Volume 44, Number 1 · January 9, 1997
Billions and Billions of Demons
By Richard C. Lewontin
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
by Carl Sagan
Random House, 457 pp., $25.95
I first met Carl Sagan in 1964, when he and I found ourselves in Arkansas on the platform of the Little Rock Auditorium, where we had been dispatched by command of the leading geneticist of the day, Herman Muller. Our task was to take the affirmative side in a debate: 'Resolved, That the Theory of Evolution is proved as is the fact that the Earth goes around the Sun.' One of our opponents in the debate was a professor of biology from a fundamentalist college in Texas (his father was the president of the college) who had quite deliberately chosen the notoriously evolutionist Department of Zoology of the University of Texas as the source of his Ph.D. He could then assure his students that he had unassailable expert knowledge with which to refute Darwinism.
Review, 5413 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |