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Indeed the reasoned criticism of a prevailing belief is a service to the proponents of that belief if they are incapable of defending it, they are well advised to abandon it. This self-questioning and error-correcting aspect of the scientific method is its most striking property.

Carl Sagan

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Carl Sagan
Age: 62 †
Born: 1934
Born: November 9
Died: 1996
Died: December 20
Astronomer
Astrophysicist
Cosmologist
Naturalist
Non-Fiction Writer
Novelist
Physicist
Planetary Scientist
Science Communicator
Brooklyn
New York
Carl Edward Sagan
Sagan
Carl E. Sagan
Carl E Sagan
C. E. Sagan
C.E. Sagan
C E Sagan
C. Sagan
C Sagan
Sagan C
Sagan C.
Sagan C. E.
Sagan CE
Belief
Scientific
Correcting
Wells
Errors
Prevailing
Well
Indeed
Striking
Self
Method
Defending
Service
Questioning
Criticism
Incapable
Proponents
Property
Error
Reasoned
Aspect
Abandon
Advised

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Even Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, and Albert Einstein made serious mistakes. But the scientific enterprise arranges things so that teamwork prevails: What one of us, even the most brilliant among us, misses, another of us, even someone much less celebrated and capable, may detect and rectify.
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Arguments from authority carry little weight – authorities have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities at most, there are experts.
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There is today-in a time when old beliefs are withering-a kind of philosophical hunger, a need to know who we are and how we got here. It is an on-going search, often unconscious, for a cosmic perspective for humanity
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A googolplex is precisely as far from infinity as is the number 1... no matter what number you have in mind, infinity is larger still.
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The gears of poverty, ignorance, hopelessness and low self-esteem interact to create a kind of perpetual failure machine that grinds down dreams from generation to generation. We all bear the cost of keeping it running. Illiteracy is its linchpin.
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Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological state plans for it. Everyone knows it is madness, and every nation has an excuse
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We are made of stellar ash. Our origin and evolution have been tied to distant cosmic events. The exploration of the cosmos is a voyage of self-discovery.
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We are the universe experiencing itself.
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Science is only a Latin word for knowledge
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That kind of skeptical, questioning, don't accept what authority tells you attitude of science - is also nearly identical to the attitude of mind necessary for a functioning democracy. Science and democracy have very consonant values and approaches, and I don't think you can have one without the other.
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The neurochemistry of the brain is astonishingly busy, the circuitry of a machine more wonderful than any devised by humans. But there is no evidence that its functioning is due to anything more than the 10(14) neural connections that build an elegant architecture of consciousness.
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Even today the most jaded city dweller can be unexpectedly moved upon encountering a clear night sky studded with thousands of twinkling stars. When it happens to me after all these years it still takes my breath away.
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It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.
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We live at a moment when our relationships to each other, and to all other beings with whom we share this planet, are up for grabs.
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As the ancient myth makers knew, we are children equally of the earth and the sky.
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There are lots of ways to communicate what we know, but few ways to communicate what we feel. Music is one way to communicate emotions.
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Who are we, if not measured by our impact on others?
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I don?t feel rejected by the sky. I?m a part of it- tiny, to be sure, but everything is tiny compared to that overwhelming immensity.
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We all have a thirst for wonder. It's a deeply human quality. Science and religion are both bound up with it. What I'm saying is, you don't have to make stories up, you don't have to exaggerate. There's wonder and awe enough in the real world. Nature's a lot better at inventing wonders than we are.
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