The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

1996 • 457 pages

Ratings105

Average rating4.3

15

3.5/5. Interesting book but I feel that it did not age well.
The first chapters were dry and thus a bit hard to read. Sagan focuses a lot on alien abduction and UFO sightings which I am not really interested in. And I feel like today nobody believes in crop circles and alien abductions anymore anyway so it was kind of redundant. Later on there is also a random Maxwell chapter where Sagan discusses the physics of electromagnetism which I am not sure really did fit into this book as I thought this book is about pseudoscience and skepticism, but maybe I just didn't get it.
As dry as the first chapters were, I felt that towards the end the chapters became more interesting though and apart from the focus on aliens Sagan did make some excellent points when he discusses science as means of progress of humanity, hallucinations, influence of politics on science, science and freedom, etc.
So I guess I would recommend the book. It was not bad by any means but I think that it didn't age too well.

October 24, 2022