Monday, July 16, 2007

How the high school learning experience can set false expectations for college

Previous high school experience tells students...
  • there's always a second chance
  • someone will remind you of upcoming due dates
  • the teacher can't give the whole class failing grades
  • the student will be told exactly what's on the test
  • very few tests are cumulative, so short term memory is usually sufficient (if your smart and pay attention, good grades are easy)
  • paying adequate attention in class is usually good enough; outside studying is not required
  • tests are relatively easy and fair
  • tests are designed so that even the lower-achieving students can potentially pass
  • there are many grades during the semester, so a few screw-ups are okay
  • each question on the test will have been addressed many times, both in class and in the reading
  • most of the required knowledge comes from class and one or two texts, not mostly from many different texts
  • long, boring lectures are the exception
  • teachers will work hard to make sure students understand what is being taught
  • teachers know how to teach, most of the time
  • teachers care about student progress, most of the time
  • someone will help students identify which classes need to be taken and when
  • someone other than the student is responsible for the student's learning
For these reasons, students fail to understand ...
  • how difficult college can be
  • how little oversight there is
  • the implications of this lack of oversight
  • the implications of their new personal freedom and the necessity for self-control and good habits
  • the real nature of the problem (it's no longer an issue of how smart you are, but of how how much you practice good habits)

Technique more important than ability

Technique is often more important than skill. For example, many experiments show that ability to recall items is more related to the technique of chunking (grouping things into categories) than it is to an inherent memory capacity. Chess masters' ability to recall the placement of pieces on a chess board is far superior to that of novices IF the pieces are placed in meaningful "real game" patterns. The masters' ability is no better than the novices when the pieces are placed randomly, because the masters recall patterns rather than individual pieces (Chase and Simon, 1973). In addition, children who are taught techniques for accomplishing a given task can often outperform adults who don't know the techniques. Teaching people how to learn is, by extension, more important than their basic intelligence.

Saturday, June 30, 2007

Intelligent Design not a scientific theory (response)

Read the previous post and excellent comment first, or you'll be lost.

First, thanks so much for your well-reasoned and thoughtful response.

>Anonymous wrote...
1) I don't think you understand what "testing" ID would involve and why it cannot be done. The issue is that a hypothetical designer could do anything: make anything look like anything. Thus there is no way to _disconfirm_ the idea since anything at all can confirm or disconfirm it. Theories are only testible when they are limited in scope, and ID by definition has no limits and those no distinguishing characteristics.
I agree that the basic question of whether or not there was/is an intelligent designer is not falsifiable (not testable) in the strict scientific sense (cf. Karl Popper). Macro evolution--all new species arise from prior species through descent with variation--is a potentially falsifiable theory. One would only have to show one case in which a new species arose without benefit of evolutionary change; how to actually prove such a thing occurred is problematic however. On the other hand, to falsify intelligent design one would have to show at least one instance in which something was not designed, but arose without a designer, and how can one do that if the designer's involvement in such a process isn't verifiable? All that to say, "I understand your point, and I agree if we are treating theory in the strict scientific sense." But that's a big if.

When scientists such as Richard Dawkins, Stephen Gould, et al. talk about the theory of evolution they tend to lump the initial, unfalsifiable, non-scientific axiom in with the falsifiable scientific theory. To say it another way, it's sleight-of-mouth when they speak of the "theory of evolution," yet include the non-theoretical assumption of naturalism. Granted, that's not the fault of the Wired letter writer. He/she was correct in the strict sense, but the theory of evolution (as it's treated in the political controversy and in the Wired article to which the letter writer was referring) is not a theory in the strict sense because of the appended axiom of naturalism.

We should be comparing apples to apples. The real choice is not between the theory of evolution (falsifiable theory) and intelligent design (unfalsifiable axiom), it is between intelligent design (unfalsifiable axiom) and naturalism (unfalsifiable axiom). I'm using "naturalism" in the sense that everything is the result of natural processes, without reference to any supernatural intervention. Both are unfalsifiable, and therefore, unaddressable by scientific methods (again, using Karl Popper's clarifications).

Either initial assumption--ID or naturalism--would allow us to postulate and test the theory of evolution. I've heard people say that, "science is the process of finding out how God works in the natural world." The axiom is "God designs nature." When an evolutionary biologist says something to the effect that God had nothing to do with it, it is all the result of natural processes the axiom is "only nature, not God." So one could start with the assumption that God creates/designs nature and evolution is the natural process by which new species arise. The theory of evolution says nothing whatsoever about the initial axiom. BUT, that's not how people use the term "the theory of evolution." That's not how Gould or Dawkins or the Wired article--and by extension, the respondent--use the term.

The real issue for me is, how can we decide between those two axioms?
Anonymous wrote...
2) Speciation and evolutionary modification are very much testable. I think
you are laboring under the misunderstanding that tests on historical claims
can only be done by repeating history, but this is not the case. We test the
past by testing the evidence the past leaves behind: the direct implications
various events have for leaving behind this or that piece of evidence. All
science, in fact, works like this: all we EVER have is more or less evidence
supporting some claim via induction and inference.

I understand the difference between legal-historical proof and scientific proof. I must disagree with your statement that, "all science, in fact, works like this." Scientific proofs do not work like this. Legal-historical proofs work like this. And as I said previously, the value of science itself is not open to scientific testing, anymore than claims about an intelligent designer or naturalism. Based on your next sentence, you would appear to agree (?).

Anonymous wrote...
3) Science is indeed built on untestable assumptions. But these assumptions
are rather special: they are axiomatic, the very assumptions we ALL require
to act and function within the physical world. Merely by reading and
responding to my words, you concede those assumptions, as you do every time
you move and act in the physical world. So they are givens, not the sorts of
special additional claims that people make for their pet theories.
I suppose I've responded to much of this already. I agree that we all require such axioms and we tacitly concede them every time we act. The question is, which axiom is true (if either)?

In summary, I agree with you and the Wired respondent if you are talking about the theory of evolution in the strict sense WITHOUT the inclusion of naturalism as an explanatory cause. But if we include the explanatory axiom in the term "theory of evolution" (as is done in the national debate, in Dawkin's and Gould's and others' writings, and in what most people mean when they say "theory of evolution"), then they are not talking about a scientific theory at all. They are talking about a belief system more akin to religion, that is, it is based on faith in an initial, unprovable axiom. That being the case, what separates the naturalist scientist from the intelligent design scientist?

Friday, June 29, 2007

Intelligent Design not a scientific theory

Wired Magazine (Start, Atlas, issue 15.05) recently published an article, "May the best theory survive," about the "theory that life was created by a higher intelligence," also known as Intelligent Design theory. The letters to the editor in the following issue contained this reader response; "A scientific theory must be able to make predictions that can be tested by experiment. Intelligent design cannot do this, so it is not a scientific theory."

Several problems arise from such a stance. First, the theory of intelligent design can be tested. Second, testability has never stopped scientists from deriving theories, nor should it. Finally, science is itself built on fundamentally untestable assumptions.

The theory of intelligent design can certainly be tested. We could stand on a hilltop and cry out for such a designer to show himself. Many have done just such an experiment, but, sadly, the results have been mixed. We could hypothesize that if an item--say a Galapagos finch or a book about the origin of species--were created by an intelligent designer it would carry the hallmarks of such design, such as a structure of sufficient informational complexity as to make random processes extremely unlikely explanations for it's existence. If you cannot test the finch in such a manner, you cannot test the book. Not seeing the informational complexity inherent in a finch as evidence of intelligent design requires an a priori belief that there must be some other explanation. If we assumed that authors were a myth, we would similarly have to preclude authorship as a plausible method of accounting for the contents of The Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin (or is it).

The mention of Darwin, that fairy tale character for the masses, leads nicely into the second point; namely, a lack of testability has never stymied theorizing by scientists. Darwin had no way of testing a theory of new species arising by evolutionary modification (although testing natural selection was easy enough). Modern scientists, for that matter, cannot test such a theory. They can only offer compelling evidence that new species do arise from other species, but how is that different from the intelligent design crowd? If you start with the assumption that there is no intelligent designer, the evolutionary explanation seems to be the only game in town. If you don't start with such an assumption, other explanations may seem more likely. But both start with an initial assumption. Which leads us to point number three.

Science itself is built on fundamentally untestable assumptions. Science hypothesizes and tests. It asks and answers. It experiments and discards. All of this is good. But one can only say it's good by drawing on untestable belief. How does one decide the value of a question or the value of its answer? For example, "Are we really better off as a species for having discovered CFCs, Mustard Gas, and the atomic bomb?" Yes or no, the answer must depend on values, and science cannot speak to values. The very fact that we consider science to be a valuable pursuit relies on a faith-based belief beyond the ken of the scientific method.

So the letter writer, it seems, was mistaken. Although he may not like the theory of intelligent design, it is, nevertheless, still a scientific theory. It is every bit as testable as more accepted scientific theories. In contrast, many scientific theories held with religious fervor by the faithful are not testable, at least not currently. Finally, science itself requires untestable assumptions to be considered as a worthwhile explanatory framework. It seems we all have our idols.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

It's not the cup

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups (porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite) telling them to help themselves to the coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: "If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups . . . and then you began eyeing each other's cups.

Now consider this: Life is the coffee; the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change, the quality of Life we live. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee God has provided us."

God brews the coffee, not the cups. . . Enjoy your Coffee! "The happiest people don't have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything. " Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. . . Leave the rest to God.

-from an email I was sent

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Breathing Photo

Look around the picture and notice how it seems to bulge and breath.
clipped from haha.nu
creatifff_in_-1151571917_i_4790_full
 powered by clipmarks