Re: WingNutDaily: Intelligent-design backers downplay Dover

On Sat, 24 Dec 2005 00:50:08 -0800, Michael Siemon
<mlsiemon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>In article <1135412408.513327.194560@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> jspaceman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>...
>
>> But Gonzaga University law professor David DeWolf says the Dover
>> decision legally is irrelevant to the Ohio curriculum.
>>
>> "The U.S. Supreme Court laid down the foundation for this body of law
>> nearly 20 years ago when they wrote that "scientific critiques" of
>> "prevailing scientific theories" may be taught in public schools," said
>> DeWolf.
>
>This should be read in the light of Judge Jones' excellent analysis
>of what an "objective" student (or parent or other adult in the
>community) would understand to be the message when this notion
>teaching that there are "scientific critiques" is applied _only_
>in biology classes.
>
>DeWolf sounds like a typical Creationist ***-head. By all means
>teach (preferably in something like physics classes) that all
>theory is provisional, and dependent on continued agreement with
>observation and experiment. Shoving that observation into biology
>classes is _inherently_ suspect, given the history of Creationism
>in this country. Jones' spells out why this is so, even though he
>did not have to deal with this specific issue.
>
>Those who are so deeply concerned about the provisional nature
>of science should WELCOME the chance to use physics as their
>example, since we KNOW that the two (powerful, useful, generally
>accepted except by crackpots) strands of modern physical theory,
>GR for gravity and QM and its progeny for everything else, MUST
>eventually (if we are to gain any substantial further advance in
>our understanding of the basic framework of our universe) be
>superseded by something else.
>
>Somehow, I doubt this will meet the agendas of the marching
>morons of ID.
>
>Since there is _no_ current reason to believe that evolutionary
>theory has anything remotely like the crisis in theoretical
>physics, biology is simply _not_ the best place for earnest
>school boards to locate this immensely valuable attempt to
>clue students into the nature of scientific investigation.
>
>Especially if biology is (as in Dover, and was true also in
>my own high school 45 years ago) the _first_ exposure of the
>students to specific subject-oriented science classes. Give
>the students an exposure to theory and its application FIRST;
>then, when there is some basis for understanding the point,
>you may suggest that there are some difficult issues relating
>to the replacement of current theories with proposed alternates.
>
>Frankly, I think that the "traditional" science sequence in the
>US (biology then chemistry then physics) is problematic. In a
>number of ways it "should" be physics, then chemistry, and then
>biology. But of course, you can't typically do physics at even
>a high-school level without math that is not likely to be known
>to the students until junior or senior year. Sigh. High school
>biology, then, becomes leaf/bug collection and frog disection,
>or the equivalent. Perhaps the _real_ sequence should be biology
>(as observation and classification, and some basics of what we
>know from that), then chemistry (postponing some explanation to
>the next year's physics classes), physics, and a senior year
>re-examination of biology, given the foundation of theoretical
>sophistication acquired in the previous years. Of course, that
>would only work if everyone had to take four years of science!

The problem with physics-chemistry-then bio is that this automatically
excludes students without some, you know, math skills getting any
education in biology. Biology is basically the only chance to capture
the non-math-oriented and give them an idea of what the scientific
method consists.

The idea of bio as basic everybody-gets-some science, followed by
physics-chemistry-advanced bio, on the other hand, is rather alluring.
"Requires four years of science" is not a bad thing by any means.

Shell
if there was any ONE thing about my life I could change, in
retrospect, it would be making a more concerted effort to get past my
math block

.

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