Is understanding science a necessity?

Carl Sagan’s, “Why We Need to Understand Science?” takes a different approach to get the reader into the writing.

Carl Sagan met somebody who is an average working man. In talking to this man, one can come to the realization that the average American doesn’t know a whole lot about science. Fact that prove this, is that American students are well bellow average in academics on a global scale. The world, unknowingly, is driven by science. Of course, science doesn’t always bring about good. For example, the creation of nuclear warheads, CFC’s, and Agent Orange. Therefore, there are many reasons people feel discomfited around science and technology. However, science is a way of thinking, and allows people to hypothesize on their own. The reason Americans are flunking, is the lack of scientific education. Partly is due to many of the teacher’s themselves don’t very well understand science. To fix this, more money is needed for teacher’s training and salaries, as well as laboratories. New generations need hands on training to fully understand the world of science. Currently high school students memorize facts, and most of them time are either afraid or are unable to take their own viewpoint on a subject and hypothesize. The reason why is because, when children are the age of asking questions that they themselves want to learn more about, they are often stopped in their tracks. Parent would rather tell their kids their question is pointless, then to say they themselves don’t know the answer. Children need to be encouraged to explore their questions more, and one day they will be able to possible answer questions that no one has done so before.

Carl Sagan was not only a renowned astronomer and astrophysicist, but also a science popularizer and science communicator. As such, he seeks to make science mainstream, and show others the importance of it. He is writing to absolutely everybody, or at the very least people who may have misconceptions of science. This essay was published in 1989, at the time when science was starting to need more attention in America. What best proves this is the titles of each section of the essay. “A Prescription for Disaster,” “Why Were Flunking,” “What Can We Do.”

This essay portray how science gives people the ability to think for themselves. Or rather, the absence of science causes the inability to think for oneself and improve oneself. The essay also understands the fact that sciences doesn’t always bring good. However, it is merely stating that the education of science is a necessity. Science is “much more then a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking”(13). The most important part of scientific education is the fact you gain the ability to think for yourself. This essay also shows the scope of the world and how much science plays a role in it other than education. Starting on page 12 onto page 13, Dr.Sagan brings up many major topics that are were going around at the time. Then brings up the question, “How can we decide national policy if we don’t understand the underlying issues?”(13) He is showing how science is needed for every major topic such as, going to mars, curing AID’s and cancer, fusion, supercomputers, even unimportant ‘high-resolution television.’

The video, “Pale Blue Dot” by Joel Somerfeild, in my opinion, perfectly exemplifies and reinforces Dr.Sagan’s thoughts. On our mote of dust, everything exists and is included. All of which is important to everyone on earth. Then it was exceedingly shown to be of mere in-importance to the universe. This shows the power of science, that the only way to prove our existences worth, or better yet, the only reason for our existence is to explore this universe in which we are a mere pale blue dot.

Response to Sagan’s “Why We Need to Understand Science?”

The essay “Why We Need to Understand Science” written by Carl Sagan expatiate on the importance of science. It consists of  three components: the definition of science, the reason why Americans fail on science and how to flourish science. Carl Sagan was a renowned astronomer, astrophysicist and a writer who worked to bring science into the popular culture of the late twentieth century. This essay was firstly published in 1989 in Parade Magazine.

In the beginning of Sagan’s article, he talks about a conversation between a driver and him. He finds the big danger which science faces-most general public cannot distinguish science and pseudoscience. Young Americans spend time on boring TV shows rather than science. Newspapers gives more room for pseudoscience column rather than science column. As a result, science is not popular among common people in America and decline every year. From his article, we can find that during 1980s, Americans are weak on science. In some international tests, American adolescents are the bottom of all children from different countries. In other words, the high level education on science in America is weak during 1980s. Thus the purpose of Sagan’s essay is to state the importance of science and persuade public to pay more attention on science. His article is not only for common readers but also for government and the media. He provides some great ideas on arranging newspapers’ columns, on supporting education from general taxes either. He hopes that government and the media can do some changes in order to boom science.

What is special for in Sagan’s article is he always use his own experiences to express his views. These experiences are really common, even they happened during our daily life. When readers read his experiences from the article, they may put themselves in his shoes and resonate with Sagan. This is a good way to convince readers and to persuade.

In the video “Pale Blue Dot” based on Carl Sagan’s book”Pale Blue Dot”, we find we are living in the same home-earth. In the universe, our home is just a blue dot. It has meaning for us because we give the meanings for it. We discover the connection between the universe and it. We discover the connection between it and us. We find it interested and be curious about knowing those mysterious, think deeply, then become more interested in it. Sagan wants to tell us–these simple, basic steps are the components of science.

 

Work Cited: http://blackboard.stonybrook.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-2611048-dt-content-rid-10801508_1/courses/1134-WRT-102-SEC22-40032/Sagan.pdf

 

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s science!

In his essay, Carl Sagan talks about a meeting with his driver, Mr. William F. Buckley. He opened Sagan’s eyes to how little people knew about real science, as opposed to fake science. Unfortunately for him, the science he was presented on TV was all psuedoscience. The real science never reached him, nor did it reach millions of other Americans. Sagan goes on to say that it is dangerous to remain uninformed about certain scientific topics such as global warming, toxic and radioactive wastes, acid rain, etc. He believes that people are scared of the power that science will put into one’s hands, but he rejects this fear by noting that advances in medicine and agriculture has saved more lives than wars have killed, and other accomplishments that have improved society such as advances transportation, and communication. But just how bad is the problem? Apparently, the American 17 year students placed last in their knowledge of algebra, and third to last in their knowledge of chemistry. Sagan proposes that the problem isn’t because American students are stupid, they just have no incentive to work hard. He says that more money needs to be dedicated into providing adequate knowledge to American students. This would mean higher salaries for teachers, more scholarships, better equipment, including laboratory sciences into graduation requirements, etc. But due to the fact that kids in the United States have their eyes glued to the television screen, providing more educational shows would be the most effective way of  raising interest in science. In fact, through Sagan’s experiences, students are always curious about science, but the problem is that the older they get, the less question they ask in fear that asking a question will result in people thinking that they’re dumb. Sagan believes that the more scientifically educated our citizens are, the better our security is. What is a few weapons systems compared to an army of scientifically developed students who can think for themselves? And in response to Sagan’s dedication and ideas to raising interest in science, the video “Pale Blue Dot” was created to bring to life Sagan’s famous monologue. This video combined beautifully created animation and soothing music to promote and dramatize Sagan as his voice narrates the video.

 

Carl Sagan is a well known astronomer, astro-physicist, and host of the TV show, “Cosmos”. He wrote this essay to promote education, primarily science, to the public. He believes that the United States is poorly educated in numerous, if not all, subjects; that other countries such as South Korea have their students spend so much more time on studying than America does. He wants the attention of everyone: the government, the parents, the teachers, and most importantly, the students. He’s writing down so many different ways that the education system could do in order to provide more adequate education in science to children. This would require the help of the government to pump money into teaching and promoting science. But in order for this to be successful, the teachers and parents need to take action and educate the students and children of America. However, if the ones being taught cannot bring themselves to learn, then it’ll just be a waste of money. That’s why more interesting ways of promoting education such as television shows will be provided. Sagan brings up a very interesting point when he said that the “public understanding of science is more central to our national security than half a dozen strategic weapons system” on page eighteen. In other words, why have a only few computers with no one knowledgeable to operate them when you can have educated people making more of these computers and actually use them?

Reaction to Sagan’s “Why We Need to Understand Science”

Carl Sagan’s piece “Why We Need to Understand Science” reevaluates the lack of motivation for the sciences in America.  He compares the American education system to that of many other countries around the world and tries to find the reason as to why we are so far behind everyone else when it comes to the knowledge of our children in the areas of mathematics and science.  He thinks that things may often be too streamlined and watered down so that the average person can understand something, when really they should be kept the way they were so it forces us to go out and learn what exactly a report or discovery is talking about.  Additionally, this piece discusses the common fear that’s associated with a greater understanding of the fields of science and how the government involvement in such fields have affected the populations view of modern advances.  One last point that is made and seems to matter a great deal to Sagan is that there needs to be more encouragement on children and teenagers to be interested in science and that adults must not be so ignorant or proud when they’re asked a question to which they don’t have an answer to.  Somerfield’s short video which hits some of the major points of Sagan’s writings, overall is saying that we can’t forget that everything that happens to us, for us, by us, and against us, happens here on Earth.  That this is the place that is home to all of us, and that yes from millions of miles away it only appears to be a blue dot in a sea of dust, but to us it is something of far more worth and value.

Carl Sagan who was an astronomer, TV personality, noted author of many esteemed books, thinker, scientist, and professor at Cornell University, was also someone who had a brighter future in mind for America and the children in it.  His thoughts on how we as a country could greater succeed on the global scale were intuitive and clever.  It is clear when reading his piece “Why We Need to Understand Science” that he truly has a passion for the art of science and that he really feels that this passion should be and needs to be felt by all those going through the education system in America.  That a brighter future must begin with a spark of interest.  In this piece he not only describes the problem areas of why there is such a lack of interest in science by Americans, but also how we can change that negative thought process.  How teachers need to be more invigorating, parents need to be more assertive, textbooks need to be more interactive, and students need to be more mesmerized.  He writes this piece to the country as a whole, but also to every teacher, parent, student, scientist, politician, and person out there.  Sagan’s essay is responding to the poor results that the U.S. produces in tests when compared to other nations around the world, and to the fact that many of us think that we are well educated on a topic, but in reality we fall under a false consensus of knowing something since it has been so watered down for us.