asking about beauty in science
Recently I was a guest lecturer in a Philosophy of Science course, an occasional offering at our university taught by an extremely well-read senior professor. I focused on a book chapter that called into question “external” factors influencing scientific theory-making, from quantum mechanics in the early part of the 20th century to more contemporary chaos, complexity, and superstring theories.
The most interesting “external” factor the author considered was beauty; he asserted that the quest for this elusive (and difficult, if not impossible, to define) factor called beauty was undermining the exercise of the scientific method and corrupting scientists, who ended up formulating misanthropic theories. The author considered chaos and complexity theories to be misanthropic, because they removed humans from the top of the evolutionary ladder, suggesting that humans might be examples of larger trends, rather than the ones in control. The idea that chaos and complexity theory amounted to a collective throwing up of the hands, insofar as they would represent an admission that a comprehensive, precise “theory of everything” would be a misguided goal, stood as a betrayal of the birthright of human reason to the author.
In one portion of the guest lecture, I asked students to discuss in groups the following four questions:
1. When is science used?
2. When is the scientific method used?
3. When not?
4. What does beauty have to do with it?
Admittedly, this was a lot for 10 minutes, especially in a group. But afterwards, when I asked each group to write on the board one of their findings, the answers surprised me.
One group wrote that science dealt with quantitative questions only; qualitative questions were outside its purview.
Another wrote that people generally employ the scientific method in their daily lives, even if they don’t refer to it as such. For example, we avoid hitting our heads into walls, because of informal experimentation we’ve done and observation. (This, of course, is rather contradictory to the previous statement.)
A third group wrote that “everything is subjective. I think.” Part of this response was motivated by the fact that the small group couldn’t agree on any answers to the questions I posed (or on approaches to the questions). Still, I found this quite a surprising response, coming from undergraduates at a science and engineering university…
I think the reluctance or inexperience of the students to analyze an argument rhetorically (be it the author’s argument, or just the way I led the discussion) left them in a bit of a bind, when it came to moving ahead confidently in their thoughts.
October 4th, 2007 at 7:23 am
That’s about what I’d expect from a group of students at our institution- the problem is that we’ve chopped up the material that they’re studying into such tiny little factoids that they think that college is about accumulating a large enough collection of facts, not about learning how to think. My experience is that some of the students really appreciate any chance to think more deeply, while many others run scared when you ask them an open ended question.
October 4th, 2007 at 9:28 am
Great bit to read about on a fall morning. I also find it troubling when I see evidence of people’s inability to synthesize and integrate ideas and thoughts from a diverse sources. I don’t blame, them, however, as we have been steeped in reduction-oriented approaches to learning. Even though we may feel that we are moving outside of that, the embedded ideas in our institutions, processes and invisible sensibilities still pays homage to this platform. And my arguement isn’t with reduction - just the overemphasis it has received. Michel Serres, a French philosopher many North Americans don’t know about, talks about the proper field of inquiry for philosophers being weather. Why? Because it requires us to synthesize significant disparities and uncertaines, necessitates us becoming good at being attentive to patterns. Keep at it. We need this kind of thinking.
October 14th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
What you’re talking about is nothing new. I teach at the local middle school. I run into the same problem when I ask students to think, to explain, to describe. This is not something new, unfortunately. It is something ingrained into our education system from the very beginning up to the college level. In order to make good grades, they are required to have the “correct” answer. In order to get into the good schools with good scholarships, they have to have the “correct scores.” In order to pass and get a degree, they have to have the “passing grades.” None of this focuses on teaching them to think, to analyze, and to synthesize the information. The education that students receive today is lacking in originality and discussion. I blame it on trying to meet scores and expectation levels that are trying to quantify something that is truly quantitative.
And for what it’s worth… I’m only one teacher, but I AM trying to teach them to think…
October 14th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
*sigh* change the second “quantitative” to “qualitative”. I need to remember to read my comments before I post them.