Would science not be a 'natural progression in curiosity'? Could introducing policy (as a form of enforcement) perhaps open an entirely new world of procedures, compliance and the like that might contradict the natural value that science has to humanity - almost 'comply' it into another form of religion (for want of a better word)?

Natasha

I must admit that I started this thread in the hope of luring Haris out of the woodwork, given that Science Education is his thing…

Anyway, to the matter in hand: I agree entirely that ‘science’ (let’s take it, for the sake of discussion, that we understand what we mean by the general term ‘science’) is, or issues from, a ‘natural progression in curiosity’ (very monkeyish; very human). However, when seen from the POV of our general curiosity about the world we experience and inhabit, contemporary science can seem frustrating to the layperson; this is particularly the case with the ‘counterintuitive’ claims or findings of physical science (QM, relativity). I’ll be posting (in the ‘naturalism’ thread) some comments on the differing objectives of scientific and philosophical refinements of our commonsense views about the world… generally speaking, scientific accounts seek to generate approximations of the putative regularities underlying this or that phenomenon, and are not particularly concerned with aligning their models with the ‘intuitions’ of phenomenal experience.

The general model adopted by science teaching can be typified by the notion of ‘lies-to-children’. To give an example: at preschool level, we learn that things have ‘weight’, and that their weight is a constant. When we start school we learn that ‘weight’ is only constant under local gravitational conditions, and that an object’s mass is invariable. However, when we approach university level, we learn that an object’s mass is not necessarily invariable, either, but depends on the velocity of the object relative to an observer. We will, however, learn the equivalence of mass and energy and how to calculate the invariant mass of an object – though along the way we’ll discover that we don’t really know what mass is (and that our best chance of finding out have been delayed until next spring by a burst pipe).

The approach – which is technically a matter of successive approximation – proceeds from the specific to the general; as such, it reproduces the historical evolution of the concept from an entirely local pseudoregularity to a closer approximation of the general regularities on which the local regularity supposedly supervenes. Other ‘lies-to-children’ – for example, the ‘planetary model of the atom’ – reproduce a key notion in the evolution of the scientific model - in the given example, Rutherford’s 1911 criticism of Thomson’s ‘plum-pudding’ model. In the case of the atom, the successor model (Bohr’s) integrated early results from QM, and is thus far less readily accessible to popular understanding.

The problem with this (setting aside sociological considerations, on which Haris would be a better commentator) is that it can lead to serious errors (take, for example, the ‘survival of the fittest’ in early vulgarisations of evolution). It also implies that the majority of non-specialist views on the various sciences are “incorrect”. Taken too far – for example, taken with the erroneous view that ONLY scientific knowledge qualifies as “true knowledge” – it would lead to a profound inequality in evaluating a given person’s understanding of the world.

When relating scientific knowledge to other forms of knowledge we must bear in mind the pragmatic value of the concepts under consideration. Those of us who don’t work in science labs or academic departments get by very nicely with ‘weight’, for example – when we’re buying our bananas we don’t need to take into account their apparent ‘weight’ on the moon, nor the effect of accelerating the bananas to near lightspeed.

The various criticisms of present educational policy (including policies oriented towards ‘popular understanding of science’) is that such policies presuppose a certain POV concerning the nature and the role of scientific knowledge when compared to other, less formalised, bodies of knowledge. There is indeed a general tendency to consider scientific knowledge as occupying a privileged role in our understanding of the world (which is fair enough); however, if this is not accompanied by a wider understanding of what constitutes knowledge, of the relation of theory to reality, etc. etc., it can lead to scientism. Scientism is methodologically untenable within scientific disciplines; applied to those who do not have full access to the entire body of scientific knowledge (that is, all of us), it becomes a form of supernaturalism.

My take on the ‘scientific education’ debate doesn’t concern the content or the pedagogy of the scientific part, but rather the need for a parallel development of the popular understanding of philosophy (and particularly of epistemology and metaphysics – two areas which are rarely developed even where philosophy classes are effectively included in educational syllabi).

I have a strong sense that each individual's personal development can be at different stages of 'evolved thinking', largely due to to where they are in their 'hieracrchy of needs' in this physical world (consider Maslow), i.e. if some basic human mechanical needs are not taken care of - consider the bulk of society being underpriveleged in very basic areas - there is a barrier to that person being able to develop concious thoughts to unconcious or even superconcious abilities. If policies perhaps address these basics and barriers in the spirit of developing popular science and philosophy - sort of a practice what you preach approach - then maybe we'll have a world more in tune with a collective conciousness....and policies become unnecessary.

dear natasha, i disagree with your initial thesis that science could be a natural progression in curiosity. my quibble is the following: natural curiosity is not the sole property of science, and sometimes science stifles creativity anyway, in the sense that diverging opinions are banished intellectually. more soon, especially on this topic, since my research interests touch on it and i'm currently in belgrade working with the french 'la main a la pate' program.

David, Haris is out of the woodwork. Haris, I digressed from the topic: my thoughts on natural curiosity and its role in science and vice versa are perhaps moot as the objective was to see what policies we SHOULD promote in the AREAS of Science Education. On that point, and perhaps to put my thoughts to bed as it were...I support a notion that creativity assigns itself to natural progression and science to the discipline of what that creativity may produce. Onward....!

dear natasha. what does it mean to be out of the woodwork?

Apologies, i am not a native english-speaker.

"To come out of the woodwork" - to come out of hiding; to participate (in this case) in a debate...

Natasha - if you mean that 'natural curiosity' is the primary motor of scientific research (as well as being the motor of many other things), then I don't think that even Haris could disagree. I think we all agree that unbridled naïve scientific realism is a no-go position (albeit one that is frequently espoused by policy-makers: they know no better).

There are two allied but sometimes antagonistic forces at work here : on one hand, science works pretty well, so what can we do to make it work better (this is the 'intrascientific' aspect, and should facilitate access to and integration with the 'science community' - basically, "how do we - or should we - train scientists?"); on the other, there's a wider social debate on the role of science in the community (the value of scientific accounts in the determination of policy, the role science should play in the epîstemic community; etc.).

"To come out of the woodwork" - to come out of hiding; to participate (in this case) in a debate...

Natasha - if you mean that 'natural curiosity' is the primary motor of scientific research (as well as being the motor of many other things), then I don't think that even Haris could disagree. I think we all agree that unbridled naïve scientific realism is a no-go position (albeit one that is frequently espoused by policy-makers: they know no better).

There are two allied but sometimes antagonistic forces at work here : on one hand, science works pretty well, so what can we do to make it work better (this is the 'intrascientific' aspect, and should facilitate access to and integration with the 'science community' - basically, "how do we - or should we - train scientists?"; on the other, there's a wider social debate on the role of science in the community (the value of scientific accounts in the determination of policy, the role science should play in the epîstemic community; etc.).

It's at this point of conversation where I flinch....let me explain - my work is to ideally assist organisations of any kind and industry to address compliance issues (legal policies, quality management, government regulations, etc). By this I mean I help organisations and people develop systems of thinking and doing that allow for the integration of 'outside' and 'inside' influences. Now, that's not where it ends - I then assist them to then 'take back' the natural 'spirit' as it were of what they existed for to begin with and continue operating/progressing naturally OVER AND ABOVE the newly developed policies. It's no easy feat...

But here's the thing: it's been my strong sense and experience that, as human beings, when thinking about progressing or bettering practices, we begin to make errors of judgment that put us on the road to problems later on -

1. We 'entitize' the discipline we're in.

We start to talk about the activities, skill or discipline we peform as another being or power. We begin to remove ourselves from the responsibility of making 'it' work/not work, following it through and then can't quite figure out why 'it' doesn't work..

2...then we develop policies to address these...procedures to ensure implementation, etc...

3. ...through a whole new language of buzz-words, analogies, trends, etc - adding 'meat' and not value to the new entity.

With some time, the nature of what it is we started with, is skewed and perhaps doesn't quite produce what we expected. I believe the majority of policies in existence today represent good faith but hold no PERSONAL responsibility in its aim.

However, this may not address right away how we could be doing things better in providing science education....perhaps it may help for us to just be concious at the start of our enquiry of the possibility that popular science needs to be looked at for its natural intention and behaviours and not as a popular trend..

I like the mention of community more and more in this line of thinking - it holds a relative world view for any reader and keeps the thinking practical, simple and certainly 'grounded'.

Natasha – don’t expect to much from the “community” approach – after all, female circumcision, the burka, and ritual cannibalism are all “community-based” practices…

When you say “organisations”, are you talking about scientific organisations, or are you speaking more widely? By simple professional necessity (I work in executive development, business consulting etc.) I’ve had to do a lot of work on the way professional organisations work with compliancy – one of our big development areas is lobbying; we also work a great deal on quality, governance, standards etc. Luckily, this means I work with people who haven’t been trained in thinking – if they had, they wouldn’t need me because they wouldn’t make such an UNHOLY PIG’S EAR of things… but this is a divergence.

I’m not sure what Haris and/or you understand by “popular science”. I sometimes get the feeling that you’re suggesting some kind of ‘democratisation’, but I just can’t see what the point would be – nor how it could possibly work. Can one of you explain?

dear david, you've sort of thrown the gauntlet to me as regards democratisation (there's a conference at bielefeld by the esf on the politicisation of science in may, Kitcher and Collins will be there among others, i've set it as my target to go there, though i'd need to fend off competition for funding) and i would like to take on the challenge. my motivation would be that it is not that obvious that science is head and shoulders above all other traditions as regards effectiveness or problem-solving or whatever. in that sense, i would defend cannibalism and circumcision (whilst at the same time biting some bullet) and pointing out at fiascos of science such as, dunno, the medicalization of everything and other stuff. Dear Natasha, sorry i haven't read much of your text to comment on that, more a bit later.

No gauntlet, dear chap, I assure you – a real demand for enlightenment. It’s just that I can’t imagine anything that would go beyond postmodernist pipedreams and qualify as a pragmatic, workable approach to such a ‘democratisation’...

Anyway, foaming-at-the-mouth-and-chewing-the-carpet rant first; serious comments afterwards (carrot and stick or stick and carrot?)

I once knew a chap who had half a mind to become a postmodernist. He was overqualified... But seriously, the whole enterprise strikes me as the last rumblings of the Sokal affair – or is it perhaps the aftershock? As I remarked to you elsewhere, under current conditions democratisation would mean opening the whole thing up to REALLY big money – I’m talking multinationals, heavy vested interests etc. The drug companies freed from peer review? A field day for skimped research and statistical manipulation. The same thing would go for ecological responsibility... to say nothing of the open season there’d be for manipulation of the ‘positive’ – almost ‘shamanistic’- image of Science and The Scientist. “Scientific studies have shown that Our Cigarettes actively fight cancer by quantum level interactions with lung cells” – who’s going to say “it isn’t true!” if we’ve dismantled any form of regulation? (after all, scientific disciplines are ALREADY autoregulated, so we can’t make the right to autoregulation one of our claims – we’re going beyond anarchism here!).

Indeed, any such democratisation could only work in a society that was not organised on the bases of consumer economics and capital investment. Consumerism is evidently the “dictatorship of the lowest common denominator” – the larger your market, the bigger the real profit. Given present levels of general public knowledge about ‘science’ – and given the models on which that knowledge is based – we’re talking about a sleep of reason that would produce monsters far worse than Enron Hubbard... remember what “the survival of the fittest” led to!

Before any deregulation of scientific debate could take place, there would need to be a concerted, long-term programme of popular education; before such a programme took place, there would need to be a major change in the way we think about the world. Politicians are hopeless (I’m talking from within the ‘corridors of power’ here, albeit that I’m only a spectator). Speaking generally, they possess a very superficial understanding of general culture, and a lamentable level of scientific culture. Furthermore, they are neither by nature nor by inclination given to rational, open-minded thought, and they rather mistrust such thought in others (in this they’re much like corporate leaders. Any attempt to understand the complexity of a situation is ‘worthless abstraction’ – what matters is action). They think of science as (primarily) an economic problem: we invest how much for what return?

On a more philosophick note: science isn’t about problem-solving (though philosophy is!). It’s about *prediction*. We tend to let the theories blind us to the practice – and as philosophers, we are attracted to theories as they bear a family resemblance to metaphysical accounts of physical phenomena (just as religious notions can bear a family resemblance to other kinds of metaphysical account). When it comes to predicting physical events from other physical events (and thus, to allowing manipulation of the physical world), science wins hands down. But all it can tell us about the way Alice will react when Bob tells her he’s leaving her for Christopher will be nothing more than common sense with a few long words thrown in and a nod to cerebral and glandular activity (and this latter tells us what happens when we feel a certain emotion, but not what it feels like to have one).

“Being a human being” is not something science can tell us about. We can no more have a ‘theory of everything human’ than we can have a ‘theory of everything’; not only would we have the logical and epistemological objection (the theory would have to account for itself, which would require a theory of more than everything), but also the more straightforward objection that science is a limited part of human activity directed towards the better understanding of the physical universe; as such, it cannot account for the subjective phenomena and interpretations which constitute our *experience* of the physical universe (as Jack Cohen and Ian Stuart remark, science can tell us what an electron is, but not what it’s like to be one – this observation goes back to Thomas Nagel). Qualia are an excellent case in point – whatever explanation of qualia we receive, it’s as likely to be philosophical as scientific.

For that matter, science can never articulate the spirituality – I use the word advisedly – of scientific activity. Scientists are rarely poets, and even more rarely good poets. Yet the poetic force of the scientific vision is evident: a short-lived race of self-animated sacks of complex molecules can look at the entire extent of spacetime and say ‘we can understand some of this’. It certainly knocks the Crucifixion into a cocked hat – the scientific enterprise is the pride and the tragedy of an entire race which, faced with the realisation of their limitations, transcends those limitations by ‘understanding’. If that ain’t spirituality, then what is?

Forgive the purple prose – I was merely trying to capture the flights of enraptured poesy that some really good physicians come out with when they’re talking about why they do physics. For my part, and being a logician rather than a physicist, I’d talk about aesthetic criteria – elegance, economy, harmony. Yet, while these qualities are exemplified by scientific accounts or (a fortiori) formal systems, such notions as ‘elegance’ or ‘economy’ cannot be expressed in the system (the closest we have is ‘completeness’, and once again this exemplifies rather than expresses the aesthetic notion).

A scientific account doesn’t express the profound spiritual activity of which it is a result; a logical system cannot explain its own beauty. Both spiritual and aesthetic activity (if there’s any difference between them, which I doubt) are entirely subjective; they represent essential aspects of ‘being human’ which have bugger all to do with what science can tell us. This goes equally for anthropology and psychology: the social sciences can tell us how certain subjective phenomena are encoded in a collective worldview and what kinds of behaviour are normative (therefore previsible) when dealing with such phenomena, but they can’t tell us what the phenomena feel like.

We can, I think, speak of phenomenal experience as something that it is necessarily underdetermined by theory. Thus, we can have as full a description as possible of how a certain term – say “red” – is used, and in what contexts of stimulation “red” is an appropriate response, but – until we have seen something red – we have no *acquaintance* with “red”. Whatever ‘theory’ we put forward, whatever way we explain why we see red “like that”, is just as good as any other as far as correspondence to the evidence is concerned. The same goes for the way in which I experience “being myself” as I’m writing this: no description, not even one written in collaboration by Daniel Dennett and a team of neurologists under the direction of James Joyce himself, could express the subjective content of the experience.

So, without going beyond the activity and appreciation of science itself, we can see that scientific ‘knowledge’ is limited. This is not in doubt – if it were, do you think I’d be a philosopher? There’s no point in doing philosophy if all the answers are in science – otherwise, it’d be an exercise in the noble art of self-abuse. I’m a philosopher because SOME of the answers are in science, and some of the others elsewhere, and philosophy is a great discipline for pontificating (should any explanation of this excruciatingly brilliant pun be required, please e-mail the author). But we can’t find the answers to subjective questions in science – nor the answers to physical questions in, for example, superstitious belief. If someone comes along and tells you that your soul must rise up from the cloying weight of materiality, all well and good. But if he then says that your soul is a physical entity held in your body by a universal principle of Down which operates everywhere in the same direction - and that furthermore on mailing $599 he’ll sell you a tinfoil Up accumulator - you are entirely entitled to raise a Spockish eyebrow and say “Interesting!” (an action which is otherwise punished by an eternity of being deconstructed by the transfigured Jacques Derrida).

Horses for courses. Science fulfils an extremely useful role (like giving something three extra legs then blowing it up – cool stuff like that beats female excision and cultural slavery any day). It represents a fundamental body of knowledge, and is probably outstanding when it comes to providing approximations of the regularities underlying the physical universe. But it is ONE pillar of human knowledge – there’s also knowledge about “being human”, and in that field, science is a non-starter.

So, to conclude (he does witter on, doesn’t he?): perhaps it’s not science that should be democratised, but the philosophy of science – and why not philosophy toute courte? All the arguments you give against the position of contemporary science are even more the case when applied to philosophy – including the rupture between an rigorous, arcane, heavily formalised “serious tradition” and a more lightweight, middlebrow “pop tradition”.

A neat connection and presentation.

----------------------

~~When you say “organisations”, are you talking about scientific organisations, or are you speaking more widely?~~

A: In the wider sense

~~I’m not sure what Haris and/or you understand by “popular science”.~~

A: I understand ‘popular science’ to be the broader science (sometimes fictional) made available to the general population. Perhaps a version of science more ‘accessible’ to the masses.

Would it be accurate to say that your line of thinking is to create ways in perhaps ‘formalising’ a ‘more elegant’ popular science to the masses? This could be done if focus is given to formalising its DELIVERY and NOT CONTENT. Or the content of popular science could INCLUDE MORE information with a view to prompting higher/further insights to those same people. Perhaps in this way, people may well be ‘trained to think’.

Moving on to ‘Democratisation’: I think there is a strong emphasis on morality and/within politics.

My concern with modern policy as a whole - which in my view is self-serving to those calling the shots – is the premise that hordes of people cannot think for themselves and that morality can be ‘assigned’ and ‘enforced’ in a series of steps. Once again, focus is given to formalising the CONTENT and not the DELIVERY, removing personal responsibility and ensuring consistency of that behaviour, or the rebel against it, for the future. Democratisation is counter-productive when its INTENTION is to enforce instead of formalise value.

PS:

~~...after all, female circumcision, the burka, and ritual cannibalism are all “community-based” practices…~~

A: I think these may be more based on superstitious archetypes than community-based practices.

"Superstition sets the whole world in flames; Philosophy quenches them." ~ Voltaire

“Would it be accurate to say that your line of thinking is to create ways in perhaps ‘formalising’ a ‘more elegant’ popular science to the masses? This could be done if focus is given to formalising its DELIVERY and NOT CONTENT. Or the content of popular science could INCLUDE MORE information with a view to prompting higher/further insights to those same people. Perhaps in this way, people may well be ‘trained to think’”.

This is, therefore, no longer a ‘scientific’ problem, but rather becomes a matter of popular education. I think the first objective should not be to communicate on the contents of given sciences (this is the general approach at present), but rather to develop people’s understanding of the nature and the limits of ‘the scientific enterprise’. An important aspect of this development should be to underline that ‘scientific knowledge’ is not a body of certainties about the world, but is rather based on the continuous questioning of what we think we know in the light of new data. This is important because ‘rival’ bodies of knowledge (religious, cultural) tend to present their ‘system’ as complete and all-explaining: there is little room, in organised religion, for major revisions of belief – such beliefs usually result in schism, and our cultures are established in order to preserve the distinction between those who are ‘inside’ and those who are ‘outside’. So, there’s an inbuilt popular tendency to see ALL ‘systems of belief’ as expressing ‘eternal truths’, rather than revisable approximations. Furthermore, and parallel to this, for various historical and cultural reasons the popular view of science is strongly tinged with magical thinking (“the scientist as shaman”) – scientists possess a ‘special power’ that the common person doesn’t. Until we revise these general misconceptions, there’s little hope for developing popular understanding of particular sciences.

“Moving on to ‘Democratisation’: I think there is a strong emphasis on morality and/within politics. My concern with modern policy as a whole - which in my view is self-serving to those calling the shots – is the premise that hordes of people cannot think for themselves and that morality can be ‘assigned’ and ‘enforced’ in a series of steps. Once again, focus is given to formalising the CONTENT and not the DELIVERY, removing personal responsibility and ensuring consistency of that behaviour, or the rebel against it, for the future. Democratisation is counter-productive when its INTENTION is to enforce instead of formalise value”.

Throughout my ‘career’ as a philosopher, for these – and myriad other – reasons, I’ve always avoided any comments on ethics, morality or the like. Moral questions are generally more to do with power than with ethics: the object of a moral system is to achieve conformity within a group or culture (frequently coupled with the notions of ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’). Ethics is polluted by relativism, and by the problem of representation: if we adopt a Kantian position, invariably considering others as “ends in themselves”, are we certain that our representation of what constitutes an “end in itself” is the same as theirs ? There are people paid to deal with questions like this…

Scientific accounts have little if anything to with either morality or ethics (of course, if anthropology is a science, then ethics and morality are subjects of scientific research). Science as a human activity evidently raises ethical questions; it is therefore necessary to raise these questions on the social, and not on the scientific, level. This reinforces the need for a better popular understanding of the general nature of scientific research.

““female circumcision, the burka, and ritual cannibalism are all “community-based” practices…”~~ A: I think these may be more based on superstitious archetypes than community-based practices.”

Superstition is usually a community-based practice. Let there be no doubt about it - *all* the activities I mention are enshrined in cultural practice – it is “the right thing to do” (note the relation to morality). Indeed, in their respective cultures, non-compliance has traditionally been punished (this is particularly true with the burka). And, if we look at them in the right way, the majority of cultural practices are to some degree based on superstition.

This is the problem with relativism (and I admire Haris for biting the bullet, but would rather he spat it out): if we espouse a relativistic view of things, we have no right to say “such-and-such a practice is unacceptable”. The scientific approach can at least allow us to say “such-and-such a belief is based on a supernatural understanding of the world, and is therefore untenable”.