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What's Your (Epistemic) Relationship To Science?

#1
C C Offline
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2017/1...to-science

EXCERPT: [...] What's the relationship to science that we should be aiming to achieve? And why does it matter?

International assessments reliably find that the U.S. lags behind many other countries when it comes to scientific literacy, and a variety of efforts aim to improve what's referred to as "public understanding of science." While some of these efforts focus on assessing and improving people's attitudes towards science, the educational world is typically more concerned with imparting knowledge and understanding.

But spelling out what these epistemic relationships entail isn't entirely straightforward. What does it mean to understand evolution, or photosynthesis, or climate change? And what does understanding buy us that mere knowledge does not?

A new paper, forthcoming in the journal Public Understanding of Science, argues that research on the public's understanding of science often conflates knowledge and understanding, and that this conflation has costs....

MORE: https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2017/1...to-science
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#2
Yazata Offline
(Nov 10, 2017 03:24 AM)C C Wrote: What's Your Epistemic Relationship to Science?

Curiosity with a faint note of skepticism.

For me, my interest in science is part of my wider interest in philosophy. I'm interested in learning and understanding a lot more about all aspects of life and reality. (Without any illusion that I will ever have it all figured out.)

The natural world is a fundamental part of that. I was an undergraduate biology major and I still have a deep layman's interest in the life sciences, evolutionary thought, the history of life, microbiology and cell biology, and (increasingly) molecular genetics. I often veer towards the more philosophical questions, but one can't really address them without knowing the scientific nuts-and-bolts.

But my interest in science is embedded in broader interests in things like history (especially the history of ideas) and the academic study of religion. I've always had an interest in mystical experience, dating back to my experiments with psychedelics back in the day. So I have never really been convinced that the boundaries of scientific understanding are coextensive with the boundaries of reality.

I'm very much a realist. I don't think that reality is in any way dependent on my consciousness. (Though my awareness of it obviously is.) As a result of that realism, I perceive reality as deeply mysterious. It's simply bigger than human understanding. We find ourselves in a dark night, standing in the middle of a thick fog with a tiny little flashlight, trying to discern faint shadows that we think that we see, surrounded by the unknown in all directions. We can learn more and more, and I hope we will, but we will probably never reach the end of it or answer all of the deepest questions. Our human cognitive powers and our access to information are probably too limited.

That's the source of my skeptical note. I get nervous when thoughtless people start acting like they have everything figured out, when they act like they know precisely what can and can't happen, and insult and bully those who damnably dare to acknowledge the mystery and continue asking questions. I don't like it when science turns into something like religious faith when it should be an open-ended exploration into the unanswered questions. Questions don't just arise at the edges, but arise concerning the most everyday certainties whenever we ask what causation is, what physical law is, what mathematics is, how wholes are composed of parts, about reduction and emergence, what substances and properties are, what time is, what the future and the past are, and how a small set of confirming instances can justify our belief in universal physical laws.
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#3
Syne Offline
The biggest hurdle to the "public understanding of science" is the politicization of science...no both sides. Studies have shown that people on the right understand evolution better than most but don't agree with it, and that people on the left have trouble with the fact that the earth goes around the sun. Similarly, both sides believe the climate changes, but only one uses this as a political bludgeon.

The deficit in the public US scientific knowledge base is largely a consequence of teachers and schools subverting science for an agenda. Instead of merely teaching findings on controversial issues, they seek to push conclusions. It's contradictory to teaching the critical thinking necessary to any real use of science.
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#4
Magical Realist Offline
In a nutshell? Trust science when it says something is. Distrust it when it says something is not.
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#5
Syne Offline
If science is that data, yes. If science is the authority of the scientists, no.
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