The Problem: say the word "scientist", and most children in the U.S. will imagine a person who looks like a cross between Albert Einstein and the fictional Dr. Frankenstein: wild hair, glasses, white lab coat, holding a test tube or beaker of some mysterious bubbling liquid. In reality, of course, much science is done with nothing more than a pad of graph paper and a calculator. Rather than correcting the false notion of science as lab activity, some educational systems actually re-inforce this stereotype. The result is either a traumatic adjustment to the student's view of science when she or he later encounters a class in which little or no lab work is done, or a distorted view of science which the student will carry with her or him though life and eventually pass on to the next generation. Education in the natural sciences needs to end its "love affair" with the image of science as lab work.The pedagogy of the natural sciences admits of wide variety, as do the pedagogies of other academic subjects. Currently, most K-12 science educators in the U.S. practice a methodology which considers “lab” work (in some form) to be essential, desirable, and properly constituting a large percentage of the time devoted to instruction in the natural sciences.
The concept of science with which I work is well-illustrated, for example, in the works of Lawrence Sklar:
Consider the essential meaning of “technical” skills - this does not primarily refer to computers and other electronic gadgets, but rather to the idea of a technique - the “how” in “this is how to do it.” But natural science is not about doing anything - it is about understanding.
Learning to set up bunsen burners, disect frogs, use boiling chips, weigh and measure, etc., is doubtless worth doing: these skills are important. But let us not confuse this learning with the learning of natural science. Natural science presents us with observations (“facts” or “data”), and asks us to formulate a theory which systematizes, explains, and predicts them.
Natural science is essentially contemplative, even meditative.
To be sure, certain of the sciences do rightfully include some lab work, not only for their practitioners, but even for their students as well. This would be primarily the life sciences (botany, anatomy, etc.), as well as geology and some others. The question I raise is not whether lab work should be done, but how much and what emphasis it should carry within the course. It would be argued that a chemistry course could be done with almost no lab work at all. Much of the lab work done belongs properly, not to the discipline of natural science, which is essentially rational contemplation of the phenomenal world, but rather to the discipline of technology, which is essentially rational interaction with the phenomenal world. For what is lab work, but measurement and observation on the one hand, and manipulation of objects on the other - wherein the former is natural science, and the latter technology? Yet the former can be achieved without the latter, making lab work superfluous. The technology here assumes a purely pedagogical role: creating a phenomenon for observation. The technology is, in that moment, utterly unimportant and a mere distraction. The essence of the matter is in the rational synthesis of the observation and measurement. Yet often the means becomes the end, and attention is devoted to the technology rather than to the science.
Another way to formulate this assertion would be to say that in a natural science class (whether life sciences or physics), the “lab work” should consist primarily of observation - not of generating the experiment. In a technology course, the lab work would be contrary - consisting primarily of setting up an experiment. In this way it can be seen that technical education and natural science education are complementary and indeed inseparable. In the natural science course, sources of error would be discussed: these would be the activities of the technology course.
Finally, we need merely to pose the question “what is a natural science?” Natural science is a quest for knowledge; it is in this sense always passive.
Consider the difference between biology and medicine; the former is a science, the latter a trade.
Random Bibliography:
Taylor, Edwin F. and Wheeler, John Archibald Spacetime Physics San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Co., 1992, 1963, 1966
ISBN 0-7167-0336-X
click here to buy
Sklar, Lawrence Space, Time, and Spacetime Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1974, 1976, 1977
ISBN 0-520-03174-1
click here to buy
Smart, J.C.C. (ed.) Problems of Space and Time New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1964, 1976
click here to buy
Gribben, John and Rees, Martin Cosmic Coincidences: Dark Matter New York: Bantam Books, 1989
click here or here or here to buy
Reichenbach, Hans The Philosophy of Space and Time New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1957, 1958
ISBN 486-60443-8
click here to buy
Sklar, Lawrence Philosophy and Spacetime Physics Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1985
ISBN 0-520-05374-5
click here to buy
Behe, Michael J. Darwin's Black Box New York: The Free Press, 1996
click here or here to buy
Glynn, Patrick National Review May 6, 1996, pg. 28 “Beyond the Death of God”
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