Re: Misconceptions assessments?

[John Denker <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

At 01:50 PM 11/7/00 -0500, Robert A Cohen wrote:
> (T/F):
> > >Scientific law is considered to be more important than scientific theory.
> >
> > Huh?  I'm not sure what this question is driving at.
> >
> > Is it common for somebody (about to enter service as a teacher) to answer
> > "T" to this question?  If so, what does that answer indicate?
> >    -- deep-seated misconceptions about physics and epistemology?
> >    -- politically-incorrect vocabulary?
>
> I'm curious - which do you think it represents - the former or the latter?

It could go either way.  I was asking a genuine non-rhetorical
question.  See below.

The general point is that there are innumerable misconceptions out
there.  If somebody gives an unapproved answer to a T/F question, sometimes
it's very hard to tell what misconception is responsible.

> I'm not sure where I got this particular statement from but I'm pretty
> sure it was used to assess whether the respondent believes a law to be a
> proven theory.

There was another T/F question that seemed like a much more direct probe
for this particular misconception.  Be that as it may....

> Most of my pre-service teachers do think that and
> consequently believe that the theory of evolution or the theory of
> relativity is on a less-firm foundation than, say, hooke's law, which they
> assume has been proven (and that is why we no longer call it hooke's
> theory).

That compound sentence touches on both of the issues I raised above.
Actually there are three ideas in play now:
  a) theory versus law.
  b) more-firm versus less-firm foundations
  c) proven versus unproven.


a) I recognize a subtle distinction between the connotations of the words
"law" and "theory".  Indeed there are other words in the same family:
        Darwin's theory
        Archimedes' principle
        Hooke's law
        Whitcomb's area rule
        Smarr's formula
The distinctions are usually not very important.

b) There are some ideas that have a more-firm foundation and others with a
relatively less-firm foundation.  It is appropriate to evaluate the
firmness.  I agree with RAC that labelling something "law" versus "theory"
does not indicate the firmness of the foundations.  The point of my
previous email was this:  without further information it's hard to know
whether such mislabelling represents merely a vocabulary problem, or
something much deeper.

c) In contrast, when we introduce terms like "proven" or "not proven", then
alarm bells go off.  The notion that any of the aforementioned
laws/theories/principles/rules/formulas would be "proven" is a major
epistemological heresy.

RAC reports that "most" pre-service teachers suffer from misconceptions in
this area.  And those are educated professional intellectuals!  I can't
bear to imagine what the general populace thinks about scientific "proof".

==============================

How did we reach such a pass?

I did not read _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_ until several
years after I finished school.  I enjoyed it, even though I had known the
main points since childhood.

I knew about the criteria for evaluating scientific theories because they
were floating around in the air.  There was no big course where they sat
everybody down and explained it.  It was just built in:  here, there, and
everywhere.  For instance, Misner/Thorne/Wheeler is not primarily a
philosophy book, but first pages of chapter 39 clearly lay out criteria for
a "viable" theory. Similarly _The Feynman Lectures on Physics_ contain bits
of scientific philosophy here and there, sometimes going on for multiple
pages at a time (e.g. volume III section 2-6).  These are not typical
textbooks... but perhaps other textbooks would benefit from following such
examples.

One would think that these topics would be included under item #1 and item
#5 of the checklist Dewey Dykstra posted at 08:58 AM 10/24/00 -0600.  But
checklist or no checklist, it appears something important is missing from
the training RAC's folks are getting.

What should be done about it?  Where should we start?