Science teaching matters
This letter is written in response to the recent advertisement placed by a religious group and the letter in response (“Ads from criminals,” Feb. 21, page 8.)
Something often forgotten about science teaching is the importance of the underlying reason that all peoples see scientific thought as important. Science is not about learning the names of the planets or life cycles, etc, but to teach children to look for patterns, which give us clues to the sense which governs the universe in which we live.
Science just means discipline of thought: If your observations contradict your hypothesis, you must change your mind. People who do not have any discipline in their thought must keep the company of fools. You do not need all the answers to have discipline.
Arguments which suggest that evolution is not true because there are some things we do not understand, fade away when children are taught that this is like a jigsaw puzzle: The jigsaw has meaning as soon as the pieces start to fit together. If millions of pieces are already together, you know you need to look for the missing bits. Even 20 pieces fitting together is a huge number, if it happens by chance.
Pieces do not fit together by luck, and because we can predict which fossils will be found and where they will be found, it means we are becoming accurate. The fossil of Tiktaalik roseae, a lobe-finned fish of the Devonian period, was not only predicted to exist, but we also knew exactly where to look, in the rocks of Greenland, which are just the right age. A three-year search revealed that such a creature had indeed existed. A triumph of reason and discipline.
You can of course hide information like this from children, but if you hide information in a court of law you are in big trouble. We need the same discipline in schools. Children must be taught to filter out nonsense with logic and reason as their tools. They must be taught. We do not see things for ourselves: Otherwise, when you look at a picture of a sea lion, you do not see half a dog and half a dolphin, but if you put three pictures on a board at the same time the children work it out for themselves.
This does not mean that you cannot or should not be religious — it means you have to be aware of the dangers of belief. The criminal record of the Catholic Church stands testimony to the horrors people will inflict on each other if they are allowed. If the story of the Spanish Inquisition had to be taught as part of religious lessons, the lessons would be much more thought-provoking.
Taiwan more by luck than design has bottom-up religion rather than top-down; ie, you are responsible for your behavior, rather than there being an external justification for it. The hierarchical religions and economic beliefs of the West started to show their flaws when the need came to dilute the power of kings with parliaments.
Democracy does the same thing: Power dissolves into the masses before it becomes dangerous. That’s the theory anyway. It often becomes diluted to a point that is useless, but harmless.
Discipline of thought means that if there is something that no one understands (like quantum mechanics), you cannot fill that hole in with something you want. That is guaranteed to be anthropomorphic and in your own favor.
The US constitution was written by people who knew that as the population spread out, it would do exactly what it was written to do. It has turned out to be accurate. Good science teaching has to have good philosophy at its core. Witchcraft and ghosts spring out of the woodwork very quickly if we abandon logic and reason.
Peter Cook
Greater Taichung
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