New Definition of Science

lunamoth

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Is anyone else here aware of what's going on in Kansas? I think what disconcerts me the most is that the standards are being adopted not based upon science or what's best for the education of our kids, but upon the ideology of the school board members. I love God, I see His Hand in all creation, but this is insane.

lunamoth

from: http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/05/15/kansas.evolution.ap/index.html


TOPEKA, Kansas (AP) -- The Kansas school board's hearings on evolution were not limited to how the theory should be taught in public schools. The board is considering redefining science itself.

Advocates of "intelligent design" are pushing the board to reject a definition limiting science to natural explanations for what's observed in the world.

Instead, they want to define it as "a systematic method of continuing investigation," without specifying what kind of answer is being sought. The definition would appear in the introduction to the state's science standards.

The proposed definition has outraged many scientists, who are frustrated that students could be discussing supernatural explanations for natural phenomena in their science classes.

"It's a completely unscientific way of looking at the world," said Keith Miller, a Kansas State University geologist.

The conservative state Board of Education plans to consider the proposed changes by August. It is expected to approve at least part of a proposal from advocates of intelligent design, which holds that the natural world is so complex and well-ordered that an intelligent cause is the best way to explain it.

State and national science groups boycotted last week's public hearings, claiming they were rigged against evolution.

Stephen Meyer, a senior fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which supports intelligent design, said changing the schools' definition of science would avoid freezing out questions about how life arose and developed on Earth.

The current definition is "not innocuous," Meyer said. "It's not neutral. It's actually taking sides."

Last year, the board asked a committee of educators to draft recommendations for updating the standards, then accepted two rival proposals.

One, backed by a majority of those educators, continues an evolution-friendly tone from the current standards. Those standards would define science as "a human activity of systematically seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us." That's close to the current definition.

The other proposal is backed by intelligent design advocates and is similar to language in Ohio's standards. It defines science as "a systematic method of continuing investigation" using observation, experiment, measurement, theory building, testing of ideas and logical argument to lead to better explanations of natural phenomena.

The Kansas board deleted most references to evolution from the science standards in 1999, but elections the next year resulted in a less conservative board, which led to the current, evolution-friendly standards. Conservatives recaptured the board's majority in 2004.

Jonathan Wells, a Discovery Institute senior fellow, said the dispute won't be settled in public hearings like the ones in Kansas.

"I think it will be resolved in the scientific community," he said. "I think (intelligent design), in 10 years, will be a very respectable science program."

Evolution defenders scoff at the notion.

"In order to live in this science-dominated world, you have to be able to discriminate between science and non-science," said Alan Leshner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "They want to rewrite the rules of science."
 
Yes, I see this as a huge problem. Those kids will end up at universities like mine, clueless about how real science is done and lacking basic knowledge about evolutionary theory, genetics, and population biology that they need for introductory biology and ecology courses.

Having taught physical/biological anthropology (which incorporates the basics of human paleontology, genetics, primatology, etc.), I've already had students that struggled so much with the science of the course. If you know anything about human evolution and population genetics, you too cringe when you hear students ask things like "If humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?"

Oddly enough, I took quite a bit of biology, chemistry, etc. and studied evolution, especially human evolution, rather extensively- and you know what? It strengthened my awe of God. I know many scientists who are the same. But that doesn't mean that we throw science out the window or redefine it to be some kind of philosophy without objectivity.

Science need not be separated from religion on a personal, individual level, but the truth of the matter is that science is a system of understanding the natural world with natural explanations, and it is not and should not be religion on a social, educational level. There is a reason the scientists and theologians/philosophers are on one campus but in separate departments. They are two different, complementary ways of exploring our universe. Our universities will not accept a "redefinition" of science, so I think it is harmful to public school students to fail to prepare them for the realities of research in the university setting.

Just this scientist's 2 cents.
 
Not sure how things are organised in the US, but if the school receives Federal funds then would that mean it's in violation of the separation of Church and State?

Without trying to make that an issue, I'm curious how much room the school has to decide its own courses within the restrictions of the US constitution.
 
But intelligent design isn't "religion" - it's just an alternate hypothesis, no religion involved... Can I take my tongue out of my cheek yet?

The first amendment also applies to the states as well (one of the later amendments made the states subject to the constitution & amendments as well) - so any official state religion would be an issue. Funding, though, has been hotly debated for years.. are school vouchers officially funding & hence sanctioning a religion (for private religious schools)? I think the current state is it's not - as long as they're provided evenly, without reference to the religious nature of the school, and to the parents, rather than schools directly.

It's a mess, and a muddle.
 
lunamoth said:
Is anyone else here aware of what's going on in Kansas? I think what disconcerts me the most is that the standards are being adopted not based upon science or what's best for the education of our kids, but upon the ideology of the school board members. I love God, I see His Hand in all creation, but this is insane.

lunamoth

from: http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/05/15/kansas.evolution.ap/index.html
The unfortunate truth here is that neither "theory" has been proven to the satisfaction of the majority. The insanity here is not what is being chosen to teach the young, but the reasons behind the choices. This issue has become a battle of wills between two distinct groups with their own agendas.

Sadly, the country as a whole suffers, as well as the children.

Personally I see no problem with teaching both theories, as they are of similar themes. First came light, then land, then animals, and finally man. The timing and details in between as well as "who or what caused it all to happen" is the rift maker.

Hard to tell people who learned from a book that is thousands of years old, that it is wrong, and some guy from the 1870s' thoughts are correct (Genesis vs. Darwin).

On an aside: I believe it was Kansas that first "charged" a man for teaching the concept of evolution in school at the beginning of the 20th century...

my two cents.

v/r

Q
 
Quahom1 said:
The unfortunate truth here is that neither "theory" has been proven to the satisfaction of the majority.
But we shouldn't be teaching what the "majority" thinks science is. You can't take a poll and then say, well, that's what we'll teach as science. The thing that scares me is that this is just what happened in the Soviet Union back in the bad old days - their science, especially in biology, had to be ideologically "correct"; that set their medical and genetics work back greatly, from what I understand.

And I do see a problem with teaching Intelligent Design, because it isn't really a theory, as I understand what a scientific theory is. In order to be properly scientific, a theory has to be falsifiable. It has to be possible to prove that it isn't true (which is what science does; it isn't about proving things). All ID is, is a group of folks who say that they can't understand how certain complex systems (such as they eye) could have evolved using Darwinian mechanisms, so there must have been some intelligence behind it. That isn't a theory, it's an opinion. It cannot be tested in any way that I can think of. I mean, you can test through observation (which is a valid scientific procedure, by the way) how these systems came into being, physically speaking, but how can you falsify the "theory" that there was some intelligent designer behind those systems? Or that there wasn't, for that matter. It just isn't a question that science is prepared to deal with. Anyway, I read a statistic somewhere to the effect that something like three-fourths or more of ID proponents do, in fact, believe that "God" (in a generally Judeo-Christian sense) is the "Intelligent Designer". Certainly, Phillip Johnson, who is one of the original proponents of ID (and who is a lawyer by profession, and not a biologist), began his study of evolution after converting to Christianity.

On an aside: I believe it was Kansas that first "charged" a man for teaching the concept of evolution in school at the beginning of the 20th century...
It was Tennessee, actually, if you're talking about John Scopes - who was actually put up to teaching evolution in order to create a test case. And, in the end, his conviction was overturned on a technicality.
 
littlemissattitude said:
But we shouldn't be teaching what the "majority" thinks science is. You can't take a poll and then say, well, that's what we'll teach as science. The thing that scares me is that this is just what happened in the Soviet Union back in the bad old days - their science, especially in biology, had to be ideologically "correct"; that set their medical and genetics work back greatly, from what I understand.

And I do see a problem with teaching Intelligent Design, because it isn't really a theory, as I understand what a scientific theory is. In order to be properly scientific, a theory has to be falsifiable. It has to be possible to prove that it isn't true (which is what science does; it isn't about proving things). All ID is, is a group of folks who say that they can't understand how certain complex systems (such as they eye) could have evolved using Darwinian mechanisms, so there must have been some intelligence behind it. That isn't a theory, it's an opinion. It cannot be tested in any way that I can think of. I mean, you can test through observation (which is a valid scientific procedure, by the way) how these systems came into being, physically speaking, but how can you falsify the "theory" that there was some intelligent designer behind those systems? Or that there wasn't, for that matter. It just isn't a question that science is prepared to deal with. Anyway, I read a statistic somewhere to the effect that something like three-fourths or more of ID proponents do, in fact, believe that "God" (in a generally Judeo-Christian sense) is the "Intelligent Designer". Certainly, Phillip Johnson, who is one of the original proponents of ID (and who is a lawyer by profession, and not a biologist), began his study of evolution after converting to Christianity.


It was Tennessee, actually, if you're talking about John Scopes - who was actually put up to teaching evolution in order to create a test case. And, in the end, his conviction was overturned on a technicality.
Good point. In Kansas the majority apparently want Creationism taught, as science. My question is this. Why can't inteligent design be considered "falsifiable"? It has as much (more or less) evidence as Darwin's evolution. I mean no offense...I may have been born in the dark, but it wasn't last night. I have no intentions of attempting to shoot holes through your thoughts, I just believe that it isn't a quantum leap from evolution to creation to Intelligent design. No one has "cornered the market" in this particular area of the beginning of life.

Oh, btw, thank you for providing the correct state, and the reasons behind the move, with Mr Scopes. I knew, but didn't know...;)

v/r

Q
 
So far as I understand it, "Intelligent Design" is a very old concept, and a well-chewed meat in metaphysical Philosophy.

So the difference is perhaps most obliquely that one is regarded as a scientific concept, and the other as a philosophical concept.

In which case, there is easily room for both to be taught, but in appropriate lessons. The idea that the Bible constitutes a scientific text-book seems misappropriate, because it does not address questions in scientific terms.

Conversely, I doubt most people here should agree that Chruches should be forced to offer lessons on scientific reductionism from the pulpit, in order to serve the agenda of fundamentlist scientists.
 
Quahom1 said:
Why can't inteligent design be considered "falsifiable"? It has as much (more or less) evidence as Darwin's evolution.
I'd have to politely disagree here. First, ID is not falsifiable because there is no way to test if there is or is not a designer, through experiment or observation. What one person would "observe" in a complex organism as being impossible without an intelligent designer, another would "observe" to be the outcome of years of evolution without a designer. Neither of these is an observation- both are opinions. The observation ends at the fact that certain organisms (or organs, systems, whatever) are really complex. Whether or not a supernatural designer is behind those complexities is a matter of opinion, and since we can never falisfy the idea, it cannot be science.

Secondly, ID and evolution are not in the same category of thought at all. Evolution is describing a mechanism. ID is describing a cause. I find it odd the two are thought of being taught together, because they are really quite different questions. I've found that many Christians in the U.S. are unaware of this distinction, nor have they read Darwin, and so they do not know that Darwin himself believed in God and ID, but was describing a mechanism rather than a cause.

Thirdly, there is no directly observable or experimental evidence of intelligent design. As I described above, such "evidence" is interpretation of facts, not direct links between ID and the observed data. This is not the case with Darwinian evolution. There are mountains of evidence from many different sources, from modern population biology, genetics, the ample fossil record and dating methods, etc. Darwinian evolution is not where it was in the late 1800s anymore. It isn't just Darwin looking around at finches and speculating about a process that yielded all those varieties. We have a lot of genetic and fossil record research that supports the evolutionary theory. We understand the mechanisms through which evolution works- the processes of genetic mutation, population genetics, adaptation, etc. Of course, evolution is not "fact" or "law"- there are very few of these in science, because science tries to remain open to new findings. But it is a very solid theory, grounded in the possibility of being falsifiable and based on several different kinds of evidence.

You all know that I believe in ID, because I believe in God. But as a scientist, there's a big difference between the science of evolution, and the opinion of ID. I don't think anyone can disprove there is ID, or God. Without this possibility, ID fails to be science.

The possibility that science becomes the opinion of the masses, most of whom are very little educated in the sciences, is scary. Science is a system best defined by those who know the most about it- scientists. Having had a couple years of high school biology and chemistry does not give one the knowledge one needs to truly understand how science works, how it is different from other methods of inquiry into the universe, and the very long and complex literature behind theories like evolution. The level of education in the sciences for the majority in the U.S. population is rather low, and I think this is part of the problem. Many fail to understand the distinctions between ID, creationism, and evolution and the methods of inquiry that are behind them.
 
To add to what LMA and path of one have said, it is a clue that ID is not scientific method that one must redefine science to include ID "methodology."

Having just heard again the majesty and glory of Genesis 1:1-2:3 read in chruch yesterday, I'm left humbled by words describing our creation by God. You bet I believe it: God created it all and "God saw that is was good." Nothing can take that away from me or anyone who has written it on their hearts, certainly not the explanations of the "how" discovered by science. As many have said above, elucidation of the how only increases the awe of the By Whom and humility and love of the Why.

Believe it or not I am not against teaching theology in school because I've come to think of science as a branch of theology. Problem is then whose theology do you teach. We really should be teaching comparative theology and philosophy at the high school level. Freedom of religion should not be freedom from religion to those who wish to study and discuss it. We have gone too far in being politically correct and we are raising a population of students who are far too sensitive--none of their ideas or beliefs can be even discussed, much less challenged, without taking offense and then going to court because their sensibilities have been offended!! I think students should be allowed to bring up any questions and critiques they have in any area of learning--we need to encourage more critical thinking by students. If I were teaching high school biology I'd welcome discussion of ID, but I would turn the challenge around to the students to use scientific method to support any concepts they have of ID. I think it would be a very useful lesson.

cheers,
lunamoth
 
Hmmm, what does one get when putting a scientist, a philosopher, and an engineer together?... (the punch line is yours) ;)


v/r

Q
 
Quite possibly a great glimpse of truth, but who can tell? (Just kidding, guys--about the "who can tell" part, anyway!):)

InPeace,
InLove
 
Quahom1 said:
Hmmm, what does one get when putting a scientist, a philosopher, and an engineer together?... (the punch line is yours) ;)


v/r

Q

I don't know but I wonder if together we could change a light bulb. :)

lunamoth
 
InLove said:
Quite possibly a great glimpse of truth, but who can tell? (Just kidding, guys--about the "who can tell" part, anyway!):)

InPeace,
InLove
Muddy water, more or less...
 
LOL- perhaps the engineer could design a better way to get light, the scientist could discover how light works, and the philosopher could ponder the origins of light? Course, that light bulb doesn't look like it'll get installed any time soon... :p
 
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