The Greatest Failing of High School Science
November 5th, 2009
I don’t care exactly what science is taught in high schools, so long as people learn that:
- The universe works according to rules.
- If we ask questions carefully and humbly, we can find out what those rules are.
- We don’t get to pick or change those rules. It’s not like basketball, where we can just decide one day that if you throw the round thing through the other round thing from far enough away, then bingo, you get an extra point.
I think #3 is the fundamental “don’t get it” in the minds of many climate change deniers. Just read this story: it doesn’t matter what Tim Nicholson, James Delingpole, or the unnamed judge believes, the universe is going to go ahead and do what it damn well pleases with or without us. Fiction often portrays scientists as egotistical, but honestly, I think it’s the people who think they can dictate to reality who have the ego problems…
I’d change 1. to “The workings of the universe can be modelled using rules”. But I take the overall point!
I’m thrilled to find another software developer / science advocate. I believe that logic should be a subject stressed as every bit as fundamental as reading, writing, and arithmetic. I’ve always said that it’s much more important to understand the scientific method (and objective methods of truth discovery) than it is to know particular details about any given scientific theory.
Most people I encounter seem to have this idea that everyone has their own opinion, and somehow most of these opinions hold more-or-less equal weight, despite how they were formed. To them, “logical” or “rational” may as well be equated to “in line with common sense.” But common sense has just that: “common”. It doesn’t make it correct.
I’d like to see more rebuttals to climate change deniers in the forefront, though. With common Creationist claims, for example, there’s no shortage of rebuttals everywhere you look.
True in a way.
But:
* Scientists can lie (which includes misdirections).
* Scientists are not infallible.
* What truths get discovered is often controlled by the politician/financier rather than the scientist.
Students should also learn that good science comes from consensus and predictions supported by experiment.
On Creationists and climate change deniers: you should always make the science speak for you whilst also engaging in the politics, otherwise its just a rant.
Thanks for this post. It’s important.
On this topic, I highly recommend the Richard Dawkins’s The Greatest Show on Earth:
http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Show-Earth-Evidence-Evolution/dp/1416594787
Here is a quote from chapter 1:
QQQ
Like the theory of continental drift, an idea may even begin its career in mired in ridicule, before progressing by painful steps to the status of…undisputed fact. This is not a philosophically difficult point. The fact that some widely held past beliefs have been conclusively proved erroneous doesn’t mean we have to fear that future evidence will always show our present beliefs to be wrong. How vulnerable our present beliefs are depends, among other things, on how strong the evidence for them is. People used to think the sun was smaller than the earth, because they had inadequate evidence. Now we have evidence, which was not previously available, that shows conclusively that it is much larger, and we can be totally confident that this evidence will never, ever be superseded. This is not a temporary hypothesis that has so far survived disproof. Our present beliefs about many things may be disproved, but we can with complete confidence make a list of certain facts that will never be disproved. Evolution and the heliocentric theory weren’t always among them, but they are now.
QQQ
Evidence matters! It just drives me absolutely nuts that people don’t get this simple idea
Keep on pluggin’ away.
Edward K. Ream