If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating ou… - Carl Sagan

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

Nietzsche mourns the loss of “man’s belief in his dignity, his uniqueness, his irreplace-ability in the scheme of existence.” For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Another contemporary example is the “war” on drugs — where the government and munificently funded civic groups systematically distort and even invent scientific evidence of adverse effects (especially of marijuana), and in which no public official is permitted even to raise the topic for open discussion.

Much more plausible is the computer-based explanation that dreams are a spillover from the unconscious processing of the day's experience, from the brain's decision on how much of the daily events temporarily stored in a kind of buffer to emplace in long-term memory... The American psychiatrist Ernest Hartmann of Tufts University has provided
anecdotal but reasonably persuasive evidence that people who are engaged in intellectual activities during the day, especially unfamiliar intellectual activities, require more sleep at night, while, by and large, those engaged in mainly repetitive and intellectually unchallenging tasks are able to do with much less sleep.

The method of science, as stodgy and grumpy as it may seem, is far more important than the findings of science.