Discuss Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Starry Messenger

On September 19, 2026, our group began exploring Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Starry Messenger. His book, an homage to Galileo’s reports on celestial bodies, serves as a wake-up call to rouse everyone from solipsistic reveries. Have we lost our ability to distinguish fact from opinion, replacing a welcoming countenance with a contentious glare, making sounds of fury signifying nothing? By finding new facts with his telescope, Galileo sparked the scientific revolution, but what makes science truly revolutionary? Tyson proposes: “Do whatever it takes to avoid fooling yourself into believing that something is true when it is false, or that something is false when it is true.” It is our ultimate tool for finding objective truth.

Objective truth does not come from authority. Science is a process in which peers carefully examine reports of observations and experiments, combing for errors in measurements and mistakes in logic, while experiments must be repeatable to render reliable conclusions. Objective truths are not derived from beliefs, but from soundly constructed experiments that establish their own authoritativeness. Conversely, personal truths can be found in religious texts, but an inquiry into heresy historically relied on coercion rather than evidence—such as when inquisitors showed Galileo the instruments of torture rather than presenting data supporting the Ptolemaic model. Threats and coercion render such arguments entirely invalid.

We find the glimmers of early scientific reasoning in the Ionians, but this accumulation of knowledge was nearly lost when religious zealots destroyed the Library of Alexandria—a self-inflicted lobotomy marking Rome’s fall as science became senescent. Fortunately, Byzantine scholars preserved many Greek and Roman texts, which Arab scholars read, translated, and updated. As Muslims expanded their trade and influence across North Africa, these works made their way to Spain. Although conquering Europeans often failed to comprehend the full depth of Arabic libraries, these recovered texts rekindled an interest in learning that ultimately sparked the Renaissance and jump-started the Scientific Revolution.

The spirit of scientific inquiry was woven directly into the fabric of our own country. Benjamin Franklin founded the American Philosophical Society to promote useful knowledge, and Abraham Lincoln signed legislation establishing the National Academy of Sciences to provide independent advice on science and technology. Later, Vannevar Bush—director of the wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development—published his 1945 report, Science, the Endless Frontier, which modernized American science policy and spawned both the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

Knowledge that once took centuries to discover now takes decades or even years. We no longer attribute diseases to miasma—the foul-smelling vapors once blamed for cholera, plague, and malaria—but instead understand them as microbial, treating infected patients with antimicrobials and protecting populations with vaccines. Communication has similarly leaped from the speed of a walking courier to telegraph wires, telephones, and pocket-sized wireless devices connecting us globally in real time. Though Leonardo da Vinci only dreamt of flying, powered flight progressed from the Wright Flyer—whose entire flight distance matched just the wingtip-to-wingtip span of a Boeing 747—a jetliner that can cross oceans in hours. What powered this exponential transformation? Science!

When humans reached the Moon just 66 years after the Wright brothers' flight, we saw Earth from a cosmic perspective. Tyson hoped this view would end selfish quarrels and unite humanity for the common good. Yet, that unifying vision is under siege by a modern retreat from reason. Today, critics doubt the very scientific methods that depend on doubt to uncover objective truths, threatening to turn the clock back to an era of miasma. With science deniers heading agencies charged with protecting public health, unwarranted executive downsizing of our science budget—engineered to enrich a fortunate few—threatens another self-inflicted lobotomy. This regression actively destroys America's global competitive edge and hobbles the creation of a brighter future for all.

Join us for our next meeting as we continue exploring Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization (Library of Congress call number CB478.T96 2022), and discuss ways to depolarize divisive arguments into informative dialogues on October 3, 2026, from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM CDT.