Introducing Students to the Aims and Methodology of Science
From Plato’s Phaedrus (the vase image interpreted)
“In my analogy, a soul is like an organic whole made up of a charioteer and his team of horses. Now, while the horses and charioteers of gods are always thoroughly good, those of everyone else are a mixture. Although [the human] inner ruler [also] drives a pair of horses, only one of his horses is thoroughly noble and good, while the other is thoroughly the opposite. This inevitably makes driving, in our case, difficult and disagreeable” — Oxford World Classics, p. 27.
This is an excerpt from our forthcoming book: “Driving Plato’s Chariot: Lessons on Student Ethical Development from the Academic Integrity Seminar.” The section below is designed to be read in conjunction with related analysis in Parts five and seven of our “Power of Stories” chapter.
A short summary of the scientific method:
From John Moore (Emeritus Professor of Biology at the University of California-Riverside) in his book Science as a Way of Knowing (1993):
[The methods of science] require disciplined minds capable of accurately recording observations, using data from those observations to develop a tentative explanation (a hypothesis), testing the necessary deductions from that hypothesis, and relating the conclusions . . . to the existing body of scientific information. Not only does the testing of hypotheses make science a self-correcting enterprise, but so does the practice of one scientist testing the conclusions of another. The result is that science is the most powerful mechanism we have for obtaining confirmable information about the natural world . . . But powerful as it is, we must never forget that decisions affecting human beings must be made by human beings; they do not emerge from science. [1]
Science as a tradition
> From Adam Frank, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester
Behind the giant particle accelerators and space observatories, science is a way of behaving in the world. It is, simply put, a tradition. And as we know from history’s darkest moments, even the most enlightened traditions can be broken and lost. [2]
Integrity in the sciences
> From E.O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Research Professor at Harvard University and winner of the National Medal of Science:
You will make mistakes. Try not to make big ones . . . A simple error in reporting a conclusion will be forgiven if publicly corrected. But never, ever will fraud be forgiven. The penalty is professional death, exile, never again to be trusted. [3]
>From Richard Feynman, Professor of Physics at the California Institute of Technology and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics:
We’ve learned from experience that the truth will out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature’s phenomena will agree or they’ll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven’t tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it’s this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is [often] missing. . . [4] [emphasis added].
> From Charles Darwin
I had . . . during many years followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than favorable ones. Owing to this habit, very few objections were raised against my views which I had not at least noticed and attempted to answer. [5]
The following AIS assignment asks students to consider truth-seeking and truth-telling as imperatives in both the sciences and the humanities:
Please read these two short Nobel prize acceptance speeches (click the links) and respond to the three questions below:
Albert Camus (humanities) [http://bit.ly/433mFQQ]
Richard Feynman (sciences) [http://bit.ly/3JT1nMK]
[a] Identify a selection from each speech that you regard as the recipient’s most memorable observation. Explain the reason for your choice.
[b] What values do the recipients seem to share? Cite specific language from each speech to support your analysis.
[c] Both recipients seem deeply engaged in their work or art. What work or art deeply engages you? Please explain.
Subsequent AIS tutor responses include our own choices for Feynman and Camus “memorable observations”
[AIS Tutor selection from Richard Feynman’s Nobel Banquet speech]
Imagination reaches out repeatedly trying to achieve some higher level of understanding, until suddenly I find myself momentarily alone before one new corner of nature’s pattern of beauty and true majesty revealed. That was my reward. Then, having fashioned tools to make access easier to the new level, I see these tools used by other men straining their imaginations against further mysteries beyond. There, are my votes of recognition.
[Additional AIS tutor comment]
Feynman stated that science encompasses “imagination” leading to perception of “beauty” and “majesty” in the exploration of “further mysteries.” He wrote elsewhere that:
[T]o view life as part of this universal mystery of greatest depth is to sense an experience which is very rare, and very exciting. It usually ends in laughter and a delight in the futility of trying to understand what this atom in the universe is, this thing — atoms with curiosity — that looks at itself and wonders why it wonders.[6]
Feynman has shown that evocative words about beauty and mystery aren’t reserved to the humanities alone. Indeed, the more “mysteries” one perceives in the sciences the more majestic nature becomes. Charles Darwin wrote about this characteristic as well:
It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us . . . Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. [7]
Likewise, consider this related observation by E.O. Wilson (winner of the National Medal of Science):
The early stages of a creative thought, the ones that count, do not arise from jigsaw puzzles of specialization. The most successful scientist thinks like a poet — wide-ranging, sometimes fantastical — and works like a bookkeeper. It is the latter role that the world sees [emphasis added] [8].
Finally, please recall Feynman’s view that science uses “tools” (methodologies, formulas and findings) that become building blocks for further exploration. Each generation trusts the integrity of preceding generations — not to be unfailingly correct — but to record diligently and truthfully what was attempted and observed. In a 1974 Commencement address at the California Institute of Technology Feynman said that scientific integrity requires:
[A] kind of utter honesty — a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid — not only what you think is right about it . . . [9] [emphasis added].
Those highlighted words are among the most important you will encounter in our seminar.
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“I am familiar with the nature of Feynman’s work . . . [He] has totally changed modern Physics, and motivated many that will walk in his path . . . He was working out of pure interest for the subject matter, to find out more about the world. I find that truly remarkable and inspiring.”
— AIS student comment
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[AIS Tutor selection from Albert Camus’s Nobel Banquet speech]
[T]he writer can win the heart of a living community that will justify him, on the one condition that he will accept to the limit of his abilities the two tasks that constitute the greatness of his craft: the service of truth and the service of liberty. Because his task is to unite the greatest possible number of people, his art must not compromise with lies and servitude which, wherever they rule, breed solitude [emphasis added].
[AIS Tutor additional comment]
The sciences and humanities often convey insight in different ways, but the “refusal to compromise with lies and servitude ” is equally important for both.
Camus also said:
Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely . . .
For myself, I cannot live without my art . . . I need it, because [I] cannot be separated from my fellow men, and it allows me to live, such as I am, on one level with them . . .
Camus suggested that empathy, human companionship, and truth seeking are essential and compatible. His observation that “truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered” suggests insight can be gained without any pretense to absolute knowledge. Feynman would agree. Both of them — from different personal backgrounds and disciplines — engage in passionate truth-seeking without any guarantee of ultimate truth-finding. This way of thinking may be one of the most important underlying components of a college education.
The humanities provide latitude for creating as well as exploring different depictions of reality. This characteristic can encourage the expansion of imagination in any field. The ultimate aim, however, remains truth-seeking and truth-telling. Consider this observation by Oxford University philosopher W.H. Walsh:
Just as a portrait painter sees his subject from his own peculiar point of view, but would nevertheless be said to have some insight into that subject’s ‘real’ nature, so too the historian must look at the past with his own presuppositions, but is not thereby cut off from all understanding of it. [10]
Walsh’s “portrait painter” metaphor suggests that components of truth may be culturally and artistically defined. But cynicism about acquiring any aspect of truth is one of the great, inherently self-contradictory falsehoods of our time. [11]
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“I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don’t know anything about . . .” [12]
— Richard Feynman, Professor of Physics at the California Institute of Technology and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics
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“Learning is hard — and it begins with a perception of the self that does not sit well with self-love. To learn, we have to accept that we are ignorant. There is much we do not know. We are partial, incomplete. It’s even possible that much of what we claim to know is not so. We have been duped before, and we no doubt can be again.” [13]
— Mark Edmundson, University Professor of English at the University of Virginia
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FOOTNOTES
[1] Moore, John, Science as a Way of Knowing (1993), p. 504. See, generally, “Scientific Method” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and History of the Scientific Method in an extended and well documented Wikipedia summary of that topic.
[2] Frank, Adam, “Welcome to the Age of Denial,” New York Times, August 21, 2013 http://bit.ly/3G9Jpop
[3] Wilson, E.O. Letters to a Young Scientist, (2013), p. 239.
[4] Feynman, Richard, Commencement address at the California Institute of Technology, (1974): http://bit.ly/3nCwDZc
[5] Darwin, Charles “Life and Letters,” Part 1, p. 36 (1887). https://bit.ly/3LdRtaI
[6] Feynman, Richard, cited in Scientists remember Feynman as new book is published (MIT News, May 20, 1998) https://bit.ly/3lXU66u
[7] Darwin, Charles, Origin of Species: sixth British edition (1872), p. 429 http://bit.ly/3FV3D4X
[8] Wilson, E.O., The Meaning of Human Existence (2014), p. 41
[9] Feynman, Richard, Commencement address at the California Institute of Technology, (1974): http://bit.ly/3nCwDZc
[10] Walsh, W.H., Introduction to Philosophy of History (1951), p. 113:
[11] Pavela, Gary, Chronicle Review, April 18, 2003.
[12] Feynman, Richard, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (2005), p. 24. https://bit.ly/3ZHnf3S.
[13] Edmundson, Mark, The Age of Guilt: The Super-Ego in the Online World (2023), Kindle location 1,019.
