« Something New (To Me) - Old Maps
Main
What's in a Name? »
January 30, 2006
Critical Analysis as a Surrogate for Something Else
I started to write about this the other day when it was more timely, then I got side tracked so I thought I'd take another shot today.
As background you might want to read the posts on afarensis and Dispatches from the Cultural Wars on two proposed pieces of legislation, one in Missouri and the other in Michigan that seek to modify there respective states teaching standards. The Missouri proposal is in some ways more onerous but both have a common theme: critical analysis.
From the Missouri bill (HB1266);
When information other than verified empirical data is taught representing current scientific thought such as theory, hypothesis, conjecture, speculation, extrapolation, estimation, unverified data, consensus of scientific opinion, and philosophical belief, such information shall be within the purview of critical analysis and may be critically analyzed. Critical analysis includes the teaching of anomalous verified empirical data, contrary verified empirical data, missing supporting data, inadequate mechanisms, insufficient resources, faulty logic, crucial assumptions, alternate logical explanations, lack of experimental results, conflicting experiments, or predictive failures where applicable. [emphasis added]
And from the Michigan bill (HB 5606);
The course content expectations for science shall include using the scientific method to critically evaluate scientific theories and using relevant scientific data to assess the validity of those theories and formulate arguments for and against those theories. [emphasis added]
On the surface all this sounds good even scientific. But anytime new legislation is proposed one should ask, "Exactly what problem is being addressed?" Science by its very nature involves critical analysis and evaluation. It is at the heart of the process. So why do these states need teaching standards that speak of critical analysis? To my mind, there can be only one reason: to sow doubt about the current state of science as that science is being taught. High school students, with few exceptions, just don't have enough science experience. The scientific method is not such a simple thing. It involves empirical observation, abduction, induction and deduction as well as the learning process that comes from failed hypotheses and successful predictions. It also involves the interaction between scientists. So the ability to do, or even understand, critical analysis grows as the scientific knowledge base grows. In fact, in order to understand alternative scientific theories requires a lot of knowledge and background.
But the real problem with both of these pieces of legislation is that they confuse the data with the science. Science is not a collection of data even, "verified data," that exists in some museum gallery: here is our butterfly collection and over here is our rock collection. Science involves the biology of those butterflies and the geology of those rocks not the mere and frankly uninteresting fact of their existence. In short the theories are the science not the butterflies and the rocks. To be sure, a new butterfly or a new rock may modify the science of biology or geology. But looking at an old butterfly or an old rock in a new way may do the same.
The Missouri bill seeks to make a distinction between "verified empirical data" and presumably unverified empirical data. As far as this distinction has any meaning at all, empirical data becomes "verified" within the science not on its own. I worry that "verified empirical data" may actually mean data that anyone, including an untrained layman, can see and understand. If my fear is correct, then the Missouri bill seeks to reduce science to naive intuition.
Allow me an analogy. I see a bicycle in the crotch of a tree branch twenty feet above the ground. Everyone to whom I point it out sees it also. It being in the tree is indeed empirical datum. But empirical datum leading to what? This isolated observation might lead the inexperienced to believe that bicycles are normally found in trees. Now I add the far more numerous observations of bicycles being ridden by people as a means of land transportation and recreation. In the light of this additional set of verified empirical data, most people would now think the bicycle in the tree was an anomaly of some kind. But exactly how many sightings of bicycles being ridden by people does one need before most observers think the treed bike is an anomaly? Actually very few, perhaps as few as one observation of a bicycle in use would suffice. Why, because the morphology of a bicycle and the way it works with a rider would lead most to see non-tree environments as where it belongs. In fact, I would claim that one sighting of a bicycle being ridden would lead a careful observer to believe that any number of sightings of bicycles in trees were somehow misleading as to its normal mode. If you have a theory, based on repeated observation of the normal use of a bicycle and/or on a careful study of how its parts interact with each other and a rider, seeing any number of bicycles in trees will not provide data for a critical analysis of your theory. Perhaps I am using theory in a too informal way but I hope you get the point. Now let me offer two other pieces of empirical data, one that is quite different than that we have developed so far. The different type of empirical data is that teenagers are known to carry out pranks on occasion. The second new set of data is that teenagers reside in the general area where the bike in the tree was sighted. I bet you are forming a hypothesis about how bicycles come to be in trees. Now all you need to do is develop a way to test it. I'll leave that as an exercise for the student. My point is that the single datum of a bicycle in a tree is uninteresting outside of the context of other data and a complex of various logical relationships. In other words, it is uninteresting outside of a theory.
Both of these pieces of legislation have a fundamental misunderstanding of science built into them and their goal is to do something other than improve science education. Ed and Timothy explain what that is. Go read their posts.
Posted by Duane Smith at January 30, 2006 3:53 PM | Read more on Science - General |
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.telecomtally.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1554
Comments
Sorry, comments are closed for this post.
Send me an email if it is important.