doesn't shed significant light on Dr. Sagan's many accomplishments and actions in life. 67.9.61.206 01:44, 28 June 2007 (UTC)Mat Zulauf

I thought the article made Sagan seemed outraged at the fact that Apple was using his name in private as a clandstine name for secret projucts so I added the fact that it wasn't untill Apple started pushing the product as "Project Sagan" that he become angry.

"was being used by Apple to sell a product" <-- this seems to contradict what is already in the article: "the project name was strictly internal and never used in public marketing". --JWSchmidt 05:48, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree, and reverted the recent addition out again. Maybe we should mention the revised code name: "BHA -- Butt-Headed Astronomer"? ;-)

Atlant 13:04, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I added the fact that Apple was using his name as a joke to make "billions and billions" for Apple and removed the "in honor" bit. It conincides with the refrence already in exstence so the change seemed to fit like the perfect puzzle piece. ::Antiproconist 1:52 PM, 31 July 2006

The problem here is that companies use the tactic of framing the debate by picking an activity like "public marketing" which they can say they never participated in. As if this was the only area that is objectionable for them to use Sagan's name in. This also serves to distract from other uses of names or claims, in say, usenet postings by Apple employees, or leaks to media. Apple resorted to some weasel words in their defense strategy. (This is perhaps the 3rd addition i've made to this page, and i assumed my IP address would be added next to my entry. This appears to not be the case. I hope this doesn't cause any confusion -SAS)

Regarding the Velikovsky debate

Velikovsky's theory was examined in Cosmos and the point Carl Sagan was trying to make was that all theories deserved to be evaluated according to the scientific method. No theory, however outlandish, should simply be dismissed or ridiculed because doing so runs the risk of missing important insights. Science is not immune to orthodoxy. I did not see or read about the conference referred to in the discussion on this talk page. It would appear Carl Sagan gave in to temptation and used humour instead of following his sober advice to the letter. Pendragon39 08:54, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Maybe "all scientific theories deserved to be evaluated according to the scientific method". Critics of pseudoscience do not introduce the humor; humorous outcomes are a natural result of the practice of pseudoscience. If you throw away the error correcting methods of science you stop doing science and end up believing in errors, often they are silly errors. People who do something silly look silly, particularly if they seem to be unaware that they are silly. Science is a human activity. Humor is part of human life. Often humor can get people to think when a logical argument does not. I think you have to ask if Sagan was making fun of honest scientific theories or if he was discussing the humor that is inherent in pseudoscience. It is a common tactic for pseudoscientists to try to elevate their work to the status of science and then call "foul" when they are laughed at. Belief in things such as infallible revelation is not a valid foundation for a scientific hypothesis or theory. It is a matter of taste when it comes to using humor to deal with people who take themselves too seriously. Many scientists just ignore pseudoscience and hope it goes away. Sagan decided to confront pseudoscience, including its humorous aspects. --JWSchmidt 14:42, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

That people react by seeing humour doesn't affect Sagan's original point. Humour and emotional reactions are not part of the scientific method. Seeing something as silly does not get people to think - it gives them an excuse to ignore and dismiss. Pendragon39 00:55, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Sagan Involved in Project A119

Does anyone have a source for this? It seems unlikely Sagan would have been involved in a top secert air force project while still in school. I am going to delete it if no one can come up with anything. Daniel J. Leivick 00:36, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

There are two references in the Wikipedia article on A119. One of these is a space.com article, which lists Carl as being involved. It is in turn derived from a [to the editor in Nature], in which Leonard Reiffel, who was in charge of A119, described Carl's involvement to correct a perceived error by one of his biographers. According to Reiffel, he hired Carl, then a graduate student, to model the effects of an atomic detonation on the Moon, on the recommendation of Gerard Kuiper. While this may seem unusual, it is not unprecedented. Various grad students worked on the Manhattan Project, for example. On a more prosaic level, a great deal of space-related research has historically been deemed restricted, although not classified or top secret. Michaelbusch 04:17, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Well this was dropping nukes so it may have been different. Regardless I think what Daniel was getting at was that Carl may have still be in school. Not university (i.e. college and later grad school for the US) but school as in secondary school. The Project A119 is unclear, it's possible he was in school at the time, it's possible he was in university Nil Einne (talk) 15:33, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Sagan refference in "White and Nerdy" video

In the video of the song "White and Nerdy" by "Wierd Al" Yankovic, Al, when walking through a comic book store, is wearing a shirt that says "Carl Sagan is my homeboy." Would it be worth mentioning that in the Legacy section, or would that be a small enough refference not to be mentioned? FVZA_Colonel 13:03, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

It is not worth mentioning. If we did, the number of equally significant references would be several hundred.Michaelbusch 20:07, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

After thinking about it briefly I came to the same conclusion, for much the same reasons. Thank you for responding. FVZA_Colonel 13:39, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I think we probably should have a section that demonstrates Sagan's ripples into pop culture. Including the White and Nerdy video. -SAS —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.79.147.61 (talk) 00:20, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Comments on Sagan's Cosmos Series

I have recently seen some of the episodes of Cosmos that are being rerun on The Science Channel. Am I the only one who finds these shows almost completely lacking in Science material? I am a heavy fan of Science related shows on tv and articles on wikipedia but I find the Cosmos episodes so slow in scientific material to almost put you to sleep. Part of the issue is his habit of hanging on his words and drawing out his sentances to great lengths. I see the article saying how great Cosmos was but it appears to me to be just a below average science show. I was thinking of adding something regarding this to this page or the Cosmos page. Any comments? Ergzay 02:19, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that Cosmos is now dated, so that some amount of the science in it has ceased to be as impressive as it was originally. Another aspect is that science television programs have evolved greatly since then, so if you are comparing Cosmos only to newer material, your judgement will be biased. Most programs are much narrower in scope, as well. Also, your objections to the show seem to be the style of the presentation, rather than the content. Stating the popularity of Cosmos here is not a problem, because it was indeed very popular. Judging Cosmos as 'below average' is a problematic statement at best, because comparing it to later programs is not necessarily meaningful and others may contest your assessment of the style.Michaelbusch 03:10, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Cosmos was a watershed event in both television and science education. If you were old enough to be "reasonably conscious" in 1980 you would understand. ;-) If you're too young, you can be forgiven for taking for granted what we see as commonplace science-programming. We see farther because we stood on tall shoulders. It's interesting that for a show that started production in 1977, some 30 years later, it still rates being on prime-time cable TV. -SAS 74.79.147.61 (talk) 00:50, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Archive Request

Could someone please archive the bulk of this page and then remove this section? Thanks. Michaelbusch 03:10, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Sagancruft

In 2004, the electronic music group Sagan released the CD/DVD "Unseen Forces." The music was accompanied by a DVD which featured humorous music video format homages of many of the historical sketches from Cosmos.

That's a cruft too far. I've removed it because it has only a very tenuous connection with Sagan. --Tony Sidaway 10:49, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think people should take it upon themselves to remove things which they personally deem trivial. Several music entities admit lineage from Sagan inspiration, and it should be noted. -SAS 74.79.147.61 (talk) 00:51, 23 January 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.79.147.61 (talk) 00:26, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

It has been pointed out that...

It has been pointed out that Sagan wasn't being logically consistent.

If this is the case, then someone will have to find whoever pointed it out and cite that. Also it's probably better to avoid "pointed out" because it assumes opinion as fact (See Weasel words). --Tony Sidaway

Civil Disobedience

The recent additions to this section are interesting, but the long discussion of history seems excessive and redundant with the rest of the article. I suggest reversion. Michaelbusch 22:47, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Michael, I suggest you actually take the time to read the relevant section from the page I directed your attention to in my edit summary (Wikipedia:Revert), which I am posting here, so you have no excuse for not reading it and taking it to heart.

==When to revert==

===Do's===

See also Wikipedia policy should follow the spirit of ahimsa

Reverting is a decision which should be taken seriously.
Reverting is used primarily for fighting vandalism, or anything very similar to the effects of vandalism.
If you are not sure whether a revert is appropriate, discuss it first rather than immediately reverting or deleting it.
If you feel the edit is unsatisfactory, improve it rather than simply reverting or deleting it.

===Dont's===

Do not simply revert changes that are made as part of a dispute. Be respectful to other editors, their contributions and their points of view.
Do not revert good faith edits. In other words, try to consider the editor "on the other end." If what one is attempting is a positive contribution to Wikipedia, a revert of those contributions is inappropriate unless, and only unless, you as an editor possess firm, substantive, and objective proof to the contrary. Mere disagreement is not such proof. See also Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith.
Generally there are misconceptions that problematic sections of an article or recent changes are the reasons for reverting or deletion. If they contain valid information, these texts should simply be edited and improved accordingly. Reverting is not a decision which should be taken lightly.

To which I would add the following:

Reverting is never an appropriate substitute for expending the time and effort necessary for thoughtful and respectful editing (and discussion) of material that has been labored over by another editor. Reverting is the lazy person's response to complex and time-consuming issues, and is, in fact, inversely commensurate with the effort that was required to produce the material that's being reverted. 30 seconds versus 90 minutes: hardly a fair exchange — and extremely disrespectful.

By now it should be apparent that I am really offended by the way you've dealt with this. When I asked you to avail yourself of the talk page, I was expecting that you would at least have the decency to give me some sort of thoughtful discussion of what your specific concerns were, and possibly (hopefully) some sort of apology for your inconsiderate action. Instead, you essentially repeated the same vague (and unpersuasive) generalities that you had already written in your edit summary, and again resorted to calling for reversion of the entire section. That is just not acceptable.

How is it possible that you have made a very considerable number of WP edits, but haven't yet bothered to learn how to work with other WP editors in a collegial fashion? I am truly mystified. I always do my very best to engage other editors with real respect for the work they've put into their writing (even when it's somewhat mediocre). In contrast, your decision to dispose of my work with the simple expedient of reverting it, was no better than common, garden-variety vandalism. Please take a minute, or an hour, or however long it may take you to put yourself in my place, and imagine how it felt to have someone come along and (presto!) revert an entire section that I had taken great care to write and find links for — as casually as flushing a toilet. That was certainly the last thing I expected to see when I took a quick look at my watchlist this afternoon. Quite an unpleasant surprise, and not my idea of a Thanksgiving treat.

So, where does that leave us? If you actually want to put in the time to have a serious discussion of what I wrote, then please show me that you deserve my respect as a fellow WP editor by (at the very least) acknowledging that you've handled this badly. I don't believe in demanding apologies (seems to undercut the whole idea), but it would certainly be welcome — and appreciated.

Craig Gingold - Cgingold 08:40, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I apologize for the offense. I have read and understood the policies. But I feel that the article was fine to begin with and now it has paragraphs of redundancy added (i.e. why do we need summaries of 1980's politics when all that is being discussed is Carl climbing a fence?). As I said above, the material is interesting, but not appropriate for the article. Consequently, I could have edited it directly, but the edits I would have made would have been almost equivalent to reversion. I apologize again for giving offense, but I have only tried to be honest. Michaelbusch 16:46, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your response, Michael (and for your personal note on my talk page). Obviously, I don't agree with your feeling that "the article was fine to begin", or I wouldn't have added the new material in the first place. Even after a third read through of related material elsewhere in the article, I am scratching my head over your reiterated claim of "redundancy" — I still haven't found any. The new material is not merely "interesting", but necessary: it provides the context that makes it possible for readers to (more fully) grasp the significance of Sagan's actions during this period. If there is a particular word or phrase that really, really bothers you, I'm certainly willing to discuss your concerns. Beyond that, it seems to me that you should be able to live with what I've added. Cgingold 22:26, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I can certainly live with it. Like so many things, we can agree to disagree. Michaelbusch 22:29, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Q:"i.e. why do we need summaries of 1980's politics when all that is being discussed is Carl climbing a fence?" A:It's about context. Sagan was heavily involved in behind the scenes big-name politics, as far as trying to avert nuclear proliferation. If you knew the full details, you'd no doubt be agog at the gravitas and influence this one man had. -SAS —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.79.147.61 (talk) 00:31, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

References

Review of two biographies in: Clark R. Chapman (2000). "Two Views of a Star's Life". Science. 287 (5450): 46–47. doi:10.1126/science.287.5450.46.

A short biography is available at: Owen Gingerich (1999). "Carl Sagan" (PDF). PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 143 (4): 712–716.

Extraordinary claims

In this part, under Personality, is it worth scrapping the Truzzi reference and mentioning David Hume's "That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish[.]"? Perhaps they're not related, it just struck me as being earlier than the Laplace principle. Leon 21:48, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

External links...

What happened to the ELs?? I'd be the first to admit they needed a trim, but I went on a wikibreak and now someone seems to have deleted almost all of them. (And several of the deleted itesm seemed rather useful to me). Mikker ^(...) 17:28, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Carl was too major a player for people to just go snipping information out. 74.79.147.61 (talk) 00:53, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Graduate students

It'd be nice to add a section listing his former graduate students (i.e., Steve Squyres)... changcho (13-II-2007)

I agree. Sagan influenced students like Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Likewise, students such as Peter Wilson had a profound effect on Carl's thinking about anthropocentrism and our attitudes towards towards other species. -SAS —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.79.147.61 (talk) 00:38, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Sagan and marijuana use

According the BBC, "For much of his adult life, Sagan used marijuana and believed that it gave him many of his best ideas." [9] Perhaps it should be mentioned in the article that his use of marijuana and his strong advocacy of evolutionary ideas may have been related. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.205.191.56 (talk) 23:15, 22 February 2007 (UTC).

They probably were related - I dimly recall reading that Sagan (as Mr X) said he did his best thinking while high. -- Pookington

No need to "dimly recall" as the link to the actual essay he wrote is here: http://www.marijuana-uses.com/essays/002.html

By his own admission, marijuana was an integral part of Sagan's entire adult life, and inspired many of his best theories. His wife is a NORML board member and his best friend for 30 years was Dr Lester Grinspoon. Surely this information is as relevant as the rest of the article? But people keep deleting the marijuana information even though it is referenced and accurate. Why are his views on other topics explored in detail, but his article on how he was often inspired by marijuana is not worthy of more than the briefest mention? 70.68.141.163 (talk) 10:12, 26 December 2007 (UTC) Dec 26, 2007, thehighguy

No, it's not as important as the rest of the article. Is that what he's famous for? No. Mention it -- sure. Go into much detail -- no. He is not his wife. He is not his best friend. Their actions do not define his life. Ask 100 people what Carl Sagan accomplished in life. Of those who even remember him, not one is going to say marijuana. This is trivia.Doczilla (talk) 10:52, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

By just reverting back and undoing this information Doczilla is not behaving in keeping with the Wikipedia spirit. If you think it is biased or too lengthy, you should fix it instead of iust deleting it outright. Besides, Sagan's marijuana use received major international media attention when it came to light. Sagan himself said that marijuana inspired much of his life and his work. Is Sagan's lifetime marijuana use less relevant than the lengthy section on UFOs, or the paragraph with Isaac Asimov thinking Sagan was smarter than him, or all the details about the whole Apple/BHA lawsuit? Lester Grinspoon was his best friend for 30 years, isn't that fact alone relevant and undeserving of deletion? And isn't the link to the actual essay Sagan wrote about his love of marijuana deserving to be there? Just deleting all this stuff with an undo is poor editing.

So I put much of this information about marijuana back in, but I tightened it up a bit, and moved it from "Social Concerns" to the "Personal life and beliefs" section where it actually belongs. There was a note already there that this section is missing adequate "personal information" and certainly Sagan's regular use of and inspiration by cannabis is a relevant part of his "personality." The information is accurate, referenced, relevant and not overly wordy. I think it should remain. We're only talking about less than 200 words in a 4500 word article. DanaLarsen (talk) 12:12, 26 December 2007 (UTC) Dana Larsen

Re: "By just reverting back and undoing this information Doczilla is not behaving in keeping with the Wikipedia spirit." Read the article. It still says he used marijuana and that it may have inspired him. You really ought to read what's there before you go saying things like that. And two reverts does not exactly constitute an edit war. I reverted once and explained the revert. When I reverted the second time, I offered a new explanation in the spirit of engaging in dialogue.

Re: "If you think it is biased or too lengthy, you should fix it instead of iust deleting it outright." I reverted it to the tightened up version as it was before an anoymous user added trivial detail. I never deleted the marijuana section. I returned it to its more appropriate from earlier in the day. Doczilla (talk) 12:20, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I took out the phrase "although he never admitted this publicly during his life." because in this 2001 interview here his wife Ann Druyan explains that "About ten years ago, a caller asked Carl on the Larry King radio show if he was for legalizing marijuana. He didn't hesitate to say yes. My recollection is that Larry followed up by asking Carl if he had ever smoked marijuana, and he again said yes. We thought there would be some fallout, but there was none. We didn't hear anybody say that Carl Sagan was a bad person because he used marijuana, and indeed marijuana was a wholly positive part of his life."DanaLarsen (talk) 19:14, 30 December 2007 (UTC)Dana Larsen

Merge from Minimum deterrence

Someone has proposed that Minimum deterrence be merged here. I disagree, and think it should have it's own article. I'll delete the merge tag in a few days if I don't hear any objection. --Selket ^Talk 21:43, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

NPOV issue

Although the section dealing with Worlds in Collision does an admirable job of stating the contrary view, the organization is problematic in that it suggests that Worlds in Collision is best treated as a piece of pseudoscience instead of as a substantial scientific view that Sagan disagreed with. This section should be reorganized by somebody who knows the material better to separate the issue of Sagan's anti-pseudoscience views from his attack on the book. 68.101.70.37 15:12, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Velikovsky's work was never a 'substantial scientific view'. See the Worlds in Collision article: 'overwhelming rejection of its thesis by the scientific community'. This doesn't merit an NPOV tag. Michaelbusch 18:10, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Religion of Carl Sagan

Atheism is not a religion. Therefore, I have removed it. 81.228.195.119 14:46, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Not sure I agree with that change. It may not be a religion, but it is still the most accurate description of his religious beliefs and should be included. Adam McMaster 14:58, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I've just tried another approach; does it suit both of you?

Atlant 15:27, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the current wording is fine with me. Adam McMaster 16:01, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Perfect 81.228.195.119 17:41, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you!

Atlant 17:50, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I do not agree. Atheism should be removed. Carl Sagan has never described himself as an Atheist. - mbk 4/25/07

"Atheist" and "agnostic," unfortunately, are not terribly well-defined terms. Carl is obviously some kinds of "atheist" and not others. He never publicly said "there is no God," for example, but he did often express strong skepticism on the subject, and made it clear he didn't expect an afterlife or anything. As such, "agnostic/atheist" seems to me like a suitably ambiguous description. Mycroft7 04:15, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

The Merriam-Webster's definition of "Atheist" as a noun is "one who believes that there is no deity." The definition of "Agnostic" as a noun, broadly put, is "one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god." Although Sagan's wife is a known Atheist, the same can not be said for Sagan. He neither affirms nor denies the existence of God. Seeing as "Atheist" is expressly defined as stated above, I argue that the term Agnostic be used to best describe Sagan's religious beliefs until a more appropriate descriptor noun or special section be created or not for that matter. I will edit accordingly. Please provide an argument for a re-edit if need be. Michaelkulov 23:57, 25 April 2007 (CST)

I know it's already been somewhat decided upon, but for the record, I don't think the Merriam-Webster definition suitably encompasses the various meanings of the term. I'm thinking of terms like Weak and strong atheism and agnostic atheism, among other things. In this case, agnostic/atheist is actually a more precise description than either agnostic or atheist alone. However, I agree that its rather unsatisfactory. Mycroft7 21:07, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

For the record, I would like to point out that Weak Atheism appears to be nothing more than a redefintion of the current definition for Agnosticism and that Strong Atheism is merely a redefinition of the word Atheism. As for Agnostic Atheism, the same thing holds. If one cannot claim Atheism, then they must either claim Theism or remain undecided due to lack of Knowledge. As for the sources of your cited articles, I question their bias. 209.187.72.3 22:39, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how potential bias in the references is relevant, since this has nothing to do with the merits of various beliefs, only with the names by which people who hold them identify themselves. Seeing as how Richard Dawkins, famous for being a vocal atheist as much as anything, identifies as a "weak atheist," I don't think you can reasonably say it doesn't fall under the "current definition" of atheism. Or at least a current definition, since, as I've been trying to say, the term is rather ambiguous. Mycroft7 22:53, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Seeing as how Atheism draws much of its basis from denotative, explicit "Understanding" it seems odd that the subjugating of the concept deserves any recognition. The definitions of the two terms, Atheist and Agnostic should be sufficient, seeing as how most skeptics can fall under 1 of 2 categories. I claim that since Dawkins described himself as a "Weak Atheist," I would then, with respect to his own stance on this, classify him as an Agnostic. Regards, Michaelkulov 00:33, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

The senior member michaelbush has pointed out that there is a concensus on this, and although I do not agree, and furthermore do not aknowledge a true concensus, I respectfully aknowledge my senior member and offer my dissention here as a caveat for future readers. Thank youMichaelkulov 05:51, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Anyone who argues that Atheism is not a religion is fooling themselves. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.202.69.2 (talk) 19:54, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Atheism is not a religion. To argue this is to proceed for a religious worldview.

Let's simplify. The unabridged definitions of "Atheist" and "Atheism" have multiple nuances that most people can't be bothered to notice. Atheist is literally, a-theist, or non-theist. In this religious culture, people react as if this were the same thing as saying "there is no god, and there can be no gods". There are militant atheists who take the latter position, but generally, the proper definition of "atheist" is closer to agnostic than the "there can't be any god" type of atheism that many people think of when they hear the word "atheist". The fact is, most people don't know the full unabridged definition of atheist. Clearly, Carl was a non-theist, though some might argue that Ann Druyan has confused people a bit by talking about "God" as the laws of physics/nature. I think this is her way of soft-selling atheism, so as to avoid rubbing people the wrong way. Anyway, Carl didn't believe in God, nor in any afterlife. there was no deathbed conversion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.79.147.61 (talk) 00:48, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Glitch?

Is there a glitch/error on the page? The infobox is repeated three times and the article starts with three "<"s (at lest on my browser", but none of that shows up on the Edit page. Jeztah 01:09, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

How do we deal with SquelchBot? I'm adding info that it removes. For example in the EL's, it's claimed that the magazine Cosmos was inspired by Sagan. I added a link to the mag's own site that seemingly contradicts that claim. It was deleted. I also added important info and clarifications on the link to the Pale Blue Dot "Wanderers" video by Lang Kasranov; like pointing out that the video was assembled from pre-existing sources, not created for his unauthorized PBD project, and that it was done posthumously by a fan, by using audiobook narration (as opposed to something that Sagan estate had any part of). That too was deleted. 74.79.147.61 (talk) 01:53, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Getting this article back to FA status

I can't find the rationale as to why this article had its FA status revoked. Could someone direct me to that info? Or does anyone know what problems have been pointed out with this? I'd be happy to bring this back to FA status for Carl's sake. AdamBiswanger1 17:25, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

You can find the FAR here. As far as I can tell, the citations aren't up to par and the article was deemed not comprehensive enough. --Gimme danger (talk) 19:10, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

"Sagan" a Russian name?

His father was from/born in Russia? What his lineage from?

-G —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.24.152.183 (talk) 07:42, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Requirements for "Featured Article" status

What is needed to elevate this article into featured status? I am willing to work on it as hard as necessary to achieve this. If someone more experienced can point me (and anyone else willing to do the same) towards the right direction, it would be greatly appreciated. --Hamsterlopithecus (talk) 04:50, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Carl Sagan: Popularization of science

copied from my talk page <eleland/talkedits>

Your deletion of the description of astronomer Sagan's failure on Nightline to answer Ted Koppel's question about where to look in the sky to see Comet Halley is not logical. On his TV appearances he came off as a pompous know-it-all; and in 1985 on Nightline he DID NOT know it all -- as the transcript from Nightline reproduced by Rawlins in DIO shows quite clearly. If you have not already, then I heartily suggest that you read the transcript for yourself and be a judge instead of a Sagan groupie. It is NOT just astronomer Dennis Rawlins' opinion. I vividly remember seeing Sagan and Berendzen squirming as they fumbled Koppel's simple question. This aspect of Sagan's public persona is every bit as relevant as his penchant for saying the word "billions", which features in the bio entry. Phaedrus7 (talk) 01:09, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

1) The proper place for all this is on the article's talk page, not mine.

2) What an editor "vividly remember" is no basis for writing a Wikipedia entry. That has to be based on the sources. I don't know of any sources on Sagan's life and work which even mention this appearance on Nightline; the only source provided is an article about something else, in an obscure and apparently dubious journal — and the journal article doesn't even support all of the language used in the article.

3) Keep your comments about "Sagan groupies" to yourself, please. <eleland/talkedits> 01:22, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

4) You know, I hadn't heard of this Dennis Rawlins guy, but the more I look into it, the more I notice that all kinds of IP addresses and single-purpose accounts have trolled Wikipedia extensively to explain how he's a brilliantly clever scientist who is constantly being slandered and maligned by evil forces, etc. This isn't another Bogdanov Affair or something, is it?? <eleland/talkedits> 01:29, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

The transcript from the Nightline program in the DIO article shows that Sagan, an astronomer, was not able to tell Koppel where to look in the sky to see Comet Halley. This example shows that Sagan was not as infallible as his PR would have the public believe. The fact that this episode is not part of the published Sagan biography does not detract from its authenticity. Keay Davidson's biography of Sagan was begun with the intention to devote an entire chapter to Velikovsky and also have a feature on the Sagan parodies on Saturday Night Live! But the book got too long and these and other topics were cutback or deleted. DIO may be an obscure publication, but the world-class nature of its editorial board <http://www.dioi.org/who.html> belies this impression. Rawlins is something of an iconoclast who does not suffer fools kindly, nevertheless with a long record of correct deductions/discoveries. For decades he has been a vocal critic of the history of ancient astronomy establishment, exposing many of their erroneous beliefs. He has published several proofs in the astronomical literature proving that Ptolemy stole Hipparchus's star catalog, a conclusion that many in the history of ancient astronomy establishment have finally endorsed. He has exposed as frauds several famous polar explorers whose attainment of the north or south pole were faked. He showed that the debunking of astrology by CSICOP in the late 1970s was methodologically flawed. And so on. Sagan's performance on Nightline in 1985 serves the purpose of providing balance to an entry that verges on hero worship. Phaedrus7 (talk) 20:34, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I guess the key policies here are (as ever) WP:NOT, WP:NPOV and WP:VER - the article may be straying from the Neutral Point of View by painting an overly rosy picture of Sagan, particularly if it relies too heavily on Sagan's own authorised bios. If the incident of Sagan getting flummoxed on 'Nightline' is a "notable" (and/or representative) example of the way Sagan could come unstuck in public, and it can be readily given a verifiable reference, then it is probably a good and interesting addition to the article.--feline1 (talk) 22:01, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

But there needs to be a reference supporting not just that the incident occurred but that the incident has some relevance to the man's overall biography. Okay, Dennis Rawlins, who seems to be a rather controversial, eccentric, marginal figure, wrote and published an article in his journal which meant to take the wind out of Sagan's sails. So what? Who cares? There have been thousands of articles published about Sagan. Even if this one was notable or representative, the summary given in the WP article here is smarmy and biased, and arguably not supported by the given reference. And I'd really encourage you to read the reference; it's a rather puerile and ad-hominem-laced attack on "Royal Cometians" and "cocktail party royalty."

I've done some internet research on Rawlins, and he seems to have a reputation for such personal hostility, and a delight in targeting scientific celebrities. He made a big media splash attacking Robert Peary's 1908 Antarctic expedition as a fraud, only to have his debunking in turn debunked. He seems to have been an early CSCICOP member who left the group amid mutual acrimony related to the astrological Mars effect. His criticisms are often cited, apparently out-of-context, by astrological true believers, to make it seem he supported their claims, which makes it that much harder to find solid information about him on the Internet. Admittedly I'm only getting fragments of the story, but the controversies surrounding his work, plus the very obvious campaign by him or his fans to "pump up" his reputation on Wikipedia (see Dennis Rawlins and Talk:Dennis Rawlins) is another strike.

So in summary, what we have is a single, critical article, from a potentially disreputable, probably self-serving, and definitely obscure source, being cited to support tendentious text that goes even beyond its own wordin, by a single purpose account editor evidently upset over Carl Sagan's dismissal of Immanuel Velikovsky's claims. This isn't about trying to remove negative information on Sagan; it's about trying to remove bad information. If somebody wants to expand on some other negative incident, like the Kuwait oil fire predictions, fine, be my guest. I'm just trying to remove disreputable sources being backed by WP:FRINGE theory proponents. <eleland/talkedits> 18:21, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Update: Oart of Rawlins' home page might clarify my concerns more than anything I could write myself. <eleland/talkedits> 19:22, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Carl Sagan appeared on Johnny Carson's "Tonight" show 26 times and ABC's "Nightline" uncounted number of times (with only two leaving a retrievable legacy: Comet Halley and the Kuwait oil fires) creating a public persona which deserves some attention in a biographical entry. As a popularizer of science, the Comet Halley incident shows his fallibility that has been mentioned and detailed in published reviews of, e.g., Dragons of Eden, Broca's Brain, and Cosmos (the series and book); see the review of Cosmos in April 1981 Astronomy magazine, pp. 64-65: "In content, Sagan is basically sound, though speculative, in the sciences. When he moves into the humanities, however, he stumbles frequently and badly....Like most scientists, Sagan is unreliable on the classic Greek thinkers. He jumbles together men separated by centuries, and fails to see that the pre-Socratics were philosophes, not proto-scientists....His history is also simplistic. While the destruction of the Alexandrian library may be a symbol, it is hardly a major cause of the so-called 'Dark Ages.' These failings are important because of the cosmic intensions and pretensions of the series." In New Scientist for 25 June 1981, John Gribbin observes: "Although we are told that the presentation is Sagan's personal view, it still jars to find extreme bias in some aspects of it, such as the complete absence of any mention of the well-founded idea that the atmosphere of the early Earth was dominated by carbon dioxide, not by methane and ammonia" (p. 854).

If it is not too late, indeed, how is the description of Sagan's reply about where to find Comet Halley on "Nightline" "not supported by the given reference"?

And where, pray, was Rawlins' disproof of Peary's "1908 Antarctic expedition" refuted, as Eleland claims? This is hardly possible since the expedition was actually to the North Pole in 1909. Rawlins made his case that Peary did not reach the pole in his 1973 book Peary at the North Pole: Fact or Fiction? The issues are recounted in DIO 1.1, 1991, in "Peary, Verifiability, and Altered Data", pp. 22-29 <http://www.dioi.org/vols/w11.pdf>. Rawlins was criticized by defenders of Peary in 1989 and 1991, but these critiques were defused in DIO 2.2, 1991, pp. 83-85 <http://www.dioi.org/vols/w22.pdf>. The article in DIO 1.1 begins:

"The greatest of US polar explorers, Robert Peary, claimed to have reached his longsought grail, the North Pole, on 1909 April 6-7, after 5 weeks of arduous dogsledging over the rough, broken, and drifting ice-floes of the Arctic Ocean. For 8 decades, the claim has been allowed, though [1] Peary did not provide normal specific, verifiable scientific proof or fruit of it and [2] his reports are riddled with anomalies. He was initially believed due to his brilliant previous explorations, which included his and Matt Henson’s unquestioned 1900 discovery of the world’s northernmost point of land, Cape Jesup (latitude 83.7 degrees). A2 The case against Peary’s 1909 claim rests on numerous firm and independently selfsufficient lines of evidence, many presented in my 1973 book, Peary at the North Pole: Fact or Fiction? Most polar explorers� have agreed with the negative verdict of Fiction, long the premier skeptical volume on the subject." This reads more somberly than Rawlins's admittedly over-the-top rants which seem to displease Eleland.

Finally, to correct Eleland, I am not "upset over Carl Sagan's dismissal of Immanuel Velikovsky's claims". I am offended that Sagan arrogantly marshalled erroneous and irrelevant arguments against Worlds in Collision and resorted to ridicule and sarcasm instead of the "reasoned disputation" he espoused as an ideal, an opinion shared by Jerry Pournelle who opined: ". . . I have to agree, although I think there are plenty of rational arguments in refutation of Velikovsky, Sagan didn't make them; or if he did, they were so buried in irrelevance as to hide them well. And I completely agree that a valid confrontation of Velikovsky in 1974 would have ended the matter: the slick job done which ignored Velikovsky's arguments in favor of 'trust me I'm a scientist and this man is mad, ho ho ho' did little to reassure those who thought Big Science incapable of thinking outside the box..." <http://www.jerrypournelle.com/science/velikovsky.htm>. When relevant, scientifically valid arguments were marshalled against Velikovsky by such scientists as Jim Warwick, Tom Van Flandern, and Victor Slabinski in correspondence, I accepted them. Phaedrus7 (talk) 00:30, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Allow me a few additional comments in elucidation of my previous points. It is easy to dismiss Velikovsky as crank, crackpot, and worse. But do not discount the fact that many well-educated people in the 1960s and 1970s supported Velikovsky and believed he deserved a reasoned hearing. Recall the famous Bargmann (physicist at Princeton) and Motz (astronomer at Columbia) letter in Science in 1962 giving credit to Velikovsky for several or his "predictions" after the high temperature of Venus was measured by an early probe. Larry Smarr, a world-class computer scientist, now at U. Cal.-San Diego, named Velikovsky as one of the three most influential scientists in his life when asked during his senior orals at Harvard in the early 1970s, a factoid known to Velikovsky and circulated among his associates; but Smarr has long recovered from his infatuation with Velikovsky's ideas. And how many people know that when Sagan first met Ann Druyan, she believed in Velikovsky, as Joel Achenbach relates in his 1999 Captured by Aliens: The Search for Life and Truth in a Very Large Universe?

"Ann Druyan first met Sagan at a dinner party at Nora Ephron's apartment in New York City. Her interest in science came primarily from her interest in the philosophy of Karl Marx. Marx had written of history as following certain inexorable scientific principles, and had wanted to dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin. Druyan herself had, at the time, rather vaporous standards of evidence for her many and sundry beliefs (as she later acknowledged). She believed, like many intellectuals, that Immanuel Velikovsky in the 1950s had correctly deduced the truth about the solar system, that it was so highly dynamic as to have been rearranged within human history, that Venus was a fragment of Jupiter and had buzzed by the Earth only a few thousand years ago, and so on." Achenbach then relates that Sagan explained to her why Velikovsky was wrong. But, somehow, this anecdote is missing from Davidson's and Poundstone's biographies of Sagan. Poundstone does not even mention Velikovsky, while Davidson devotes several pages to Sagan's interest in Velikovsky.

Concerning the "reasoned disputation" missing from the aftermath of Sagan's analysis of Worlds in Collision, Velikovsky and his defenders had rebuttals to practically all of Sagan's criticisms. For example, concerning the alleged origin of Venus out of Jupiter, which many critics discussed, not one critic dealt with Velikovsky's rebuttal in the context of the fissioning process discussed by several scientists, the most prominent being R.A. Lyttleton. Although the Lyttleton fissioning is not mentioned in Worlds in Collision, it was a well-established part of Velikovsky's defense prior to the AAAS symposium in February 1974. The failure of mainstream critics to deal with Lyttleton's fissioning created the impression among supporters that the critics could not deal with it and maybe Velikovsky had a point in his favor. I hope these further comments clarify the nature of the Sagan-Velikovsky "debate". Phaedrus7 (talk) 16:56, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I am not going to be drawn into extensive discussion of the validity of pet fringe theories. The point is that Dennis Rawlins' journal does not have an established reputation for accuracy and fact-checking, (WP:RS) and there is no evidence that this article represents any significant weight of opinion on Sagan (WP:NPOV.) If you are aware of credible sources which refute Sagan's critique of Velikovsky, then we can discuss them on their merits. However, the paragraph at issue here is irrelevant, skewed, and violates pretty much every one of WP's core content policies. <eleland/talkedits> 22:54, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

eleland, you have reverted the article claiming there is "no consensus": on this talk page, I see 3 editors commenting (yourself, myself and Phaedrus7), with 2 of us in broad agreement, and you in the minority. I do not find your use of pejorative little weasling words about "pet fringe theories" very helpful (and, ironically, Velikovsky's work was undoubtledly a "pet theory" of Sagan's - he addressed it in public meetings, in his books and on TV). I also get the sense you are just making knee-jerk edits against what you perceive to be an editor who is a Velikovsky advocate. I find this most amusing and ironic, as Phaedrus7 is, dare I say it, infamous as one of Velikovsky's most ardent and indefatigable critics and debunkers. That Sagan didn't do his homework for the 1974 AAAS conference, and attempted to use sloppy populist handwaving and charisma to debunk Velikovsky, instead of academic rigour, is well attested, probably typical of his general approach to communicating science with the public and thus reasonably important addition to the article--feline1 (talk) 10:47, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Feline: I don't care about Velikovsky. It was P7 who brought up Velikovsky, not me, and I was against this material before he mentioned it. The point is that a low-quality reference was being used to support a non-neutral paragraph that gave commentary going beyond even the source, and there is no indication that the incident it recounts is in any way notable to Sagan's overall biography. User:Shii agrees with this, as well, so it's 2 and 2 by your count. Material needs consensus to stay, not to be removed. <eleland/talkedits> 11:13, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Gee, what fun. I just removed a rather trivial post about Sagan not being able to tell just where to look to see Halley. He described the appearance and rather poor showing of the comet quite accuratly. The reference given reads rather like a blog and seems written by someone annoyed by Sagan's crticism of Velakovsky ... what does that have to do with anything? The supposed inability of Sagan to state where in the sky to look is simply trivia and not a notable event for the article. Vsmith (talk) 23:17, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Fringe publication? The fact that DIO, the journal founded and published by Dennis Rawlins, is obscure does not mean that it is "fringe". Rawlins is no fringe personage considering he has published in such scientific organs as American Journal of Physics, Vistas in Astronomy, Pub. Astron. Soc. Pacific, Bull. Amer. Astron. Soc., Mon. Not. RAS, and Isis, with many being invited papers. Rawlins has no brief for Velikovsky, either, considering that his demolition "Freudian Astronomy", written in 1972, was rejected by Marcello Truzzi at The Zetetic (precursor to Skeptical Inquirer) on the grounds that it was too strident. The contributors to DIO cannot be considered "fringe", either, including Robert R. Newton, Hugh Thurston, Dennis Duke, E. Myles Standish, David Dicks, and Aubrey Diller. Contrary to one assertion, the articles in DIO are not "unsigned", as though being anonymous considering that in the first issue, DIO 1.1, The first article is "Prologue: by Dennis Rawlins". The second is "Rawlins' Scrawlins", implicitly attributed. The fifth article is "The Scholarly Integrity of Book Reviews: by Robert Russell Newton". On p. 89, the following notice is printed: "At present, most DIO copy is written by Dennis Rawlins and friends."

So, how is the description of Sagan's inability to tell Ted Koppel where to find Comet Halley in the sky "notable to Sagan's overall biography"? It is intended to counterbalance the perceived omniscience attributed to Sagan by many as part of the "cult of personality" engendered by Sagan's notorious self-aggrandisement, noted by many commentators over the years. Sagan appeared on television many times on The Tonight Show and Nightline explaining astronomy and other scientific subjects to the public. In this instance, which I witnessed, Sagan did not "allow people to better understand the cosmos" and "increase scientific understanding" among the public. In the event, according to the transcript in DIO, Sagan beat around the bush failing to locate Halley and then at the last moment endorsed the INCORRECT location stated by Richard Berendzen, identified as "Squareza" in the article "Royal Cometians", DIO 1.1, 1991, pp. 75-77: <http://www.dioi.org/vols/w11.pdf>. The fact that this episode is absent from the biographies by Davidson, Poundstone and Achenbach in no way necessarily detracts from its cogency. No biography provides a day-by-day detailed account of the subject's life. Poundstone never mentions Velikovsky while Davidson devotes several pages to the Sagan-Velikovsky confrontation and Achenbach is the only source for the fact that when Sagan met Ann Druyan in Oct. 1974 she was very keen on the ideas of Velikovsky and von Daniken. Phaedrus7 (talk) 21:28, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

This whole section is bordering on a personal airing of grudges. Were it not for WP:BLP only applying to the living, I'd be considering deleting it until such point as editors can make their points without making pointed personal commentary. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:25, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Agnosticism

Is he was agnostic or atheist —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vojvodaen (talk • contribs) 10:03, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

If there were consistant definitions of either, then that might be an answerable question. --Donovan Ravenhull (talk) 12:56, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

What did he said about it?--Vojvodae ist 20:01, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Though the boundaries of atheism and agnosticism vary depending on the source of the definition, his beliefs were more in line with atheism than agnosticism. As the article states, he claimed that if God means natural laws, then he is a believer. However, to claim that believing proven facts such as gravity means believing in God is nonsense. Every sane, intelligent person (whether Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, atheist, agnostic etc) believes in natural laws. Religions are mere faith. The atheists category states that the category is only for people who have expressed being an atheist, but that does not mean they must have actually said "I am an atheist". What Sagan said, and wrote, appears to qualify him for the category; he made his atheism clear. Werdnawerdna (talk) 23:28, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

What he said and wrote was "An atheist has to know a lot more than I know." which certainly did not make his atheism clear. Madridrealy (talk) 13:08, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Excuse me, but It's quite confusing that articles about Sagan in Wikipedia are contrary to each other. 'Carl Sagan' page says he's not atheist(Sagan was, however, not an atheist, expressing that, "An atheist has to know a lot more than I know."), but he is classified as atheist in 'List of Atheists (science and technology)' page with some quotes. I'm searching for a further information. Please someone make sure that whether he is atheist or agnostic. (122.34.37.49) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.34.37.49 (talk) 09:57, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

It's an epistemological question. Wikipedia isn't consistent because it's edited by different people at different times. I suggest you try being bold and removing Sagan from any list of atheists you may find on Wikipedia, with a note on the talk page referencing the Washington Post article. --TS 10:31, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

The definition of "atheist" is one who lacks belief in god. Its the accepted definition by atheists around the world. However, in a culture dominated by theists, you find the definition is usually incorrectly given as someone who believes that there is no god (and various incorrect and superfluous elaborations beyond that.) I am fairly certain that Carl Sagan was simply bamboozled into viewing atheism as the latter definition, hence he self-identified as not an atheist -- incorrectly. But atheism is not about self-identification (as most religions are). Carl Sagan doesn't get to declare whether or not he's an atheist (or bald, or educated). Whether or not he's an atheist is a matter of definition and of his actual beliefs (he couldn't claim to be bald without engaging in the act of shaving his head, and he can't claim to be educated without going through the work or studying; but once he does either he becomes those things regardless of his declarations about them). It is obvious from his writings, his method of thinking, and what he professed, that he was missing any belief in any god which makes him an atheist. If he claims otherwise, then he was simply mistaken about himself. And understandably so, as Madeline Murry O'Hare was not making the label atheist into a very nice thing as the time -- there was no atheist culture with which he could identify. Why throw his lot in with that crazy woman? He didn't spend much time during his life thinking about god, religion, theology or other anti-intellectual pursuits. He spent it thinking about science. He thought that made him nothing (or agnostic), when in fact it made him atheist. Qed (talk) 17:19, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Qed:The definition of "atheist" is one who lacks belief in god.

me, madridrealy: There are multiple definitions of the word, a common one is wordnet's "someone who denies the existence of god"

Qed:Its the accepted definition by atheists around the world.

Madridrealy: Do you have a reliable source for this, or is it just your opinion? Considering that most atheists are from communist countries, not English speaking ones, I am wondering how you got everyone's input. Anyway, all of this is immaterial being that the meaning of words comes from common usage, not just from how people within a group decide to describe themselves. Otherwise words describing only a few living people such as poet laureate could be changed all the time, and insulting terms (e.g. ugly, stupid) would never be able to retain a definition because no one in that group would choose to keep an unflattering definition.

Qed:However, in a culture dominated by theists, you find the definition is usually incorrectly given as someone who believes that there is no god (and various incorrect and superfluous elaborations beyond that.)

madridrealy: Again, common usage chooses words. It is not like some fundamentalists just picked the definition to annoy these atheists. The meaning including denying gods has existed since long before Darwin, with roots dating back even before the English language itself according to this section. And considering theists make up a large majority of the population in Sagan's country, it is not surprising that they play a large part in choosing the meaning of words. This is not like Mensa where you can make up your own criteria for admission into the group and thereby control the definition.

To wrap this up, you can see on the wikipedia page, there are multiple definitions for atheism, and each editor can't just go around choosing their own to admit celebrities into their ranks; that is what reliable sources are for. And how on earth do you purport to know what he spent his time thinking about? Madridrealy (talk) 09:02, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Many dictionaries are written by theists, and theists are in the majority, so a word may be used that way. But following the acts of the ignorant is an unsound way to proceed. If you ask an atheist, you will find that "lack of belief in god" is the most typical one. Claiming that it is "denying a belief in god" is like saying atheists are in denial about the existence of god -- clearly a theistic point of view, and also clearly wrong. That's more of an insult than a definition. My reliable source are atheists themselves but you can go with the numerous references in the article on atheism right here on Wikipedia. (I would expect also, that Dawkins gives one in "The God Delusion" but I might be wrong. You might like to check "God is not Great" by Hitchens or some of Dennet's books.) I would like to point out that the word "atheist" *WAS* initially meant as an insult to someone who didn't believe in the Christian god (so polytheists like the majority of Greeks were all "atheist" from their point of view). The action of using the term as an insult is quite typical by many theists and is clearly visible in some books I have recently read. So yes, fundamentalists *DO* pick a definition to annoy *ACTUAL* atheists. A majority opinion is insufficient for the purposes of the definition of a word, especially one with a technical meaning; can you imagine if legal or scientific terms were defined by the majority? A definition must be held by the people most expert on the subject at hand. Theists have an extremely biased point of view and rarely have any empathetic capacity to understand the point of view of an actual atheist; many are incapable of even understanding the difference between the various incorrect definitions and the correct ones (it is, in part, what *MAKES* them theist). There is a claim here (even if by Sagan himself) that he was not an atheist. That means he doesn't satisfy *ANY* correct definition, and that's clearly false. Qed (talk) 17:38, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Sagan was pals with Isaac Asimov, and Asimov was a die-hard atheist. But even Asimov didn't like the pigeon holing that "atheist" implies. He felt that the term only defined what he did not believe, and it didn't say anything about what he did believe. Since "humanist" is often applied to Asimov, it makes me wonder if Sagan, too, tended toward Humanism? ^.`^) Paine ^diss`cuss (^^`. 23:20, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

"Claiming that it is "denying a belief in god" is like saying atheists are in denial about the existence of god -- clearly a theistic point of view, and also clearly wrong. "

Denying not denial. At least for me, I have never thought of denying as a negative term in itself. In fact, people who deny supernatural things such as haunted houses and aliens are typically looked on a lot more favourable by society at large than someone who is trying to convince people that he or she sees ghosts or was abducted by aliens. The situation is different for belief in a god which is an exception. Obviously if most people in a society cherish their beliefs in a god, they will unfavourably upon the others because the other's worldview is different and threatening to them, or they may not like the others' group. The wording makes no difference, because the idea is the disturbing part to those people, not the wording or definition itself.

"My reliable source are atheists themselves but you can go with the numerous references in the article on atheism right here on Wikipedia. (I would expect also, that Dawkins gives one in "The God Delusion" but I might be wrong. You might like to check "God is not Great" by Hitchens or some of Dennet's books.)"

There are multiple difficulties here. The first one is that atheists are just people who don't have a certain belief; they are not an organization like the Catholic Church with a leader elected to direct everyone. Similar to other groups who don't hold a belief, for example people who don't believe the income tax should be used, there are organizations for people to join, but multiple organizations with different viewpoints, and most people of the belief aren't even part of them. Writing a popular atheist book or giving speeches to atheists doesn't then entitle people to speak for atheists. A second issue is that wikipedia reflects a world-view of issues and these people, while famous worldwide, I would assume sell most of their percentage to English speakers who make up only a relative small part of the world's atheists and few to the people of communist and formally communist nations who make the typical world atheist. While this is the English section of wikipedia, the translations of the word are used similarly in much of the world because of the international nature and the word in English comes from French which in turn comes from Greek. Which brings me to my most important point--Dawkins and Dennet have no special qualifications to decide on the definition. They are not linguistic, nor English or ancient Greek experts. They are just famous atheists. It would be like Michael Jordan making national econ decisions because he is rich. Again, (not) holding a belief doesn't entitle one to choose a definition for a word just because he/she wants it to describe him/her better. If a group like alcoholics anonymous and all of their members decide that alcoholic actually meant really smart, you would not expect everyone to use alcoholic to mean really smart, just because that is what people in the group decided. (I am using a group with negative connotations in the definition as an analogy because of your idea that the definition of atheist has negative connotations, not to make a comparison). While the definitions of the term are more similar here than in the example I gave, the basic principle remains.

" I would like to point out that the word "atheist" *WAS* initially meant as an insult to someone who didn't believe in the Christian god (so polytheists like the majority of Greeks were all "atheist" from their point of view). "

Actually, it was initially used by the polytheists to insult other religions centuries before Christianity even existed (see Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece by Nigel Guy Wilson page 109). When Christians came around this usage spread to them, and they returned it. That is my point, it started out as a way of saying they are denying a god (the *true* god in the perceptions of the insulters), or godless, they are not saying that the atheists just don't believe in a god. And while now that *tolerance* extends in the western world to where those believing in any other gods or being expressively unsure about the existance(agnostic) are enough to prevent the usage of the word atheist, this word still remains for those who express their disbelief gods.

"The action of using the term as an insult is quite typical by many theists and is clearly visible in some books I have recently read. So yes, fundamentalists *DO* pick a definition to annoy *ACTUAL* atheists."

Actually, it was used that way against members of opposing religions long before there was a significant enough group of atheists to describe. You just said early Christians called polytheists atheists. Both meanings have continued despite the efforts of some activists to artificially reduce the word to just one definition to suit their purposes. Christians may now use it in the same insulting way as it was used by ancient Greeks in the past, but using a term as an insult doesn't change its definition. Ugly still means unattractive and stupid still means unintelligent, no matter how many times they are used by a person to hurt another person's feelings.

"A majority opinion is insufficient for the purposes of the definition of a word, especially one with a technical meaning; can you imagine if legal or scientific terms were defined by the majority? "

Atheism is not a technical term, it is a widely used and easily understood word that happens to have more than one definition. And yes, word usage dictated by the majority is sufficient, that is why we do not have an English Académie. And technical terms do change with common usage. Why do you think molecular biologists aren't measuring the effects of azote intermediates on organisms? If you want to keep definitions static you will have to follow the Vatican's example of publishing important documents in a more or less dead language (Latin in their case). And of course, the word definitions used by many specific groups, especially technical fields, are not dictated by the entire English speaking world very rapidly (although this does happen slowly, e.g., Mongoloid idiot was not p.c. enough for the modern world), common usage within groups affects meaning and just because one group uses a word one way doesn't mean everyone else will or even should. For example the word base has many different definitions even between technical groups. That doesn't mean mathematicians should use the chemists' definition and electricians should use the architects' definition. A physician will use the adjective 'acute' to describe a sudden, or quickly terminating disease, that doesn't mean when a mathematician uses the term, that is how he or she is describing an angle. And of course outside of technical field the same is true. Fag will have a different meaning to a Welshman than to an American. The important thing to keep in mind is that dictionaries list more than one definition for a reason. Wikipedia is not a technical journal journal in any field, therefore it is open to the common definitions.

Theists have an extremely biased point of view and rarely have any empathetic capacity to understand the point of view of an actual atheist; many are incapable of even understanding the difference between the various incorrect definitions and the correct ones (it is, in part, what *MAKES* them theist).

I won't even touch the hypocrisy of you calling others biased here.

"There is a claim here (even if by Sagan himself) that he was not an atheist. That means he doesn't satisfy *ANY* correct definition, and that's clearly false."

No, it doesn't mean just any definition. That is way too open to equivocation, especially considering the huge amount of homographs in English. For a common example: a variation the one here, the park bench said fine for entering, but when I entered, I was given a ticket. More to the point, according to the Roman Catholic definition, everyone who is baptized a Catholic is one for life. Therefore their lifelong members would have included people like George Carlin and I think Bill Maher. Madridrealy (talk) 06:10, 14 April 2009

(UTC) I undid a change from Humanism to Agnosticism. There's a lot of quotes on this page: http://atheism.about.com/library/quotes/bl_q_CSagan.htm - reading over them I get the overwhelming sense that he was in a no way religious - if that means one who has "faith" in the mere word of others regarding the laws and origin of universe and all in it. He appears to be a man of deep and thoughful spirit, enamoured with the beauty and complexity of life and the universe. I wonder if he might have considered himself to be Deist? sherpajohn (talk) 17:32, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Sherpajohn, I don't recall anything in the literature about him or by him about his being a Deist. While he did consider himself a Humanist, that was the closest he ever came that I know of. A Deist accepts the idea that God is a sapient and sentient being, and according to Carl Sagan#Personal life and beliefs, Sagan felt this to be a dubious concept. ^.`^) Paine ^diss`cuss (^^`. 00:02, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Tone and coatracking

I'm rather taken aback by the tone of this section:

Sagan caused mixed reactions among other professional scientists. On one hand, there was general support for his popularization of science, his efforts to increase scientific understanding among the general public, and his positions in favor of scientific skepticism and against pseudoscience. Most notable perhaps was his ironically more emotional than scientific debunking of the book Worlds in Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky. As popular as this condescending assault was with science writers and the public the flaws in its reasoning were ultimately brought to light by astronomer Robert Jastrow and Sagan's student, astronomer David Morrison. Concerning Sagan's great odds against a collision of 1 in 30,000 per 1000 years, using his statistical approach and Velikovsky's actual scenario, e.g., no grazing encounters, S. F. Kogan (Velikovsky's older daughter) showed the odds would be drastically reduced to 1 in 12 per 1000 years. Furthermore, Sagan's Appendix 3 on the cooling of Venus has nothing to do with cooling, but instead is a trivial identity that merely equates the heat radiated to Venus by the Sun in one hour at 6000 K to the heat radiated from Venus in 3500 years at 79 K. On the other hand there was some unease over the possibility that the public would misconstrue some of the personal positions and interests that Sagan took as being part of the scientific consensus.

Most of this section appears to be a coatrack intended to justify "Worlds in Collision", and the tone adopted (see bolded phrase) is far from neutral or encyclopedic in anyway. It seems like a piece of naked apologetics for the works of Immanuel Velikovsky. --TS 11:37, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

There seemed to be other problems there. Basically it was a heap of weasel words. I've replaced it with:

Sagan was also known for his popularization of science, his efforts to increase scientific understanding among the general public, and his positions in favor of scientific skepticism and against pseudoscience. Most notable perhaps was his debunking of the book Worlds in Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky.

--TS 11:58, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Sagan's Fallibility

In the "Popularization of Science" section is a passage detailing some of the many errors on Sagan's part in criticizing Worlds in Collision, which has been reinstated after being deleted earlier today. Some of these errors by Sagan were pointed out in print by his peers Robert Jastrow and David Morrison, as cited. It is important that, in the light of the seeming deification bestowed on Sagan by many science writers and the public, his fallibility NOT be suppressed, especially since Sagan never acknowledged any of his errors regarding Velikovsky, even in Demon Haunted World in which he admitted a few errors on other topics. Phaedrus7 (talk) 19:48, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I think Sagan's fallibility might certainly be discussed (the Jastrow critique is a good example). We need to approach the subject in the context of the neutral point of view policy, I'm sure you'll agree. This is a case of my being bold and removing some stuff and starting a discussion (see previous section on this page), and you (who inserted the removed stuff) restoring it and continuing the discussion. Let's carry on the discussion. How are we to discuss any putatively problematic dimension of Sagan's contributions in the context of Wikipedia's policies? --TS 20:14, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

When someone publishes something that is objectively wrong/incorrect, as was the case with many of Sagan's arguments against Velikovsky, what is NPOV about saying "X is wrong", as Jastrow, Morrison, Kogan and G.R. Talbott did, as cited? Many notable scientists and prominent science writers reviewed Sagan's analysis of Worlds in Collision in the late 1970s, and only two pointed out any errors: Jastrow and Terence Dickinson, editor of Star & Sky. Jastrow only dealt with Sagan's calculation of the odds against the collisions while many years later Morrison pointed out several more. Kogan goes farther than Jastrow in discussing the "odds". Only G.R. Talbott explained the howler of a mistake in Sagan's "Appendix 3" concerning the "cooling" of Venus. These are real errors on Sagan's part, not to be confused with the concatenation of nonsense published by Charles Ginenthal in Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky (1990/1995), and in the interest of balance, Sagan's fallibility deserves to be acknowledged in as NPOV a manner as possible. Phaedrus7 (talk) 20:55, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, at this point, I'd say the main question is whether due weight requires such an extensive treatment of a very minor issue. I hope you recognize that in the context of Sagan's work this is minor, in the context of Velikovsky's work, it is also minor, in the context of astronomy this is minor, and indeed it is very difficult to find any conceivable context in which these nitpickings are anything other than minor. So why are we supposed to expend so much effort on this very minor matter? --TS 21:05, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

We are not. I have removed the excessive discussion of a minor side affair in a storied life. Hipocrite (talk) 21:35, 9 January 2009 (UTC

It is clear that Sagan's debunking of Worlds in Collision contained many scientific and technical errors which were overlooked or ignored by most reviewers and science writers. The fact that these commentators were negligent ought not mean that Sagan's errors should continue to be suppressed, even after his peers (esp. Jastrow and Morrison) have exposed them. Sagan's critique of Worlds in Collision has been unjustifiably lauded as a good example of scientific criticism of pseudoscience and Wikipedia ought not continue in perpetuating this deception. Velikovsky is easy enough to refute, as others continue to do, without having to resort to fallacious and erroneous arguments, as Sagan did. Phaedrus7 (talk) 02:22, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

This is not relevent or notable - having a paragraph discussion of it in Sagan's bio provides it undue weight. If you insist it must be inserted, please seek a consensus of uninvolved editors. Hipocrite (talk) 11:04, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I suggest that the correct place to cover this would be under Worlds in Collision. I think it has been given far too heavy a weight in this context. Moreover the statement that Jastrow showed Sagan's critique to be significantly flawed is an overstatement. Sagan raised ten problems, many of them devastating to Velikovsky's thesis. Jastrow finds flaws with some of them--mostly quite minor flaws, but some that invalidate the point in question. Jastrow concludes his analysis of Sagan as follows:

My own judgment is that Sagan's critique would have been stronger without Problems 1, 2, 6, 9, and Appendix 3. But I can understand his use of strawman models and ROM calculations. One of the frustrations of dealing with Velikovsky is his vagueness and lack of quantitative reasoning. In the absence of any specific scenarios or models from Velikovsky, Sagan substituted his own strawman versions and showed how absurd they are. In their rebuttals, Velikovsky and his supporters repeatedly said that Sagan had misrepresented their positions, but they did not offer any real alternatives. Sagan wanted to illustrate scientific thinking and show how hypotheses could be tested quantitatively. But this meant nothing to Velikovsky. His supporters delighted in finding minor errors in Sagan's paper (and he made quite a few), but they missed the big picture.

It would be incorrect to represent these minor errors as in some way invalidating Sagan's devastating critique of Velikosvky. --TS 11:32, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I am sorry, but it is important to indicate, at least, that Sagan's "analysis" of Worlds in Collision was so flawed and marred by errors of science (Appendix 3 is totally erroneous, e.g.) that it prolonged the controversy with the public instead of clarifying and ending it, as Sagan cuold have done had he not tried to be so "cute" and stuck to the facts. The role that Velikovsky played in Sagan's life is a subject even his two biographers, Keay Davidson and William Poundstone, do not agree on. Whereas Poundstone does not even mention Velikovsky, Davidson devotes several pages to Velikovsky and his initial plan was to devote an entire chapter to Sagan's fascination: Feb. 1974 AAAS address, the published version in Scientists Confront Velikovsky adapted for reprint in The Humanist and Biblical Archaeology Review, revised for Broca's Brain, and reprised in Episode 4 of Cosmos. Sagan was fully informed concerning the errors in his "analysis" and, while he corrected many trivial errors for Broca's Brain, such as spelling and biblical allusion, none of the technical errors were corrected, not even Appendix 3 that is TOTALLY bogus. As Ellenberger pointed out in his letter "A lesson from Velikovsky" in Summer 1986 Skeptical Inquirer (enlarged): QUOTE: To be effective in public controversies, scientific critics must deal skillfully with the issues as they are perceived by the public. Failure to do so diminishes the credibility of the critics, gives consolation to supporters, and prolongs the controversy among informed observers. [In the July 1981 _Technology Review_, S.L. Solnick concluded that "until serious scientists can 'explain the unexplained' to the public's satisfaction, the circus atmosphere will remain."] As long as critics "disproved" Velikovsky while ignoring supporters such as Bass, the controversy looked to many as a dispute between opposing "experts." [This is precisely the impression created by George Abell's review of _Scientists Confront Velikovsky_ in _SI_ II:2 and his letter in _SI_ III:2 in which the critics were endorsed and supporters, discounted and dismissed.] END QUOTE; full text at <http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/vlesson.html>. I have seen cases where an error such as Sagan makes in his Appendix 3 is sufficient to discredit an investigator's entire presentation. Sagan's hubris is very well documented and probably explains his refusal to deal with his mistakes regarding Velikovsky; but these mistakes are on the public record via Jastrow and Morrison and others and deserve to be acknowledged in Wikipedia. And I hasten to add that the difference between Sagan's astronomical odds against Worlds in Collision versus the 1 in 12 per 1000 years reported by Kogan in Physics Today in Sept. 1980 (a forum ignored by Sagan whereas he replied earlier to Jastrow in New York Times, a rebuke Jastrow did not accept as valid since he repeated his criticism next in Science Digest} is hardly any "trivial" difference. Phaedrus7 (talk) 18:29, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Did you read Jastrow's summary (reproduced above)? --TS 18:47, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

The sourcing above is weak. Please try to stick to sourced facts from reliable sources. Your opinion that Sagan's analysis was so terribly flawed is unsourced - you earlier tried to say that Jastrow said it, but a review of what he actually wrote says quite the opposite. Hipocrite (talk) 22:43, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Jastrow is really a very weak reed here because he only criticized Sagan on the first problem, that of the odds. Far more substantial a critique of Sagan is provided by David Morrison's "Velikovsky at Fifty" in Skeptic 2001; 9(1), which is on the WWW and was/is linked to its citation in Carl Sagan and also in the entries Immanuel Velikovsky and Worlds in Collision: <http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_kmske/is_1_9/ai_n28869901/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1> . And do not forget the detailed critique by Kogan in Physics Today, Sept. 1980, a letter that I happen to know was sponsored by Freeman Dyson in the interest of fairness. Sagan's AAAS performance was also thoroughly critiqued in Pensée IVR VII in June 1974 and later in Kronos III:2, 1977, whose book version is titled Velikovsky and Establishment Science wherein Sagan is critiqued by Velikovsky and Ralph Juergens. While some of the criticisms by Velikovsky and his supporters are invalid, many others are spot-on. I realize Sagan's fallibility comes as a surprise to many, but this fallibility is thoroughly documented and cannot justifiably be dismissed as so much sour grapes on the part of Velikovsky partisans. After Sagan admitted to a few mistakes over the years in Demon Haunted World, but none concerning his treatment of Velikovsky, and when he was asked about this in a letter, Sagan replied in April 1996 that he was unaware of any errors by him concerning Velikovsky. And I encourage anyone with an interest in this issue to study Sagan's Appendix 3, whose so-called "cooling calculation" is nothing but the trivial identity that the heat gained by Venus in one hour via radiation at 6000K equals that radiated by Venus in 3500 years at 79K, as George R. Talbott explained in Kronos IV:2, 1978, whose book version is titled Scientists Confront Scientists Who Confront Velikovsky. And, at the risk of being repetitive, it is my belief that Sagan's carelessness and refusal to correct his technical errors unnecessarily prolonged the controversy over Worlds in Collision. Yes, to many, there never was any controversy over Velikovsky's book. But this ignores the fact that the AAAS session in Feb. 1974, where Sagan famously confronted Velikovsky before an audience of over 1300 in the Ballroom of the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, was convened because of the popular interest in Velikovsky's ideas that was stimulated by Pensée magazine. The physicist and science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle preserves an interesting commentary on this confrontation: <http://www.jerrypournelle.com/science/velikovsky.htm>. Phaedrus7 (talk) 23:56, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

To me this looks like storm in a teacup stuff. No book is free of all techincal inaccuracies, what point is served by pointing them out? Jefffire (talk) 00:12, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

The issue is NOT about errors in a book. And since when is it NOT good form to point out and correct errors? However, the real issue is the validity and accuracy of the arguments Sagan marshalled against Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision, which were prepared for presentation at a AAAS session whose purpose was to explain to the public why Velikovsky was wrong. The session did not accomplish that purpose in large part because the arguments did not address the issues as they were perceived by those familiar with what Velikovsky actually wrote. On top of this, many of Sagan's arguments were either flawed or wrong, as many have explained over the years, mostly in the Velikovsky literature, but not exclusively. Even Sagan's student David Morrison now agrees with this as his 2001 article "Velikovsky at Fifty" in Skeptic 11(1) (reprinted in The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience) explains, although in April 1981 Physics Today he defended Sagan against Kogan's Sept. 1980 criticism. Practically all the reviewers and commentators in 1978-80 failed to mention any of the errors in Sagan's "analysis", although many of the major errors had been pointed out in Pensée in 1974 and Kronos in 1978. The two versions of the "analysis" (in Scientists Confront Velikovsky, 1978, and Broca's Brain, 1979) are remarkably the same except for minor corrections and one big alteration: whereas in 1978 Sagan allowed that if only 20% of Velikovsky's evidence were valid there was something to be explained, in 1979 he said there was nothing to be explained. Because so many hold up Sagan's "analysis" as a good example of scientific criticism of pseudoscience, which is demonstrably NOT the case (I notice no one has commented on "Appendix 3", the cooling calculation, that is totally bogus), it is important that Sagan's fallibility NOT be suppressed in a resource such as Wikipedia whose lofty purpose is to get the truth out, unless Wikipedia is really as "closed-minded" as the article in 3 January New Scientist, p. 19, "Psychologist finds Wikipedians grumpy and closed-minded", reports on the basis of psychological testing of Wikipedia editors in Israel. Phaedrus7 (talk) 23:47, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

You're going into great detail about this but it's obviously very peripheral to Sagan's career, and even to his popularization of science. Velikovsky's nonsense had been largely ignored by serious scientists, but lapped up by the public. Sagan saw it as a chance to show the general public that by taking Velikovsky's explanations and plugging in numbers one could show just how absurd they were. He succeeded but, as Jefffire says, his analysis wasn't perfect.

At the moment we have this massive great gobbet of indigestible and irrelevant information sitting on the article. It doesn't belong there and I propose to remove it if, by tomorrow evening, you're the only person arguing for it to remain. --TS 01:58, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I disagree that Velikovsky is "peripheral" to Sagan's career as popularizer of science. Recall that biographer Keay Davidson originally planned to have a chapter on Veliovsky in his biography of Sagan. It is a major topic of his extending over many years from 1974 to 1980 and is held up by many as an exemplar of good science criticism. It is also interesting to note that on the night in October 1974 when Sagan met Ann Druyan (his future third wife) at a party at Nora Ephron's, Druyan was an avid fan of both von Daniken and Velikovsky, according to Joel Achenbach in Captured by Aliens (1999), an anecdote absent from the two Sagan biographies that came out that year. The "plugging in numbers" was hardly a successful gambit considering that when numbers more suited to what Velikovsky actually wrote were "plugged in" by Kogan in 1980 for Sept. Physics Today, Sagan's astronomical odds against Velikovsky's scenario were very drastically lowered, as mentioned previously. Furthermore, that "plugging in numbers" exercise of Sagan's, whose context was orbital motion under gravity, totally ignored gravity, and instead was an exercise in "ergodic theory", as Sagan remarked to celestial mechanician Robert Bass in the event, before Sagan excused himself to make his plane so he could appear on Johnny Carson's TV show that night. Ironically, the very real errors in Sagan's "analysis" would be common knowledge today had Sagan submitted his finished paper to Cornell University Press in a timely manner, instead of over two years late -- in mid 1976. Scientists Confront Velikovsky was supposed to be the proceedings of the Feb. 1974 AAAS symposium whose original plan was to have rebuttals accompany each contributor's paper. However, Sagan's final paper was 50% longer than what he had in 1974 which prompted Velikovsky to want additional time and space to reply to the longer paper. When a compromise between Cornell University Press and Velikovsky could not be reached on this issue, Velikovsky withdrew his paper (which was in final form in 1974) and so did Irving Michelson of Illinois Institute of Technology. Both their papers were published in 1974 in Pensée IVR VIII. Equity demands that Sagan's fallibility concerning his scientific arguments against Velikovsky NOT be ignored and he should not benefit from the effects of his procrastination in finishing his AAAS paper. Phaedrus7 (talk) 23:02, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Good science criticism it certainly was. You appear to be complaining that it was not perfect in every detail. Phaedrus7, I hope you won't take it amiss if I observe that you appear to have been very closely--almost exclusively--involved in editing articles related to Velikovskian catastrophe theories since you first edited Wikipedia in July, 2007. I think you're too close to the subject. Sagan was the foremost American popularizer of science of his era, and his work in dispatching Velikovsky was just one small part of his output. If you insist on trying to turn the Velikovsky debunking into War and Peace, perhaps the best thing to do would be to choose one of Sagan's many other popular debunking exercises. --TS 23:35, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Tony, you are not really being fair to Phaedrus7 here. It is true he has contributed a lot to wikipedia's Velikovsky-related articles. This is a good thing, because Phaedrus is arguably the world's leading Velikovsky debunker, for want of another way to put it, and is hugely expert and knowledgeable on the minutiae of that particular topic. As usual, I get the sense that there's an attitude of "Oh noes! Someone isn't just calling Velikovsky an idiot! Quick! A WITCH! BURRRRRRN HIM!" That is *not* the case here. Phaedrus is not quibbling with this part of the Sagan article because he is a "Velikovsky supporter" or wants to "prove Velikovsky right" - he is quibbling with it because it is erroneous. Sagan's critique of Velikovsky was deeply flawed, and, far from debunking him, was one of the main reasons why, in the 1970s, Velikovsky became a cult fringe-science movement with conferences held and journals published: many lay people took Sagan's cavalier flawed "debunking" as an indication that Velikovsky's work had merit. As such, it is quite notable and worth mentioning in an article about a man who made a career of popularizing science. By all means, yes, let the article also have an example of Sagan successfully debunking something too. I realise, of course, that several editors around these parts will refuse to accept what I'm saying and insist that Sagan *did* effectively debunk Velikovsky ("he must of done, cos Sagan was our hero and Velikovsky was wrong - QED! lol!") but /shrugs/ well, I just can't sit here and watch the irony of y'all treating Phaedrus, the world's most knowledgeable and diligent Velikovsky debunker in this manner...--feline1 (talk) 00:00, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I'll ignore the side issues (please don't falsely characterize other people's statements or opinions). What is it that causes you to say that Sagan's critique of Velikovsky was "deeply flawed"?

Um, reading it? (And subsequent commentaries and responses to it).--feline1 (talk) 00:29, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

In any case, the Velikovsky mention is only intended to be an example of Sagan's many public expositions of debunking. He gave many more notable, devoting much of Episode 12 of his popular Science series, Cosmos to accounts of various famous cases including the Barny and Betty Hill abduction.

Now if, as you claim, Phaedrus7 were a famous Velikovsky debunker, his edits about Sagan's efforts would be subject to our conflict of interest rules--in short, he would have an interest in denigrating Sagan.

Rather than see the existing mention of Velikovsky continue to be a coatrack for a series of minor grievances related to the obscure subject of Velikovskian catastrophism, I think it would be better to substitute one of these other examples of debunking. --TS 00:22, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

It occurred to me shortly after my previous posting that IF Velikovsky is "peripheral" to Sagan's career as science popularizer, then there is no compelling reason to mention Velikovsky at all. BUT, if Velikovsky is mentioned as one of Sagan's subjects, then objectivity would require that Sagan's scientific malfeasance ought to be acknowledged in some manner. I have cited the analyses of at least four critics: Jastrow, Morrison, Kogan, and G.R. Talbott, not to mention Velikovsky and Juergens. The existence of these critics, and this list is NOT exhaustive, neutralizes any criticism of my interest in the topic as a COI issue. Since when does expertise in a subject make the expert ipso facto COI? At the risk of repetition, the problems with Sagan's "analysis" are not mere "mistakes". Sagan's arguments consistently fail to deal with the problems in a valid manner. Take the matter of the odds against the series of collisions indicated in Worlds in Collision. Sagan's methodology, the "ergodic theory" assumed the collsions (actually near collisions) were independent events when in a gravitational system any first collision guarantees a second collision eventually. This is the main point Jastrow made against Sagan. Sagan did not accept Jastrow's rebuke in New York Times and had a letter published. But Jastrow did not accept Sagan's rebuttal and repeated his criticism later in 1980 in a special issue of Science Digest. Then, take the matter of the putative origin of Venus out of Jupiter. Sagan, and other critics, had a field day with this one. But readers of Pensée, and Sagan was at least the beneficiary of a gift subscription from the editors, knew that, although not mentioned in the book, planetary fission was Velikovsky's defense. In the 1960s and 1970s the scientific literature, and even an article in 1965 in Scientific American by Alan Boss, was full of articles by such scientists as Ray Lyttleton, W.H. McCrea, and Don Wise on planetary fission: for example, proto-Earth reached a rotational instability that led to its fissioning into Earth and Mars, with our Moon being a droplet formed where the neck broke. Velikovsky proposed that Venus was such a droplet left over from when Jupiter fissioned. The public was not prepared to assess the feasibility of Velikovsky's suggestion and no critic, including Sagan, deigned to explain why Velikovsky's defense was futile. This an example of a substantive scientific issue concerning how Sagan's "analysis" failed to impress those in the public who knew that Sagan was not addressing the issues as they were understood by the interested public. In the wake of Sagan's failed "analysis" qua debunk, the public's attention switched from an interest in examining Velikovsky's ideas to exposing all the errors and mistakes in Sagan's "analysis". And, the most over-looked error in the bunch is the totally bogus "cooling calculation" in Appendix 3, as has been described more than once in this forum. Even though David Morrison now agrees that Sagan made some serious scientific errors, he has never publicly mentioned the errors in Appendix 3. But, take a look at Appendix 3. Examine it and see if you do not understand that all it shows is a trival identity between the heat radiated to Venus in one hour at 6000K and that radiated by Venus in 3500 years at 79K. THIS, I submit is NOT "good" popularization of science or responsible science criticism. Phaedrus7 (talk) 05:57, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I think you're far too close to this subject to maintain a proper perspective. I'm switching the single sentence on debunking to mention another case entirely. --TS 10:44, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Fair enuf, TS. However, there is nothing intrinsically wrong for someone to claim pi = 3.125 is wrong and the same reasoning applies to pointing out bald-faced errors in Sagan's "analysis" of Worlds in Collision, regardless the speaker's background. But I thought it need NOT be said that identifying Sagan's scientific errors DOES NOT MEAN that Velikovsky was right. Far from it. But it is a fact, as Feline1 pointed out, that the many errors that punctuated Sagan's "analysis" detracted from a proper evaluation of Velikovsky's ideas as the public became distracted by an exercise in correcting Sagan's errors. This exercise became as an obsession to at least one Velikovsky fan who came on the scene in 1984 and has self-published more than one book defending Velikovsky from a host of critics, starting with Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky (1990/1995). This fellow's efforts do more to expose his own misunderstanding of science and physics than to chastize his subjects, although he does reprise most of the real errors from other sources. No one in this forum has shown that the errors commmitted by Sagan and cited by me are faulty or imaginary. Phaedrus7 (talk) 18:47, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

The reason that no one has discussed anything about your arguments is that this is not a web forum, it is an encyclopedia, that uses Reliable Sources and dones not allow Original Research. Talk pages are not for disproving things or pointing out bald-faced errors. If you don't mind me asking, is there an article about you in the encyclopedia that you have edited before? Hipocrite (talk) 19:19, 13 January 2009 (UTC)