science education

(Series)

Alfred Russel Wallace is the all but forgotten co-founder of modern evolutionary thought. His major book reveals a bit of why, right from the title and sub-title: The World of Life: a manifestation of Creative Power, Directive Mind and Ultimate Purpose.

In short, Wallace was a design thinker, and in fact he was also a supernaturalist. (A Spiritualist, actually.)

It should be no surprise to see, therefore, that he took on the methodological naturalism that was even then beginning to be informally institutionalised in science.  (In our time, it has now been formally written into redefinitions of science promoted by bodies like the US’s National Academy of Science and their National Science Teachers Association, in the teeth of serious historical, logical and epistemological issues and concerns.)

It is worth pausing for a few moments in this series of posts, to reflect on how Wallace responded to Hume et al, in his An Answer to the Arguments of Hume, Lecky, and Others, Against Miracles.

Clipping from p. 112 on, we may see: Read More ›

Look at this. Most school money is a waste. Sure. But not all. You have to fit you to the program. If people spent a bit of time buying an education, a house, or a car, they’d save themselves a bill.

In “British Humanists campaign to restrict academic freedom”( Access Research Network, September 23, 2011), British physicist David Tyler explains, This week has seen the launch of a new website, with the title: “Teach evolution, not creationism!” registered by the British Humanist Association. The issue relates to education and the way the subject of origins is handled. The organisations in the campaign are the British Humanist Association, the Association for Science Education, the British Science Association, the Campaign for Science & Engineering and Ekklesia. There are 30 individual signatories and most publicity has been given to Sir David Attenborough. The Daily Telegraph’s report said that “The naturalist joined three Nobel laureates, the atheist Richard Dawkins and other leading scientists in calling Read More ›

Here, we’ve given a fair amount of space to Texas textbook hearings, and it’s only fair to say why. Godfather Politics recalls (September 21, 2011) Texas distributes 48 million textbooks every year. This is a huge market if you are a textbook publisher. While California is the nation’s largest textbook market, the state’s financial crisis has not made it a major player. New York and Illinois are also big markets. Any new textbooks are going to be tailored to fit with what the textbook adoption agencies decide in to do in Texas since Texas has money to purchase new textbooks. “The state’s $22 billion education fund is among the largest educational endowments in the country.” Long before these current battles, Read More ›

When I was a kid and was bored in Chem classes I would occasionally daydream of a messenger arriving at the classroom door to tell the late, great, Fr Farrell of a scientific breakthrough. Of course, in later years, I always assumed that it would be years before a breakthrough would filter down to High School Chem. But, today, may be a possible day like that. According to a BBC report from CERN (HT, WUWT): Neutrinos sent through the ground from Cern toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away seemed to show up a tiny fraction of a second early. The result – which threatens to upend a century of physics – will be put online for scrutiny by other Read More ›