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Re: Cause and Effect

At 8:45 AM -0600 10/26/00, Dewey Dykstra, Jr. wrote, inter alia:
Why? Because the result of this failure on our part goes *far deeper* than
the students do not develop a new notion of force. The majority learn from
this failure and the many others we inflict on them that they are not
smart, not good enough, to understand science, physics in particular, and
certain other special people are. I know that this outcome is not intended
by *most* of us, but there it is nonetheless. (I use "most" here instead
of "any" in the previous sentence having explicitly thought about the
choice.)


Dewey, are you suggesting that the majority of your students are
intrinsically capable of understanding physics, that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain inalienable intellectual facilities,
and that among these is the right to understand Newton's laws *as we
do*?

Yes.

Lets get over the idea that science, especially physics, is for
everybody (or even the majority) just because we know how wonderful
it really is.

That's not why I hold the position I do.

Dewey


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Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr. Phone: (208)426-3105
Professor of Physics Dept: (208)426-3775
Department of Physics/MCF421/418 Fax: (208)426-4330
Boise State University dykstrad@email.boisestate.edu
1910 University Drive Boise Highlanders
Boise, ID 83725-1570 novice piper: GHB, Uilleann

"As a result of modern research in physics, the ambition and hope,
still cherished by most authorities of the last century, that physical
science could offer a photographic picture and true image of reality
had to be abandoned." --M. Jammer in Concepts of Force, 1957.

"If what we regard as real depends on our theory, how can we make
reality the basis of our philosophy? ...But we cannot distinguish
what is real about the universe without a theory...it makes no sense
to ask if it corresponds to reality, because we do not know what
reality is independent of a theory."--S. Hawking in Black Holes
and Baby Universes, 1993.
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