“Science may be hard to understand . It may challenge cherished beliefs. When it’s products are placed at the disposal of politicians or industrialist, it may lead to weapons of mass destruction and grave threats to the environment. But one thing you have to say about it : it delivers the goods.
Not every branch of science can foretell the future-paleontology can’t- but many can and with stunning accuracy. If you want to know when the next eclipse of the Sun will be, you might try magicians or mystics, but you’ll do much better with scientist. They will tell you where on Earth to stand, when you have to be there , and whether it will be a partial eclipse, a total eclipse, or an annular eclipse . They can routinely predict a solar eclipse, to the minute, a millennium in advance. You can go to the witch doctor to lift the spell that causes your pernicious anemia, or you can take vitamin B12. If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or inoculate. If you’re interested in the sex of your unborn child , you can consult a plum-bob danglers all you want (left-right, a boy; forward-back, a girl–or maybe it’s the other way around), but they’ll be right , on average, only one time in two. if you want real accuracy (here,99 percent accuracy), try amniocentesis and sonograms. Try science.”
~Carl Sagan, A Demon-Haunted World
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