As much as I'd love to chuckle along with you, I'm afraid defending the scientific method has become a serious matter - again.
Remember how smug we felt when taught about the end of the dark and superstitious age? How science shone a light and drove away the cult of ignorance? Well, brace yourself - ignorance, superstition and pseudo-science are coming around to haunt us again.
Those with a vested interest in keeping the public ignorant and confused will stop at nothing to paint science and scientists as a cult of crazed and unethical, even unscrupulous elitists who are out to manipulate the public into ungodly, selfish and frivolous beliefs.
There is nothing more important for science education than to impart the scientific method on young people - observation, model, hypothesis, experiment, lather, rinse, repeat. This is far more significant than teaching the atomic weights of elements or any similarly profound facts.
I'm worried sick about the education of our kids right now, and I can only hope that clear, free and sceptical thinking will eventually prevail over religion, occultism and superstition.
A dialectic view of history implies that dark ages keep taking turns with periods of enlightenment, but there is nothing that says we have to go down without a fight.
As much as I'd love to chuckle along with you, I'm afraid defending the scientific method has become a serious matter - again.
Remember how smug we felt when taught about the end of the dark and superstitious age? How science shone a light and drove away the cult of ignorance? Well, brace yourself - ignorance, superstition and pseudo-science are coming around to haunt us again.
Those with a vested interest in keeping the public ignorant and confused will stop at nothing to paint science and scientists as a cult of crazed and unethical, even unscrupulous elitists who are out to manipulate the public into ungodly, selfish and frivolous beliefs.
There is nothing more important for science education than to impart the scientific method on young people - observation, model, hypothesis, experiment, lather, rinse, repeat. This is far more significant than teaching the atomic weights of elements or any similarly profound facts.
I'm worried sick about the education of our kids right now, and I can only hope that clear, free and sceptical thinking will eventually prevail over religion, occultism and superstition.
A dialectic view of history implies that dark ages keep taking turns with periods of enlightenment, but there is nothing that says we have to go down without a fight.
Cheers
Steffen.
I totally agree with you Steffen. I would also say that another of the things we should add to that list of "dark" musings is pseudoscience. These people who take real science and then misuse and/or abuse it for the sake of their own agendas and fantasy twisted realities are not doing anyone and/or anything a service, either. It's alright to have alternative theories and hypotheses, but only when those theories and hypotheses don't start to wander off into cloud cuckoo land (on all accounts).
Remember how smug we felt when taught about the end of the dark and superstitious age? How science shone a light and drove away the cult of ignorance? Well, brace yourself - ignorance, superstition and pseudo-science are coming around to haunt us again.
Ignorance, superstition and pseudo-science has always been the dominant condition, even in the most so-called advanced societies.
Carl Sagan drew criticism from both ends of the spectrum: the UFO nuts hated him because he could destroy their beliefs with a word, while many of his colleagues hated Carl for being unfailingly polite when arguing with the UFO nuts.
A New Authorative Textbook for the Scientifically Challenged
