1/20/2012 9:31

Teaching Science

There are those who believe that teaaching science means teaching scientific facts. How these people expect us to generate a full year of science education is beyond me, let alone 2 years. After all, there are no scientific facts. There is scientific data which is very important (but not usually taught in science courses). A fact in the sense of a proven and irrefutable truth is something that science can never produce.

Science is a present active participle. It is the process of learning how the universe works. Science is too humble and weak to claim achieving absolute truth and certainty, an attribute which, perhaps paradoxically, explains science's power.

(That paradox would not be surprising to Christians or others who have studied the teachings and example of Jesus of Nazareth, but it continues to run counter to our everyday experience of the world.)

I don't mean to say that no individual of science has crossed the boundary into speciously absolute claims. Scientists are human beings and subject to bouts of ridiculous self-righteousness just as much as all the rest of us are.

Such lapses by scientists are not science any more than Christians setting themselves in judgement over the thoughts and actions of others is religion. Both cases are matters of self-delusion; they are common enough, but not representative of what is distinctive or best in science or in Christianity.

I would go so far as to suggest that there are no True-or-False questions in the realm of science. A bald statement without any nuance or hesitation is inadequate to express the nature or the power of scientific thought. For example, True or False? "Human beings evolved from simpler life forms." The correct answer is "No", not true or false. The correct answer is "Yes", this is a (thin) summary of the best explanation anyone has yet proposed to explain the existing (and large) body of evidence. The correct answer is "Yes", the set of theories summarized so very briefly have been shown to have power to predict the nature of unknown evidence. It seems likely that these theories are very close to whatever the truth is, subject to further investigation. But is it true? No one knows, not scientifically.

What should we teach about science, if not "facts"? We should teach the history of scientific inquiry, which by itself will show the futility of "facts". We should teach the current events of science, what working scientists today are learning and thinking. Most of all, we should teach the process of science, that is, the process of coming to know through careful collection of evidence, rigorous analysis, and openness to contradiction. Because that's what science is, in actual reality.


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