Interview with Carl Sagan

(Ithaca, NY, July 2 1992). I had breakfast with Sagan one July morning in Ithaca, and interviewed him for a local literary newspaper (Bookpress). He later called my editor and said it was the best interview he'd ever given, and could he have a transcribed copy. We made this transcription for him. Bookpress didn't have the space to publish all of it, and I never could find anyone remotely interested in publishing it, so here it is in full text, for your enjoyment. I was a grad student, and learned a lot from this experience. I found him quite delightful, even though we disagreed on everything. Kavita Philip, 2011

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

KP:

I'd like to begin with some specific questions about postCold War politics, and go from there to broader questions of science and society. With the collapse of the former Soviet Union, do you envision a new era of scientific cooperation between the US and Russia? In particular, do you think the U.S. space program might benefit from increased access to Russian space research, and their facilities such as the space station?

CS:

Well, first of all, there are major areas in which former Soviet technology is in advance of our own. So the Mir space station is able to do today things that in the best of cases, and after spending $70 billion or something, the United States might be able to do a decade from now. Long duration space flight is an example. Soviet citizens have been continuously in orbit in the space environment for a full year. The American record is a few weeks. If you're interested in sending people to Mars, for example, you must spend a long time getting there. And so this is very a relevant experience. What's more, the Soviets are hungry for hard currency. There's the clear makings of a deal here. But there is an ideological objection from the United States. I'm not sure exactly why we were perfectly happy to accept the help of Nazi scientists after World War II! Why we would not be willing to accept the help of former Soviet scientists and engineers in a way that would save an enormous amount of money, I can't understand. It seems so foolish. And there are many other areas. Anyway, some move away from obdurate obstinance by this administration is beginning there are some indications of more cooperation in space with the former Soviets. And, while we're moving too slow, I think we're moving in the right direction. You've suggested elsewhere (in an interview with Ted Turner) that one of the primary benefits of the American space program has been 'spy satellites' military intelligence precludes unnecessary panicmongering, and therefore promotes peace, you argue. The U.S. no longer has much reason to view Russia as a military threat. Does this mean the end of the utility of spy satellites, and if so, might we expect a scalingdown of the US space program? Well, first of all, the reconnaissance satellites are not part of NASA. They're in a completely dark agency called the National Reconnaissance Office whose budget, in fact, is not to be

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public knowledge. So it's very difficult to talk of saving money when its a secret how much money we spend, and what on! Nevertheless it seems to me that its prudent, not just for the United States but for other reasons that it's possible to imagine, for the United States to retain state of the art reconnaissance and treatyverification satellites. Remember, there are right now over 50,000 nuclear weapons in the world, for all the talk of the end of the Cold War. Only a few of them are all that's necessary to annihilate any modern nation. It's important to know what's happening in the world. And there are other reasons, apart from nuclear war, why it may be good to have the capability. I think it should be more widely spread I think it's dangerous to have only one nation with this kind of capability. Hopefully one thing that can happen is that many nations maybe the United Nations, maybe the European Community, maybe Japan will start having such capability. In monitoring the environmental health of the planet In fact, here's an example: in monitoring compliance with environmental treaties; for example, treaties on chlorofluorocarbons. It would be very good to have a daily map of the earth in which you could see where there are chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere, and where there are not. That, it seems to me, is important for the health of everybody on earth. KP: On the subject of other nations developing advanced technology might new "evil empires" be invoked to justify continued military escalation and intervention, now that the "Soviet threat" no longer exists? For example, the 'threat' of 'third world' nations that seek to develop a nuclear bomb might be seen as the new justification for increased US militarism and intervention. Do you think we can expect a genuine decline in US militarism, or will we see continued military escalation to combat new "evil empires"? I view this in terms of selfmaintenance by established bureaucracies. One of the real dilemmas for a large bureaucracy is when the justification for its existence is threatened. All bureaucracies then invent new justifications. We see this repeatedly with military weapon systems: when the threat that they're designed to counter dissipates, very quickly inventive new reasons why you needed just this technology for some new threat you'd never thought of, that had never been mentioned before, come up. People are very ingenious you can always find such a reason which has at least a minimum satisfactory plausibility for politicians. A good example is the B2 bomber. What is its purpose, now that the Cold War is over? Its only purpose and even this was very close to specious at the height of the Cold War was that its job was to subsonically penetrate Soviet air space to find residual mobile missiles with nuclear warheads that had not already been destroyed by the submarine launch ballistic missiles, the silolaunch ballistic missiles, the tactical air nuclear weapons, the airlaunch cruise missiles, the sealaunch cruise missiles, the groundlaunch cruise missiles, and the supersonic heavy bombers. That was its function. Considerable skepticism was in order even then. Now, what is its justification? People at Northrop and Boeing are busily trying to invent a justification because there are jobs in question, stockholders will be unhappy, promotions are on the line. This is a microcosm a tensofbillionsofdollarsmicrocosm, but still 'micro' in this business of what's happening, on both sides. Soviet military people are trying to prevent the complete deterioration of their strategic forces by reminding their leaders that the United States is untrustworthy, that there may be future threats, and so on. One entertaining and telling development is that some of the people responsible for the Strategic Defense Initiative, Star Wars, have now decided that it is essential to be able to deflect or blow up asteroids in case they might hit the earth. This has all sorts of advantages from their point of view, including if you really want to smithereens an asteroid then you really need a weapon of unprecedented yield, maybe a hundred thousand megatons or something like that. And since there's no theoretical limit on the yield of a thermonuclear weapon, here is an endless opportunity to develop more nuclear weapons! "Lets find some justification, no matter what, and probably the politicians won't give it a second thought they've always bought everything we've said in the past, probably they'll do it again!"

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You raised the issue of funding, and the competition between different departments for it. Recently, Congress vetoed funds for the Superconducting Supercollider [SSC]; yet they are insisting that the Pentagon spend $800 million on developing the V22 Osprey combat aircraft. What are the priorities here? What ought they to be, in your opinion? How do we decide much spending is enough, in the following spheres: 1) military development, 2) militarycumscientific research, such as the space program, and, finally, 3) scientific research, such as the SSC? A cynical approach is that it is wholly irrelevant for us to set priorities on the basis of merit, that what counts is how much money you spend in the states of congressional leaders and influential members of congress, and that that's all that matters. That all this is really porkbarrel, especially now with the Cold War over. And it's a welfare program for the rich. The more influential, the more ability to influence key members of Congress, who then vote to support those who support them. There's no question that pork barrel politics is the major and corrupting influence in American political life especially with the expenditure of large amounts of money for technical purposes. In my view, the Department of Defense has a budget grossly in excess of legitimate need to defend the United States. Given the enormous pressures on the discretionary federal budget, that's where, quickly, we ought to start siphoning money to urgent social programs. And scientific research. But the cost of scientific research is trivial compared to what were talking about the savings and loan fiasco , compared to the cost of cleaning up toxic waste dumps, nuclear contamination, compared to the one trillion dollar cost of repairing decaying urban infrastructure. Scientific research, and even the unmanned and unwomanned part of the space program, costs trivial amounts of money compared to (a) what's spent in the Department of Defense, and (b) what is needed to address urgent issues in our national life. That makes a good transition to issues of science and social responsibility, not just national but international. You have cautioned that the use of modern technology brings dangers that we cannot afford to ignore, such as accidents like Chernobyl and Bhopal. Bhopal was caused, not because adequately sophisticated technology does not exist to prevent what happened there; rather, it happened because of the economic benefit that accrues to multinational companies when they operate chemical plants in thirdworld countries which offer cheap labour and lax industrial safety laws. In addition to talking about technological fixes for technical problems, therefore, isn't it necessary to address issues of social responsibility in the context of global political and economic inequities? You have called for more public control of science, saying "we just have to get our technology in hand." Will public control over industrial and military technology solve such problems?

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Well, several questions there. Why are the labor laws so lax in Bhopal? Is this something that Union Carbide forced on the Indian legislature, or is this something that India on its own decided that it wanted to do in order to attract foreign capital? If the laws had been tougher, if India had had more highly trained experts watching over because after all there's clearly some degree of danger then maybe it wouldn't have happened. I'm not trying to, at all, let Union Carbide off the hook. But I want to stress that India's not a passive player in this. There are things that India could have done that she didn't. This is a general problem. There is an official of the World Bank, an economist, whose internal memoranda were leaked, in which he argued that there were many places in the world that were "insufficiently polluted;" that many places did not have their fair share of pollution and by equity we ought to pollute these parts of the world before we pollute the industrialized north some more. As far as I can tell this was a serious argument, although he now claims it was just intended to be provocative which it certainly was!

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Or take the general NorthSouth question on global environmental issues. For example, if I remember correctly, India is not a signatory of the Montreal Protocol. Why not? What is the argument for India not to sign this protocol? After all, it's protecting the ozone layer, which in turn protects us humans and the ecosphere, or biosphere, against deadly ultraviolet light from the sun. Why is India reluctant? All the major industrial nations have signed. India and China have not. What is the reason? The argument goes: "Look, this is a problem of the industrialized nations. Chlorofluorocarbons and refrigerators and air conditioners were invented by Germans and Americans. The principal economic benefits have gone to the industrialized nations. Now, just when we're getting going, in a country which is often warm, where refrigeration is necessary to get food to distant hungry people, where people are uncomfortable in hot summers the efficiency of national life would increase if there were more air conditioning then these nations from the industrialized North come and say: 'Oh, there's a new issue that you have to pay attention to, even though we didn't. And you have to stop making more CFCs.'" Now, This is not a wholly foolish point of view. On the other hand, it's not a wholly sensible one either, since we are talking about a very serious issue to the planet. The obvious solution to these kinds of problems is for those nations with more advanced technology, that have already benefited from the technology that has endangered us, to help the developing countries with alternative technologies that serve their purpose and do not wreck the global environment. That's obviously what should be done. Let me give you another example. China has the second largest coal reserves on the planet. China's in the process of some exponential industrialization. Of course, China wants to use its coal. The technology is available, it's inexpensive, a fossil fuel sitting there right within its borders, its the most natural thing to do. Then representatives of former colonial nations come to China and say "Oh, this is dreadful, you're increasing the greenhouse effect, you're going to affect Chinese forests, and Chinese agriculture, and rising sea levels, and inundate Chinese cities. We know, we did just the same thing. But please don't do as we did, do as we say." Now, this is a somewhat hollow appeal if it's not accompanied by: "And by the way, we have a wonderful alternative technology which we will make available to you, we will subsidize, we will help you build factories to generate this technology which serves your industrialization needs (or most of them) and does not increase the greenhouse effect." Then the United States or Britain or Japan would have reason to be listened to in China. But otherwise it's much more difficult. On the other hand, if China goes through steep industrialization, burning coal, then there's no question it will seriously affect the climate of the planet, and China. So it seems to me there's plenty of responsibility, both on the developed and developing world, on these sorts of issues. I think there's a clear moral responsibility for those who develop the dangerous technology to help prevent its most severe consequences. And there's a clear responsibility for developing countries, even though there's some injustice compared to the ways of the predecessors, to pay attention to the newly understood global climatic consequences. KP: CS: To follow up on that does this responsibility lie, perhaps, at two levels, 1) at the level of national governments, who need to agree not to industrialize too much, and the other I wasn't saying don't industrialize too much, I was saying industrialize in the right way; industrialize in the environmentally responsible way. I was not suggesting I mean that would truly be unfair "Now we've industrialized, we've raised the standard of living in our country, and we want you people to be locked forever in poverty." That would be outrageous. It would be absolutely understandable for people in developing countries to consider that outrageous. And at a second level, that of common people in both societies Do we have to talk about changes in consumption patterns, changes in lifestyles, or do you think we can maintain this standard of living, that we have in the industrialized west today? Well, if we substitute the stillimperfect alternative HCFs for CFCs, does anyone give up an affluent lifestyle? No. It costs slightly more, but when its all amortized, it'll be a negligible blip in the national economy. What about alternatives to the burning of fossil fuels? First of

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all, much higher efficiency in the burning of fossil fuels saves money. After all, if you can get more miles out of a gallon of gasoline then you're saving money, and it helps, not hurts, the economy. Of course there's some startup cost to develop the technology which burns the fossil fuel more efficiently, but in the long run you save money this way. So it doesn't change the standards of living. And then, imagine you were able to move away from the fossil fuel economies; suppose you had wind turbine farms. The US exports technology to Holland we're selling the Dutch windmills (coals to Newcastle!) once that's up and running, maintenance is a small cost. The wind blows forever you save money. Solar electricity the sun keeps shining; it'll shine at least for another five billion years. Its free! Solar electric technology is very close to maintenance free once the initial cost is done, it's all gravy thereafter you can save money. So the idea that we must not change our lifestyle because people will be forced to go to a bicycleandtweedsuit standard of living which horrifies many yuppies is just false. And I think it betrays a failure of the technological imagination. KP: In your forthcoming book you describe a personal quest for an understanding of the meaning of human existence. You suggest that we come closer to answering fundamental questions such as "Who are we?" and "Why are we here?" only through a richer understanding of our place in nature. You and Ann Druyan then, with admirable clarity, elegance, and humour, take the lay reader through decades of biological research. Could you explain, for a prospective reader of your book, why you think an understanding of things like evolution and animal behavior is valuable, not just in itself, but in the context of those larger questions? Well, I think it's a forlorn hope to try to understand ourselves without understanding where we came from; without understanding who our antecedents were; without understanding why we have the predilections and the propensities that we do. And since the human species is only a few hundred thousand years old on an earth that's a few billion years old, we've been around for only 1/10, 1000th of the history of the earth, of the history of life. So that means that we are extremely new. But we have antecedents we have ancestors. In part, we must be the way we are because of who our ancestors were, what their evolution was like, what they had to adapt to, and the nature of this very process. So, part of the answer to your question is: "How can we solve our problems if we don't know who we are? If we don't know not just what we pretend, not just what we wish we were, not just the myths and fantasies that all cultures invent about who we are and where we came from but the actual reality?" Every now and then we're amazed that people are capable of doing something monstrous; and every now and then were amazed that people are capable of doing something heroic, selfsacrificing. They both amaze us and yet it constantly happens all through history. If we wish to design a society that brings out the best in us, shouldn't we know what we're capable of? And what we're capable of has a lot to do with where we came from. So that's at least part of it. This book was a 12year effort and it's just the first step. But it's an attempt by us to understand something of how we humans got into the present mess, which is really serious, and to ask the question: can we get out? And if so, how to get out. But to do that we really have to look ourselves squarely in the mirror. That's part of what our goal is, in the project of which Shadows is the first step. KP: Would you say, then, that we need to emphasize the importance of science education not just because we want to produce more scientists, but because this can play an essential part in the development of every human's consciousness? Absolutely. I think we're all born scientists. In effect, a lot of the way to convince young students that science isn't for them: "It's too difficult, it's too boring, go do something else, push paper on Wall Street." And this is foolish. For one thing, science is our birthright. Every human culture has asked deep questions about origins, and we've invented all sorts of stories and now many of those issues of origins are within our grasp. I think you'd have to be made

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out of wood not to wonder where humans came from, where life comes from, where the earth comes from. Secondly, as you point out, we have an increasingly global society certainly American society based on science and technology, and yet arrange things so that nobody understands science and technology. It's a clear prescription for disaster. And I'm not just talking about producing scientists and engineers, but producing knowledgeable citizens who can make intelligent decisions on how science and technology ought to be applied. Who makes these decisions? How many members of Congress have any background at all in science and technology? How does it enter into our decisions about who to vote for? It hardly does at all. And yet every day decisions involving science and technology are made that determine, prefigure, our future. This is just foolishness it is surrendering the democratic process to a few technocrats. KP: So then, who do you see yourself as writing for? What kind of audience do you have in mind while you write? What effect would you like your books to have on the American public highschool students, scientists, Washington policymakers, etc.? Well, we hope that lots of people will read it. We've tried to make it accessible to people with no background in science, and at the same time not talk down to the reader. Its a delicate line to walk. I hope we've done reasonably well. Yes, I hope that policy makers will read it; but I wouldn't mind in the least if no policy makers read it as long as lots of citizens read it. You've talked about origins, and the meaning of life, and the role of science in understanding these. Do you think, then, that science ought to occupy the social and moral position that religion once did? Well, I don't see how science can occupy the moral role of religion. It can teach us skepticism. It can teach us what constitutes adequate evidence for belief. But it can't tell us what to do. It can't convert an 'is' into an 'ought.' This has traditionally been the role of religion, but all sorts of religions counsel all sorts of different behavior, that clearly contradict each other so the key question is, how do you choose which religion to follow since there are so many of them? and they all say in many cases different things, for example in a religious war, surely the people on the two sides are saying different things, otherwise there would not be a religious war. So this comes to a deeper question, which is, how do we decide what to do? How do we decide what is wrong and what is ethical? Might it be that some of the precepts of the past that may have worked well are less wrong today? Or could it be that the precepts of two, three, four thousand years ago are perfectly good today despite the massive changes in the society and demographics and technology and so on? I think it's a good question to ask how do we decide what the rules are that we should obey. I think yes, science is essential for everybody to know. It does approach some of the mythic aspects or religion that kind of satisfaction. But on the other hand it doesn't it's not very satisfying to pray to the law of gravity, for example. And people have an understandable need, especially in times of distress or deprivation, to believe that there is a powerful figure that can save you from the injustice you have been deposited into. Now whether that is truly helpful, or just prevents you from doing something to help yourself, is a different issue. But in any case there's no question that science cannot provide that kind of reassurance. On the other hand, to the extent that you can improve your standard of living and the circumstances of your nation by understanding science, science might make it less necessary to feel that degree of despair. I'd like to go a little further into your efforts to disseminate scientific ideas. You've said about science fiction that "one of the great benefits of science fiction is that it can convey bits and pieces, hints and phrases, of knowledge unknown or inaccessible to the reader." Isn't there a danger that scattered, suggestive bits of information mystify rather than elucidate? Produce awe and wonder at the expense of clarity and insight? Could a similar charge perhaps be

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leveled at a television series like Cosmos that, by giving snippets of scientific information mixed up with snippets of the history of western civilization, along with artists' renditions and computer simulations of outer space, the effect produced is one of religious awe rather than scientific curiosity? CS: We received many thousands of letters from viewers of Cosmos. I certainly have not read them all, and it's obvious, but I'm sorry, I certainly couldn't answer them all. But that is a way to understand peoples' response to Cosmos . The most common response, often from women, was something like this: "When I was a child I was interested in science. But in school they taught me that I was too stupid. That it was beyond me; that I just didn't have the intellectual capability for it. So I've gone and done something else. In watching Cosmos I was amazed to find that I understood what you were saying. You stimulated that childhood ambition to science that I though I had lost forever. I'm now going back to college," or, "I'm now reading textbooks; I've decided I'm not going to live my life without science." There are literally hundreds of professional scientists, young ones, in the world today who decided to become scientists from watching Cosmos . I know this from meeting or being written to by them. So my answer to your question is: "No, I don't think that it has any negative influence. I think people who had written off science, or considered science had written them off, were gathered back into the fold by Cosmos. Of course it's not a course in Physics or Astronomy or Biology or Chemistry or any of those things; it's not pretending to be. But it does pretend to connect the findings of science with deep human aspirations and questions and convey not just some of the content of science but also some of the methods. One of the things that we tried to stress in the episode on Johannes Kepler was the importance of skepticism, and of believing the data, even if they fail to conform to your deepest hopes. If Cosmos did nothing but teach a little scientific skepticism, as we did with astrology, with UFOs, with several other areas of pseudoscience, I'd be quite happy. Cosmos was successful beyond anybody's wildest dreams and the fact that it's been seen in well over 60 countries and well over 400 million people worldwide must say something about peoples' hunger to learn science, and how poorly the schools and mass media are doing in providing science at a level that people can find interesting. I'd like to come back to the scientific method in a bit. I know that, in addition to your writing, you and your wife, Ann Druyan, have been involved in a lot of activism. Could you talk about some of the activism you've been engaged in? Well, activism really means speaking with more than your mouth. And I consider writing activism also. It's a strange word. What is its opposite, 'passivism?' Who would like to be called someone who's passive on the major issues? I think if you care about any of the major issues of the day enough to talk about it to others then you are an activist. But I know what you mean. Well, in the '80s while there were many issues to be worried about including the cult of greed fostered by Reagan administration the clearest danger was the threat of nuclear war. And so I spent a lot of my time much more than I cared to on that issue, trying to organize some of the debate on Star Wars; work on nuclear winter, by far the most dangerous consequence of nuclear war; on opposing US underground nuclear testing, especially in the face of a voluntary Soviet moratorium. And my point of view (and I think I can speak for Annie, although she often has much better reasons than I do) is that it's just something you do as a citizen. It's your responsibility, if you can. Its a democracy after all, and the last thing you want to do is leave it to the leaders, especially leaders as incompetent as we've had in the recent past. And so it's just a thing I do for my children my grandchildren, for my neighbors; and maybe some will consider I was misguided. But I hope even such people will recognize that my motives were to preserve all of us. I'm pleased with how it has turned out. And there are other issues now that we're also involved in, the global environment is clearly one on the same sort of grounds: it's the most serious long term threat to the most people. Annie and I got arrested several times at the Nevada nuclear test site. We organized three of the largest acts of nonviolent civil disobedience against US nuclear testing. It was a wonderful

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experience. and a great opportunity to meet all sorts of people, especially physicians who were strongly motivated on that issue. And these days one of the things that Annie and I are doing is a surprisingly successful attempt to bring scientists and major religious leaders together on environmental questions; and that's been going really quite well. KP: On that last project: Do you find no difficulty in dealing with contradictions between scientific and religious worldviews? What is the relationship between the scientists and religious leaders philosophically and ideologically that you've worked with? Well, we have deep differences, which I've tried to not elide over. I explain that I'm deeply skeptical about all claims of revealed religion, and that claims of knowledge have to be subjected to the same standards of skeptical scrutiny in religion as anywhere else; but that we all inhabit the same environment, and the same planet, and have just the same goals for preserving it for future generations. And we have no difficulty at all. Sometimes there's problems with language, but we manage to work that out. To get back to your 'activism': I've heard that you've spoken at prochoice rallies. Would you summarize your position on abortion? Annie and I wrote an article on abortion for Parade magazine which had a 900number that you could call in and express your opinions. 300,000 people called in. And you have to pay a few dollars to make the call. So that's an indication of how volatile and impassioned the issue is. Our approach is to ask is there such a thing as a middle ground? On the one hand you might argue that it's nonsense to claim that a baby, one day before its born, has no claims to life but the next day, once it's out of the uterus, then it has all sorts of rights. It's the same baby, what happened in that day? On the other hand it is equally specious to claim that a fertilized egg or an embryo or foetus in the first two or three months of pregnancy is a human being. Clearly it's not. What defines us is our higher brain functions; and nothing like those higher brain functions are up and running at two or three months in fact, you could argue maybe even 4 or 5 months. Therefore we explore the possibility that there is some compromise. This, needless to say, offends the partisans of both extremes. But I think its the only satisfactory resolution The Supreme Court's touchstone is viability. But 'viability' is a technologically dependent state and it cannot be that it's alright to kill a foetus as long as we don't have the technology to preserve it , and as soon as we do have the technology to preserve it out of the womb, then it's a moral crime. That just does not make sense. And so I think its possible that, in the long term, the uneasy compromise will have to with when a foetus develops characteristically human capabilities. If we use intelligence or neocortical development as a touchstone, along with a ban on postfirst trimester abortions, you have suggested, should go a righttolife law for animals of equivalent intelligence, such as dolphins and chimps. Yet in Shadows , you make numerous references to experiments on animals (such as one in which rhesus monkeys were rewarded for inflicting electric shocks on other monkeys) without commenting on the ethical choices involved in conducting such experiments. Well, we do we say that our own moral sympathies do not lie with the scientists but we don't out and out condemn them. Would you develop the tension between two positions here: one that supports equal rights for animals and people, and the other that sees animal experiments as essential for 'scientific progress'? Yes. Yes, there's no question that there is a tension. The thing to think about is: What if it were possible to have a viable cross between a human and a chimp? Its not that they have 48 chromosomes and we have 46 it could've been that we both had 46, or 48. Then does that offspring have all human rights? Half of human rights? How do we decide? It's astonishing that they have more than 99% of their active genes identical to us. Identical! So, is there a sharp boundary between whatever it is that makes us worthy of special legal protection, and

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chimps, who are our closest biological relatives And suppose that the genetic difference between you and me is ten times less than the genetic difference between me and the chimp. Is that factor of ten everything that counts as far as legal protection goes? What if it were not a factor of ten what if were a factor of five? Of two? Where is the point when the protection we ordinarily extend to humans claim we do, obviously very imperfectly applies to other animals? And now put another way: since we are to some extent related to animals we're all kin is it true that even the most humble of animals don't deserve some degree of protection? Is that degree of protection proportional to its general similarity to us? And why are we the touchstone? The more like us the better? It's so characteristically chauvinistic to make such a definition! I don't claim to have the answers to this. But these are some of the ways I would approach this question. On the animal experimentation issue: on the one hand, there is needless cruelty and if it's truly needless, then let's not do it. On the other hand, there are essential things we need to learn about ourselves, essential cures to desperately bad human illnesses, thousands millions of babies saved because of animal experiments. I would not want to be the one who would tell the parents of a sick baby that I am so opposed to animal experiments that I happy to condemn their baby to death. You have to be very sure before you can make such judgments and I am by no means sure enough to make such a judgment. As on the abortion issue. There is a difficult compromise that has to be made, and both extremes are worried about the slippery slope that the moment you move one micron away, off the ideological position, you will then effortlessly slide all the way to the hateful opposing point of view. And yet, as in many human interactions, the middle ground is what you have to find. KP: CS: Are cows, sheep, goats, and chicken 'similar enough' to us so that we ought not to eat them? Are rutabaga, broccoli, carrots and cabbages? How would you decide? We humans have been hunting animals for as long as we've been on the earth. The defining phrase that anthropologists use for humans in a state before civilization is 'huntergatherers;' 'hunterforagers.' Our interest in meat goes very deep. And of course there have been prominent reactions to it (India is an obvious example), often tied to high religious principles. But, you know, there may even be physiological reasons some people want to eat meat. On the other hand, what do the cows, sheep and goats have to say about it? Is it right to raise them in concentration camps for animals so that humans can eat them vast numbers, under terrible conditions? It's another important issue. Are you vegetarian? No, I'm not. To go back to some of the issues you raised about the scientific method In Cosmos, commenting on the threat of nuclear war that we faced, you said: "we accepted the products of science; we rejected its methods" What is 'the scientific method?' Is it universal, transcending historical, cultural and ethnic divisions ? I know that there are all sorts of people who think that science merely is a tool of those in power and that it'll always be used to justify the status quo and invent fancy reasons. And there's no question that science does that scientists are human beings; they can be bribed and cajoled just like everybody else, they grow up in a culture and accept its assumptions uncritically as children. It's hard to shake loose of it afterwards, of course, how could we imagine otherwise? But at the same time, science, I claim, has some fundamentally powerful methods attached to it more powerful than any other field that alleges a claim to knowledge. And the way I look at it, it represents a delicate balance between a heroic openness to all ideas and possibilities and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. Some people are comfortable with one half; some people are comfortable with the other half. And some scientists for example are happy to have their whole careers in finding out what's wrong, in emphasizing what's wrong with the ideas of others. Newton made the

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famous remark, "If I've accomplished anything it's by standing on the shoulders of giants." I have a physicist friend in the skeptical tradition whose self evaluation is: "If I've accomplished anything it's by peering over the shoulders of dwarfs." A very hostile and arrogant approach, but still, it's an essential part of science: the rigor, the freedom to criticize, the nominal ethic of being willing to surrender your most deeply held opinions if the facts warrant. That is, to my mind, the key aspect of science. And even if it's imperfectly applied Max Planck spoke a generation before physicists were willing to accept quantum mechanics even though it explained aspects of the world that nobody could explain otherwise. There is in scientists, as in everybody else, a conservative streak, an unwillingness to shake the foundations. Of course it's part of human nature. But science more than any other field is willing to make those fundamental reexaminations and that is absolutely without a doubt part of the reason for its success. So it is not absolute; it is sometimes honored more in the breach than in the observance; but it works. And I don't know of any other claim to knowledge besides the scientific method. To the extent possible, you want your results to be reproduced you want to encourage debate, you want to have substantive issues on which you can perform an experiment to test out whether it is valid or invalid. And if the test fails you are supposed to be willing to abandon your idea. And that's very useful because you don't want to clutter up your mind with all sorts of erroneous ideas. It's the same approach we use when we're buying a used car. Nobody says, "Don't look under the hood, the salesman looks nice, and lets not be too Cartesian." You would of course look under the hood because used cars are sometimes not what they seem, because salesmen sometimes lie cheat and steal. Because humans are fallible. That's just the reason why we must be prepared that the truth may come from some bizarre direction, and at the same time be prepared that things that seem obviously true in fact are not. It's a challenge. KP: There are those who are using radical skepticism to critique the 'scientific method.' I'm thinking of feminist philosophers, such as Sandra Harding, Donna Haraway, and others. Sandra Harding suggests that "women and men cannot understand or explain the world we live in or the real choices we have as long as the sciences describe the world primarily from the perspectives of the lives of the dominant groups." What implications does this have for your belief in the universality of science, and the 'scientific method'? First of all, please apply this to quantum mechanics for me. What does "the lives of dominate groups" have to do with quantum mechanics? Or any other areas of physics or mathematics? Well, Andrew Pickering, in Constructing Quarks, a history of elementary particle physics, argues that scientific debates in particle physics were resolved based on more than just 'the facts' that "cultural" aspects of the different groups of scientists, their access to power, to funding, determined the outcome Oh, of course, but that's not true to the scientific ideal, that's just human nature. But would we be closer to the truth if we abandoned the scientific ideal? Obviously not. There's a tension between the fallibilities and cupidities of human beings and this grand, sometimes emotionally difficult to apply, counsel of the scientific method. But the fact that sometimes humans are fallible doesn't say anything about the validity of the scientific method. But feminists argue from 'partial perspectives' for 'situated knowledges' (Donna Haraway's terms). Sandra Harding has argued that the very notion of objectivity needs to be examined that we need to talk about objectivity that's contextualized, not decontextualized. So knowledge from the perspective of women's lives, or other marginal groups I don't understand. I mean, do an experiment in elementary physics. Tell me how women get different results, in the laboratory , than men, in the same experiment.

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Evelyn Keller argues that Barbara McClintock discovered the genetic transposition in corn because her approach to the subject was radically different from men's. The males were obsessed with nuclear genes, and she provided the first good evidence for cytoplasmic genes. A very important discovery. How is that connected with her being a woman? Suppose she were a member of some other oppressed group. Would we then say, "Oh, this is a typical Native American insight"? This argument, I think, is fundamentally tangential to how science goes. If you're now saying, let's look at claims of social science take an example we talked about in Shadows, this idea of the heroic sperm and the passive egg, which is a view so natural for male scientists. The sperms are 'fighting' each other to get to the egg, the egg is sitting there, hoping for a handsome suitor and that's what it's about. And even when it was found in some species that the egg is calling to the sperm, that it's sending out all sorts of chemical messages, that the sperm is loaded with all sorts of odor sensors, very similar to those in the human nose, that the egg casts out a line to grab the sperm, and reels it in, that the sperm are in many cases bumbling, incompetent, and it's the eggs doing all the hard work. Now that is a perspective, even when the data supported it, that many men somehow didn't see. The words did not come out to describe reality that their own experiments were seeing. It took women to grab them by the collar and say, "Hey now, just a minute, you're not saying this in the right way." So in that sense, of course there are gender perspectives. It's not that there's an experiment that was only done because that women and men had a different experiment to look at how the eggs go to the sperms, or something like that. Where our selfinterests are involved, of course we make mistakes, of course we can be misled, fool ourselves. And you can see that most easily in all the scientists who provide weapons for nations of the most diverse ideological stripes, everyone of them convinced that he or she is doing the right thing. All those people who went to their governments in 1939 and '40 saying, "we must develop nuclear weapons before the 'whatever' do" the Americans because of the Nazis, the Soviets because of the Americans, the Japanese, there was even a call to make Yugoslavian nuclear weapons. Everybody suddenly saw that anybody else having nuclear weapons was a danger; 'our nation,' who of course is morally beyond criticism, should have nuclear weapons first. We're humans; we grow up in societies, we're affected by nationalism, we're a sex were born into and have a prejudice involving that sex, likewise ethnic groups and so on. That's our nature. It's important to understand that; if we understand it we can do something about it. But none of this, it seems to me, calls into question the skeptical tradition of science.

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So the idea you're suggesting is that scientific experiments give us 'data;' we, then, as human beings, as members of ethnic groups, genders, couch them in metaphors. These metaphors are informed by who we are, where we stand, but Yes, what feels right, what makes sense to us and there's all kinds of prejudice that comes in at that point. But, because science is so open to debate as women who saw that failure in the male egg/sperm metaphors, wrote papers, and talked to the people in the laboratories, and now you can see a transition in the literature. The men are finally paying attention. And it's only a few years ago, maybe a decade, that the data themselves were obtained. It doesn't seem to me a disaster. It's just that humans are fallible. Who figured otherwise? So, language, metaphor, and prejudice are just an overlay that we impose on scientific fact? Yes. Of course, the design of experiments can involve prejudices, especially in the social sciences. There's no question about that.

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To give you an example from my own experience: in the first IQ test that I took, there were sketches of objects, and you had to choose, from a list, what they were. One of them was a torus, and the correct answer was: 'a napkin ring.' I was a poor kid in Brooklyn; I had never seen napkin rings; I got that one wrong. Now, was that a failure of us kids who had never seen napkin rings, or a failure of those who designed the test? Was there something wrong with the way the question was asked, reflecting the prejudice of those who designed the test? I wouldn't say conscious prejudice. That's a flawed question. Racist and other assumptions in IQ tests are now well known. I doubt that the designers intended consciously to foist such erroneous data on the public. They've certainly been embarrassed by the flaws in the test. They couldn't help themselves they grew up in a racist society, the biased questions seemed reasonable to them. How do we approach this question? We point out the deficiencies. And then, they change. I by no means hold any brief for IQ tests as an infallible judge of intelligence. They have become less parochial because of that criticism. That kind of criticism is what science is about. KP: Could we pursue the idea of 'difference' a little more, with reference to your own writing? Your writing is part of what you characterize as a search for our common origins. In a suggestive episode of Cosmos, you remarked that if an extraterrestrial were to visit Earth, it would be struck more by the similarities between cultures than by the differences. You express hope for peace, in your latest work, Shadows, because you feel that we are gradually growing towards being an 'intercommunicating, planetary species.' In this vision of unity and peace, what role do the real differences between cultures play? Or do you believe that once we get to that stage, there will be no really significant differences between cultures/ ethnic groups/ political worldviews ? I think it would be a disaster if we put all our eggs in one cultural basket. Not from any sense of ethnic pride that many people have in their diverse cultures. But again, because of human fallibility. It is stupid for us to kill off the remaining huntergatherers because they have important insights into not just where we came from and who we are, but because there may be clues to how we could arrange our societies in the future. I don't say that a huntergatherer lifestyle is possible on a planet with 6 billion people. But if we spent 99.9% of our history in such a state it's fantastically stupid to lose access to that information we need it. Never mind if you didn't have a compassionate bone in your body for hunter gatherers. For selfish reasons you ought to preserve them. And likewise for the diversity of cultural traditions on the planet. We don't know which of those is useful and important. But whether it is useful and important for a hollowly technical future society or not, it provides important data on who we are. And then beyond that there's the obvious point that people enjoy their cultures and value them. And there's something atrocious about saying, "I'm sorry your culture doesn't produce nuclear weapons well enough, and therefore you must adopt mine. Under threat of extermination." Or whatever this has been the trend of western culture. You can see it clearly in the case of the case of the Conquistadores and Aztec Mexico. Aztec civilization just collapsed they had better calendars, but the Spanish had better weapons. So that very rich culture, with all its powers and glories, is gone. And all sorts of questions that we might have asked about it, all sorts of insights into ourselves that we might've gotten from that society, are unavailable. A few scholars debate over why this or that happened. There is a tension, as there is in all of these difficult issues you've raised, between making a global community that works and preserving a large number of cultures that do not work for that goal in society. There must be a compromise, there must be a way to establish a global society that works, and still preserve, on the local level, ethnic diversity. That's not impossible. There's nothing there that is out of the question. You can see it , for example, in Japan, where the businessperson comes home and takes off the western suit and puts on a kimono, and steps into a seventeenth century setting. Not

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everybody can do that. If you're poor its much more difficult to do that than if you're rich. But you can see an attempt to have the two approaches coexist. And there's no reason why we can't do that especially if we make serious attempts to do it. What's more the degree of ethnic violence in the world suggests that it's important for us to figure out a way to preserve ethnic diversity and still have a global society. I don't see any fundamental objection there it does mean that you cant be a cultural fundamentalist and say that the global society is simply incompatible with diversity. I simply refuse to accept that. I mean, you can say that but you will be washed over. And at the same time you cannot say that these ethnic groups are irrelevant and therefore should be allowed to wither away. Both of those are egregious points of view. Both of those it seems to me are impossible to maintain. In a realistic world we have to have a compromise.