Well, when the opponents of the sticker make claims like "saying that evolution is a theory and telling students to have open minds is like saying that everything in the book is false" or listening to Dawkin's ex cathedra pronouncements about scientific orthodoxy make Feyerabend's position pretty tenable.
I said "stop assuming that science education is *simply* the process of telling students what a lot of really smart, respected people believe,". To be sure, a lot of science education will be technical explanations of well accepted theories and it would be bad if students did not learn them. But if that's *all* that students receive in science class they are very poorly served and they really aren't getting a clear notion of what science is. Einstein once said something to the effect that his progress resulted from asking questions that children were told not to ask. I think there is a tendency, especially at the secondary school level, to teach science as if it is, for the most part, a done deal instead of a regular process of theory refinement, theory saving, and even discarding theories for entirely new models.
(FWIW, I mostly think that schools do just a really terrible job of teaching. Mostly because helping students to become thinkers is at best a secondary or tertiary objective of schools and at worst, contrary to their real objectives. About the only article that I remember from my days as an education student is a flaky article from the 60s that was distributed as something of a joke. It opened with the words, "School is where the dying society lays its trip on you." There's another claim that I find it hard to disagree with (once you get past the 60s lingo) but maybe that's a story for a whole new post. We are far less interested in teaching students to reason, explore and criticize than we are in making them into good rule-following citizens who are employable and contributing to the GDP.)
What you wish the school board migth be noble, but it's not what they said. They said something clearly false by implying (as clearly as one can) that it is "not a fact." Now, you might want to engage the youth in edifying tales of critically evaluating theories, but if you are suggesting to them that those "theories" are necessarily less reliable than some other thing you call "fact," then I think you are in the wrong.
A common critique of "dogmatic" empiricism has been that there aren't really these foundational truths call facts against which we can bang our far-flung theories. It's all somewhat far-flung and somewhat well-grounded, and anyway "facts" are more or less well-confirmed theories of a special sorts. I am with you, if the S. Carolina board or whoever wanted to make this the beginning of a science course, I'd be all for it. Manifestly, they aren't. They are wrong, and it's clear that they are trying to be sneaky, not just wrong. If they were half honest, they should point out that by their own (amended) lights, creationism would qualify as not even a theory, since it lacks even modest prerequisites of internal coherence and reliance on less controversial assumptions.
What do you mean, "what have you done"? Seems fine to me.
BTW, have you read Kitcher's "Believing Where We Cannot Prove" a great discussion of these very issues? As an exercise, I used to have philosophy students make presentations to "school boards" (other students) as to why creationism should be included in the science curriculum. This was certainly a very effective way to explore the salient issues.
I once stumbled on an article by Daniel Kolak that is salient to this discussion as well. It's called "The Church of Science". It's another fun article for intro. philosophy of science; it presents a defence of the church in the Galileo controversy and invites readers to explore why they beleve that the earth goes around the sun. A story for another day, perhaps
This is unfortunately true; keep in mind that the public school system is an outgrowth from the rising war between the nation states (1700-1800) during the development of the modern guns, when the complicated drills required soldiers that were at least rudimentary trainable.
I have to say, as much as I enjoy the rabble-rousing style of Feyerabend, in this particular situation I am more strongly channeling Popper: Popper is doubly relevant here, one the one hand as the notion that it is the job of the scientists to continously refute their own theories by finding violating counter-examples (and clearly this needs to be passed on to the students); but even more important here as the notion that one cannot appeal to tolerance for pushing an intolerant stance, and that it is indeed the opposite of political correct to accept this.
The destruction of the German Weimar Republic and the beginning of World War II was exactly such an inappropriate tolerance, because it allowed un-democratic parties to become the key power-brokers in a democracy. The results are well known: the two parties slugged it out, the Nazis managed to enlist the help of the heavy industry bosses of the Rheinland, and the Communist movement got mushed. (This is the kind of example that Popper has in mind in the Open Society, I believe, where he presents this notion.)
Thus, while there are rights that each individual in the scientific discourse holds, there are also duties, and among the duties is extending equal rights to the participants. I would claim that the request of making evolution "just a theory" is done with the implicit shielding of Intelligent Design as "just a theory".
The day any of the Creationist or Intelligent Design folks say that Genesis 1-5 is also just a theory, then I will buy your argument. A day earlier is giving in to scientific fascism, IMHO, because it abuses the infrastructure of tolerance for an intolerant agenda.
Well, I guess part of my argument is that there is no thing in science as "just a theory", it's theories all the ways down, see the Post letter to the editor that I posted below; to acknowledge that evolution is a theory is not to give anything up.
I don't deny that fundamentalists are attempting to trade on a general assumption that calling something a theory is to disparage it (in a way that they wouldn't do to their own views). Admittedly, I don't have any evidence that that's what they're doing.
The Popper tolerance reference is an interesting point, not sure it's entirely applicable here but it's not inapplicable, either.
I said "stop assuming that science education is *simply* the process of telling students what a lot of really smart, respected people believe,". To be sure, a lot of science education will be technical explanations of well accepted theories and it would be bad if students did not learn them. But if that's *all* that students receive in science class they are very poorly served and they really aren't getting a clear notion of what science is. Einstein once said something to the effect that his progress resulted from asking questions that children were told not to ask. I think there is a tendency, especially at the secondary school level, to teach science as if it is, for the most part, a done deal instead of a regular process of theory refinement, theory saving, and even discarding theories for entirely new models.
(FWIW, I mostly think that schools do just a really terrible job of teaching. Mostly because helping students to become thinkers is at best a secondary or tertiary objective of schools and at worst, contrary to their real objectives. About the only article that I remember from my days as an education student is a flaky article from the 60s that was distributed as something of a joke. It opened with the words, "School is where the dying society lays its trip on you." There's another claim that I find it hard to disagree with (once you get past the 60s lingo) but maybe that's a story for a whole new post. We are far less interested in teaching students to reason, explore and criticize than we are in making them into good rule-following citizens who are employable and contributing to the GDP.)
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A common critique of "dogmatic" empiricism has been that there aren't really these foundational truths call facts against which we can bang our far-flung theories. It's all somewhat far-flung and somewhat well-grounded, and anyway "facts" are more or less well-confirmed theories of a special sorts. I am with you, if the S. Carolina board or whoever wanted to make this the beginning of a science course, I'd be all for it. Manifestly, they aren't. They are wrong, and it's clear that they are trying to be sneaky, not just wrong. If they were half honest, they should point out that by their own (amended) lights, creationism would qualify as not even a theory, since it lacks even modest prerequisites of internal coherence and reliance on less controversial assumptions.
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PB
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BTW, have you read Kitcher's "Believing Where We Cannot Prove" a great discussion of these very issues? As an exercise, I used to have philosophy students make presentations to "school boards" (other students) as to why creationism should be included in the science curriculum. This was certainly a very effective way to explore the salient issues.
I once stumbled on an article by Daniel Kolak that is salient to this discussion as well. It's called "The Church of Science". It's another fun article for intro. philosophy of science; it presents a defence of the church in the Galileo controversy and invites readers to explore why they beleve that the earth goes around the sun. A story for another day, perhaps
Reply
I have to say, as much as I enjoy the rabble-rousing style of Feyerabend, in this particular situation I am more strongly channeling Popper: Popper is doubly relevant here, one the one hand as the notion that it is the job of the scientists to continously refute their own theories by finding violating counter-examples (and clearly this needs to be passed on to the students); but even more important here as the notion that one cannot appeal to tolerance for pushing an intolerant stance, and that it is indeed the opposite of political correct to accept this.
The destruction of the German Weimar Republic and the beginning of World War II was exactly such an inappropriate tolerance, because it allowed un-democratic parties to become the key power-brokers in a democracy. The results are well known: the two parties slugged it out, the Nazis managed to enlist the help of the heavy industry bosses of the Rheinland, and the Communist movement got mushed. (This is the kind of example that Popper has in mind in the Open Society, I believe, where he presents this notion.)
Thus, while there are rights that each individual in the scientific discourse holds, there are also duties, and among the duties is extending equal rights to the participants. I would claim that the request of making evolution "just a theory" is done with the implicit shielding of Intelligent Design as "just a theory".
The day any of the Creationist or Intelligent Design folks say that Genesis 1-5 is also just a theory, then I will buy your argument. A day earlier is giving in to scientific fascism, IMHO, because it abuses the infrastructure of tolerance for an intolerant agenda.
Reply
I don't deny that fundamentalists are attempting to trade on a general assumption that calling something a theory is to disparage it (in a way that they wouldn't do to their own views). Admittedly, I don't have any evidence that that's what they're doing.
The Popper tolerance reference is an interesting point, not sure it's entirely applicable here but it's not inapplicable, either.
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