What good is science education?

(First of two parts)

In his book “The Demon-Haunted World — Science as a Candle in the Dark,” the astronomer Carl Sagan (1934-1996) says a survey revealed that 95 percent of Americans are scientifically illiterate. An example of the kind of illiteracy referred to can be seen in a video made available through this link from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (http://hsdvl.org/video.php?record_serial=80). The video shows newly minted Harvard and MIT graduates, still gowned for graduation, being asked where trees (and the material in wood) come from. Every single person interviewed did not know. At the end of the film, a scientist asks, if graduates from the best and most prestigious universities in the US do not know that trees are made mainly from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, what about the rest of Americans? Here is another example: despite the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence supporting the theory of evolution, a recent Gallup Poll revealed that that 61 percent of Americans do not accept that evolution occurs and 46 percent believe that humans were created in their present form. The US is different from other western, industrialized countries with respect to widespread rejection of evolution. Ignorance concerning science, in general, and evolution, in particular, leads to unending debate in US society as well as in legal battles concerning the teaching of “Intelligent Design” (creationism in disguise) in schools. If citizens don’t even know that trees are made from carbon dioxide, how can they be expected to understand the processes that lead to global warming, to contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gases, to vote for politicians who pledge to protect the environment, to let tax dollars be used to support environmentally friendly government programs?

In Sagan’s view, the appalling degree of ignorance of science among Americans is because popular culture, the educational system, and the communications media have failed them. As citizens, he argues that they, in turn, fail their country. His message rings true today: “Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”

Because the US is so wealthy, it seems reasonable to conclude that money can’t buy scientific literacy — a “way of thinking.” Rather, it is something that societies must work to achieve. That citizens should be informed and guided by scientific understanding is not a uniquely western aspiration. Filipino scientists, as those elsewhere, work for the development of a scientific culture. Let us consider what this means.

Science is what scientists do, and a popular notion is that to do science is to collect facts — the more facts are collected, the more science is advanced. This is a widespread myth. Although the collection of data is quite often required to do research, to do science is to attempt to gain an understanding of the natural world. Facts, by themselves, mean nothing unless collected and interpreted in the context of scientific world-views called “paradigms.” The scientific process involves constantly testing these world views, modifying or replacing them with others if they are found to be inadequate. For example, a person could count the number of bird species on Mt. Makiling. Let us suppose that 45 species of birds are counted. What determines whether this is a useless, uninteresting number or one rich in meaning is determined by what scientific questions are addressed. Jared Diamond counted birds in the mountains of New Guinea to study community structure and used his data to test the Theory of Island Biogeography. He then used the fundamental scientific knowledge he gained as the basis for providing advice concerning conservation to the Indonesian government.

(To be concluded)

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Raul Kamantigue Suarez is a professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, California and an editor of the Journal of Experimental Biology, Cambridge, UK. E-mail him at [email protected].