Science as Story Telling and Story Revision
Linear science | Seriously loopy science |
Science as body of facts established by specialized fact-generating people and process
Science as successive approximations to Truth
| Science as ongoing process of getting it less wrong, potentially usable by and contributed to by everyone
Science as ongoing making of observations, intepreting/summarizing, making new observations, making new summaries Science as process of inquiry into anything, one which everybody is equiped to do/can get better at/be further empowered by, - a way of making sense of what is but even more of exploring what might yet be
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Don't "teach science" but instead ...
Teach/do science as: making observations, interpreting/summarizing/creating stories, in order to see what has not yet been seen, conceive what has not yet been conceived (by oneself and/or others) |
Which of the following two stories do you prefer?
Scientific stories are frequently efforts to summarize the widest possible range of observations, always motivate new observations and hence new stories, should never be understood as "authoritative" or "believed in", do not compete with or invalidate other stories.
Key issues about scientific stories
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Which of the following stories do you prefer?
The Brain as a Scientist/Explorer/Story Teller/Story Reviser
The conscious/unconscious distinction
Hands-on activities are fine for certain kinds of learning but do not necessarily generalize or produce improvements in ability to interpret or to appreciate the difference between observation and interpretation
Both hands-on and interpretive activities are needed to become more skilled at "making observations/intereting/summarizing/creating stories, in order to see what has not yet been seen/conceive what has not yet been conceived."
Just as observations can affect interpretations, so too can interpretations affect observations.
Try out noticing how interpretations affect observations, how observations can lead to new interpretations, further questions.
For further exploration: