Ann Druyan Talks About Science, Religion, Wonder, Awe . . . and Carl Sagan
It is a great tragedy that science, this wonderful process for finding out what is true, has ceded the spiritual uplift of its central revelations: the vastness of the universe, the immensity of time, the relatedness of all life, and life's preciousness on our tiny planet.
Ann Druyan
To me, faith is antithetical to the values of science. Not hope, which is very different from faith. I have a lot of hope. Faith is saying that you can know the outcome of things based on what you hope is true. And science is saying in the absence of evidence, we must withhold judgment. It's so hard to do. It's so tempting to believe in the lie detector or in heaven or that you know who you are based on the day of the month that you were born. It's a sort of unearned self-esteem. It's an identity that you can slip right into, and it's tremendously reassuring. So, I don't have any faith, but I have a lot of hope, and I have a lot of dreams of what we could do with our intelligence if we had the will and the leadership and the understanding of how we could take all of our intelligence and our resources and create a world for our kids that is hopeful.
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Copyright (c)2003 Ann Druyan
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Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Friday, January 16, 2004
From New York Times
_________________________________________________________________________________________
January 16, 2004
Chinese Go Online in Search of Justice Against Elite Class
By JIM YARDLEY
ARBIN, China, Jan. 14 — On Oct. 16, the day she died, Liu Zhongxia was riding in her onion cart when it scraped a sedan. Usually her death would have gotten little attention. But in a country increasingly divided between rich and poor, a detail stood out: The sedan was a BMW.
Mrs. Liu was a peasant. The driver of the BMW, Su Xiuwen, is the wife of a businessman. The initial scrape was minor, but after a confrontation, Mrs. Su drove the car into Mrs. Liu.
The trial in December lasted less than two hours, with Mrs. Su receiving a suspended sentence. The death was ruled an accident.
And that would have ended it, except for two things. First, the "BMW case" tapped into sharp class resentments emerging in this Communist country, which long espoused a classless society. And second, that anger was able to coalesce in what is becoming an increasingly influential court of appeals in China: the Internet, which boiled with online outrage.
This week, in a rare step, officials here announced an investigation into possible judicial corruption in the case, state media reported. There is already speculation that Mrs. Su could face a harsher verdict, a result that would appease the online critics but could also set an uneasy precedent for reformers trying to establish a genuine rule of law in China.
"If the case involved a tractor, I'm sure it wouldn't have attracted any attention," said Qu Wenyong, dean of the sociology department at Heilongjiang University in Harbin. "But it involved a BMW, which symbolizes wealth and power. People immediately associated it with the gap between rich and poor."
That yawning gap is a fundamental contradiction of China's economic boom. Wealth is pouring in, swelling the middle class, yet hundreds of millions still live in poverty.
Here in the northeast, once the country's industrial center but now mired in unemployment, it is not hard to find class bitterness rubbed raw by the case. "We ordinary people have to obey the laws," said a taxi driver. Mrs. Su, he said, does not: "She has the power. She has the privilege. She can drive wildly."
Initially, the accident barely attracted attention outside Harbin.
That day, Mrs. Liu's husband, Dai Yiquan, accidentally bumped their onion cart into the side of the BMW, pushing the car about three feet. Mr. Dai, interviewed at his small village home outside Harbin, said Mrs. Su jumped out and began hitting him.
Then, after bystanders intervened, she returned to the car, apparently to back up. But she unexpectedly drove forward, crushing Mrs. Liu and injuring several others. The car crashed to a halt against a tree.
"My wife was dragged for six or seven meters," Mr. Dai said. He said he tried to lift her right arm but it was broken. He saw blood coming out of her mouth. "People said she was already dead," he recalled. "I was just dumbfounded."
The question at trial was whether Mrs. Su had intentionally tried to harm Mrs. Liu or had simply mistakenly put the car into first gear instead of reverse. The trial was notable for its lack of eyewitnesses, though many saw the incident.
Mrs. Su's husband admitted that he had paid more than $20,000 — a huge amount of money in rural China — to people who were injured, which may explain why none testified at the hearing.
One of them was Mr. Dai, who said he had received almost $10,000, roughly eight years' wages. He said he did not even attend the trial. "I just want peace for my family," a weary Mr. Dai said as one of his two daughters listened. "I don't care about the verdict and whether it is justice or not."
But China's "netcitizens" cared very much. Editors at Sina.com, the country's most popular Web site, said that after the verdict, more than 200,000 messages were posted to chat rooms, many suggesting corruption was to blame.
A spate of stories in the media fueled their anger. Before the verdict, newspapers in Harbin covered the case lightly; afterward, reporters from outside the province swept in. Some stories speculated that Mrs. Su was connected to a politically powerful family. Others quoted Mr. Dai accusing Mrs. Su of intentionally trying to harm his wife.
Guo Liang, a scholar with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who studies the role of the Internet in Chinese society, said the case was the latest example of the Net's growing influence. He said Internet protests of a beating death last year that involved police officers helped prompt a change in national detention laws. The Net also became a primary source of information during the initial SARS outbreak.
Mr. Guo noted that while most Internet users are China's urban elite, he recently finished a study showing that poorer, more rural residents are increasingly online, renting time at Internet cafes for as little as 12 cents an hour.
"This platform has really changed the situation in China, because everybody can write something," he said. "They just log on to Sina.com and read all kinds of newspapers. And the fascinating thing for them is, they get to leave their comments."
But there are definitely limits. The government methodically arrests Internet "dissidents" and tightly monitors postings about sensitive political subjects, like Tibet, Taiwan and Falun Gong, the banned spiritual movement. Government censors can tolerate unexpected subjects like the BMW case for weeks — undoubtedly using them to gauge public opinion — only to shut them down abruptly.
Chinese newspaper reporters and online editors say censors did just that late Wednesday in the BMW case. Newspapers were told to stop reporting and links to the case were erased from Sina.com. No public explanation was given.
The role of the Internet is particularly complicated for those working to reform China's legal system. Some analysts applaud the light that online scrutiny can sometimes shine on the justice system, yet worry about its influence on legal rulings, particularly when fact and rumor can so easily get mixed.
Meng Fanxu, a lawyer in Harbin, cautioned that people who had not read the transcripts of the BMW case should not become the equivalent of judges, even the thousands of angry ones on the Internet.
"If used properly, the Internet can promote justice and the rule of law," Mr. Meng said. But if "carried too far, and in a blind manner, it may disturb judicial justice and mislead the public to mistrust the law."
Guan Mingbo, Mrs. Su's husband, says the Internet has victimized his family. He said online speculation that his late father was a prominent provincial politician was unfounded; he was a government clerk. Mr. Guan, who owns a development company, said he paid money to Mr. Dai and others as an apology, and to help cover medical and funeral costs.
"My family has become the victims of the Internet and the newspapers," Mr. Guan said in a telephone interview. "It has gotten me in turbulent waters." Asked about suggestions of his wealth and connections, Mr. Guan said: "I am a common person, too."
His wife, he said, was not a murderer, just a bad driver who did not know how to handle a car.
In fact, he told state media, he used connections at the local traffic authority to get her a license in 1997. Otherwise, he said, she would not have been able to pass the test.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
January 16, 2004
Chinese Go Online in Search of Justice Against Elite Class
By JIM YARDLEY
ARBIN, China, Jan. 14 — On Oct. 16, the day she died, Liu Zhongxia was riding in her onion cart when it scraped a sedan. Usually her death would have gotten little attention. But in a country increasingly divided between rich and poor, a detail stood out: The sedan was a BMW.
Mrs. Liu was a peasant. The driver of the BMW, Su Xiuwen, is the wife of a businessman. The initial scrape was minor, but after a confrontation, Mrs. Su drove the car into Mrs. Liu.
The trial in December lasted less than two hours, with Mrs. Su receiving a suspended sentence. The death was ruled an accident.
And that would have ended it, except for two things. First, the "BMW case" tapped into sharp class resentments emerging in this Communist country, which long espoused a classless society. And second, that anger was able to coalesce in what is becoming an increasingly influential court of appeals in China: the Internet, which boiled with online outrage.
This week, in a rare step, officials here announced an investigation into possible judicial corruption in the case, state media reported. There is already speculation that Mrs. Su could face a harsher verdict, a result that would appease the online critics but could also set an uneasy precedent for reformers trying to establish a genuine rule of law in China.
"If the case involved a tractor, I'm sure it wouldn't have attracted any attention," said Qu Wenyong, dean of the sociology department at Heilongjiang University in Harbin. "But it involved a BMW, which symbolizes wealth and power. People immediately associated it with the gap between rich and poor."
That yawning gap is a fundamental contradiction of China's economic boom. Wealth is pouring in, swelling the middle class, yet hundreds of millions still live in poverty.
Here in the northeast, once the country's industrial center but now mired in unemployment, it is not hard to find class bitterness rubbed raw by the case. "We ordinary people have to obey the laws," said a taxi driver. Mrs. Su, he said, does not: "She has the power. She has the privilege. She can drive wildly."
Initially, the accident barely attracted attention outside Harbin.
That day, Mrs. Liu's husband, Dai Yiquan, accidentally bumped their onion cart into the side of the BMW, pushing the car about three feet. Mr. Dai, interviewed at his small village home outside Harbin, said Mrs. Su jumped out and began hitting him.
Then, after bystanders intervened, she returned to the car, apparently to back up. But she unexpectedly drove forward, crushing Mrs. Liu and injuring several others. The car crashed to a halt against a tree.
"My wife was dragged for six or seven meters," Mr. Dai said. He said he tried to lift her right arm but it was broken. He saw blood coming out of her mouth. "People said she was already dead," he recalled. "I was just dumbfounded."
The question at trial was whether Mrs. Su had intentionally tried to harm Mrs. Liu or had simply mistakenly put the car into first gear instead of reverse. The trial was notable for its lack of eyewitnesses, though many saw the incident.
Mrs. Su's husband admitted that he had paid more than $20,000 — a huge amount of money in rural China — to people who were injured, which may explain why none testified at the hearing.
One of them was Mr. Dai, who said he had received almost $10,000, roughly eight years' wages. He said he did not even attend the trial. "I just want peace for my family," a weary Mr. Dai said as one of his two daughters listened. "I don't care about the verdict and whether it is justice or not."
But China's "netcitizens" cared very much. Editors at Sina.com, the country's most popular Web site, said that after the verdict, more than 200,000 messages were posted to chat rooms, many suggesting corruption was to blame.
A spate of stories in the media fueled their anger. Before the verdict, newspapers in Harbin covered the case lightly; afterward, reporters from outside the province swept in. Some stories speculated that Mrs. Su was connected to a politically powerful family. Others quoted Mr. Dai accusing Mrs. Su of intentionally trying to harm his wife.
Guo Liang, a scholar with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who studies the role of the Internet in Chinese society, said the case was the latest example of the Net's growing influence. He said Internet protests of a beating death last year that involved police officers helped prompt a change in national detention laws. The Net also became a primary source of information during the initial SARS outbreak.
Mr. Guo noted that while most Internet users are China's urban elite, he recently finished a study showing that poorer, more rural residents are increasingly online, renting time at Internet cafes for as little as 12 cents an hour.
"This platform has really changed the situation in China, because everybody can write something," he said. "They just log on to Sina.com and read all kinds of newspapers. And the fascinating thing for them is, they get to leave their comments."
But there are definitely limits. The government methodically arrests Internet "dissidents" and tightly monitors postings about sensitive political subjects, like Tibet, Taiwan and Falun Gong, the banned spiritual movement. Government censors can tolerate unexpected subjects like the BMW case for weeks — undoubtedly using them to gauge public opinion — only to shut them down abruptly.
Chinese newspaper reporters and online editors say censors did just that late Wednesday in the BMW case. Newspapers were told to stop reporting and links to the case were erased from Sina.com. No public explanation was given.
The role of the Internet is particularly complicated for those working to reform China's legal system. Some analysts applaud the light that online scrutiny can sometimes shine on the justice system, yet worry about its influence on legal rulings, particularly when fact and rumor can so easily get mixed.
Meng Fanxu, a lawyer in Harbin, cautioned that people who had not read the transcripts of the BMW case should not become the equivalent of judges, even the thousands of angry ones on the Internet.
"If used properly, the Internet can promote justice and the rule of law," Mr. Meng said. But if "carried too far, and in a blind manner, it may disturb judicial justice and mislead the public to mistrust the law."
Guan Mingbo, Mrs. Su's husband, says the Internet has victimized his family. He said online speculation that his late father was a prominent provincial politician was unfounded; he was a government clerk. Mr. Guan, who owns a development company, said he paid money to Mr. Dai and others as an apology, and to help cover medical and funeral costs.
"My family has become the victims of the Internet and the newspapers," Mr. Guan said in a telephone interview. "It has gotten me in turbulent waters." Asked about suggestions of his wealth and connections, Mr. Guan said: "I am a common person, too."
His wife, he said, was not a murderer, just a bad driver who did not know how to handle a car.
In fact, he told state media, he used connections at the local traffic authority to get her a license in 1997. Otherwise, he said, she would not have been able to pass the test.
Thursday, January 15, 2004
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
A hundred years or so ago, C. S. Peirce, a working scientist as well as the greatest of American philosophers, distinguished genuine inquiry from "sham reasoning," pseudo-inquiry aimed not at finding the truth but at making a case for some conclusion immovably believed in advance; and predicted that, when sham reasoning becomes commonplace, people will come "to look on reasoning as merely decorative," and will "lose their conceptions of truth and of reason."
This is the very debacle taking place before our eyes: genuine inquiry is so complex and difficult, and advocacy "research" and politically-motivated "scholarship" have become so commonplace, that our grip on the concepts of truth, evidence, objectivity, inquiry has been loosened. I want to talk about how this disaster came about, and the role played by the phenomenon Barzun calls "preposterism" in encouraging it.
Susan Haack Science, Scientism, and Anti-Science in the Age of Preposterism
, Skeptical Inquirer magazine : November/December 1997
This is the very debacle taking place before our eyes: genuine inquiry is so complex and difficult, and advocacy "research" and politically-motivated "scholarship" have become so commonplace, that our grip on the concepts of truth, evidence, objectivity, inquiry has been loosened. I want to talk about how this disaster came about, and the role played by the phenomenon Barzun calls "preposterism" in encouraging it.
Susan Haack Science, Scientism, and Anti-Science in the Age of Preposterism
, Skeptical Inquirer magazine : November/December 1997
Must science come to an end? Not necessarily. But unless scientists become more philosophically sophisticated, their apologetics will continue to ring hollow. And unless our educational system focuses more on teaching students how to think than on what to think, our populace will become increasingly credulous. Scientists and educators alike need to realize that the educated person is not the person who can answer the questions, but the person who can question the answers. In our age of rapidly changing information, knowing how to distinguish truth from falsity is more important than knowing what was once considered true and false. Only a person who knows the difference between a justified and an unjustified belief can truly appreciate the value of scientific inquiry.
Susan Haack, The End of Science?, Skeptical Inquirer magazine : November/December 1997
Susan Haack, The End of Science?, Skeptical Inquirer magazine : November/December 1997
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