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I think that these readings were good summaries of all the ideas we have addressed over the course of this class. I was especially interested in both Anne and Paul's articles by the relevance of these discussions to science education and accessibility. It was funny to look at Paul's comparison of the scientific model he was taught as a child and the scientific model he found later. I, too, remember the first model -- it's a basic, understandable format, and I imagine it's easy to explain to children. It's so black and white, right and wrong. I also remember learning the second model at some point, and definitely understanding it in college. We think of questions, we design methods to answer those questions, we get results, we tell a story about what we found, we ask more questions, and so on. I've said this in previous postings -- I feel like science has made a concerted effort to embrace this model of postulation and refutation (what Paul would call the "assailability model" perhaps). But I do agree that there is still this gap between the world of science and the non-professional scientist public. While the scientific community is free to postulate and refute, the public is fed a very different image...

I do think we all need to be trained to be scientists... and I agree that this doesn't involve being a math-genius or memorizing chemical pathways... it's fostering the feeling that one can ask questions, can criticize, can feel free to doubt and to formulate independent, different thoughts.

I see the scientific world trying, I do. In many ecology-based classes I have taken, we learn theories which help us to predict and understand phenomena in nature. It has always been made clear, to me at least, that these are stories. They don't always work, they sometimes don't explain a situation at all, and sometimes a combination of theories fits an observation. Theories are tools that we use, just like any other tool in science. We build on these theories when we conduct further research - we create new stories...

My question is, what does the scientific community really have to do differently? We're talking about a language problem, not really a problem with methodology, correct? It's the culture around science, not necessarily the physical practices of science that are the issue at hand here, correct? And while anyone can embrace scientific thought, without having to make a huge commitment to it, it is, ultimately, the mathematicians/staticians who can offer interpretations based on this "other," less ambiguous language... It's making it accessible and allowing everyone to have an influence on scientific pursuits that seems of more importance to me...

Thanks for these readings, guys -- I really enjoyed them!

“Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.”

-Ambrose Bierce