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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
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Jordan Miller 20+
It's not your job to convince anyone - that's a salesman's job. it's your job to present the facts as they are objectively. the people who want to will resonate with it and agree with your conclusions.
Sigal Tifferet 500+
I would want to give them tools of scientific thought that they could use to evaluate different claims. For instance: Is the claim falsifiable? Have the results leading to the claim been replicated? Is the research method convincing (i.e. case studies vs. double blind with placebo).
Jordan Miller 20+
Hans Bauer
But I do ask, how people who deny science get to study scientific subjects? What are their motives?
Tim Colgan 50+
Perhaps the best form of "evangelizing" for rational thought is simply keeping up the debate. Truth (hope that's not too dogmatic a term) will eventually emerge.
Lloyd Fraser
Sondra Sneed
Ben Ross Mowat
- That would be the rather large field of quantum mechanics
"Can you measure the mind?"
- People are always measuring the mind. A quick scan round TED will show up plenty of interesting things: http://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_seung.html
Also New Scientist is a good bet: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18150-signature-of-consciousness-captured-in-brain-scans.html
B. Reynolds
I don't think your question, "Can you measure the mind?" serves your argument. Although Ben and Patricia could be argued with (if for no other reason than that the mind is a tricky thing to pin down) that doesn't support the notion that measurement is equivalent to falsification. It's a rare thing indeed that the scientific community agrees is "good science" that isn't falsifiable.
Tim Colgan 50+
Although I think, that given enough time, humankind will move in the direction of reason, it still concerns me that dogmatic thought may result in a major catastrophe before we get there. Any push in the right direction should reduce the probability of apocalyptic thinkers getting their way.
Hans Bauer
It can be very efficient, as we can see, and its efficiency depends on the "evangelizer`s" skill or charisma. Wouldn't this be somehow like robbing Peter to pay Paul?
B. Reynolds
Is that an academic question? I mean, do you think allowing someone with no training in cosmology to believe that the world rests on the back of a turtle as morally equivalent to allowing them to believe in a heliocentric solar system?
If you do then yes it's robbing Peter to pay Paul. If you don't, it isn't.
Hans Bauer
From the moral point of view you are right. "Cuz we are the good, the moral, the educated ones!" ;)
But I wanted to point out the impression of the "stupid", the untrained, the uneducated ones, because the answer depends much on their mental and their emotional condition. The question was not if they should be educated but how, respectively if there is a way.
It can only be answered individually, I'd say. Some may be reasonable enough to accept arguments so that you need not put them into a space shuttle for them to see that there is no turtle underneath the world. But who has not the slightest notion of logical thinking, will regard scientific "evangelizing" the same as religious or other evangelizing. He will either turn down all of it as indoctrination or choose what he simply likes better. Thats's his sensation of moral.
Krisztián Pintér 200+