Chapter 2 Summary and Analysis

Science offers hope in a way that other disciplines and world views can't. It has a built-in correcting mechanism by which scientists are continually searching for eternal, inviolable laws of nature and the universe. The process by which a hypothesis becomes a theory, then if it survives long enough a law is matched by no other process of human thought. Science is both imaginative and disciplined, and operates through a continual clash of new ideas with old in search of the truth.

As a child, Sagan was exposed to the World's Fair of 1939 where multiple exhibits displayed and depicted the latest advances in science and technology that could improve human life. At that point, he fell in love with science and determined to spread the word of its magic. Sagan admits that his love for the romance of science continues unabated...