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Can people who deny science be educated? How?
Some of my undergraduate students deny scientific research with the following claims: (1) my experience shows otherwise, (2) scientific results are always changing, (3) each person has his own truth.
Is there a way to change their way of thinking, or should it be treated as a belief, similar to religion which is unfalsifiable?
If it is subject to change, how would you go about achieving that change?
Please do not answer the question "Should people who deny science be educated?", that is a different issue.
Topics:
education postmodernism science skepticism
Tobias Duncan 200+
Michael McLoughlin
Or remind them that essentially every modern convenience that they enjoy is the result of result of what was first an understanding of physics. Consider at least, electricity and everything that relies on it.
Your points, one and three, are virtually the same. Remind your students also that their singular subjective experience is objectively meaningless (we take this as the very least) and personal 'truths' are just wishful thinking.
No matter how hard I wish it, no matter what lengths I go to to convince myself otherwise, physics rolls on, despite me.
Personally I believe that the sun won't rise tomorrow, my cellphone runs on voodoo, and penicillin is a sham.
We notice immediately how little my beliefs matter.
The sun still rises, my cell phone still emits microwaves, and penicillin, and its like drugs, are still remarkable cures.
Each of these items are a testament to our extraordinary understanding of the workings of the world and the resultant ability to take advantage of our understanding. These are the direct results of skilled, patient, and honest scientific endeavors.
To deny the validity or usefulness of science is absurdity in the highest degree.
Finally, While science is indeed always changing, these changes are rarely radical alterations and they are never erratic. Scientific changes are almost always refinements that, while dynamic to some degree, are always marching along the same path. Science is convergent, you see. The changes bring us closer to a full understanding and in no way warrant a question of validity.
Zac Thomas
Anyway, the point is that 'known' truths in science are just temporary explantions for what happens. These explanations only last until a new explanation, which works better, is formed. Therefore, I recomend that you encourage independent thought, and explain that science is just the best explanation that we currently have available, and does not nessesarily correctly explain every possible situation. I think this will be the most effective tool for making your point.
Best of Wishes
John Accarino 50+
The sum total of human knowledge is but a drop in the true nature of our universe. Socrates only called himself wise because he acknowledged the fact that he did not know really much of anything.
Putting that aside, we can use scientific experiments to build an education as long as we acknowledge the boundaries of our instruments and methods. We can never measure a meter to its exact length because there can be an infinite number of significant digits, but we can do a lot of cool things if we estimate or settle for a certain amount of accuracy.
It may be true that each person has his own truth for moral issues, but scientific education is about a universal truth about the nature of the universe. But, that's just my opinion.
jungwoo chang
Ambar Kleinbort
Wayne Busby 30+
The Scientist and the Shaman need to have a talk.
David Masterson
Gary Rieschel 100+
Wayne Busby 30+
Jack Danger Canty
"Archaeology is the search for fact...not truth. If it's truth you're interested in, Philosophy class is right down the hall"
I think this distinction is powerful. When your students think that science is attempting to take away from them their understanding of the *meaning* of the world, then they will resist it. But if they understand that the goal of science is narrowly limited to exploring the reliability of facts then they may be able to properly partition those concepts in their head.
This is how professional religious academics maintain their personal faith. They understand that their work is an exploration of historical fact but their religious practice is an exploration of meaning. This skill helps them freely uncover facts that would otherwise ruin their personal spirituality.
Sigal Tifferet 500+
I want to thank all of the participants for their interesting ideas and insights, they have been very helpful.
Mark Meyer 10+
Donald Thompson
Nicholas Heller 20+
One way of reaching into their walled complacency is to be subtle instead of confrontational. Screaming "Darwin was right, and you're an idiot" won't benefit both parties. Instead, point out some examples of evolution, such as bacteria adapting to penicillin within a few decades. You can also tie in common technologies with scientific phenomena. In essence, people can be educated out of their science denial, but science denial and an educated state cannot be maintained in the long term simultaneously. Disaster looms if current trends continue.
Christopher Sean Thomas 10+
My answer: I think you asked the wrong question.
Specifically, can all people who deny science be INFLUENCED? If that was the question, I would give a resounding yes.
You said: "Some of my undergraduate students deny scientific research with the following claims: (1) my experience shows otherwise, (2) scientific results are always changing, (3) each person has his own truth."
You would try to get them to disbelieve their own experiences, rather than over time let them experience the truth you shared with them(if it turns out to be an absolute truth)?
Do you argue that scientific results(theories) aren't always changing?Are atoms the smallest? Protons? Quarks? What happens when you bring in string theory..? Results can be looked at from more than one way, and support more than one answer, and nothing can be more frustrating. I understand their frustration.
Each person does have their own truth. We all see through different eyes, our senses(as in the quote in previous post) are possibly inadequate to share what is all around us, or perhaps they are all unique. One of the few fundamental truths, of an absolute certainty, is that we shall all one day die. Let them have their own truth, because none of us truly and absolutely know what we do after death.. and although you try to arm them for this life, maybe they are arming themselves for whatever is next, if anything.
I don't mean to sound too critical or maybe cynical, I would just say maybe you expect too much of yourself or others. You see the beauty in what you are trying to teach them(I hope), and you want nothing other than to communicate that beauty. Perhaps just putting in their head that that beauty may exist will one day lead to a revelation you will never get to see, but do you do it for that reward, the knowledge that you have changed someone?
If you are teaching right, only one person may be changed, but they may change the world..
Christopher Sean Thomas 10+
"I don't try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it."
-ALBERT EINSTEIN
There are a few things I would say or ask.
What I would ask:Why do you want people who deny science to be educated? Who in particular do you think needs this education, or at least more specifically, and what would this education accomplish really?
I will say:
I think that you would want people to be educated for a number of reasons, a big one being that "science makes sense", and I am sure numerous others. To strike down ignorance maybe? But although science does make sense, and in a general way it adds up.. is science the end all be all way to look at the world? I am sure there are a number of ted talks that could give possible explanations(education kills creativity is one that comes to mind), but the question is, science as it is right now or will grow up to be, is this the most accurate way of looking at the world?
I also think I have an idea of who you would be talking about, most likely people who believe so strongly in something else that they don't know how they can believe in science and still have their beliefs coexist. The easiest to come to mind(and really one of the only) would be the religiously devout. Unbending people who believe in stories more than they believe what is in front of their eyes. Extremists maybe? Although not the best viewpoint for co-existing and prospering, their perspective may be one of the few left to bring us under scrutiny, and keep us "honest".. keep us from making logical fallacies that everything can and should be explained away, that it is better that way.
And what would this accomplish.. perhaps you haven't seen how many(not all) scientists look at the world. Clinically. Factually. It can be sad.
Comment deleted
Budimir Zdravkovic 20+
George Kong 30+
To be sure, it's difficult and to some seems intractable. But they're humans like the rest of us; can we developmentally paint ourselves into a corner from which we cannot extract ourselves?
I'd say no. But at the same time, I think the fact that people continue to seek the company of their own (on both sides of the fence), that they look for an echo chamber of thoughts, feelings and emotions, means that for many afflicted with this mindset, they'll never find themselves in a situation, scenario or environment that will allow themselves to be properly 'deprogrammed' (for want of a better term) from the self reinforcing (il)logic of denying science and it's related tenets (i.e. critical thinking, logic, rationality, empiricism, etc).
On a wide scale, what can we do to increase the spread of rationality at a faster rate than which the spread of irrationality is growing?
I don't have all the answers, but I know that whatever we do, it's going to have to dramatically reimagine the state of world education at all levels, especially at the 'highest levels' to which we aspire.
For starters, you'd not only have to dramatically change and reinvision the environments and methods in which we learn, but also the content and aim of learning.
And to me, that starts bringing up questions of what exactly we are trying to achieve with society (what should we teach/learn in order to help us get to those places). Hard sorts of questions that I don't really see been asked.
Once we have a clear resonant idea of where we want to be, where we want to go, why we're heading there, then, I think we can look at restructuring our system of education in a manner that will best help achieve those goals.
Otherwise, at this point in time, we're just pissing in the wind, excuse the language.
David Lane 10+
Then I tried to present students with the history of the development of science. I offered them two "paths" in this history: 1) pantheism and creation myths as an early attempt at a kind of science and 2) the development of prehistoric to more modern tools for agriculture and warfare. In juxtaposition, these two "events" demonstrate how ravenous humans are to understand our world. But the development of modern tools from prehistoric ones shows that we base our understanding on trial-and-error and observation of results. Pantheism and creation myths demonstrate our narrative ability to create a "truth" from unreliable observable information: the earth is flat. the sun is all-powerful, the night sky is dotted with tiny holes through which light passes. When the observable information becomes more reliable, we no longer see the sun as a mighty deity or the earth as flat. Science and religion are not mutually exclusive, but in fact come from the same source: human curiosity. This helped some students to become more comfortable with science. Other students just shrugged their shoulders and said, "No way. Can't be."
Recently, I've started keeping files of hard data that clearly indicate the overwhelming likelihood of evolution and the age of the earth. These 2 scientific theories are among the most "denied" by students I've met. When I ask students to look through the data, some of them begin to question their ideas. Others just shrug and say, "I don't care. The scientists must have made mistakes."
I'll keep on trying, though. When I don't want to anymore, I'll quit.
Susan Wetenkamp-Brandt
The second is obviously true, but over-hyped by science denialists. What you need to do is explain the context in which this is true. Real examples of widely-accepted theories being overturned are very rare; instead, what happens is that our understanding becomes incrementally better... small ideas change all the time; big ones rarely do. But science reporting in the media is so bad that preliminary, inconclusive results are reported as carved-in-stone facts... and then of course they are overturned because they never WERE solid results to begin with, just portrayed that way by a journalist. This is the cycle that leads people to believe that scientists don't know what they're talking about. We need to combat this!
The third is hard, but I try to counter with the idea that "you are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts." Which is to say, people can disagree about what the facts MEAN, but unless the discussion is to devolve into meaninglessness, we must be able to establish that the facts we discuss are observable and repeatable = actually factual! Each person may have his own interpretation, but they are not all equal. Some are better than others.
adam frey
, (2) scientific results are always changing = Yes, that is true, but usually it is in small incremental steps that are slightly more accurate than the Law or Theory before.
(3) each person has his own truth.= Wrong, Each person has his/her own "opinion." It is not truth until it is objectively agreed upon. And even then it has to survive the test of time and new technological scrutiny and testing.
Best put I think:
"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know. "
~~~Donald Rumsfeld
Rick Brand
Yes, all learning is a process of changing belief to a new understanding. I have found that the over relied upon system of repetition to be lacking. The best way to change a belief is through rapport and/or the students interest. I have found that connecting any science, lit, math, etc. to a students individual interest gains a rapport of the actual material.
I hope this helps, I am working on an article about this very topic.