You are most welcome, Ray. My friend Ed sent it
to me.
Let us know how it works out. In two weeks I teach evolution for 5
weeks to about 675 Biology 1 students (mostly pre-med and said to be 25%
creationist-types--at Berkeley!?? Yes indeed!!), so this Dini thing
has got me thinking too. I usually start with the nature of
science, evidential reasoning, critical thinking, and hypothesis
development and testing, since this kind of thing seems not to get taught
a lot around here. No beliefs, but I recognize that these do
bring comfort and hope (as well as a lot of other things) to
people.
So far, no problems, other that the occasional invitation to debate some
passing creationist (I refuse on the grounds that we don't debate
science, unless of course it is whether or not an asteroid killed the
dinosaurs) or, in one case (actually in my oceanography class of 450
students), about 20 students demanded that I allow some chemistry
professor to lecture in my class for an hour on the "alternatives to
evolution". I refused and suggested that they should take his
course rather than mine. In the oceanography course, this all
started because of one sentence: "Until photosynthesis
evolved, there was little oxygen in the atmosphere and
hydrosphere". At least they were careful listeners!
Good luck to all of us.
Jere
At 08:08 AM 2/10/2003 -0500, you wrote:
I wanted to publicly thank Dr.
Lipps for the reference to the article. I am currently teaching an
introductory geology course, and was looking for a good question on the
nature of science. I'm taking a quote out of the editorial and asking
these freshmen to critique it, and point out the error (dare I say
ignorance?) of the author. We can most effectively fight for science by
educating our students. I've found that when I can do so by citing them
verbatim, it is most effective.
So thank you for the test fodder!
Sincerely,
Raymond F. Gildner
Department of Geosciences
Indiana University-Purdue University Ft. Wayne
gildnerf@ipfw.edu