rlm@2: #+title: Science Minus Science rlm@2: #+author: Dylan Holmes rlm@2: #+email: ocsenave@gmail.com ocsenave@9: #+description: The debate between teaching scientific facts and the scientific way to think. rlm@2: #+SETUPFILE: ../../aurellem/org/setup.org rlm@2: #+INCLUDE: ../../aurellem/org/level-0.org rlm@2: ocsenave@9: I'm worried that science classes are becoming unscientific. ocsenave@9: Typically, science classes are supposed to teach not only how the world works, but also how ocsenave@9: to think scientifically. Lately, however, our mentality has been ocsenave@9: marginalized to make time for teaching students all the theory that ocsenave@9: eventual college students should know. ocsenave@9: #I've noticed that classrooms ocsenave@9: #have been heavily emphasizing our information, rather than our ocsenave@9: #mentality. They haven't forgotten about teaching ways to think, but ocsenave@9: #they insist that teachers familiarize their students ocsenave@9: #with theories that every college student should know. ocsenave@9: Because our theories are complex, ocsenave@9: with intricacies that would be cruel and unusual to ocsenave@9: inflict upon unsuspecting pupils, such a curriculum requires teachers to be frugal with the facts: they must prune tangential ocsenave@9: subjects and pare whatever's left, watering down complicated results ocsenave@9: into simplified half-truths. They must avoid the imperfect boundaries ocsenave@9: of our knowledge, instead concentrating on an idealized and sanitized ocsenave@9: account of what we know. But what's the result of such abbreviation? rlm@2: ocsenave@9: #Needs must when the devil drives, of ocsenave@9: #course--but what is the end result? rlm@2: ocsenave@9: #As a result of this shift, they have been saddled with the ocsenave@9: #difficult task of disseminating complex scientific theories in a short ocsenave@9: #period of time rlm@2: ocsenave@9: # and it is less important to teach ocsenave@9: #the empirical mindset than to impart our accumulated scientific ocsenave@9: #knowledge. Thus, because the field is so vast nowadays, teachers are ocsenave@9: #obliged to be frugal with the facts: they must prune tangential ocsenave@9: #subjects and pare whatever's left, watering down complicated results ocsenave@9: #into simplified half-truths. Needs must when the devil drives, of ocsenave@9: #course--but what is the end result? ocsenave@9: ocsenave@9: In modern science classrooms, students must still swallow a deluge of ocsenave@9: unfamiliar scientific dogma in time to regurgitate it onto an ocsenave@9: exam. In their forced hurry, they cannot stop to ponder various ocsenave@9: alternatives which scientists have methodically eliminated over the ocsenave@9: course of centuries; instead, they must simply trust that science has ocsenave@9: done what it purports to have done--or, faster, simply stamp out their ocsenave@9: own conjectural, critical instincts. ocsenave@9: ocsenave@9: Facility with ocsenave@9: scientific concepts and language is ocsenave@9: not such a bad skill to have. rlm@2: By the end of such a course, students might be able to recite the rlm@2: tenets of our current scientific creed and might employ those tenets ocsenave@9: when answering carefully formulated questions. I am worried, though, because even if ocsenave@9: our students get their facts straight, they will still have acquired at most rlm@2: only our pre-processed truths, and nothing of the empirical machinery ocsenave@5: that produced them. rlm@2: ocsenave@9: In my opinion, this shortchanges our students, and we ought to re-evaluate our priorities. Surely the essential mark of the ocsenave@8: scientist is not his ability to recount the latest model of reality, ocsenave@8: but rather his pervasive inquiry and methodical, empirical ocsenave@5: approach to obtaining answers? Instead of canonizing the latest ocsenave@8: theories, shouldn't we be stimulating a zeal for scrutinizing ocsenave@9: them? Might we even want to /postpone/ handing our ocsenave@9: students canned knowledge, at the very least until we've taught them enough ocsenave@9: about how to be curious, how to acquire knowledge for themselves, how ocsenave@9: to be analytical---in short, how to live like scientists? ocsenave@9: ocsenave@9: ocsenave@5: ocsenave@5: #Surely the shibboleth of the ocsenave@5: #scientist is not his ability to recount the bleeding-edge depiction of ocsenave@5: #reality--after all, theories are transient and revolutions expected--but ocsenave@5: #rather his pervasive inquiries about the world and his methodical, ocsenave@5: #empirical approach to answering them? Indeed, don't we recognize the ocsenave@5: #scientist by his lack of allegiance to the status quo, by the way he ocsenave@5: #scrutinizes even his own theories with utmost irreverence? ocsenave@9: ocsenave@9: When we value data absorption over methodical reason, we give our rlm@2: students a fragmentary and moreover inexplicable impression of ocsenave@9: nature, one which will probably evaporate outside the classroom. That's an approach to science which hardly sounds like science. ocsenave@9: Instead, let's teach students how to think, so they can build a ocsenave@9: framework that will house the rest of their knowledge. Let's stop ocsenave@9: rushing to teach students everything we know, and let them grapple ocsenave@9: with Nature themselves for a while. Let's train them to be curious rather than ocsenave@9: complacent learners. The results will be worth our effort. rlm@2: ocsenave@9: #I ask you: how much of science is left in that? ocsenave@9: