Critical Thinking and Creationism.

While not common, one of the most difficult barriers to critical thinking that I run into is creationism. In fact it is really only an issue at one institution I work for, but for this one institution, it causes me the greatest concerns for my effectiveness as an instructor.  

Among the subjects I teach is introductory astronomy.  At many institutions this course is often taken because it has a reputation for being “easy,” and satisfies the limited science requirement of many non-technical degree programs.  It is very clear to me that this is the only exposure to the scientific world view that many of my students will ever have.  It is also the first time that many of these students have been confronted with material that directly contradicts their religious beliefs in a factual manner backed up with observations and data.  A minority of this student population reacts in a … well reactionary manner.  I have even been told that, “Science is a tool of Satan.”  My goals for fostering critical thinking in this environment have become correspondingly modest. 

The fear inherent in this creationist position is palatable.  I believe that these students know that once they begin to question their basic assumptions that their entire world is open to change.  In fact if my own fundamentalist family background is a guide, a change of this magnitude can stress and even destroy ties with extended family.  Despite aspirations to higher education, many of them are not ready for this.  

That said, the fact remains that they have come to me for both facts about the universe and for the human practice that produced that knowledge.  The best approach I have come up with revolves around framing knowledge in two different contexts.  I assure them that there is a difference between revealed religious knowledge, and the body of knowledge that we call science.  In this manner I hope to expand the assumptions they work with enough that they can engage with the factual material of the course.  In discussion questions I combat the trite dismal of, “Just a theory” with an examination of the scientific usage of the word “Theory.” In all of my interactions I try to instill the most basic element of critical thinking, which is that our understanding of the world can be improved upon through our own through processes.

 In truth I do not believe that a scientific world view and a fundamentalist religious faith are compatible. Please note the emphasis.  It was not in my case, but the very last thing I want is to leave my student with the impression that science is the implacable enemy of ANY form of faith. Nor do I want to leave you with the impression that this is a subtext of all of my student interactions.  At most institutions, and even with most of the students with whom I am privileged to work, this is not an issue. That said it is the issue with which I struggle the most. 

posted by Y.H.N.

Quote

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. --  Bertrand Russell,  (1872 - 1970)

posted by Y.H.N.

Global Sedition

In these days of Tea Party Rallies and Occupy Wall Street demonstrations at home, of the Arab Spring, and various flavor of Jihadism around the world, it is amazing to realize that Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History and the Last Man" (1992) could ever have been taken seriously.   It is important though to recall that that Fukuyama's thesis which was that all of the political and philosophical issues about which human kind could fight seem to have been resolved in favor of Western democratic pluralism and free markets.  From that era we have the1998 film version of the classic series "Lost in Space," in which the bad guys were a movement laboring under the name the "Global Sedition." 

It is the very vagueness of this global sedition that makes them interesting.  Other than an objection to hyperbolic acting, cough sorry William, they did not seem to have any particular program.  At that time the great binary ideological struggle between the Soviet Union and the West had been won.  Free markets were clearly superior to the collapsed command economies.  In the words of Christopher Hitchens, socialism was no longer an acceptable critique of global free market system, that in fact there was no critique of the global economic system.  In two days it will be 2012, the year 1998 will lie 14 years in the past and there is still no acceptable critique of the global economic system.

Why?

Why after over two decades since the fall of the Berlin wall have the western intelligencia not arrived at new critical view of our economic system?  Is it really within the realm of possibilities that the regulated free market is the best of all possible worlds?  We have come to expect that cell phones, computers, power grids, medical access, … will all improve with in a year or two and be totally transformed on the timescale of decades.  Why do we not expect a transformation the way in which we provide for ourselves with our various needs?  

That this critique does not yet exist is not an expression of satisfaction with the status quo.  The Occupy and to a lesser extent its predecessor the Tea Party movement come from opposite sides of the political spectrum, but both arose from insurgencies within their political cultures.  Dissatisfaction is what unites both movements.  The tea party movement suffers from cooption by the opportunistic and the clownish.  The name of the Tea Party now carries currency within the halls of the US Congress and one fears for the virtue of that damsel.   The disavowal of individual leaders leads me to be more hopeful for the future of the Occupy movement.  There may even be an advantage to the absence of an endorsed specific list of demands.  With no leaders, with no specific demands to which one can feign respect and pay lip service it is difficult to coopted the movement.  They remain free to demand leadership on the only true issue critique which is that the system is simply not fair.

posted by Y.H.N.

The Breakthrough Paradigm

Clive Thompson Articel on breakthrough and how to regognizre them.

If you want to spot the next thing, Buxton argues, you just need to go “prospecting and mining”—looking for concepts that are already successful in one field so you can bring them to another. Buxton particularly recommends prospecting the musical world,

Look at a field (democracy movements) look to see where they have gotten inspiration in the past (music? other democracy movements or even failed democracy activists now doing other things?) and use this to predict where the influential field actually is.  Look for innovations there.

posted by Y.H.N.

The Four Hour Work Week

If you read it to the end then you are already a fan of Tim Ferris' the 4HWW.  The author's enthusiasm is contagious, but I am left to wonder if the system outlined in the book will in fact work.   So here I post one of several videos on the subject of 4HWW success stories.

Have fun!

posted by Y.H.N.

One Professor’s Attempt to Explain Every Joke Ever | Magazine

You know the fundamental theorem of humor? If you have to explain the joke then it is not funny and that explaining a joke ruins it forever? Well apparently Rod Martin is going to ruin all jokes for all time. .

One Professor’s Attempt to Explain Every Joke Ever

posted by Y.H.N.

CSS

Just finished a great little Intro to CSS course.  Great for getting that first hit with a clue bat.!  :)

posted by Y.H.N.

Open Science

Doug Natelson over at Nanoscale Views has joined the open science debate.  He raises some good questions about how open the access to the results of publicly supported research should be.  This is followed by the great observation on the obligations of scientists beyond simply providing data.

As a practical matter, scientists are not obligated to make any interested citizen into an expert on their research.

My response it that I believe that public funding or not that the data should be made available in all cases. Taking an example form the software community, having access to the Linux Kernel source code does not make one an operating system expert. In a similar manner having access to data from an experiment does not make a expert in data analysis.

That said we, as scientists have a lot to gain from greater transparency in how research is done. We have a chance to show the public that: :

 - Science is hard - It will only take the casual reader 15 to 20 minutes to begin to realize the kind of work it will take just to understand the questions in any particular field.

 - Barriers to entry are not insurmountable - There is no secret handshake or external licence that can be withheld. Being a scientist and doing science just takes a LOT of work.

 - Anyone can be a scientist - By opening the tools of science for examination we can put these tools in to the hands of the general public.  It may take years to learn the Matlab routines required to do analysis in your field but these same tools can be applied to simpler problems closer to peoples lives and the things they care about. DIY science is an open and growing field.

Too often we struggle for support from the general public because Scientists are viewed as a separate cast.  The public come to view themselves as passive recipients of knowledge beyond even their ability to begin comprehend.  No wonder we have to fight for every dollar of funding we get.

posted by Y.H.N.

The 5 Sentence Rule

I broke the 5 sentence rule today just as I do most days.  The idea is that if you (meaning me) have something to say that takes more than 5 sentences you should post it to the web and then send the link.  My brilliant insights are not lost to /dev/null/  @IDontHaveTimeToReplyToYourRamblings.org

The subject was family and family connections.  I will post that later but I think you can see that there is just so much to say that the character limit on Facebook is just inadequate.

posted by Y.H.N.

Misuse of the Language

Forget ending a sentence in a preposition, my pet peeve is with the mal-appropriation of words from my own field for the purpose of bilking folks out of their hard earned cash.  How can I explain this?  Imagine that some one is making money by providing a poor quality service.  Further imagine that this person is claiming to have the endorsement of your profession.

XKCD does a better job of illustrating the problem with the mal-appropriation of terms from physics for the selling of what is essentially snake oil. 

Sure it is fraud but you still suffer from the natural suspicions of those who were taken advantage of because of their ignorance.  That suspicion make alleviating that ignorance so much more difficult.

posted by Y.H.N.

Quote

“Scientists tell us that the fastest animal on earth, with a top speed of 120 feet per second, is a cow that has been dropped out of a helicopter.”  -- Dave Barry

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Addiction

Karen has commented on feeling nauseous after eating nearly anything, but especially after eating things which are "not good" for either of us.  I have started to pay attention (yes, I have a weight problem) to my own feelings.  Here I am talking about internal physical sensations as opposed to internal emotional sensation. 

The situation was that I had eaten too many cookies.  The feeling was vaguely unpleasant.  Why had I not noticed this before?  I suspect the answer may lie in the stuffing of feelings that come with addiction.  Eating is used to suppress all internal sensation, physical and emotional.  Learning to ignore emotional discomfort leads to ignoring the rest of the bodies signals.

Question of the day:  Can I learn pay attention to the signals of my body and my soul for just this day?

posted by Y.H.N.

The End of Civilization As We Know it.

The S.M. Sterling novel, "Dies the fire", starts with the simple premise.  All technology based on the flow of electrons and pressurized gases stops working.  How this comes about is sort of passed over.  With thousands of jet aircraft in the story plunging to the ground during the first few minutes of the change, as the disaster is called in the novels, the point is not a glaring omission.  I recommend reading the novels.  In fact I highly recommend reading the novels.   

With an speculative fiction one can not help but to imagine oneself is a situation similar to that of the characters.  If I ignore the fact that I would most probably have been eaten by (Oops, spoiler censored!), I might have found myself in Corvallis, OR.  In the story at least, the local university is attempting to rebuild their little corner of civilization with what ever technology they can scrape together. 

So this begs the question, exactly what can we do with pre-electronic technology?  The answer surprisingly is quite a lot.  We would have not where near the economies of scale that we do with the modern PC but mechanical computers would still be part of our technological tool box.




Once I gave my fictional self access to computers once again I realized that the profession of physics was still relevant.  In fact it would be more relevant because "The Change,"  was primarily a change in physical laws. As a physicist I would most likely be concerned with how this new and terrible world works.  If the old gas law does not work, then how do gasses work in this new world?  The answer is simple, I experiment and figure it out.

Next you put your new found knowledge to work.  If gasses are now infinitely compressible, implied in the story, what technological applications does this open up?  Air engines become high energy density technologies even if still limited to low power.  Is the lift in a dirigible now controllable via the simple re compression of the lifting gases?  If so this would release these craft from the limitations of gas supply and ballast.

Sterling's bad guys ride around in Cap-a-pie and on chargers but I would be arming my guys with compressed air powered armored cars and supplying dirigible air cover.  Yeah technology is still all about working with in physical laws even in that changed universe.

posted by Y.H.N.

Millionaire - Racism and Sexism

I have made this post separate from the rest of the series I am posting on the book , "The Millionaire Next Door." To wit, where are the women and the minorities?

The first is that the masculine pronoun is used universally throughout  the first two chapters.  Back in 1996, when the book was published I would not have batted an eye at this usage.  From the perspective of 2011 the usage is more than just vaguely disturbing. Oh what a difference 15 years makes! A quick glance (more in a latter post) at Appendix 1 on the survey methods shows that affluent neighborhoods were targeted through a method called geocoding.  These residential targeted surveys were also addressed to heads of household.  Due to a cultural bias this may have unintentionally selected male over female respondents.

The second is that when ethnicity as a factor in wealth accumulation is examined only persons of European and Middle Eastern ethnicity are considered.  Blacks, Asians and Hispanics are entirely excluded from consideration.  It is possible that the conditions under which Blacks and Asians labor are so significantly different as to warrant separate treatment.  I think that unlikely, rather I suspect that the survey methodology unwitting excluded non white ethnicites.   Geocoding is acknowledged by the authors to be unreliable in rural areas which are presumably less affluent. It is possible that the relative economic disadvantage of Black, Asian and Hispanics communities may have excluded these groups from consideration.

It is not my conclusion that the insight to be gained from the book is any less valuable but I will have to place the whole in to its proper historical perspective.

 posted by Y.H.N.