[Phys-L] Logical Thinking (Was: Another attack on Evolution)

[John Clement <clement@HAL-PC.ORG>]

> "Actually the rise of fundamentalism in the US is actually parallel to the
> rise of fundamentalism in the Middle East."

Is it like NTN3, where you can't say that which one is action or reaction?


One wonders what the politicians are thinking, because they know that any
attempt to infuse a particular religious interpretation into science will
result in a law suit that they will inevitably lose.  That is now quite
clear.

Maybe they are doing this because they know they will lose, so it is a safe
way to send the message to their supporters, without having this be an issue
in their campaign.  One wonders if they could be vulnerable to the charge
that they are wasting public funds by doing this.  Sadly, I think the level
of thinking is so low that they are serious about putting religion into
science.

Speaking of logical reasoning, the new GRE reported in the NYTIMES Jan 8 has
a number of new questions which require logical reasoning, and the analogies
have been dropped.  This is definitely a step forward, if it works out.  In
particular they need to have questions of the type in the Piagetian test
reported in the Dec AJP.

Actually both the GRE and SAT need to have questions which test the ability
to do conservation reasoning, proportional reasoning, and two variable
reasoning, along with a few questions designed to test the student ability
to reason about objects that can not be seen.  This latter type of reasoning
is characteristic of a theoretical reasoner, a category proposed by Lawson
as being above formal operational.

Unfortunately the GRE article is no longer available for free, but the first
question is problematic.  It asks which sentence in a short reading shows
evidence for the author's assertions.  The answer was the last sentence.
But the last sentence is not really evidence, but a hand waving analogy.
Maybe this is what passes for evidence in English, but I certainly hope not.
Perhaps someone who has the article can comment.  It was in the Education
Times.  Also check out the math questions.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX
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