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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!!
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To: Grainne who wrote (12188)8/5/1997 2:09:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte   of 108807
 
>>You said evolution is the simplest story that fits all the facts. In the search for truth, is that not what we are almost always looking for?

Yup. The difference between a scientist and a "believer" is that if a new, uncomfortable fact comes to light, the scientist will 1) Test the heck out of that fact. 2) If the fact holds up, the theory is in for some bodywork.

Now I haven't kept up with it well enough, but my impression is that "creation science" often is short on good application of the scientific method. I'm not comfy tyeaching it as "alternative science" because the emphasis is on jamming the facts into a box, not tailoring a box to hold the facts.
In that regard evolution can be taught as science. Science is (as one way of looking at it) the search for order in natural phenomena. Evolution theory is a nice showcase for how that order is taking shape in biology.
For a nice illustration of how theories evolve to embrace facts, I could think of two good examples. When I was a kid, texts speculated on the nature of the moon's craters. The main view at the time was that they were volcanic in origin. The shift to thinking of craters as impact structures is surprisingly recent. Some pretty subtle physics and geology needed to be thrashed out by the leaders in the field before the impact theory got promoted to current doctrine. I think the case for impact craters is pretty airtight.
Another example would be plate tectonics. When Wegener formulated this theory, it was considered "fringe thinking". It took a lot of geological fieldwork to put the theory to the test. Tested it did get; now it's doctrine. Of course the fine points (like earthquake dynamics) are in a state of lively debate.
This is what I'd like kids to learn about science: it's a set of rules about how to make and correlate observations. The theories&doctrines arrived thereby are subject to constant revision! The philosophies, worldviews, belief structures... which evolve as naturally as breathing when peolle talk about science... those need to be treated separately from the process of doing science. They need to be recognized as beliefs, often as arbitrary as any religion.
You can never get belief systems out of the schools. The need to teach an overview of all science and art and politics as history invites awesome levels of generalization. The techniques of critically evaluating the sources of these nice glossy syllabi are what often do not get taught.
The story depends heavily on how storytelling is taught. The whole thing can get pretty recursive.
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