Re: What are "principles" in science?

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

At 4:25 PM -0400 6/9/04, Bob LaMontagne wrote:
> Is it more common to cover this in high school or at the
> college level - or maybe even middle school? I mentioned
> this thread to my colleagues at lunchtime and they were all
> puzzled as to why anyone would take time out of a course to
> discuss this topic - one joked about letting the philosophy
> majors worry about it.
If all you are teaching is science majors, then maybe that's OK
(although I doubt it). But if, as is the case with most of us, we are
teaching students who are going to become all sorts of people when
they grow up, I think it behooves us to get them to understand just
what some of these terms mean. Most of them have been inculcated with
the fictional "scientific method" hierarchy throughout there primary
and middle school education, and often even into high school. So they
end up giving more credence to some empirical relationships that have
been called "laws" than they are due, and don't understand why it is
wrong for the creationists to call evolution "just" a theory.

It is far more important that students in science courses learn about
the nature of science than it is that they learn any particular
science content.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
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<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

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