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[Phys-L] Re: What is Scientific Process?



The case method is already used in science education:
<http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/projects/cases/case.html>
<http://www.actionbioscience.org/education/herreid.html>
<http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/cases/write.html>

Larry Woolf
General Atomics
www.ga.com
www.sci-ed-ga.org

-----Original Message-----
From: Jack Uretsky
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 10:30 AM
Subject: Re: What is Scientific Process?

There is an approach that could work, I think, modeled on the curricula of
many law schools. That is the "case method". You study examples of
scientific papers that have gained "acceptance" by being frequently quoted
and included in textbooks. You then seek and discuss common themes. Almost
never will you reach definite conclusions.
This is a tall order.

One of the most important papers of the last few decades was a paper
by Murray Gell-Mann called "The Eightfold Way". It is framed in the context
of something called "The Algebra of Currents" and led, by devious routes, to
the modern (I was going to say "current") ideas of quarks and gluons. But
the mathematics involved would make the paper undecipherable to most
students. This example suggests that the case method cannot work except at
the Institute for Advanced Studies, or in a very diluted form.