Talk:Carl Sagan/Archive 3

This is an archive of past discussions about Carl Sagan. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Archive 6

Some of Sagan's Errors

Here are some of the errors that Sagan made against Velikovsky. None of these imply that Velikovsky was necessarily correct.

At the AAAS meeting, Sagan presented the odds for the planetary encounters described in Worlds in Collision, as 10²³ against. Two years later, Sagan provided his calculations, and the odds have decreased to about 10²⁷ against.
- Sagan assumes a grazing collision between Earth a Venus. Velikovsky writes of a near approach
- Sagan assumes five or six consecutive collisions, and assumes that they are statistics independent events. This is like suggesting that each appearance of Halley's Comet is independent.

It doesn't really matter what the chances are, they're small no matter how you look at it. But if Venus did what Mr. V said then it is an exception to a few things: (1) NEwton's laws of motion, (2) Newton's law of universal gravitation, and (3) Einstein's general theory of relativity. Bubba73 [[User_talk:Bubba73|(talk)]]

Sagan corrects some of his predecessors (eg. Payne-Gaposchkin, Asimov) who had suggested that if the Earth had stopped liked Velikovsky suggested, then stalactites would break off, and people would go flying into space. Sagan correctly shows that if the Earth slowed to stop over the course of a few hours, the deceleration would be so slow that stalactites would not break, and nothing would fly off the Earth. But Sagan calculates the heat generated would cause an average temperature rise of 100K. Sagan concludes: "The oceans would have been raised to the boiling point of water, an event which seems to have been overlooked by Velikovsky's ancient sources."
- In Worlds in Collision, there is an entire section titled "Boiling Earth and Sea".

But we know that didn't happen. Bubba73 [[User_talk:Bubba73|(talk)]] 05:30, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Sagan calculates that Velikovsky's comet produces an impossible 10²⁸ grams of manna
- Velikovsky suggests that Earth's encounter with Venus resulted in Manna raining down on the Israelites in the desert (as described in Biblical sources). Velikovksy assumed that hydrocarbon's originated the tail of the Venusian comet, oxidised in the Earth's atmosphere, and rained down as an edible carbohydrate.
- Sagan's calculation is based on (a) the amount of manna required to feed hundreds of thousands of Children of Israel for forty years. (b) He estimates 100 kilograms per person per year, or 4000 kilograms per person in 40 years (c) This quantity is then multiplied over the entire surface of the earth (d) And then over the volume of the inner solar system

Sagan writes: "I find it odd that Velikovsky does not attribute the temperature of Venus to its ejection from Jupiter ... but he does not."
- Velikovsky writes in Worlds in Collision "Venus experienced in quick succession its birth and expulsion under violent conditions; an existence as a comet on an ellipse which approached the sun closely; two encounters with the earth accompanied by discharges of potentials between these two bodies and with a thermal effect caused by conversion of momentum into heat; a number of contacts with Mars and probably also with Jupiter. Since all this happened between the third and the first millennia before the present era, the core of the planet Venus must still be hot"
- Sagan then goes on to calculate the temperature of Venus, if it had received its extra heat only from a close approach to the Sun, and reaches a figure of 79K
Sagan writes: "The planet [Venus] is cratered, and, perhaps, like parts of the Moon, saturation cratered ... These craters ... are produced almost exclusively by impact ... Now the colliding objects cannot have arrived at Venus in the last ten thousand years; otherwise the Earth would be as plentifully cratered ... the cratering process on Venus must have taken billions of years."
- Venus has a fewer number of small craters than any other planet. Ref

--Iantresman 22:37, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

But it doesn't matter. First, you're ignoring the gas planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; and who knows about Pluto. So you're looking at Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars only. Mercury has no atmosphere to protect it and Mars has very little. Venus' atmosphere is many times denser than Earth's. The point is that if what Mr. V says is true, then Venus probably wouldn't have any impact craters. Bubba73 [[User_talk:Bubba73|(talk)]] 05:30, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

See List of craters on Venus. Also see Venus for a description of how its thick atmosphere prevents the formation of craters less than 3 km across. Also, read the part where the surface is hundreds of millions of years old - directly contradicting Mr. V. Bubba73 (talk), 16:02, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

10²³ vs. 10²⁷. Velikovsky's "prediction" that Venus was ejected from another planet and passed near Earth several times was typically vague. Sagan tried to make reasonable estimates of how likely such a history of Venus might be. Making several different calculations of this type is not an "error".

"independent events" There is no reason to think that Velikovsky's proposal of repeated close contacts between Earth and Venus could be accounted for by a regular cometary orbit. In the absence of an identified regular orbit for the "cometary Venus", there was nothing unreasonable in Sagan assuming independent events required to cause each Earth-Venus interaction.

In Worlds in Collision, Velikovsky writes of "Venus was a comet" .. "Venus was more of a comet than a planet", which does seem reasonable to me, to treat it as a comet and to assume dependent events. --Iantresman 08:52, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

"The oceans would have been raised to the boiling point of water, an event which seems to have been overlooked by Velikovsky's ancient sources." <-- Sagan's point was that if close approaches of Venus caused the events suggested by Velikovsky, there should have been many more global events and catastrophic effects that one should expect to have been included in the ancient texts used by Velikovsky as "evidence".

Worlds in Collision is packed with ancient references to catastrophism. Velikovsky's sequel, Earth in Upheaval is packed with geological evidence. --Iantresman 08:52, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

amount of manna. The point is, it is hard to find any mass calculation that would be consistent with conversion of a presumed "cometary tail" of Venus into manna. Why call Sagan's calculation erroneous without offering an alternative?

That's the point, Sagan's criticism is based on assumptions that Velikosky did not make. --Iantresman 08:52, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

"Venus has a fewer number of small craters than any other planet" This does not contradict Sagan's point. The thick atmosphere of Venus limits small crater formation. Due to volcanic activity, most of the surface of Venus is several billion years younger than the surface of those moons and planets that have not had volcanic activity. None of this changes the fact that the surface of Venus is too ancient to have been formed after Velikovsky's proposed origin of the planet within historical times. --JWSchmidt 01:06, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Sagan claimed that Venus would be "saturation cratered". This does seem to be a direct contradiction of the facts. --Iantresman 08:52, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh for goodness sakes, I appreciate you are the president of the Carl Sagan fan club - nonetheless, not even Sagan himself disputed that these were errors on his part.--feline1 08:15, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

He probably said that about Venus's craters before we knew. If he was wrong about that, it doesn't mean that he was wrong about Mr. V. Bubba73 [[User_talk:Bubba73|(talk)]] 05:37, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

suggestion to Iantresman; There is a huge amount of information available about the craters of Venus, but nobody has taken the time to include a detailed summary this information on wikipedia. The few paragraphs here could be expanded to an entire article. Why not start a wikipedia article that reviews in greater detail the published data for impact craters on Venus? The main goal of the article could be explaining the basis of an estimated age of the surface as being several hundred millions of years old. Then the readers of wikipedia can decide for themselves if Velikovsky's "young Venus" theory is better than an "old Venus" theory. --JWSchmidt 14:04, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I am not supporting Velikovsky's view here. I'm just saying that Sagan's argument, that Venus must be old because it covered in craters is wrong, on two counts (1) Cratering does not nessarily imply age (2) Venus was not heavily cratered. Deos this mean that Velikovsky has the better theory> No. --Iantresman 14:45, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

If you have a published article that supports your view of the data, I'd like to see it. I'm not an astronomer, but from what I have seen of the Venus impact crater data, it is reasonable to conclude that the surface of Venus is ancient and its features do not indicate that Venus was recently ejected from a larger planet. --JWSchmidt 16:01, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Sagan wrote: "The planet [Venus] is cratered, and, perhaps, like parts of the Moon, saturation cratered". My view is that Sagan was presenting this arguement as evidence that Venus is old. Sagan was wrong. Venus is not heavily cratered. I agree that whether Venus is heavily cratered or not, this does not necessarily support an old or young Venus. Having said that, others have suggested that cratering implies age. See for example:

--Iantresman 20:05, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Weasel criticisms

Moved from the article:

Critics of The Demon-Haunted World complain that Sagan dismisses religious and spiritual experiences as delusions.

This is not a very valuable statement, because it tells us nothing beyond what we might expect anyway. I don't mind a section discussing criticisms of Sagan from a religious perspective, but these should be properly attributed to specific notable sources.--Eloquence * 10:14, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I disagree, to me it seems a perfectly reasonable and succint summary of some common criticisms of Sagan's work, and you seem to be on some pro-Sagan fan-boy crusade, under the thinly veiled guise of "removing POV". There is a big difference between the voice of a wiki article being POV, and the wiki article neutrally reporting common POVs regarding the article's subject.--feline1 12:13, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

"Pro-Sagan fan-boy crusade"? That is bordering on a personal attack; please avoid such language. Furthermore, it was you who used language such as "p*ss-artist" to describe Sagan; I have not used similarly emotive positive language, so the moniker seems to be entirely unjustified. I have no objection against reporting common POVs if they are properly attributed and sourced. If they are as common as you claim, that should not be hard to do.--Eloquence * 12:18, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

"a perfectly reasonable and succint summary of some common criticisms of Sagan's work". Please read the section of this page called "Demon Haunted World does not apply its own science tools to disproving ghost experiences". Sagan did not dismisses religious and spiritual experiences as delusions. If the article had a "criticisms" section, this criticism could be listed there and identified for what it is: misinformation invented by Sagan critics. --JWSchmidt 13:50, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

"Sagan did not dismisses religious and spiritual experiences as delusions" -

er, so what? the article didn't say that, it claimed that critics regularly accused him of doing so. Can you not see the logical distinction?--feline1 13:56, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

"Can you not see the logical distinction?" I can. I never said that the article says that Sagan dismissed religious and spiritual experiences as delusions. --JWSchmidt 16:44, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

As for protesting that I'm making personal attacks on you: well sorry for a little flip remark, but in all seriousness, I do have concerns about your conduct on this article - you seem to be steam-rollering into an existing well-established piece, cutting out material which you disagree with from your own POV, and querying it on the Talk page *after* you've done the edit, not before. Anyone who suggests a different text, you dismiss them with cries of "where's your reference". The material in question re: attitudes to Sagan seems to be quite widespread and so it seems entirely likely that "proper" references can be tracked down if needs be (I provided one Amazon link to an entire book on the subject, for goodness sake!) Instead you seem to have to no patience or inclination to track down references or gain consensus (or use the edit history feature to ascertain who wrote the material you disagre with, and get them to clarify) - you seem to be intent on just making your own rather biased edits. However, Carl Sagan isn't a subject I know enough about to start reverting things on you, so I'll merely give me views here in the talk page.--feline1 15:44, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

This is a featured article; as such, it meets the highest standards of quality of the Wikipedia community. It's not acceptable to simply insert potentially false information into the article and wait until someone digs up the references to prove it right. But it's not just that a lack of citation for disputed facts degrades the quality of the article, it's also that it violates one of our established stylistic guidelines: Wikipedia:Avoid weasel terms. Our goal is to transmit useful information, not to placate the religious right.

The fact that some religious people objected to Sagan's views on religion -- and not just in The Demon-Haunted World -- is fairly self-evident; some religious people object to pretty much everyone's view on religion, when expressed. The question is, was it particularly notable in this case, was it specific to The Demon-Haunted World, was it specifically the religious right, the New Age people, or who, what did they object to, when did they say it, what was Sagan's response to it, if any, and so on.

And Sagan was far from one-dimensional on the matter. An interesting essay by him on religion is part of Billions and Billions, titled "Religion and Science: An Alliance"; he had a strong interest in establishing connections with religious leaders and showing them that there was no need for scientists to be dismissive of religion, or religion to be dismissive of science. His conflicts with religion were in the area where religion made factual, testable claims about reality; he argued that such claims merit examination.

This is information that would actually help the reader as opposed to merely telling them that the sun rises in the morning. Rather than a mere "Criticism" section full of soundbites out of context, this could then become a "Clashes with religion" section. There are other interesting stories to tell here, for example, the reaction to the Pioneer plaque because it displayed human genitals.

If you want to examine conduct, examine your own; you are the one who seems intent on keeping highly questionable information in a featured article under the premise that Carl Sagan was a "p*ss artist" and is widely regarded as "arrogant", basing this of very little knowledge about Sagan, as you admit. I commend you for not beginning an edit war, but you have not brought much useful information to the table yet either, instead resorting to attacks against those who have actually done work on the article (more than 30 edits in my case, including the featured article nomination and preparation for it).--Eloquence * 17:29, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

"track down references" I agree with User:HorsePunchKid that the book Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky seems to be a questionable source of insight into the scientific validity of Sagan's comments on Velikovsky's ideas. If there were a valid scientific point made by catastrophists in refuting Sagan's views, then it should be possible to cite a peer-reviewed scientific publication as a reference. If we are seeking consensus, I think that User:Eloquence has expressed reasonable positions. --JWSchmidt 16:44, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

LOL - as we all know, Asaac Azimoz will be ice-skating in hell (etc etc) before a "peer-reviewed scientific publication" prints a prints a pro-Velikovsky piece at the expense of Sagan.

I suggested the option of finding a peer-reviewed reference as a standard option that works well for many science-oriented wikipedia articles. If you feel that you have identified some sort of systemic bias in the peer-review process that prevents some valid arguments from being published, then you can describe the arguments here; that was my original request (higher up on this page). --JWSchmidt 22:54, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Except that the peer-review process is inherently biased (the first two references are peer-reviewed). See:

--Iantresman 14:36, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

reading about the "encounter" between Sagan and Velikovsky

I have taken the time to read about the "encounter" between Sagan and Velikovsky. Sagan was very involved with the emerging planetary science of Venus and the rest of the solar system. Velikovsky was trying to defend his previous "theories" against the large amounts of new data from planetary science that did not support his "theories". Below, I summarize particularly the debate over Velikovsky's idea that Venus originated as an ejected object from Jupiter.

Velikovsky's claims

Periodic close contacts with a Venus (which had been ejected from Jupiter) had caused the Exodus events (c.1500BC) and Joshua's subsequent "sun standing still" incident. (source)

In his 1974 AAAS talk Velikovsky mentioned both his idea of electromagnetism controlling planetary orbits and he said that a greenhouse effect cannot account for the high temperature of Venus. He thought that the high heat of Venus must have been residual from a catastrophic ejection of Venus from Jupiter. (source))

Velikovsky talked about his previously proposed idea that hydrocarbons from Jupiter would be found in the clouds of Venus (he also had claimed that some of the hydrocarbons of Venus had been deposited on Earth in historical times when a "cometary Venus" repeatedly passed Earth).

Sagan's comments made at the AAAS meeting

One of Sagan's points was that the small magnetic fields of planets could not produce Velikovsky's orbital changes for planets.

Sagan was later criticized for having used (in his critique of ejection of Venus from Jupiter) a slightly wrong value for the escape velocity of Jupiter. In my view, these and other quibbles raised by Velikovsky supporters have been thrown up as a smoke screen and do not invalidate the thrust of the points Sagan made.

Sagan asked Velikovsky about the hydrocarbons of Venus. Velikovsky replied that there were many possible hydrocarbons that were compatible with spectroscopic data for Venus. Saga suggested that sulfuric acid clouds account for the data. Later Velikovsky asked Sagan if there might not be some hydrocarbons on Venus. Sagan asked how much.

Velikovsky seemed to suggest that the hydrocarbons would have been on Venus thousands of years ago (after ejection from Jupiter) and that they would have burned up by reacting with oxygen, so it does not matter how much hydrocarbon is eventually detected on Venus today. This was part of the Velikovsky idea that carbohydrates produced from the oxidation of components of Venus' atmosphere turned into biblical manna.

Sagan made several comments about Velikovsky's manna idea, including calculations of the amount of material that would have been required and he asked if Velikovsky's idea could account for the exact biblical details of the manna story. Sagan was clearly skeptical about the way Velikovsky made use of only those ancient writings (and his translations of them) that supported his ideas.

Inorganic molecules like sulfuric acid are still thought to be responsible for Venus' clouds. It seems like Velikovsky supporters no longer want to talk about manna.

It should also be mentioned that after 1974, the structure of the surface features of Venus were found to be consistent with an ancient existence, and do not indicate a recent molten period associated with recent catastrophic ejection from another planetary body.

There was also discussion raised by Velikovsky of how scientists had often changed their ideas about the planets (for example, switching from predicting nitrogen in the Venus atmosphere to reporting carbon dioxide). Sagan made the point that this is how science works- it follows the evidence. Velikovsky seemed to claim that he himself never had made an incorrect prediction about the planets and that his method of reading ancient writings about astronomical events was the secret to his success. Sagan suggested that the "successes" came from vague predictions that were later fit to new data, in the same way that fortune tellers gain the confidence of their clients. (source)

In my view

In my view, Sagan was perfectly reasonable in his evaluations of Velikovsky's planetary speculations. Having read about the "encounter" between Sagan and Velikovsky, I find the claims that "Sagan's AAAS piss-take of Velikovsky was egregiously wrong in almost every statement he made" and that Sagan provided only a "cynical hatchet job" to be wrong.

I think the comment of Robert Jastrow (that is currently in the Sagan article) should be placed in a section of the article called "reactions" or "complaints" against Sagan. This would provide a place to explain the context of Jastrow's statement and why it is irrelevant to the larger debate about how Sagan treated Velikovsky's planetary speculations.

--JWSchmidt 18:23, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Velikovsky was trying to defend his previous "theories" against the large amounts of new data from planetary science that did not support his "theories".

Sorry, but that is ass backwards! V's "Worlds in Collision" had been a bestseller in 1950... unsurprisingly, 20 years later, the kerfuffle had died down somewhat - but as various probes explored the solar system, sending back "surprising" new data, Velikovsky and his followers seized on these, claiming that V's theories had *predicted* the probe findings. V was not "defending his theories", he was trumpeting his success!! In the early 70s, some pro-Velikovskian journals sprang up and had tens of thousands of subscribers, and various Velikovsky conferences were held on US campuses. By 1974, the AAAS decided this was getting a bit out of hand a decided to do something about it - hence their V conference. Otherwise do you think they'd have risked giving him any more of the oxygen of publicity?? V naively believed they were coming to discuss his theories on an equal footing, when of course they were coming to debunk them.

The debate about Venus is ultimately a bit pointless. It's a fairly commonly accepted idea these days that cometary bodies have menaced Earth within human memory (AD dark ages and all that...) - V's particular heresy was to claim the comet settled down and became Venus. There is no need to use celestial mechanics to debunk this - simply read V's train of logic/sources in Worlds in Collision, and it turns out the ENTIRE identification hinges on a reference to a lost medaeval Latin text by "Rockenbach", called "De Cometis". It is tenous at best. Sagan could have dismissed V's entire Venus theory in 5 minutes flat by attacking that, but instead he didn't want to cross interdisciplinary boundaries and preferred to make jokes about frogs whilst getting his maths wrong.

As for your claim that " Sagan was clearly skeptical about the way Velikovsky made use of only those ancient writings " - this is si mply wrong - Sagan is on record as saying something like (I paraphrase from memory slightly) "My own position is that if even 10% of the agreement between the historical/mythical sources V has presented is true, then there is something to be explained" --feline1 19:39, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

They were "trumpeting his success" in the same way a fortune teller does after making a vague statement that "amazingly" matches some aspect a person's life. I'm not impressed. Yes, people who hear what they want to hear will lap up what hucksters like Velikovsky offer; that is why Sagan had to publically challenge Velikovsky. I urge all wikipedia editors to read the transcript of Sagan at the AAAS meeting. The file is long but just search through it for "Sagan". He was his usual skepticl self and centered on dealing with evidence. --JWSchmidt 02:22, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

It's not a question of you being impressed! It's just the truth of what happened - no matter how irksome you may personally find it, in the early 70s, thousands of people in the US (particularly students on campuses) became very sympathetic to Velikovsky's ideas, and regarded the "scientific establishment" as having treated him unfairly. (And boy, did V milk his martyr status!). That is why the AAAS set up that conference!! As an enthusiastic "populizer of Science" with a capital S, Sagan was keenly involved. However the *fact* is that, with a substantial proportion of the acolytes that the AAAS was trying to wean off Velikovsky, Sagan's conduct completely backfired and merely made them all the more convinced that the "establishment" was not treating V fairly. This is a fact (there are still books being published on this gravy train today, years after both Sagan and V have passed away, for goodness sakes - cf the Ginethal book). It is completely irrelevant that you personally have a pejorative attitude to Velikovsky and don't personally find that Sagan's proselytizing of Science was diminished - what this objective encylopedia article could usefully note is that for many of his key target audience in a showcase example like this, Sagan shot himself in the foot. No-one else on the AAAS panel that day came in for such stick. Sagan got himself demonised with that audience the same way Harlow Shapley and Celia Payne-Gaposhkin did in the 1950s.--feline1 08:35, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

reply to feline1: There is no point in being overly dramatic. I am not in denial over the "truth". There is no need for you to keep repeating that Velikovsky had and still has followers. That is not a matter of debate. I also have never denied that Velikovsky was treated unfairly by some elements of the "establishment". In particular, the idea that Harlow Shapley would try to influence the publication of one of Velikovsky's books seems absurd. You state that my opinions about Velikovsky are irrelevant. I think you are wrong. I am trying to participate in a decision about what to put in the Carl Sagan article. There has been an attempt to insert into the article a claim that Sagan did not behave as a scientist should in confronting Velikovsky. I have looked at both Velikovsky's "science" and the claims that Sagan did not treat Velikovsky fairly and I am not impressed with either. This is my judgment as a scientist and has nothing to do with me being irked or in any other emotional state that you might imagine. Sagan set up the AAAS confrontation because large amounts of data for the solar system had become available and he knew it would be useful for the public to be allowed to compare how scientists systematically use such data to build our understanding of the solar system to how Velikovsky was selectively "trumpeting his success" whenever there was some trivial and irrelevant match between new data and one of his "predictions". I think you are wrong that "Sagan's conduct completely backfired". The storm of protests thrown up by Velikovsky supporters after the AAAS meeting was just smoke and mirrors, ment to impress the gullible. As I said, I am not impressed. Sagan acted as he should have acted to expose shoddy "science". I agree with User:Eloquence that Velikovsky's type of science can best be classified as pseudoscience. You think that "Sagan shot himself in the foot", but I think you are wrong. My view is that it best to openly discuss bogus claims that are passed off as science, even if it means that you stir up a swarm of religious fanatics. You claim that it is irrelevant that I "have a pejorative attitude to Velikovsky", but I think you are wrong. Velikovsky's approach to "science" invites criticism and I think it is a mistake to avoid providing the criticism it is due. It does not bother me that there are people who respond to the criticism by saying "We are being atacked again by the nasty athiest scientists!". You characterize Sagan as "proselytizing of Science", but I am familiar with attempts of religious zealots to pass off Sagan's actions in terms of religion. Defending science is not promoting religion. You seem to be advocating that the Carl Sagan article mention the fact that by confronting religious zealots you give them additional motivation for their zeal. This is a fundamental sociological fact that fits well in the Religion article. Maybe you should go there and add a small footnote to the 1974 AAAS meeting as an example. --JWSchmidt 13:58, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

There is no point in being overly dramatic." - you would prefer me to write in boring and turgid style? ;-) 'I am not in denial over the "truth".' - Well, you DID incorrectly claim that V was backpedalling to save his theories in the light of new space probe evidence, which is the exact opposite of the actual scenario, misprepresenting why the AAAS came about at all! I didn't say you were in denial, I just said you were wrong ;-)

Moreover, you keep framing this in terms of religious fundamentalism or somesuch, you obviously have a bee in your bonnet about this particular discourse. Velikovsky was a zionist, but seldom brought "religion" per se into his books (other than discussing various ancient religous texts, including the Bible - but this was always in the course of providing physical explanations of the phenomena described in them)... I don't really see what aethism vs religion has to do with any of this particularly. The fact is that half a dozen people spoke at that AAAS conference, but only Sagan's conduct got people's hackles up. Only Sagan peppered his address with jibes about frogs. Only Sagan whizzed off after he spoke and refused to participate in Q&A sessions. Only Sagan took two years to rewrite his address into a completely different paper. Perhaps he was the only one to have his own TV show too, I dunno... Ultimately I do feel he had a weasel streak in him, which sometimes helped him get his messages across, but sometimes backfired on him.--feline1 14:38, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

"I just said you were wrong". I never said that Velikovsky was "backpedalling". I said that Sagan knew that observations of the planets did not support Velikovsky's "theories"; Sagan recognized that this presented an opportunity to debunk Velikovsky and show how his sort of pseudoscience differs from science.

"framing this in terms of religious fundamentalism". Some people have tried to interpret Velikovsky as having provided a way to use scientific results to "proove" that miraculous biblical stories are factual accounts of global catastrophic events. I'll admit that some people just want to make money off of Velikovsky. However, I think that Velikovsky would never have entered into the main stream of public awareness if his ideas did not appeal to religious fundamentalists who hope to show that everything in the bible is literal truth. This is not a bee in my bonnet. It is all the creation of the fundamentalists.

"had a weasel streak in him" Do you have evidence that Sagan did not have a valid reason for leaving the AAAS meeting before the evening session? The fact that he had to leave the meeting early was openly announced at the start of the meeting and is not unusual for busy scientists.

"Sagan whizzed off after he spoke and refused to participate in Q&A sessions". Sagan participated in Q&A with Velikovsky at the session where they both gave their talks.

"Only Sagan took two years to rewrite his address into a completely different paper" When Sagan spoke at the meeting he explained how what he had originally thought of as a simple exrcise in discussing the planetary science of Venus grew into a larger project that covered much of Velikovsky's body of work. He found it impossible to limit himself to debunking one small aspect of Velikovsky when there was so much more to be done. That a busy scientists would take the required time to comprehensively confront Velikovsky is to his credit. --JWSchmidt 16:05, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

"However, I think that Velikovsky would never have entered into the main stream of public awareness if his ideas did not appeal to religious fundamentalists who hope to show that everything in the bible is literal truth" - possibly - I don't know, I don't live in America, here in the UK your whole "religious fundamentalism" thing is much less of a phenomenon... V was certainly not a religious fundamentalist himself though.--feline1 16:35, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Nuking the Moon

No reference to the works of Sagan in the secret project to "nuke the moon", in the 50's?

http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/nuke_moon_000514.html

Scientific achievements

This sectuion seems to be disturbingly small for such a notable scientist. Is this all that Sagan actually did with his academic life?
21:13, 29 January 2006 User:Arundhati bakshi

the second sentence appears to be a cynical attack. and it is a logical fallacy: post hoc ergo propter hoc. because some article (a wikipedia bio) lacks some information it cannot be assumed, or even reasonably conjectured, that such information (scientific achievements in his career) does not exist. it merely indicates that the achievements section should be updated. http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/post-hoc.html

Geez. It was obviously a figure of speech - the writer clearly knew that Sagan HAD done much more than that. Is this what your logical thinking come to, rendering you unable to interact with other plain-language humans? (btw feel free to consider this question a "cynical attack")

Awards - 2 entries corrected (removed)

removed : Hugo Award - 1998 - Contact Hugo Award - 1997 - The Demon-Haunted World

In validating a bio quotation for Sagan, I visited the Hugos website and the two citations above (from Wikipedia) are not correct. The only Hugo Award shown for Carl Sagan on the official Hugos site is: "1981 - Non-Fiction Book: Cosmos by Carl Sagan "

Reference: World Science Fiction Society | World Science Fiction Convention The Hugo Award Science Fiction Achievement Award) : http://worldcon.org/hugos.html The Hugo Awards By Year : http://worldcon.org/hy.html