Science and Civil Liberties: The Lost ACLU Lecture of Carl Sagan
Quillette | Steven Pinker and Harvey Silverglate
Harvard professor and FAIR Advisor Steven Pinker (PHD ‘79) and Harvard alumnus and FIRE co-founder Harvey Silverglate (LLB 67) transcribe an “uncannily prescient” lecture given by scientist Carl Sagan in 1987. “Sagan spoke prophetically of the irrationality that plagued public discourse, the imperative of international cooperation, the dangers posed by advances in technology, and the threats to free speech and democracy in the United States… Most importantly, he highlighted the virtues common to science and civil liberties that are needed to deal with these challenges: freedom of speech, skepticism, constraints on authority, openness to opposing arguments, and an acknowledgment of one’s own fallibility.”
Below are some key passages from Pinker and Silverglate’s transcription; we encourage you to read the transcript in full.
“Science has devised a set of rules of thinking, of analysis, which…are responsible for the remarkable progress of science… Things like arguments from authority have little weight. Like contentions have to be demonstrable. Like experiments must be repeatable. Like vigorous substantive debate is encouraged and is considered the lifeblood of science. Like serious critical thinking and skepticism addressed to new and even old claims is not just permissible, but is encouraged, is desirable, is the lifeblood of science. There is a creative tension between openness to new ideas and rigorous skeptical scrutiny.”
“If there are institutions in our society that are in error… these are potential impediments to our survival. How do we find the errors? How do we correct them? I maintain: with courage, the scientific method, and the Constitution. Sooner or later, every abuse of power must confront the Constitution. The only question is how much damage has been done in the interim.”
“It’s no good to have such [constitutional] rights if they’re not used: a right of free speech when no one challenges the government; a right of assembly when there are no protests; universal suffrage when much less than half the eligible electorate votes… It is not enough merely to have these rights in principle; we must exercise them in practice.”
“Education on the nature of civil liberties, on the need for them, on how to exercise them, is an essential part of the democratic process, and it seems to me almost pointless to have these rights without their exercise.”
“If we are agreed that there is nothing we can be absolutely sure about, that we have no monopoly on the truth, that there is something to be learned, why is each side so frightened about having the principles of the other expounded?”
“One of the dangers when a democracy is in confrontation with a totalitarian adversary is that the democracy slowly, perhaps unwittingly, becomes more and more like the adversary. Democracies are in danger of losing the very thing that they are ostensibly fighting for.”
“It seems to me there has been a terrible backsliding on Constitutional and democratic issues… [and] a serious erosion of the tradition of skeptical inquiry, of vigorous challenging of government leaders, of public exposure of what the government is actually doing... it is in this area—skeptical scrutiny, public exposure—where the largest strides, in my opinion, are needed.”
“Civil libertarians must do more to explain exactly why civil liberties and their vigorous exercise are essential—essential not just to retain what freedoms we have… but also an exercise in the application of civil liberties that are necessary for our very survival.”
