1. The Most Precious Thing

Who is someone who is widely read?

Someone who has invested a lot of time in reading about a subject.

A precious facet of your inner life

Something that is precious to you deep down inside

Society allows mainly pretense and confusion to trickle through when it comes to science. It doesn't know how to distinguish what?

real science from the cheap imitation

Authoritatively describe

Describe with authority

Skepticism does not ________ well.

sell

Why is it so easy to believe in what we see through popular culture?

because it the most widely available and accessible source of information

What is Gresham's Law?

bservation in economics that "bad money drives out good" as time passes.At the core of Gresham's law is the concept of good money (money which is undervalued or money that is more stable in value) versus bad money (money which is overvalued or loses value rapidly). The law holds that bad money drives out good money in circulation.

Every generation worries that educational standards are ____________.

decaying

Why is it that the consequences of scientific illiteracy far more dangerous in out time than in the past?

It's perilous for us to remain ignorant about global warming, ozone depletion, air pollution, toxic and radioactive wastes, acid rain, topsoil erosion, tropical deforestation, exponential population growth.Jobs and wages depend on science and technology. If our nation can't manufacture, at high quality and low price, products people want to buy, then industries will continue to drift away and transfer a little more prosperity to other parts of the world. Consider the social ramifications of fission and fusion power, supercomputers, data "highways," abortion, radon, massive reductions in strategic weapons, addiction, government eavesdropping on the lives of its citizens, high-resolution TV, airline and airport safety, fetal tissue transplants, health costs, food additives, drugs to ameliorate mania or depression or schizophrenia, animal rights, superconductivity, morning-after pills, alleged hereditary antisocial predispositions, space stations, going to Mars, finding cures for AIDS and cancer.

There's not very many members of U.S. Congress who has a background in ____________

science

The last scientifically literate president may have been who?

Thomas Jefferson

Who is Hippocrates of Cos?

He is the father of medicine. He is still remembered 2,500 years later for the Hippocratic Oath. He is chiefly celebrated because of his efforts to bring medicine out of the pall of superstition and into the light of science. Hippocrates introduced elements of the scientific method. He urged careful and meticulous observation. "Leave nothing to chance. Overlook nothing Combine contradictory observations. Allow yourself enough time."He stressed honesty. He was willing to admit the limitations of the physician's knowledge.

Instead of acknowledging that in many areas we are ignorant, we have tended to say what?

that things like the universe is ineffable. A God of the Gaps is assigned responsibility for what we yet do not understand.

As knowledge of medicine improved since the fourth century B.C., there was more and more that we understood and less and less that had to be attributed to what?

divine intervention

what has happened because of scientific advances in medicine?

Deaths in child birth and infant mortality have decreased, lifetimes have lengthened, and medicine has improved the quality of life for billions of us all over the planet.Diseases that once tragically carried off countless infants and children have been progressively mitigated and cured by science—through the discovery of the microbial world, via the insight that physicians and midwives should wash their hands and sterilize their instruments, through nutrition, public health and sanitation measures, antibiotics, drugs, vaccines, the uncovering of the molecular structure of DNA, molecular biology, and now gene therapy.Smallpox has been wiped out worldwide. The area of our planet infested with malaria-carrying mosquitoes has dramatically shrunk. The number of years a child diagnosed with leukemia can expect to live has been increasing progressively, year by year.

There is still a religion, Christian science, that denies what?

the germ theory of disease; if prayer fails, the faithful would rather see their children die than give them antibiotics.

What was the life expectancy in the past?

In hunter-gatherer, pre-agricultural times, the human life expectancy was about 20 to 30 years. That's also what it was in Western Europe in Late Roman and in Medieval times. It didn't rise to 40 years until around the year 1870. It reached 50 in 1915, 60 in 1930, 70 in 1955, and is today approaching 80 (a little more for women, a little less for men).

What is the reason of the increase in life expectancy?

The germ theory of disease, public health measures, medicines and medical technology.

The most precious thing then that science has been able to give us is what?

the gift of life. Science has given us longevity.

What is the bad side to the double edged sword of science?

The development of nuclear weapons. The atrocious cruelties of Nazi doctors. Our technology has produced thalidomide, CFC's, Agent Orange, Nerve Gas, Pollution of air and water, species extinctions, and industries so powerful they can ruin the climate of the planet. Half the scientists on the planet work at least part time for the military.The technological perils that science serves up, its implicit challenge to received wisdom, and its perceived difficulty, are all reasons for some people to mistrust and avoid it.

Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the ______ in history.*

wars

Does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits? Why?

I don't think so. Because, like Carl, I think it is better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. It's a better attitude for long-term survival and gives us more leverage on our future. If our naive self-confidence is a little undermined in the process, it's not such as loss. It should be welcomed as a maturing and character-building experience.

How does superstition and pseudoscience keep getting in the way of the truth?

They provide easy answers, dodge skeptical scrutiny, and cheapen the experience, making us routine and comfortable practitioners as well as victims of credulity.

Pseudoscience purports to use methods and findings of science, but this is not true because why?

because they are based on insufficient evidence or because they ignore clues that point the other way.The standards of argument, what passes for evidence, are much more relaxed.

Why is pseudoscience easier to contrive than science?

because distracting confrontations with reality—where we cannot control the outcome of the comparison—are more readily avoided.

How does pseudoscience speak to powerful emotional needs that science often leaves unfulfilled?

People try various belief systems on for size to find answers to things we don't understand and they are desperate enough, they are all too willing to abandon what may be perceived as the heavy burden of skepticism. Pseudoscience caters to fantasies about personal powers we lack and long for (like those attributed to comic book superheroes today, and earlier, to the gods). In some of its manifestations, it offers satisfaction of spiritual hungers, cures for disease, promises that death is not the end. It reassures us of our cosmic centrality and importance. It vouchsafes that we are hooked up with, tied to, the Universe.*At the heart of some pseudoscience (and some religion also, New Age and Old) is the idea that wishing makes it so. How satisfying it would be, as in folklore and children's stories, to fulfill our heart's desire just by wishing. How seductive this notion is, especially when compared with the hard work and good luck usually required to achieve our hopes.

If you've never head of science (to say nothing of how it works), you can hardly be aware you're embracing ____________________. Instead, what are you doing?

pseudoscience/you are, instead, simply thinking in one of the ways that humans always have.

something 'speaks to' something meaning

to show that something exists or that something is true

'drummed into' meaning

to force (something) to be learned by (someone) by repeating it over and over again

Case history

A person's case history is the record of past events or problems that have affected them, especially their medical history

What is the worlwide TM organization?

For a fee they promise through meditation to be able to walk you through walls, to make you invisible, to enable you to fly. By thinking in unison they have, they say, diminished the crime rate in Washington, D.C., and caused the collapse of the Soviet Union, among other secular miracles.TM sells folk medicine, runs trading companies, medical clinics and "research" universities, and has unsuccessfully entered politics.

Bubbling subsurface

Something troubling being held back and about to burst.

Some portion of the decision-making that influences the future of our civilization is plainly in the hands of who? How does Carl support this?

charlatans/ he mentions how powerful people often seek help from people like psychics and astrologers or people who base their decisions on mysticism or pseudoscience.

How does science thrive on errors?

It cuts them away one by one. False conclusions are drawn all the time, but they are drawn tentatively. Hypotheses are framed so they are capable of being disproved. A succession of alternative hypotheses is confronted by experiment and observation. Science gropes and staggers toward improved understanding. Proprietary feelings are of course offended when a scientific hypothesis is disproved, but such disproofs are recognized as central to the scientific enterprise.

How does pseudoscience not thrive on errors like science?

Hypotheses are often framed precisely so they are invulnerable to any experiment that offers a prospect of disproof, so even in principle they cannot be invalidated. Practitioners are defensive and wary. Skeptical scrutiny is opposed. When the pseudoscientific hypothesis fails to catch fire with scientists, conspiracies to suppress it are deduced.

How is our perceptions fallible?

We sometimes see what isn't there. We are prey to optical illusions. Occasionally we hallucinate. We are error-prone. We're good some things, but no in everything.

Wisdom lies in understanding our _____________.

limitations.

What is perhaps the sharpest distinction between science and pseudoscience?

that science has a far keener appreciation of human imperfections and fallibility than does pseudoscience.

If we refuse to acknowledge where we are liable to fall into error, then we can confidently expect that mistakes will be what? How do we get away from this?

our companion forever/if we are capable of a little courageous self-assessment, whatever rueful reflections they may engender, our chances improve enormously.

If we teach only the findings and products of science without communicating its critical method, how can the average person possibly distinguish what?

science from pseudoscience

What's the problem with presenting unsupported assertion?

You simply don't know if the assertion is true

'Old hat' meaning

used to refer to something considered uninteresting, predictable, tritely familiar, or old-fashioned