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Teaching Science (Another Derbyshire Classic!)
National Review Online ^ | August 30 2005 | John Derbyshire

Posted on 08/30/2005 9:31:31 AM PDT by RightWingAtheist

Catching up on back news this past few days — I was out of the country for the first two weeks of August — I caught President Bush's endorsement of teaching Intelligent Design in public school science classes. "Both sides ought to be properly taught," President Bush told a reporter August 2, "so people can understand what the debate is all about."

This is Bush at his muddle-headed worst, conferring all the authority of the presidency on the teaching of pseudoscience in science classes. Why stop with Intelligent Design (the theory that life on earth has developed by a series of supernatural miracles performed by the God of the Christian Bible, for which it is pointless to seek any naturalistic explanation)? Why not teach the little ones astrology? Lysenkoism? Orgonomy? Dianetics? Reflexology? Dowsing and radiesthesia? Forteanism? Velikovskianism? Lawsonomy? Secrets of the Great Pyramid? ESP and psychokinesis? Atlantis and Lemuria? The hollow-earth theory? Does the president have any idea, does he have any idea, how many varieties of pseudoscientific flapdoodle there are in the world? If you are going to teach one, why not teach the rest? Shouldn't all sides be "properly taught"? To give our kids, you know, a rounded picture? Has the president scrutinized Velikovsky's theories? Can he refute them? Can you?

And every buncombe theory — every one of those species of twaddle that I listed — has, or at some point had, as many adherents as Intelligent Design. The hollow-earth theory was taken up by the Nazis and taught, as the Hohlweltlehre, in German schools. It still has a following in Germany today. Velikovsky's theories — he believed that Jupiter gave birth to a giant comet which, after passing close to earth and causing the miracles of the Book of Exodus, settled down as the planet Venus — were immensely popular in the 1950s and generated heated controversy, with angry accusations by the Velikovskians that they were being shut out by closed-minded orthodox astronomers determined to protect their turf, etc., etc. Lysenkoism was state doctrine in Stalin's Russia and was taught at the most prestigious universities. Expressing skepticism about it could get you shot. (Likewise with the bizarre linguistic theories of Stalin's protégé N.Y. Marr, who believed that every word in every human language derived from one of four basic elements, pronounced "sal," "ber," "yon," and "rosh." I tell you, the house of pseudoscience has many, many mansions.) Dianetics was rebranded as Scientology and is now a great force in the land — try criticizing it, and you'll find out.

Nor is any of these theories lacking in a certain appeal, as Martin Gardner, from whose book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science I compiled that list, is charitable enough to point out. Of Lawsonomy — "The earth is a huge organism operating by Suction and Pressure..." — Gardner says generously: "This makes more sense than one might think." Pseudoscience is in fact a fascinating study, though as sociology, not as science. Gardner's book, now 50 years old, is still an excellent introduction, and great fun to read.

What, then, should we teach our kids in high-school science classes? The answer seems to me very obvious. We should teach them consensus science, and we should teach it conservatively. Consensus science is the science that most scientists believe ought to be taught. "Conservatively" means eschewing theories that are speculative, unproven, require higher math, or even just are new, in favor of what is well settled in the consensus. It means teaching science unskeptically, as settled fact.

Consider physics, for example. It became known, in the early years of the last century, that Newton's physics breaks down at very large or very tiny scales of distance, time, and speed. New theories were cooked up to explain the discrepancies: the special and general theories of relativity, quantum theory and its offspring. By the 1930s these new theories were widely accepted, though some of the fine details remained (and some still remain!) to be worked out.

Then, in the late 1950s, along came your humble correspondent, to study physics to advanced level at a good English secondary school. What did they teach us? Newtonian mechanics! I didn't take a class in relativity theory until my third year at university, age 21. I never have formally studied quantum mechanics, though I flatter myself I understand it well enough.

My schoolmasters did the right thing. Newton's mechanics is the foundation of all physics. "But it's wrong!" you may protest. Well, so it is; but it is right enough to form that essential foundation; right enough that you cannot understand the nature of its wrongness until you have mastered it. (Along with some college-level math.) Furthermore, it is consensus science. By that I mean, if you were to poll 10,000 productive working physicists and ask them what ought to be taught in our high schools, I imagine that upwards of 9,900 of them would say: "Well, you have to get Newtonian mechanics into their heads..." No doubt you'd find the odd Velikovskian or adherent of the Hohlweltlehre, but Newtonism would be the consensus. Intelligent high-school seniors should, I think, be encouraged to read popular books about relativity and quantum mechanics. Perhaps, nowadays — I couldn't say, I am out of touch — teachers have even figured out how to make some of that higher stuff accessible to young minds, and are teaching it. If so, that's great. The foundation, though, must be consensus science, conservatively taught.

I think intelligent teenagers should also be given some acquaintance with pseudoscience, just so that they might learn to spot it when they see it. A copy of that excellent magazine Skeptical Inquirer ought to be available in any good high school library, along with books like Gardner's. I am not sure that either pseudoscience or its refutation has any place in the science classroom, though. These things properly belong in social studies, if anywhere outside the library.

And what should we teach our kids in biology classes, concerning the development of living things on earth? We should teach them Darwinism, on exactly the same arguments. There is no doubt this is consensus science. When the Intelligent Design people flourished a list of 400 scientists who were skeptical of the theory of evolution, the National Center for Science Education launched "Project Steve," in which they asked for affirmation of the contrary view, but only from scientists named Steve. (Which they estimate to be about one percent of all U.S. scientists.) The Steve-O-Meter stands at 577 as of this July 8, implying around 57,000 scientists on the orthodox side. That's consensus science. When the I.D. support roster has 57,000 names on it, drop me a line.

And Darwinism ought to be taught conservatively, without skepticism or equivocation, which will only confuse young minds. Darwinism is the essential foundation for all of modern biology and genomics, and offers a convincing explanation for all the phenomena we can observe in the life sciences. It may be that, as we get to finer levels of detail, we shall find gaps and discrepancies in Darwinism that need new theories to explain them. This is a normal thing in science, and new theories will be worked out to plug the gaps, as happened with Newtonism a hundred years ago. If this happens, nobody — no responsible scientist — will be running round tearing his hair, howling "Darwinism is a theory in crisis!" any more than the publication of Einstein's great papers a hundred years ago caused physicists to make bonfires of the Principia. The new theories, once tested and validated, will be welcomed and incorporated, as Einstein's and Planck's were. And very likely our high schools will just go on teaching Darwinism, as mine taught me Newtonism fifty years after Einstein's revolution. They will be right to do so, in my opinion, just as my schoolmasters were right.

If you are afraid that your children, being confronted with science in school, will turn into atheists and materialists, you have a wide variety of options available to you in this free nation. Most obviously, you should take your kids to church regularly, encourage them to pray, say grace before meals, and respond to those knotty questions that children sometimes ask with answers from your own faith. Or you could homeschool them, or send them to a religious school, and make sure they are not exposed to the science you fear so much.

You really shouldn't be afraid of science, though. Plenty of fine scientists have been religious. The hero of my last book, one of the greatest mathematicians of the 19th century, was a very devout man, as I took pains to make clear. The same can be said of many Darwinists. I am currently researching the life of the Victorian writer Charles Kingsley, who was a keen naturalist, an early and enthusiastic supporter of Darwin, and also a passionate Christian, who preached the last of his many fine sermons from the pulpit of Westminster Abbey. (The last words of that sermon were: "Come as thou seest best, but in whatsoever way thou comest, even so come, Lord Jesus." I suppose this man would be considered impious by the Intelligent Design merchants.)

A great deal of nonsense is being talked in this zone recently. Science is science, and ought to be taught in our public schools conservatively, from the professional consensus, as settled fact. Religion is quite a different thing. It is not entirely unconnected with science. Many scientists have believed that in their inquiries, they were engaging with God's thoughts. Faraday certainly thought so; probably Newton did, too; possibly Einstein did. This has even been a strong motivation for scientific research, and it is probable that in a world with no religion, we should have much less science than we have. Those are matters psychological and motivational, though. They don't — they can't — inform the content of scientific theories, because those theories are naturalistic by definition. Whether miracles happen in the world is a thing you must decide for yourself, based on your own faith, study, and life experiences. To admit miracles into a scientific theory, however, turns it into pseudoscience at once; and while pseudoscience can be fun, it is not science. Nor is it religion, except in the widest and loosest possible sense of that word, a sense that includes every kind of supernatural baloney that any clever crackpot can come up with — a sense I personally will not accept.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: allcrevoallthetime; anothercrevothread; creationuts; crevocrevoallthetime; crevolist; crevorepublic; derbyshire; enoughalready; evolution; funwithkeywords; johnderbyshire; makeitstop; science; scienceeducation; spewhatehere; thederb; walltowallcrevo; yetmorecrevo
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To: longshadow
To do so requires an astounding level of ignorance.

I must admit that after a few years on these crevo threads, my threshold for being astounded is much higher than it used to be.

161 posted on 08/30/2005 2:21:54 PM PDT by Gumlegs
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To: LaineyDee
Doesn't present-time observations tell us that life forms "degenerate" or become extinct... without intelligent intervention?

Species become extinct. What do you mean by "degenerate"?
162 posted on 08/30/2005 2:22:56 PM PDT by Dimensio (http://angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif <-- required reading before you use your next apostrophe!)
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To: longshadow
Demanding that the ToE explain the Origin of Life is equivalent to demanding that Hydrology explain where water molecules came from. To do so requires an astounding level of ignorance.

Analogizing to that...I'm a materialist, but not a Cartesian. Human aspirations, thought, and our destiny are not subjects whose questions we submit to scientists. In a narrowed scope, scientists can and should try to answer what was happening 1 billion years ago (for example), and try to fit that into theories, chains of causes and effects. I think their consensus opinions have some problems even within the realm of science, but the biggest error is one of category - the idea that their theories "disprove" transcendental ideas.

163 posted on 08/30/2005 2:23:45 PM PDT by NutCrackerBoy
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To: jimmyray
If *god* could not get it correct the first time, and required millions of years and countless cycles of death to create, why would anyone want to serve that *god*? he/she is not much of a *god*, really nothing more than blind chance!

Who are you to presume the motives and methods of a god?
164 posted on 08/30/2005 2:23:57 PM PDT by Dimensio (http://angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif <-- required reading before you use your next apostrophe!)
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To: js1138

Yep. And barfing a brick would be nothing compared to what he barfed onto these threads. Spifford Lives!.


165 posted on 08/30/2005 2:25:39 PM PDT by Gumlegs
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To: Dimensio
Who are you to presume the motives and methods of a god?

A creationist.

166 posted on 08/30/2005 2:28:14 PM PDT by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
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To: Gumlegs
Where to begin? you therefore must believe that birds, bats, and flying insects are the same thing

No, just believe they all fly Genesis 1:20-21 - define bird

that insects have four legs

Have you read Genesis? "..and all the creatures that move along the ground" Gen 1:25

Hares chew their cud

Rabbits re-eat their dung, thus chew cud that was not regurgitated, rather excreted.

Most Theology students can tell the difference between ceremonial laws and civil laws.

Using the Popse as authority only appeals to catholics. I would argue that the Pope ignores the second commanment, regarding graven images, and they pray to Mary as intercessor, which the bible is plainly against. Much as I'm told on these threads regarding various aspects of "evolution", I will ask you, have you actually read the Bible you criticize out of hand? If you do, you will find it has problem texts, which require inquiry to understand, but no contradictions.

167 posted on 08/30/2005 2:33:36 PM PDT by jimmyray
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To: Gumlegs
BTW, what is the central message of the New Testament?

How is a man "Born Again"?

168 posted on 08/30/2005 2:34:59 PM PDT by jimmyray
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To: Dimensio

Hey I've been called a degenerate more than once and over the course of this last year I certainly feel degenerated.

Will either of these help?


169 posted on 08/30/2005 2:39:53 PM PDT by furball4paws (One of the last Evil Geniuses, or the first of their return.)
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To: longshadow
"Demanding that the ToE explain the Origin of Life is equivalent to demanding that Hydrology explain where water molecules came from. To do so requires an astounding level of ignorance."

So every time the word is used in science magazines, white papers, TV "science" shows, school textbooks, etc. all use your definition of "speciation" by "Natural Selection" of "beneficial mutations"?

No, the word evolution used at large implies abiogenesis to man, often including The Big Bang as well. I understand your point well, but most proponents of evo don't, I would argue.

170 posted on 08/30/2005 2:40:55 PM PDT by jimmyray
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To: jimmyray; longshadow

There are sometimes when it ain't worth wasting the electrons.


171 posted on 08/30/2005 2:42:29 PM PDT by furball4paws (One of the last Evil Geniuses, or the first of their return.)
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To: js1138
"On the other hand, if God has inflicted all those deaths just to slap down some disobedient twit, why should anyone consider that deity anything other than an abusive parent?"

Have you not read, "Just as sin entered the world by one man, and death through sin." Rom 5:12

What would man be like if he lived forever in his sinful condition, and could not die? What would earth be like? Why was man created?

Evolution answer: Man wasn't created, you're just an accident, no different than a worm

Creation Answer: To know God, and fellowship with him.

172 posted on 08/30/2005 2:46:00 PM PDT by jimmyray
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To: Monti Cello
[W]hat I had in mind, and should have stated clearly, was the derisive 'spaghetti monster' crowd which seems so delighted in mocking belief of things science can't demonstrate, but insists on leaving origins out of the discussion because it puts the shoe on the other foot in regard to belief with scanty evidence.

Certainly that goes on, but I don't think it even covers all of the spaghetti monster group. (I myself find it an excellent source of puns -- "Luther's 95 Recipes" and that sort of thing).

Origins isn't part of the theory -- you and I (along with the rest of the evolution side), agree on that. Unfortunately, parts of the creationist/ID side do not, and appear to be compelled to insert objections based on origins. They refuse to understand the distinction.

Their objections are usually based on the Bible. I (and others), take issue with using the Bible to censor science. When all the people who so devoutly believe in the Bible (and not just crevo posters here), and who've studied it in detail their whole lives can't agree on what it means, what's it doing as a barrier in science class?

Again, I note the insect-bird-bat issue, the hare chewing its cud issue, and the insects have four legs issue. I've been told the problem is "nitpicking." When we're talking about the Bible-as-science-book, is it really nitpicking to note mistakes like miscounting the number of legs on an insect?

173 posted on 08/30/2005 2:47:03 PM PDT by Gumlegs
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To: Dimensio
"Who are you to presume the motives and methods of a god?"

His word says different. Disprove the Bible is Scripture, inspired by God. Show me all of the contradictions, and I'll show you MANY fulfilled prophecies that attest it's veracity.

174 posted on 08/30/2005 2:47:44 PM PDT by jimmyray
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To: Ol' Sparky
People like you have to believe the symmetry of solar eclipse is a result of random chance. The sun is 400 times bigger than the moon, yet the exact distance from the moon to form a perfect eclipse. If you think that happened by accidernt, you and the author of this tripe are morons.

Those like you, Sparky, who can't support their arguments scientifically with solid evidence, are reduced to calling names - and a foolish belief that the solar system was set up by a cosmic designer just to provide an astronomical spectacle for you once a year or so. That's if you can get to where the eclipse will be total and the weather permits.

As for me, I'll accept that it is pure random chance, and good luck, that the sun's and the moon's relative distance and diameters are such that they subtend about the same arc from my point of view. I can accept that, without thinking that I am so special that I rate a cosmic designer to set everything up just right!

175 posted on 08/30/2005 2:47:46 PM PDT by IonImplantGuru ("Me? You talking to me? You talkin' to me? Then [BLEEP]... Well, I'm the only one here.")
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To: furball4paws

It is my birthday and I expect lots of ecards from my Freeper buddies! But when you've passed 50, it's downhill so it doesn't bother me much anymore. LOL mlc9852@yahoo.com :)


176 posted on 08/30/2005 2:48:16 PM PDT by mlc9852
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To: jimmyray
Is the Bible literal or not?

I'm sure you don't agree with the Pope's theology, but that's not my point. Pope John Paul II was clearly a devout man who took his religion quite seriously and was considered by everyone to be quite learned in it. That he could accept the theory of evolution is an indication that it isn't necessarily contrary to the Bible, and that people can accept the theory without being atheists.

I do not critique the Bible. I critique the use to which it is put by those who would censor science.

177 posted on 08/30/2005 2:51:47 PM PDT by Gumlegs
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To: Gumlegs
is it really nitpicking to note mistakes like miscounting the number of legs on an insect?

If you look at a grasshopper on a surface like a leaf, it's usually sitting on its hind four legs. Solomon, who wrote the naturalist studies of his day, would have refuted the bible if this wasn't the case.

178 posted on 08/30/2005 2:51:59 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (No wonder the Southern Baptist Church threw Greer out: Only one god per church! [Ann Coulter])
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To: jimmyray

Where does it say, "Thou shalt ignore science"?


179 posted on 08/30/2005 2:54:12 PM PDT by Gumlegs
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To: jimmyray
"You ere, for you know not the facts.

Taxonomy, as first put forth by Carolus Linnaeus"

Taxonomy far out dates Linnaeus; Aristotle is probably the first to try to work in the field.

You should check before you lecture people about *knowing the facts*; it would make you look a lot less foolish.
180 posted on 08/30/2005 2:56:29 PM PDT by CarolinaGuitarman ("There is a grandeur in this view of life...")
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