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1 #+title: Science Minus Science
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2 #+author: Dylan Holmes
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3 #+email: ocsenave@gmail.com
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4 #+description: What's wrong with our current Science Education?
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5 #+SETUPFILE: ../../aurellem/org/setup.org
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6 #+INCLUDE: ../../aurellem/org/level-0.org
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7
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8
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ocsenave@5
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9 Today's science classrooms are remarkably
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10 unscientific. According to prevailing wisdom, it is less important to teach
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11 the empirical mindset than to impart our accumulated scientific
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12 knowledge. Thus, because the field is so vast nowadays, teachers are
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13 obliged to be frugal with the facts: they must prune tangential
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14 subjects and pare whatever's left, watering down complicated results
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15 into simplified half-truths. Needs must when the devil drives, of
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16 course--but what is the end result?
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17
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ocsenave@5
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18 In modern science classrooms, students must swallow a
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19 deluge of unfamiliar scientific dogma in time to
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20 regurgitate it onto an exam. To accomplish this daunting task, they
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21 cannot possibly stop to consider various alternatives which scientists
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22 have methodically eliminated over the course of centuries; instead,
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23 they must simply trust that science has done what it purports to have
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ocsenave@5
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24 done--or, faster, simply stamp out their own conjectural, critical
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25 instincts.
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26
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27 By the end of such a course, students might be able to recite the
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28 tenets of our current scientific creed and might employ those tenets
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29 when answering carefully formulated questions. But even if, by chance,
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30 our students get their facts straight, they will have acquired at most
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31 only our pre-processed truths, and nothing of the empirical machinery
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ocsenave@5
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32 that produced them.
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33
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34 In my opinion, such a lackluster result demands
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35 that we re-evaluate our priorities. Surely the essential mark of the
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36 scientist is not her ability to recount the latest model of reality,
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37 but rather her pervasive inquiry and her methodical, empirical
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38 approach to obtaining answers? Instead of canonizing the latest
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39 theories, shouldn't we be stimulating a zeal for scrutinizing the
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40 them?
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41
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ocsenave@5
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42 #Surely the shibboleth of the
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43 #scientist is not his ability to recount the bleeding-edge depiction of
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44 #reality--after all, theories are transient and revolutions expected--but
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45 #rather his pervasive inquiries about the world and his methodical,
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46 #empirical approach to answering them? Indeed, don't we recognize the
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47 #scientist by his lack of allegiance to the status quo, by the way he
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48 #scrutinizes even his own theories with utmost irreverence?
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49
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50 In valuing data absorption over methodical reason, we give our
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51 students a fragmentary and moreover inexplicable impression of
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52 reality. We must ask ourselves: how much of science is left in that?
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53
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