Friday Meanderings: A Way of Thinking
Revisiting Carl Sagan’s Final Interview and the Ongoing Need for Rational Thought
Happy Friday, friends. Something short and sweet today, as I’m still recovering from a brief illness over here.
I was looking back at my old posts in A Cosmobiologist’s Dream and came upon one from nearly 10 years ago. I had watched a shortened highlight video of Carl Sagan’s last televised interview and decided to write about it. Nearly a decade on, it’s just as inspiring as when I first watched it (and it’s now almost 30 years since the interview was originally recorded). Here are some thoughts and the video below.
In 1996, during what would be his final televised interview, Carl Sagan sat across from Charlie Rose and distilled a lifetime of wonder and wisdom.
Among the many important ideas he shared, was the gem:
Science is more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking.
Those words ring louder today than ever before.
In a world saturated with information—some of it true, much of it not—the ability to think clearly, to question claims, and to withhold judgment until evidence appears is a survival skill. And that is precisely what science offers us. Not just knowledge, but a discipline of curiosity paired with skepticism. A framework for asking better questions and building better answers.
Sagan’s message wasn’t just for scientists. It was for all of us. Science, he said, is a “candle in the dark”—a phrase he used as the title of one of his most enduring books. That metaphor is especially apt now, as misinformation spreads faster than ever and institutions of knowledge are increasingly treated with suspicion or outright hostility.
But skepticism, as Sagan was quick to remind us, isn’t cynicism. It’s not about disbelief for its own sake. Skepticism is about holding beliefs accountable to reason and evidence. It’s about being open-minded, but not so open that our brains fall out. It’s about asking, “How do we know that?” and demanding an answer that stands up to scrutiny.
Science as a way of thinking helps us step outside of our assumptions. It teaches us that intuition alone is a poor guide in a complex universe. It shows us that we are not the center of existence—but that we are capable of understanding our place in it.
This mindset is not just useful for solving equations or launching spacecraft. It’s vital for civic life, for education, for parenting, for policy, and for survival. It’s how we learn to change our minds when we’re wrong. It’s how we build bridges between competing ideas. And it’s how we imagine a future that is better than the present—because the scientific mindset is not just a way of understanding the world, but a way of improving it.
Here’s a condensed version of Sagan’s final interview from Inspiration Journey. Some hopeful words of hope and inspiration for your day ahead.