Chapter 12 Achieving Wider Scienti c Literacy

12 . 1 INTRODUCTION 1
That public understanding of science, or scienti c literacy in general, is in a l
amentable state is an old story. Magazine articles, educational literature. and
pronouncements of scienti c associations all through this century and well were es
pecially determined to help college students acquire a better sense of the natur
e, power, and limitations of scienti c thought, as well as a better understanding
of the interactions between science and society. Since then, the escalating impa
ct of science and technology on moral, ethical, political, and societal problems
has only continued to enhance the urgency of the problem of education and to he
ighten the pertinence of the liberal education objective For years, meetings of
scienti c societies reverberated, and pages of educational journals were lled, with
descriptions of new courses that had bean designed to lead nonscience majors to
greater scienti c literacy. Almost every report presented or published was accomp
anied by the results of evaluations of student answers to tendentious questionnai
res, the answers invariably demonstrating how much the students loved the course
, valued the learning experience, and appreciated the instructors enthusiastic ef
forts on their behalf With but a very few exceptions, however, these courses van
ished and was rapidly succeeded by more up-to-date but essentially identical and e
qually evanescent versions, also accompanied by enthusiastic student testimonial
s: These numerous attempts have had very little impact on scienti c literacy Those
who were students in such courses, and responded so favorably on the questionna
ires, show little or no understanding of science and of its interactions with so
ciety. In retrospect, most say that they enjoyed their course very much, but rec
all nothing of what they were supposed to have learned. (It has been sardonicall
y suggested that, this being the almost universal outcome, perhaps we should dir
ect our efforts to devising courses still more enjoyable and still easier to for
get.) Yet the clamor for making science a more effective component of liberal ed
ucation continues unabated, and with an urgency indicative of how little past ef
forts have achieved. The notion that understanding of science can be achieved by
purely verbal inculcation seems to me to be a principal source of failure. Expe
rience makes it increasingly clear that exclusively verbal presentations lecturi
ng to large groups of intellectually passive students and having them read text
material- leave virtually nothing in the students minds that is permanent or sign
i cant. Much less do such presentations help the student attain what can be consid
ered the marks of a scienti cally literate person. Since such marks, however, unde
rlie the contentions and recommendations in this chapter, it is well to stop at
this point in order to enumerate some of them.
12.2 MARKS OF SCIENTIFIC LITERACY
I suggest that an individual who has acquired some degree of scienti c literacy wi
ll possess the ability to:
1. Recognize that scienti c concepts (e.g., velocity, acceleration, force, energy,
electrical charge, gravitational and inertial mass) are invented (or created) b
y acts of human imagination and intelligence and are not tangible objects or sub
stances accidentally discovered, like a fossil, or a new plant or mineral.
2. Recognize that to be understood and correctly used, such terms require carefu
l operational de nition, rooted in shared experience and in simpler words previous
ly de ned; to comprehend, in other words, that a scienti c concept involves an idea.
first and a name afterwards, and that understanding does not reside in the tech
nical terms themselves.
3. Comprehend the distinction between observation and inference and discriminate
between the two processes in any context under consideration.
4. Distinguish between the occasional role of accidental discovery in scienti c in
vestigation and the deliberate strategy of forming and testing hypotheses.
5. Understand the meaning of the word theory in the scienti c domain, and have some
sense, through speci c examples, of ho w theories are formed, tested, validated, a

nd accorded provisional acceptance; recognize, in consequence, that the term doe

s not refer to any and every personal opinion, unsubstantiated notion, or receiv
ed article of faith and thus, for example, to see through the creationist locuti
on that describes evolution as merely a theory.
6. Discriminate, on the one hand, between acceptance of asserted and unveri ed end
results, models, or conclusions, and, on the other, under- stand their basis an
d origin; that is, to recognize when questions such as How do we know. . . .7 Why
do we believe . . . ? What is the evidence for. . . ? have been addressed, answer
ed, and understood, and when something is being taken on faith.
7. Understand, again through speci c examples, the sense in which scienti c concepts
and theories are mutable and provisional rather than nal and unalterable, and to
perceive the way in which such structures are continually re ned and sharpened by
processes of successive approximation.
8. Comprehend the limitations inherent in scienti c inquiry and be aware of the ki
nds of questions that are neither asked nor answered; be aware of the endless re
gression of unanswered questions that resides behind the answered ones.
9. Develop enough basic knowledge in some area (or areas) of interest to allow i
ntelligent reading and subsequent learning without formal instruction.
10. Be aware of at least a few speci c instances in which scienti c knowledge has ha
d direct impact on intellectual history and on ones own view of the nature of the
universe and of the human condition within it.
11. Be aware of at least a few speci c instances of interaction between science an
d society on moral, ethical, and sociological planes.
12. Be aware of very close analogies between certain modes of thought in natural
science and in other disciplines such as history, economics, sociology, and pol
itical science; for example, forming concepts, testing hypotheses, discriminatin
g between observation and inference (i.e., between: information from a primary s
ource and the interpretations placed on 1:11: information), constructing models,
and doing hypothetico-deductive reasoning.
I hasten to indicate that this list is neither exhaustive nor prescriptive It il
lustrates some of the insights that I believe characterize scienti c literacy and
that I nd most college undergraduates, given time and opportunity. and having the
willingness to exert some intellectual effort, can encompass. Readers will have
valid modi cations, preferences, and priorities of their own. These can be interp
olated and examined in light of the following discussion which I will con ne to ef
forts being made in schools, colleges, and universities to upgrade scienti c liter
acy.
12 .3 OPERATIVE KNOWLEDGE
Researchers in cognitive development describe two principal classes of knowledge
: Figurative (or declarative) and operative (or procedural) [Anderson (1980); La
wson (1982)]. Declarative knowledge consists of knowing facts; for example, that t
he moon shines by reflected sunlight, that the earth and planets revolve around
the sun, that matter is composed of discrete atoms and molecules, that animals b
reathe in oxygen and expel carbon dioxide. Operative knowledge, on the other han
d, involves understanding the source of such declarative knowledge (How do we kn
ow the moon shines by re ected sunlight? Why do we believe the earth and planets r
evolve around the sun when appearances suggest that everything revolves around t
he earth? What is The evidence that the structure of matter is discrete rather t
han continuous? What do we mean by the names oxygen and carbon dioxide and how do we
recognize these as different substances?) and the capacity to use, apply, trans
form, or recognize the relevance of the declarative knowledge in new or unfamili
ar situations. To develop the genuine understanding of concepts and theories tha
t un- derlies operative knowledge, the college student, no less than the element
ary school child, must engage in deductive and inductive mental activity coupled
with interpretation of personal observation and experience. Unfortunately, such
activity is rarely induced in passive listeners, but it can be nurtured, develo

ped, and enhanced in the majority of students providing it is experien- tially r

ooted and not too rapidly paced, and providing the mind of the learner is active
ly engaged. There is increasing evidence that our secondary schools and colleges
are not doing very well at cultivating operative knowledge in any of the formal
disciplines, and that the teaching of science is not unique in this respect altho
ugh the failures in science are more immediately obvious [Arons (1976); Chiappet
ta (1976); McKinnon and Renner (1971)]. Consider some speci c illustrations:
1. Almost any individual (child, student, or adult) who is asked about the origi
n of the light coming to us from the moon will respond with the assertion that t
he moon shines by reflected sunlight. When one asks, however, for the evidence f
or this conclusion, one very rarely obtains a meaningful or logical response. Th
e knowledge is purely declarative and has been received from authority without a
ccompanying evidence or support. It is interesting to note a deeply related misc
onception: Most people, including nonscience college faculty, if asked how they
account for the unilluminated portion when they see a bright crescent moon, resp
ond that the dark portion is the shadow of the earth. Very few people have ever
watched the moon in its changing phases and taken the intellectual step of notin
g the simultaneous location of the sun. It is perfectly possible to lead young c
hildren to full understanding of what is going on and why we conclude that the mo
onlight is the sunlight (see Tennysons Locksley Hall Sixty Years After), but this is
very rarely done.
2. In a more subtle and sophisticated context, virtually any individual will tel
l you that the earth and planets of our solar system revolve around the sun. Mos
t people do not even see anything paradoxical about this because, unlike the anc
ients, few of us now have occasion to sleep out under the sky and watch the proc
ession of the celestial bodies. If asked for the evidence, for the reasons why w
e accept a helio- rather than a geocentric model, the vast majority, including c
ollege science majors, react only with dismay or embarrassment. A few might mutt
er something memo- rized and unintelligible about stellar parallax, but even these
have no realization that the Newtonian picture was rmly accepted long before ste
llar parallax was actually observed, that the observation was simply a con dently
expected con rmation, and that a proponent of geocentrism could readily invent som
e re nements that would incorporate stellar parallax in the geocentric model. Thus
most individuals have learned what Whitehead (1929) describes as an inert end resu
lt. They posses only declarative knowledge received from authority, and they have
no understanding of the first grand synthesis provided by modern science. They
are probably even less sophisticated than their medieval counter- parts, who wou
ld have put forth the geocentric model but would have quali ed it as only saving th
e appearances rather than representing a nal Truth. Such modern-day reactions of p
urely declarative knowledge are typical with respect to many other aspects of sc
ience, and, I submit, are not what we have in mind when we speak of an understand
ing of science.
3. An example drawn from experience with both pre- and in-service elementary sch
ool teachers in undergraduate science courses (the two groups turn out to be ind
istinguishable in their levels of understanding of science subject matter): Some
where in their general science courses in the schools, or in other circumstances
, they had all heard expositions about electrical circuits, had seen diagrams in b
ooks or on chalkboards, an listened to assertions of the facts and concepts of cu
rrent electricity When they are given a dry cell, a length of wire, and a ashligh
t bulfz and are asked to get the bulb lighted, they almost invariably do one cf
the following things: they either hold one end of the wire to one termi- nal of
the battery and touch the bottom of the bulb to the other end of the wire, or th
ey connect the wire across the terminals (i.e., short the battery) and hold the
bulb on one battery terminal. They have no sense of the two-endedness of either
the battery or the bulb; few notice that the wire gets hot when connected across
the battery terminals, and fewer still infer anything from the latter effect. I
t takes 20 to 30 minutes before someone in the class discovers, by trial and err
or, a con guration that lights the bulb. (Seven-year-old children, when confronted
with the same situation, go through exactly the same initial steps, and 20 to 3

0 minutes elapse before someone gets the bulb lighted.) Lacking the syn- thesis
of actual experience into the concept of electrical circuit, the college students,
despite the words they know and the assertions and descriptions they have receive
d as passive listeners, have no more under- standing of the ideas involved than
the seven-year-old approaching the phenomenon de novo. Purely verbal inculcation
has left no trace of gen- uine knowledge or understanding. Such is the outcome
of the majority of our present modes of science instruction.
12.4 GENERAL EDUCATION SCIENCE COURSES

The majority of college courses that purport to cultivate scienti c literacy in th

e nonscience major tend to fall into two principal classes: Courses that in one
quarter, one semester, or even one year attempt to give students an insight into
the major achievements of a science (e.g., in physics, everything from Galileo
and Newton through the laws of thermodynamics, relativity, quantum mechanics, an
d current particle physics); and courses that focus on some narrower topical are
a such as the energy crisis, spoliation of the environment, the application of s
cience to military problems, ethical and moral questions lying behind modern adv
ances in molecular biology, philosophical questions posed by relativity and quan
tum mechanics, and so on. Courses in the first category have been invented and r
einvented in essentially the same form countless times ever since general educat
ion curricula sought to provide courses addressed to nonscience majors. Despite
pretensions to being substantive and not merely surveys and despite the always glo
wing student evaluations, these courses have had so short a half-life and so littl
e effect on the generations of students subjected to them, that they are still b
eing reinvented to ll the persisting vacuum. Young scientists, completely unaware
of past experience, seem to think the vacuum is there because this mode has nev
er been tried before and that the solution lies in presenting the material in th
eir own specially enthusiastic and impeccably lucid way. The truth is that the v
acuum is there because this mode has no prospect whatsoever of educational succe
ss, yet its proponents continue to justify it on the ground that students are gi
ven a feeling for the content of science and the nature of modern scientific thoug
ht and that they now know something about current scienti c progress. Meanwhile, com
plaints about the lack of scienti c literacy continue to escalate.
Such efforts founder - as their replications will continue to founder - rst, beca
use they invariably subject students to an incomprehensible stream of technical
jargon that is not rooted in experience accessible to the learner: second, becau
se the subject matter is poured forth much too rapidly and in far too great a vo
lume for signi cant understanding of ideas, concepts, or theories to be generated
and assimilated. The pace makes dif cult, if not impossible, the development of a
sense of how concepts and theories originate, how they come to be validated and
accepted, and how they connect with experience and reveal relations among seemin
gly disparate phenomena. Both the pace and the volume preclude any meaningful re
flection on the scope and limitations of scienti c knowledge or of its impact on o
ur intellectual heritage and view of mans place in the universe. The stream of wor
ds courses have not solved, and will not solve, our educational problem, however
handsomely illustrated the texts and however liberally salted they may be with a
llusions to pollution. ethics, energy crises, black holes, or Kafka. Courses in
the second category, although supposedly narrower in scope. nevertheless suffer
from related dif culties. It seems to me that intellectual integrity would demand
that students acquire some genuine comprehension of the scienti c concepts, theori
es, and insights underlying the great topical problem being examined, and that s
tudents should not be encouraged to discourse vacuously on matters they essentia
lly do not understand. With students who already have the requisite conceptual b
ackground, one can, of course, enter these discussions directly. But with studen
ts who have no notion of what energy means (many regard it as some kind of materia
l substance) and no comprehension, however qualitative, of the restrictions impo
sed on us by the laws of thermodynamics; with students who have no basis for bel
ief in the discreteness of the structure of matter (knowing only a string of nam
es such as atom, molecule, nucleus, electron that have been thrown at them by asser

without examination of any of the experiential evidence and reasoning underlying

the names); with students who have no idea what is meant (and what is not meant
) by electrical charge; with students who have no understanding of the grounds on
which we accept the proposition that the earth and planets revolve around the su
n; and with students who are still Aristotelian in their use of teleological loc
utions and in their unawareness of the law of inertia - with such students it is
intellectually specious and dis- honest to pursue the initial discussion withou
t first helping them form and understand the essential prior concepts. Indeed, o
nce they see where intellectual integrity lies and what they must understand to
talk meaningfully and intelligently about the original problem, few students obj
ect to the digression necessary for understanding the underpinnings. Such backtr
acking to the necessary scienti c understanding, however, drastically reduces the
amount of coverage. To the best of my knowledge, very few courses have made the
sacri ce, and the students emerge with no more understanding of the scienti c concep
ts or of the nature and limitations of scienti c thought than do the victims of co
urses in category one.
What is the alternative? It seems to me that it is essential to back off, to slo
w down, to cover less, and to give students a chance to follow and absorb the de
velopment of a small number of scienti c ideas at a volume and pace that make thei
r knowledge operative rather than declarative. Depending on the time available,
they might, for example, be led through one or more of the following questions:
1. Why do we believe the earth and planets revolve around the sun? In what conte
xt of concept and theory is this picture correct?
2. Why do we believe that matter is discrete rather than continuous in structure?
What is the evidence behind belief in atoms and molecules?
3. What do we mean by the term electrical charge? How does the concept originate?
Is charge some kind of substance? What is meant by like charges; in what sense is th
e word like being used? On what grounds do we believe that there are no more than
two varieties of electrical charge? What (hypothetical) evidence would force us
to conclude we had discovered a third variety? What is the evidence that electri
cal charge plays a fundamental role in the structure of matter?
4. Why do we believe that atoms have discrete structure on a subatomic scale? Wh
at is some of the evidence? (Ex cathedra assertion of terms such as electron and nu
cleus is not evidence at all and cultivates only declarative knowledge; yet much
teaching of science is done in this fashion.) What experiments and observations le
ad to (and reinforce) creation of the concept electron? What is the evidence that
such an entity is a universal constituent of matter? What is the evidence that i
t is subatomic? What role does the electron play in atomic structure?
5. Since we can take thermal energy out of the atmosphere or the ocean without v
iolating the conservation principle, why is it that we can- not solve energy sho
rtages by using the atmosphere or ocean as energy sources?
6. In what way does Einsteins special theory of relativity alter our funda- menta
l conceptions regarding space and time?
Any one of these questions can be dealt with in an honest way under restricted c
overage of subject matter and can be used to cultivate and enhance aspects of sc
ienti c literacy such as those de ned in Section 12.2. By contrast, I suggest that e
nterprises such as the following (however pop- ular they may be) are at best use
less, and at worst damaging, since there is insuf cient time to attack the How do w
e know . . . ? Why do we believe . . . ? questions or the necessary background is
far too advanced:
1. Students being told about the fascinating particles of high-energy physics (wit
h unintelligible jargon about interactions, angular momen- tum, mass-energy rela
tions, quantum transitions, quarks, gluons, color, strangeness, the uncertainty
principle) when they have inadequate un- derstanding of concepts such as velocit
y, acceleration, force, mass, en- ergy, and electrical charge, much less any und
erstanding of how we obtain evidence regarding the structure of matter on a scal
e that transcends our direct sense perceptions.
2. Students who are still essentially Aristotelian, with no signi cant understandi

ng of the law of inertia, satisfying distribution requirements by taking courses

in meteorology or oceanography and hearing incomprehensible assertions about th
e role of the Coriolis effect.
3. Students who have no notion how to define local noon or the north- south dire
ction, who have no idea of the origin of the seasons or of the phases of the moo
n (believing the unilluminated portion of the crescent moon to be the shadow of
the earth), who are unaware that the stars have a diurnal motion, who do not und
erstand why we believe the earth and planets revolve around the sun, taking gener
al education courses in astronomy and hearing lectures on stellar nucleosynthesis
, pulsars, quasars, and black holes.
4. Students who do not know how substances are de ned and recognized. who have no
idea what is meant operationally by words such as oxy- gen, nitrogen, or carbon, who
o not understand why we believe in discreteness in the structure of matter, and
who have no idea what is meant by electrical charge or potential difference being le
ctured to about DNA, molecular biology, and the structure of genes, or about ner
ve and muscle action.
The stream of unintelligible words cannot possibly generate scienti c lit- eracy;
it simply aggravates the problem we are trying to solve.
12.5 ILLUSTRATING THE NATURE OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT
By addressing ideas such as those suggested in the preceding section - at a pace
that allows formation and understanding of underlying concepts as well as consi
deration of the How do we know . . . ? Why do we believe . . . ?" questions - ill
ustrations of the character and limitations of scienti c thought rather than being
injected arti cially by assertion, will arise naturally and abundantly.
When, in the Two New Sciences, Galileo confronts the problem of describing the c
hange in velocity of a moving body (the idea to which we give