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Michael Bowen wrote:
"scientific method"
In many cases, community college science courses will be flatly
rejected for transferability to certain public universities UNLESS the
course's catalog description explicitly states that the
(whatever that is) will be taught or illustrated,
Ugh.
=====================
A good principle to apply in such situations is that it is
important to give the customers what they want, keeping in
mind that what they really want and really need probably
differs greatly from what they initially say they want.
They say they want "the scientific method" but what they
really want is for us to teach people to think clearly.
People aren't born knowing how to do that. Learning to
think is the most important objective of the physics
course, far more important than any particular facts
and figures.
There _do exist_ things we all recognize as scientific
behavior, taking scientific approaches to problems, etc.,
and we probably pretty much agree what they are, although
it might be hard to come up with a concise-and-complete
list. By the same token there are certain unscientific
behaviors that we recognize with even greater clarity,
and we can give guidelines for recognizing them.
The problem is that the phrase "the scientific method" has
been hijacked.
the "scientific method" (whatever that is)
I understand the sentiment -- but the situation is
even worse than that. We _do_ know more-or-less what
they mean by "the scientific method" but we recoil from
it in horror.