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Sarah Spry
There were two points within the article that I find crucial to doing science a justice, those points being that science is another form of “perspective”, or “explanation” for the world we exist in rather than simply an answer to it. Often I feel that science is seen as a two dimensional form of question-answer, when in fact it is more akin to the study of literature or history. Literature and history are forms of explanations for the world we live in, and the two are separate “lenses” for how things came to be. Also, like literature or history science reflects the biases, limitations or enlightenments of a specific society at a certain point in time; science mirrors humanity’s social evolution. A basic (and perhaps rather obvious) example of such evolution is how the leading scientists of the late fourteen hundred all believed that the world was flat and that it was the center of the universe, reflecting the need for people to believe that human life was the greatest life for, as well as other religious beliefs of the time in Europe. Of course today we look back and say that that was a conceptual flaw due to the technological or perhaps intellectual shortcomings of the time, but I think it had to do with what was socially, and perhaps religiously need at the time and place.
The second point that I thought the article conveyed was how science (and education in general) ought to be the application of thought and reasoning, rather than memorization. I absolutely agree with that “postulate” because to encourage memorization alone implies that knowledge and “truth” and understanding are stagnant, when in fact the truth according our perception is ever shifting, forming and reforming. Like optical illusions on the site, without the disclaimer that they were all optical illusions we would have no reason not to believe that was we see is reality. In that same respect we must accept that we only have our ability to rationalize make observations and create suppositions from those observations, because otherwise we live within intellectual obscurity like one observing an optical illusion and not realizing it.