The Demon-Haunted World Chapter Summary & Analysis - Chapter 24 Summary

Chapter 24 Summary and Analysis

Science must be kept free of corruption by politics and mass movements, Sagan says, or it will be nothing better than witchcraft which was created by the church to give the church more power through fear. Witches, political deviants, and weirdos have been singled out for persecution since the earliest times, most recently in Nazi Germany and in Soviet Russia. The extreme efforts by these two dictatorships to control speech and thought, especially political behavior, makes the surrealistic happenings in George Orwell's novel 1984 seem lightweight by comparison.

He notes that one of Thomas Jefferson's first acts as president was to wipe the Alien and Sedition Acts off the books and to pardon those convicted under its wrongheaded provisions. These laws had been enacted by the previous Adams administration to depart any foreigner who spoke or acted in a way deemed suspicious—usually French and Irish immigrants. Sagan comments that scapegoating these two groups and using them to push the electorate's fear buttons was merely a political ploy for the Federalist Party to gain power. Yet scientists, like all citizens, need to be wary of the tendency to water down the Bill of Rights whenever an external threat is perceived.

Sagan once again mentions witchcraft and the various methods of torture used in the 1600s by the Catholic Church to extract confessions from the accused. Friedrich von Spee, a German clergyman, Gianfrancesco Ponzinibio in Italym and Alonzo Salazaar de Frias in Spain should be accorded hero status for questioning and resisting the inhumanity of the Inquisition. Modern-day scientists must resist the temptation...
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