Posted on 01/10/2006 6:29:50 PM PST by gobucks
The description does not seem to mis-represent the content.
I'm not sure where it stands in relation to the Lemon criteria.
But the required courses must teach science as we know it, including evolution. They should acknowledge in those classes that many people disagree with it. That's only fair.
But they don't have to teach Scientology in a science class to be fair and balanced. In philosophy, you can teach just about anything you want and still get paid for it.
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(*) Spelled either way archeology or archaeology this is a greek root word with roman letters approxiamting the greek spelling.
I'm confident that it is at least as balanced as the Dover science classrooms.
Thus the reason I went into engineering. I did take several archeology classes though. Enjoyed the classes almost as much as asking the professors questions they couldn't answer about evolution and some of the fields analysis methods. To my surprise they didn't get offended!
There are more numbers and less subjectivity in archaeology nowadays than in the past.
The physical sciences are contributing a lot of hard data; everything from radiocarbon dating to x-ray fluorescence, remote sensing, and a host of other techniques. Statistics are common, when once they were rare.
Archaeologists are working with soil scientists and geologists to figure out stratigraphy, and with palynologists and other experts to figure out past environments.
Of course, interpretation of hard data is still subjective, but that's the same as in many other sciences.
But, like other sciences, everything is peer-reviewed, sooner or later, and bad science gets shown the exit.
PurplePing
Cogito ergo sum-Renee Descartes
We find truth and reality in the world around us. We know there is a force that keeps us all on the Earth and we call it gravity. There are theories about what causes gravity and how it can be calculated but it exists regardless of whether we have a theory about it.
Atomic bombs were not all around us. A theory was proposed and the bomb was developed.
But the question I asked, responding to your previous post, involved truth and reality. You wrote:
Scientists should have to take Philosopy of Science just so they won't be like the current generation which equate theory with actual truth or reality.I think scientists are well aware of what theory is, in relation to "actual truth or reality." I have even posted the definitions on these threads--often--so that most people here are aware of what scientists consider a theory to be.
But if you would settle for scientists taking a class in the history and methods of science, I could certainly not argue with that. I think everyone should have some exposure to those subjects.
But philosophy? Please, we scientists have our standards!
What about history class? We can't teach that there was a time when people didn't believe in evolution.
What preconceptions caused you to expect them to be offended?
And I expect you'll misunderstand the answers, as you so often do.
As I've previously stated, "ID" would be acceptable in a philosophy class, *IF* it is covered in the same manner as other philosophies. If, however, it's just brought into class in the way it usually is -- as a Trojan horse for advocating creationism under a different name -- then it would again be found unconstitutional for the same reason the Dover attempt was.
It's the *content* of the material, not whether there's a "science" or "philosophy" sign hanging over the classroom, which determines whether the teacher or schoolboard is trying to push or protect a specific religion or religious view.
From the above article, it sounds as if the content of the "philosophy" class is just the Dover twaddle transplanted into a different classroom down the hall. In fact, if the article is accurate, this example seems to have an even *more* blatantly explicit religious content than the Dover case.
As for teaching "ID" on just its merits as philosophy, I have previously written:
But I did not say ID taught as "Science". I said ID taught as "Philosophy." I thought you didn't have a problem with a joint science-philosophy class.Isn't that going to be a mighty short philosophy segment? Other than stating, "it's in concept possible that some unspecified portion of the Universe or its contents were constructed at some unspecified time by some unspecified intelligence", exactly what else *is* there to the "philosophy of ID" (especially after it's divorced from theology, as the IDers studiously assert)?
As paper-thin as the "science" of ID is, the "philosophy" of it is even more limited in scope.
But one does need to take genetics, chemictry and physics.
Yes. Hard sciences.
One doesn't even need to take an evolution class to get a degree in Biology.
But one does need to take genetics, chemictry and physics.
My own perspective is that ALL historical sciences (and philosophies) need to be held with greater humility. Past events are unable to be held to current observations--and repitition--things I recall from Jr. High as being required in classic scientific method. We can make reasoned theories for historic (or prehistoric) events but since those events cannot be observed--EVERYONE needs to be less dogmatic and certain of their particular explanation of things that happened a very long time ago.
This is why physics or chemistry...where direct contemporary observations and repetition of experiments seem to be more reliable, "hard" sciences, where sociology, physchology, anthropology or any investigation of things historical have different standards of proof.
The scientists at DuPont definitely have much higher (and different) standard of proof than the best law-court in the world--yet both are trying to discern truth from evidence, one about chemistry the other about recent past human history.
He retreated to a Monadastery.
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