What is "Science"?
Who and What Is It For? And Who Gets
to Say?
Paul Grobstein
Center for Science in Society
Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania 19010
U.S.A
610 526-5098
For the
inaugural issue of the Journal of Research Practice
Draft
(incomplete) 15 August 2004
I suspect
that my writing this article will incline at least a few people who have (or
would have) regarded me as "scientist" to write me out of membership in that
community, and for that reason to dismiss what I have to say here. The risk is probably equally
great with people who regard themselves as "scientists" and those who don't.
Though for somewhat different reasons, both groups are likely to share a common
feeling that one cannot both be a "scientist" and argue, as I will, that some
widely accepted understandings of what "science" is are not only wrong but
counter-productive, and potentially dangerous. So let me say at the outset, to both groups, that I
think of myself very much as a "scientist", and take great pride and
satisfaction in my work as a "scientist", past and ongoing. Furthermore, I regard this article as
very much a part of that work. In
short, I hope those inclined to disenfranchise me as a "scientist" will hear me
out before passing judgement. My objective is not to attack "science" but to
encourage the same kind of critical examination of our understandings of
science that science itself promotes in its examination of our understandings
of other phenomena. It is, I will
argue, exactly that critical perspective that is the source of the demonstrable
power that "science" has. And it
is exactly that critical perspective, turned on itself, that science needs in
order to continue to evolve, in the most productive ways possible, the
essential role it has to play in human culture, both for those who, at the
present, regard themselves as "scientists" and those who do not.
With that said, I suspect I am at this point running a different risk with a somewhat different group of potential readers, again (significantly) including both people who currently think of themselves as "scientists" and people who don't. The problem this time has to do with "the essential role [science] has to play in human culture", a phrase that many people who regard themselves as scientists as well as many who don't will find equally troubling. The former may wonder why they should worry at all about culture; science is science and that's what they do --- culture is something different and can take care of itself. And the later may wonder why they, conversely, should think at all about science (or perhaps are already worried about it as a threat to culture). Common to both is a perspective that science and culture are different and parallel things between which one can choose (perhaps with the addition of the idea that one threatens the other). To these people too, I ask you to hear me out. Science, I will argue, is not usefully conceived as an alternative (either neutral or competitive) to culture. It is instead a central element of human culture, one that existed long before the term "science" was coined and one that will remain long past our current era when "science" is seen by many as an odd or specialized or privileged activity that can be engaged in only by those receiving difficult and advanced training and duly anointed by a self-perpetuating professional community. Just as I would prefer not to have what I say dismissed because of disagreements about whether I do or do not fall in the category of "scientist" so equally I would not like it dismissed over disagreements about whether I do or do not fall into the category of "member of human culture". The needed "critical perspective turned on itself" for science is necessarily also a rethinking of the role of science in culture and hence of culture itself. It cannot be achieved without a very substantial blurring of the borders between those who think of themselves as "scientists" and those who think of themselves as something else, and will, I believe, inevitably result in a further blurring of those borders.
There is a third group of
potential readers, perhaps the largest one but in any case certainly again a
mix of those who think of themselves as scientists and those who don't, who,
perhaps even more than the first two groups, need and deserve to be
acknowledged at the outset of this essay.
For this third group the notion that science is a part of culture will
not be surprising, either because they have had as yet no reasons to think
otherwise or because, at the other extreme, they have had adequate reasons to
give a lot of thought to the matter, and have done so. The things I have to say about science
itself may also not be surprising to this third group, for one or the other of
the same two reasons. Here
it is not enough to ask for indulgence and patience. The question that instead needs to be addressed is "why are
you writing this essay at all? Are
you simply beating dead horses, or do you actually have something new, or at
least useful, to say?"
I'd like to think that I do
indeed have something new to say, but that is largely an "academic" question
and my concerns here are more practical.
So I will content myself with explaining why I think this essay might be
useful, even for a group of readers who may not find anything in it with which
they find themselves in sharp disagreement (indeed, perhaps particularly for
that set of readers).
More than 50 years ago, CP
Snow, the British scientist and novelist, called attention to what he referred
to as a "two cultures" divide:
I believe the intellectual life of the whole of western society is
increasingly being split into two groups. When I say the intellectual life, I
mean to include also a large part of our practical life, because I should be
the last person to suggest the two can at the deepest level be distinguished
... Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension - sometimes (particularly
among the young) hostility and dislike, but most of all lack of understanding
... This polarisation is sheer loss to us all. To us as people, and to our
society. It is at the same time practical and intellectual and creative loss,
and I repeat that it is false to imagine that those three considerations are
clearly separable.
While there have been
extensive discussions about what exactly constitutes the "divide", there is no
question but that it relates to "science", and to some more or less sharp
distinction between people who are and people who are not interested in and
engaged with "science". And there
is no question but that that "divide" persists today. In 2004, the New York Times celebrated the 25th
anniversary of its weekly Science Times with a special issue having a lead
article entitled "Does Science Matter?".
The authors wrote
" ... there are new troubles in the peculiar form of paradise that science has created as well as new questions about whether it has the popular support to meet the future challenges ... Science has also provoked a deeper unease by disturbing traditional beliefs"
The tension between those who
have some degree of comfort with "science" and those who don't may have been at
one point primarily a disagreement among intellectuals but it is now, as Snow
forecast, increasingly significant in "practical life", at a whole variety of
scales ranging from international conflict to national policy to local
interactions between individuals in educational and other contexts. To further cement the point, a few
comments I've recently collected in an educational context:
My personal view of science for many
years was, well, summed up with one word, "Yuck!"; in primary school
it was indistinguishable from the morass of general information we learned from
uninspiring textbooks and well-meaning, but insipid teachers. Middle school was
worse: sterile classrooms in which science was lectured at us, and labs were
limited to teacher demonstrations with very little student-centered learning.
Then came the nighmarish annual science project ... Along with college pretty
much came the exit of science from my life ... Karen Cohen (high school
teacher)
"Science came from a textbook
with very little experimentation or discovery because all of the answers were
written on paper, you just needed to read and understand them. ... There are
teacher preparation programs that continue to steer clear of the subject unless
you have declared science to be your area of certification. So we know where
that leaves the K-8 educator. This in turn becomes apparent in some classroms
where we continue to breed a group of young people who are phobic about
science" ... Janet Middleton (middle school teacher)
"Science has always been regarded
as a very different approach to life. In fact I used to think that it was a way
of life for some weird people. Actually people see scientists as nerds in the
society" ... Ayatola Oronti (high school teacher)
Science as "indistinguishable
from the morass of general information we learned from uninspiring
textbooks"? As "all the answers were
written on paper, you just needed to read and understand them"? As "a way of life for some weird
people"? Are we (both those of us
who are "scientists" and those of us who are not but are engaged with and have
some understanding of it) fully aware of what many people think about
"science"? Of how remote from it
they may actually be, and what the consequences of that are, for us, for
themselves, and for others (particularly but not only the context of generating
expectations in the next generations)?
Science education can, of
course, be done in a way that paints a different picture of "science" but, even
then and there, one runs into problems.
I discussed the New York Times article in a college introductory biology
course and got an important response from a particularly thoughtful
student. I felt that the Times
article misrepresented the terms on which science ought to be evaluated and
wrote the following as a correction:
"The distinctive role that
science has played in our culture... is to be the embodiment of permanent
skepticism, of a persistant doubt about the validity of any given set of
understandings reached by whatever means (including those of science itself).
It is the insistence on doubting existing understandings, not the wish to eliminate
human ills nor to find 'answers' that has always animated science and has
always been source of its power and successes"
To which the student responded:
This is a stirring appraisal of
science and one that I would very much like to believe. But I'm beginning to
have my doubts. In my conversations with others about the natural sciences and
the social sciences, I have represented the views that you express in class -
about the noble skepticism of science - as those of the scientific community at
large. Now I sense my own naivete in having done so. The tale that Broad and
Glanz weave is a misguided one, so you say, but my question is this: you and
what army? Are all scientists as given to reflection about what it is they are
trying to achieve? Would every scientist agree that it is Broad and Glanz who
are misguided? I feel there is a strong dichotomy between the doers and the
thinkers, and it is the thinking minority that allows science to remain, in
large part, unaccountable for what it has brought about" ... Su-Lyn Poon
(college intro bio student, anthropology major)
"You and what army?" and
"minority that allows science to remain, in large part, unaccountable for what
it has brought about" is actually the immediate stimulus for this essay. And, I hope an adequate explanation for
my writing it, even for those who have understandings about "science" and its
place in our culture not so very different from the ones I will describe in the
following. The critical question
is not whether one recognizes the "understandings". The critical question is how effectively one transmits them
to others, not only in words but also in actions.
To this point, I have
frequently put the word "science" in quotation marks. I hope it is now clear why. There is no "science" in the abstract; there is only the
evolving understandings of science in the minds of individuals and in the
cultural stories to which they give rise.
Furthermore, there is, at the moment, nothing even close to a consensus
about what the word means in our culture, no commonly held cultural story. My effort here is to move us more
towards such a commonly held cultural story about what "science" is and what it
is, and is not, useful for. I will
use "science" when I mean to refer to that which has different meanings
(consciously or unconsciously) for different people. And I will use science (no quotation marks) when I refer to the particular sense of that term
that I am offering here. I
trust all readers will understand that the latter really is intended as an
"offering". I make no pretense of
asserting that it is any more "real" than any other conception of "science",
and suggest only that other people may, as I do, find it useful..
I hope it is also clear, at
this point, why I have repeatedly called attention to similarities between
people who currently call themselves "scientists" and people who don't. I strongly believe that the
evolution of understandings about
what science is and what it is useful for is much too important to be left
solely in the hands of a self-annointed and closed community of
"scientists". What is needed is
indeed an "army", not one solely of "scientists" but one consisting of a much
larger and hence much more diverse array of human beings who have in common a
shared sense of science as a valuable component of human culture and a
willingness to shoulder the burden of making it into what it has the capability
to become.
Science has the potential to
be what we all desperately need as we evolve into a world wide community: an
important element of a common human story of growth and exploration, one in
which all human beings are involved and take pride. For this to happen, we (all of us) need to work, much harder
and more deliberately than we have, to not only reduce the perception of
science as a specialized and isolated activity of the few but to make it in
fact the product and property of all human beings. In the following, I try to make this as concrete as possible
by focusing on particular aspects of "science" where I believe there to be
important disagreements, suggesting resolutions of those disagreements, and
pointing to implications for "practical life" that follow from these
resolutions.
(rather than as a distinctive and privileged route to
Truth or well-being)
Nature is strictly governed by impersonal laws ... Steven Weinberg
Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are
not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world ... . Albert
Einstein
The bottom line is to make the port, to make people, to make this
country safe so that no one should have to look over their shoulder in doubt ...
Lt. Commander Gary Jones (U.S. Coast Guard)
To consumers, it often seems that contradictory studies about food
and health appear in the media just about everyday, leaving many to wonder why
researchers can' t get it right the first time! ... Asian Food Information Center (http://www.afic.org/FFA%20Issue%2019%20Science%20is%20Evolutionary,%20not%20Revolutionary!.htm)
IF "nature" were "strictly governed by impersonal laws" AND humans
had the means to find them THEN one might imagine that with a combination of
rigorous effort and sufficient time we would arrive at both "Truth" and the
best condition for human beings that can be achieved in the context of those
"impersonal laws". We could all be
"safe" (or at least as safe as possible) and no one would "have to look over
their shoulder in doubt". Its
worth noticing though that Albert Einstein, writing even in the restricted
context of "physical concepts" regarded "laws" as "free creations of the human
mind ... not ... uniquely determined by the external world". In the context of thinking about
"science", and science in culture, there are very important implications of
Einstein's assertion, both conceptually and practically.
For many people, both
people who think of themselves as scientists and people who don't, "science" is
the cultural entity whose distinctive property is its claim to be able to
uncover "impersonal laws", and, ultimately, the "Truth". In fact, of course, such a claim does
not at all distinguish science from many other cultural entities. Many religions and political
philosophies lay equal claim to providing special access to "Truth", along
quite different paths and with quite different proposed or anticipated
outcomes. Not unreasonably,
the conflicting claims for the same turf generates antagonisms between those
who are engaged with science and those who are not.
The same holds for "science" as the cultural entity with a
distinctive claim to being able to assure "safety" or "well-being". There are many other cultural entities
(nations, tribes, service professions and organizations) that regard the
provision of safety and the assurance of human well-being as their mission, and
who pursue it in directions quite different from "science". Moreover, while "science" has had
notable successes along those lines, it has also produced a number of
problems. Whether, on balance,
"science" has enhanced or diminished human safety/well-being to date is by no
means an easy question to answer.
If "science" is distinctive neither as a path to "Truth" nor as a
path to safety and well-being, what is it exactly? Has there been any distinctive
role that science has played in human culture? Where is the "core" of "science"?, why is it less clear than
it might seem on first glance?, and how might it be brought out so that science
can more effectively play a useful role in culture in the future? These are
not, of course, questions for which there exist (or should be expected to
exist) definitive answers, but let me suggest a direction along which I think
useful developments might occur, a direction consistent with Einstein's view of
science as "free creations of the human mind".
Figure 1 contrasts two descriptions of "scientific "method", one
that was taught to me when I was an elementary school student decades ago (at
least one that I remember having been taught), and a second that I currently
use in my own teaching. There are
several important and relevant differences. The "old" description uses words ("hypothesis",
"experiment") that convey (to an elementary school student at least) at
definite sense that "science" is a specialized activity, one that can't
possibly be engaged in until one has, at least, learned the meaning of the
words (which, of course, themselves further inspire images of white coats,
laboratories, and the like). I'll
return to the significance of this difference in the next section. Here I want to focus primarily on two
other differences between the two descriptions. The first is the use of the word "true" in the older description
and its absence in the newer. And
the other is the linearity of the earlier description, in contrast to the
circularity of the second.
The "scientific method", which I take as very close to the "core"
of science, is, the left side of Figure 1 notwithstanding, very much NOT about
determining either "truth" OR "Truth".
As indicated in the right side of the figure, an "hypothesis" is nothing
more (and nothing less) than a useful way to summarize observations made TO
DATE (it is shorter than simply describing all previous observations and makes
predictions about future ones).
And an experiment is nothing more (and nothing less) than the making of
a new observation to see whether it matches the predictions made by the
previously existing summary. From
this perspective, no "hypothesis" can ever be proven "true". A new observation can show that a
previous summary is no longer adequate ("falsify the hypothesis); what it can
never do is to show that a summary will be forever more adequate. In short, "true" in relation to
scientific statements should be eliminated from the vocabulary. Hypotheses may summarize fewer or
greater numbers of observations (and can be discriminated in value partly on
that score) but there is nothing in scientific method that would or can justify
the assertion that a hypothesis is "true" in any respect other than being "an
adequate summary of observations to date" (with, perhaps, the addition that the
particular summary in question fits well with other summaries related to other
sets of observations). The idea of
"true" plays a useful role in mathematics, and perhaps in some kinds of human
interactions, but it doesn't belong in science (except, perhaps, in some narrow
technical contexts having much more constrained meanings than is present in
human language generally).
So what IS science doing?
What IS it about, if not determining what is "true"? Its at this point that the circularity
represented in the right side of Figure 1 becomes relevant and important. The "scientific" method is not a route
to an end (a "conclusion"). It is
instead a recursive, never ending process.
There are two
possible outcomes of a new observation: it is either the one predicted by the
existing summary or it is not. If it is the one predicted by the existing
summary, there remains (and always will remain) the possibility that a future
observation will invalidate that summary and so the continuing task is to
further test the summary by making additional observations. This may, of course, get boring after a
while, as in the case of the hypothesis the sun rises every day, but the point
here is that a new observation consistent with a hypothesis can in principle
never end the process.
In almost all ways it is the second possibility, the new
observation that is not predicted by the hypothesis/summary, that is the more
interesting and important one. In
this case, the summary itself requires alteration, and that in turn means
creating a new summary that makes new predictions and hence requires new
observations. Here too, the
unending recursive cycle continues.
Even more importantly, it is at this juncture, most particularly,
that Einstein's "not uniquely determined by the external world" is
relevant. There has always been
more than one possible "summary" that will fit the observations (Grobstein, 2004). And so there is always an arbitrary creative
act in science, a choice (conscious or unconscious) to further pursue one or
another way of several alternative ways "making sense of the world". It is through this crack particularly
that science is perhaps most strongly affected by culture and by the individual
temperment of its practitioners.
Many people (both "scientists" and others), regard that crack as a weak point of science, the place where
the "scientific" claim of "objectivity" fails. One can also regard it (as I do) as one of the strengths of
science, the space that allows for individual agency and, even more importantly
perhaps, the space that makes it possible for individual efforts to usefully
become collective ones.
I'll discuss this
further in a later section. What's
important for the moment is that, whether for reasons having to do with the
organization of human brains or because of the nature of "reality" or both
(Grobstein, 2004), scientific method (and hence, I would argue, science) does
not and can not provide "final" answers to questions about anything. Not about what IS, nor about what would
be the best way to assure human well-being. What it CAN do is to provide effective summaries of ever
greater bodies of observations.
These may be very useful for making predictions and, in many cases, for
suggesting ways that particular forms of human suffering might be alleviated
but it is critical to understand their limitations to use them
effectively. Moreover, the really
distinctive thing that science can do, its most important unique contribution
to human culture, is not these things but rather to provide a motivation and
method for further questioning and exploration. Science is, fundamentally, not about security but about
doubt, not about knowing but about asking, not about certainty but about
skepticism.
Periodically, people write about the "end of science" (Stent
1969;, Horgan, 1996), suggesting either that the process of science has
converged to a final answer or that we have reached a point where the process
itself is no longer adequate to contend with new observations. Neither past nor contemporary history
supports this. It is conceivable
that at some remote time in the future a set of summaries will emerge that seem
are not invalidated by repeated new observations (Grobstein, 2004) but even
this would not suffice to end the process, for the reasons given above. What's more important is that there is
absolutely no reason to believe we are anywhere near such a time (and some
reason to suspect we will never be (Grobstein, 2004). Physics, to take just one example, has recently found itself
having to deal with the totally unexpected observation that the universe,
rather than decelerating in its expansion, is accelerating, an observation that
requires quite major changes in its summaries of observations prior to that
one. And the same holds in a
whole variety of other realms of scientific inquiry.
What has changed, and can be expected to continue to change, is
the way "scientists" pose questions, make observations, and develop new
summaries. The tools currently
used by professional scientists, both technological and conceptual, have limits
(cf Horgan, 1999), as such tools have always proved in the past to have limits. It is not only inevitable but
desirable that questions should be raised, by both "scientists" and others,
about the adequacy of the tools used in science at any given time. This isn't a challenge to or of
science; it is instead a testimony to the core of science: a profound
questioning essential to improved understanding not only of other things but of
the know processes of doing science itself.
In trying to summarize at this point, let me return to my several
potential (and hoped for) audiences.
If nothing else, I hope I have made it clear to those who do not
currently regard themselves as "scientists" why "researchers can't get it
right". I hope I have equally made
it clear to those who do regard themselves as "scientists" that it is terribly
important, both for themselves and the enterprise of science as a whole, to
make it clearer to everyone that we neither claim nor aspire to getting it
"right". While we may (or may not)
have ourselves thought deeply about what the limits of science are, we
frequently present science (and allow others to represent it) in ways that are
deeply inconsistent with what we are in fact about. And in so doing, we not only generate unnecessary
antagonisms to the scientific enterprise but isolate ourselves from the
engagement of others who would be quite willing to support an ongoing effort to
make better sense of things, and even to make useful contributions to it
themselves. This can and should be
changed.
Most generally, science should be playing for culture the central
role of helping humans understand the value of skepticism. It is NOT possible "to make people ...
safe" nor to eliminate "doubt".
We, above all, know that the world was not made for people, and that we
do not, cannot know enough to make people "safe". And we know (or should know) that it is precisely "doubt"
that is the most effective tool for becoming as safe as one can be, and the
essential stimulus for humans to discover and expand their capabilities. It is a message that can be conveyed
and will be heard if we put our minds to it:
"Moving on, the prof asked a question
in class. It was after our conclusion that doctors and scientists don't really
KNOW anything. That there are no 'truths' and that everything is sort of
dependent on other factors. He followed this conclusion with a question: how does
that make us feel? I didn't answer in class, but I'd like to here. I really
think that I feel good about knowing that. If I believed everything I was told
by a scientist or a group of doctors, and acted on whatever it was that they
concluded, then my life really wouldn't be my own. I would be controlled by
this outside authority" ... college intro bio student
""We just discussed in class
whether a conclusion can ever be true, definitive. Realizing that the answer is
'no' opens a whole new door to science which some students unfortunately will
never be able to walk through. Science can be as analytically inviting as any
novel or poem I will read in an English class because it involves opinions,
guesses, and presumptions which can never really be confirmed" ... college intro
bio student
"Oh, if we became scientists with
sentiment and excitement [in] fantasy as well as [in] "truth" what
a world, what a universe!"
... middle school teacher
(rather than a body of knowledge elaborated by a few)
I was never someone who enjoyed science classes. I found most
of them to be pure memorization, and I generally thought that science should be
left to those for whom in was natural ... . College intro bio student
in life, we make observations, test those observations, and
then determine if those tests bring about results that support our
observations. more often than not, these real life tests bring about unexpected
results, but we learn from those results. the same is true for science ...
College intro bio student
I've suggested
some ways to think about the first of the questions in the title of this essay
Ð "What is science?" Ð and those suggestions lead on naturally to some ways of
approaching the second question of the title Ð "Who/what is it for?" Here again I feel it important (for
reasons that I hope will become fully clear in the following section) to accept
the complications and slight clumsiness of trying to speak simultaneously to
several audiences.
I don't know
whether it is true in all cultures, but certainly in the United States there
are people who think of science, and their own involvement in it as "natural",
and others who don't. I believe
this is, though, largely an artifact of how "science" is presented, in
classrooms and otherwise, and that it is a concrete example of those things
that we (all of us who are in one way or another engaged with science) need to
make a deliberate effort to change if science is to fulfill its promise for
human culture.
Science, in the
terms characterized in the previous section, is not only not defined by
laboratories or white coats, it is also not defined by knowing certain things
(or having a skill at memorizing) nor by compulsive information gathering nor
by the use of mathematical tools or logical rigor. It is instead nothing more (and nothing less) than the
dynamic combination of curiosity and skepticism that fuels virtually all
productive inquiry, and is inherent in all humans from the time they are
born. Babies obviously do not
arrive in the world as "scientists", but they do very much arrive in the world
as scientists. They "make
observations, test those observations" and "learn" from "unexpected results". In short, science is a tool for "life"
for everyone, a tool that everyone comes equipped with and needs only to be
encouraged to continue becoming better at using.
I can well
imagine both "scientists" and others shaking their heads at this as too simple,
as somehow missing the point (one or another point). But sometimes the simple (and apparently obvious) is worth
being reminded of as a foundation for other things. This is, I think, one of those times.
It is very much
not my intent to suggest that professional scientists don't need professional
skills, nor that anyone and everyone should regard themselves as a professional
scientists (or even want to). It
is, however, very much my intent to challenge the notion that professional
scientists are, by either birth or training, an entirely different form of humanity
than others and the reciprocal notion that others are an entirely different
form of humanity than professional scientists. There is a deep core of commonality between professional
scientists and others, a commonality not only of intention but also of
method. Recognizing and building
on that core could go a long way towards healing the two cultures rift and
enabling science to play a more effective role in culture.
Some specifics
may help here. As professional
scientists many (though not all ) of us have some tendency to equate science
with quantitization and, more generally, with mathematics. There is no doubt but that advances
along many lines of inquiry have been greatly enhanced using these tools, and
that anyone aspiring to work in these areas needs to acquire them. But it is equally important to bear in
mind that neither was central to other important areas of exploration (Darwin's
work and Freud's come to mind immediately) and that mathematical ability,
irrespective of education, is not even remotely evenly distributed across the
human population. To the extent
that we equate "science" with mathematical sophistication, and so portray
science or allow others to do so, we are disencouraging many otherwise able and
engageable people in becoming involved with science. One does not need mathematical sophistication to be
engaged with science. And science
is depriving itself of valuable potential insights from those who are more
comfortable exploring in other ways.
Let me illustrate
another realm in which it is important to remember that doing science should
not be presumed to depend on any litmus test other than the ability and
inclination to be curious and skeptical.
In the United States, the issue of teaching evolution in the schools has
been a major cause celebre and some quite disenfranchising things said by
people on both sides of the divide.
Trying to talk about evolution as "true" or "fact" simply exacerbates
the problem (for reasons discussed in the previous section). In fact, of course, evolution is a
"summary of observations" and should be talked about as such. This can, and does, lead to exchanges
about evolution more productive than arguing about what is "scientific":
"presenting it
as a story is, I think, very useful and diffuses the potential for damage in
espousing evolution as the version "smart" people believe." ... middle
school teacher
"Story" = "summary".
Presenting science in this framework makes it possible for everyone to
connect it to their own curiosities, and to become a part of the larger process
of making sense of things, using their own tools. By avoiding appealing to "smartness" (or any other of the
litmus tests we frequently, if unconsciously, use, we can markedly increase the
likelihood that everyone will become engaged, to one degree or another, with
science.
Science as a fundamentally social activity, dependent on human diversity
(rather than the activity of individuals or a narrower
community restricted by its own homogeneiety)
no need for EVERONE to become professional scientists, nor for all professional scientists to become synthesizers, communicators, but IS a need for the professional community to recognize the importance of, endorse, support synthesizers/communicators
Is NOT the case that only professionals can pose questions that change "scientific understanding"