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Return to E-mail Discussion page Previous in threadJoseph, Lewis Thomas (author of Lives of a Cell, etc.) once suggested that undergraduate science classes be about all that we don't know. Then in graduate school we teach the science we know. His point was that most people experience science in a one semester class in which the emphasis is on, as you say, a set of facts. So most people think that scientists know (or think they know) everything (or a close approximation) or, even worse, that how the Universe works is well understood. It is only later that science students learn how little is understood of the Universe process. But there is a more fundamental issue: the difference between mystery and ignorance. How a caterpillar changes into a butterfly is a vast mystery, no less a mystery than the birth of the Universe. That we can (or someday will be able to) describe the series of biochemical processes which occur as the caterpillary becomes the butterfly does not change the deep mystery involved. I have found that this is very important to communicate: mystery is fundamental. Larry Edwards Todd Duncan wrote: . . . Last point. I think that humans find meaning in mystery. For example > Catholicism's "the mysteries of Christ" or acceptance of paradoxes is > actually useful to practicing Catholics. It is through the conflict of > ideas that meaning is found, not through the resolution of these conflicts. > There is so much conflict in science. For example, the evolution debate is > still a great debate. I'm wandering dangerously from my area of expertise > here, but as an example, geological and genetic dating are often orders of > magnitude off. This is an interesting and important mystery... > To conclude, if we teach science as a set of facts or even as a history > or conflicts, we miss sacrifice the mysteries which exist today. > > Joseph Biello (U of Chicago astrophysics grad student) -- Larry Edwards ledwards@sasq.net 1855 Branciforte Dr. 831-425-2079 (home) Santa Cruz CA 95065-9738 831-460-0204 (fax) |
