Mental discussed and linked to a interesting article on the scientific theory and how that relates to what we know and believe in the context of electrons and fairies. I'm a touch worried that readers who read his blog, and know he is Catholic, will believe that he is just being a religious zealot who is out to destroy teaching of science in school. If you think that, you're wrong for several reasons:

  1. If you read his blog, you'll realize Mental isn't like that.
  2. Your the one being the fanatic if you're distrusting a logical argument because of someone's beliefs. You should base your disagreement on the content, not the person.
  3. I agree with him and the last major contact that I had with a church was getting hit by a nun's car in front of one (that really did happen).

We need to stop teaching The Origin of the Species in schools, but continue to teach Evolution. I do realize that one is a book title and one is the concept presented in that book, but I think separating them makes an important point. Evolution is a process that is recreatable, we can seen bacteria change in response to anti-bacterial soap. We watch disease change to resist medications that we take to stop them. We can recreate evolution and it is an important process to teach in any modern Biology program.

The Origin of the Species is different, it is a thought on what could have happened. It is taking the equations that we've created, and running them backwards. No one has taken primordial goo and made a human out of it, so how can we call this scientific fact? No one has recreated it. It is a guess based on the concepts that we use to predict the future. And, we don't need to teach that as fact, it is one philosophy on what happened in the past.

But, this is just a symptom of a more systemic problem in science teaching today. The greatest strength of science is that nothing has to be taken on belief, everything can be recreated (if you have the equipment) and tested. If you disagree with someone else's findings, prove it, come up with a new theory that predicts things better. Science is thus dynamic. But, in our educational system we teach science as factual, the truth, when it is just as likely to change in the future as anything else; and that is a good thing! We need to teach the process of science, the process of questioning, not to blindly accept today's understanding as fact.


posted Oct 6, 2005 | permanent link