SWNID famously champions the notion that good education is deliberately interdisciplinary.
And so does everyone else, until the subject of science education comes up. Then suddenly, the conversation takes a dark turn: the science classroom should teach nothing other than science.
Of course, that never happens. It's a means of excluding the larger metaphysical questions about origins, questions leading to discussion of God, from the conversation. So you can't follow the discussion of evolution with any of the three questions that evolution appears incapable of answering: (a) why is there something instead of nothing? (b) why is there life and not just non-life? (c) why are there self-conscious humans capable of pondering such questions?
Enter Ari Eisen of Emory University's Center for Ethics, on CNN's Belief Blog. His gravid voice asks whether there's ever been a significant conversation about science that didn't touch on issues that belong to other areas of inquiry, like ethics and religion. He wonders whether students are less attracted to science as a way of knowing precisely because it's presented as a body of facts independent of significance. He points to data suggesting that students learn science better when they are challenged to see its relationship to other considerations. He notes well that the neglect of larger questions does not make those questions go away in the minds of students and the public--that people persist in their belief that scientific data and religious ideas are somehow compatible.
We are pretty sure that Eisen would be given a very unscientific cold shoulder were he to present his views at any major conference of natural scientists. Too bad for everyone.
3 comments:
I've been in a lot of heavy conversations with an atheist student at UC who is VERY into science, and he's pretty knowledgeable with all of that too, but he has a propensity, in my opinion, to just give evolution way more credit than it should be given. Ask any question about why things are the way they are, and he just says "evolution." Why is there something instead of nothing? Matter is eternal and the whole universe just keeps expanding, contracting, and expanding again. Why is there life and not just non-life (we as that question noting how slim the chances are for non-life material to evolve into simple life forms)? He would just say, you can't look back on it and say the chance is too slim to happen because it did happen so perhaps chances are higher than we give it credit for (just a decision to deliberately take God out of the equation). Why are there self-conscious humans capable of pondering such questions? Evolution - as the mind advanced and rendered humans able to survive much better, it also grew in capacity to be self-conscious.
If your friend had the opportunity to hear more interdisciplinary discussion of these issues, he might be at least marginally more open to other points of view. But we suspect that he's motivated as much by the desire to run his life as he pleases as by his socialization in the classroom.
Also, if your friend had the opportunity to hear more science, he might be at least marginally more open to the fact that the oscillating universe hypothesis is dead. And if he had the opportunity to hear more logic, he might be at least marginally more open to the fact that he's begging the question on the probability issue. And if he had the opportunity to hear more of himself, he might be at least marginally more open to the fact that he's looking to science to settle disputes outside its jurisdiction.
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