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

[jlu at HEP.ANL.GOV (Jack Uretsky)]

On Tue, 30 Aug 2005, Peter Craft wrote:

> As Jack aludes below, the question of what is the "scientific process"
> looms large in the ID thread.  Also as I wrote earlier that I am required
> to teach students (quite rightly) about the way that scientists do their
> work.  Our mandatory syllabus makes this clear when it says we need to
> cover:
>
> 5.2     the nature and practice of science
> c)      apply scientific processes to test the validity of ideas and
> theories
> d)      describe how an idea can gain acceptance in the scientific
> community as either theory or law
> g)      identify that the nature of observations made depends upon the
> understanding that the observer brings to the situation
------------------------------------------------------------------------

        Actually, I hate your syllabus because it presumes so much.  It
presumes that there is some way to decide what is, and some way to define:
science
the scientific process
the scientific commununity
theory
law

        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.
                                        Regards,
                                                Jack


--
"Trust me.  I have a lot of experience at this."
                General Custer's unremembered message to his men,
                just before leading them into the Little Big Horn Valley