Teaching Science as Liberal Art

I've been thinking a lot recently about how to teach science as a liberal art. I've argued elsewhere in this blog that science is a liberal art and has greater claim to that title than many disciplines (say, history for example) that are typically thought of as liberal arts. I still believe this to be true. However, I recognize that the way science is frequently (perhaps usually) taught tends to suck the liberal artness right out of science. Science, the way it is practiced by most scientists, IS a liberal art. It the activity of a free person, who engages in scientific research for the sheer joy of the intellectual endeavor. It is not something that one does for a paycheck. But many science courses are taught in such a way that only the utility of science is emphasized. Others even forgo highlighting the utility of science and instead present the material as a succession of facts to be memorized because they are "correct". Better science courses help there students learn to think like scientists, to engage at a basic level in the kinds of activities that scientists engage in. But few courses, I think, can really get students wrapped up in the experience of science. I don't think I've managed that feat myself, although I hold out hope for the future.

I think one reason science courses fail to fully immerse students in the scientific experience is that they cover too much material. Many science courses for non-science majors are what might be called "highlights" courses, which try to cover all of the important topics in the discipline. My physics course for non-science majors is a bit like this, although I have found myself cutting breadth to gain in depth. But the more I think about it the more I think there is a better way to teach science. Instead of giving students the "Cliff's Notes" version of the discipline, give them an excerpt of one of the really good parts. Pick a particular important discovery (or sequence of discoveries) and really delve into it. Present it historically, so that students learn about the errors and false starts as well as the great discoveries. A historical presentation also serves to highlight that science is a human activity, carried out by human beings not by computers or robots or mindless automatons.

I've reached this conclusions as a result of a confluence of several factors. The most important is the development of an astronomy course of this type (focusing on the Copernican Revolution) by a colleague of mine. The second factor is the departure of that same colleague to pursue another career, leaving me to teach his astronomy course. The third factor is that I recently read The Liberal Art of Science, a report from a committee of the AAAS. My departing colleague also taught some more standard astronomy "surveys" and I'm supposed to pick these up as well, but I just don't see myself teaching that type of astronomy course and I don't think such a course really teaches science as a liberal art (at least not as outlined in the AAAS report). In a way, I'm in an ideal situation for innovation. I'm an outsider to astronomy (although my undergraduate degree is in physics/astronomy and I did a bit of astronomy research as an undergrad) so I have no commitment to the status quo. I also have no commitment to particular pieces of the discipline. A well-trained professional astronomer probably feels like she is cheating her students if she doesn't teach them such-and-such. But I lack that training and thus those feelings. I'm free to develop a new astronomy course as I see fit. And so I intend to create a new course modeled on the style of my colleague's Copernican Revolution course, but with the discovery of galaxies as my topic (I'll also continue teaching The Copernican Revolution).

I may say more about this new course at a later date (when I've actually got some of it figured out), but for now I want to discuss the conclusions I have come to, in the process of thinking about this new astronomy course, about how science should be taught. As I said above I think science courses for non-science majors should focus on a fairly narrow topic, and take a historical approach. But it is essential that the course delve into not only WHAT the scientists discovered but how they discovered it and how others became convinced of their discovery. Students need to see that this process is far from straightforward. In fact, the best examples to present are discoveries that were controversial for years before finally becoming accepted (like the Copernican Revolution, only in that case it was centuries). Students should be given the chance to examine the evidence on both sides. In the process they should see that there are often legitimate objections to controversial new ideas (like Copernicus' idea) but that in some cases these ideas are able to overcome those objections and become part of accepted science. They should see what it takes for a controversial theory to succeed. They should be exposed to the problems, the mistakes, and the political maneuvering that plague a controversial hypothesis. And ultimately they should have a strong understanding of why the idea ultimately won acceptance.

To do all of these things students must "get their hands dirty". They must carry out experiments and make observations. Reading the results of someone else's experiment is simply not as compelling as conducting the experiment yourself. Of course, in some cases they will be unable to perform the experiment themselves. Simulations can work well in such situations, but if no simulations is available then students will have to read about it. But whenever possible they should read primary sources. For the astronomy course I am developing I am convinced that my students can handle reading a few articles from the Astrophysical Journal, as well as some more historical material from the publications of the Royal Society of London. Original research articles on the history of science can also be of great use. I intend to have students re-analyze published data (after all, we won't have the Mount Wilson 100-inch telescope to play around with like Hubble did) and try to draw their own conclusions, then compare their findings to those of the original author.

Of course, there needs to be some time for discussion and synthesis as well. Even a narrowly defined topic will have many strands of evidence that ultimately braid together to make the case for the new discovery or new theory. Students should delve as deeply as possible into several of these strands, but they also need time to do the braiding and see how the different strands tie together (or fail to tie together in some cases). Ideally there should be some strands of evidence that contradict each other (that is the case for the Copernican Revolution, where evidence from the physics of the time flatly contradicted the idea of a moving Earth). Such contradictory evidence creates a tension that must be resolved. Science strives for internal consistency and unity. This aspect of science is often left out of courses, because we never show the students the evidence that turned out to be "wrong".

All of these things take time. You can't conduct your own experiments, read primary sources, delve into the history of the discoveries, explore multiple strands of evidence for a theory, and synthesize all of this into a unified whole and still cover every important theory in the discipline in a single semester. But this is the essence of science. Science is not, ultimately, about what we know right now. What we know now will be supplanted in the future. Science is about how we come to know things at all. And students should be encouraged to revel in the fact that we ARE able to know things, things that it might seem would be impossible for us to know. How could we, stuck here on our little planet, ever learn that there are other galaxies composed of billions of stars that are billions of light years away from our own galaxy? How could we ever know that the entire Universe is expanding? Isn't it mind-boggling that we possibly say we "know" these things? And yet, these great pieces of knowledge are built up out of a series of much smaller, and much more believable pieces. Students need to see how those small pieces fit together to form the grand (but very incomplete) puzzle of modern science. Surely we would prefer to read a single scene from a Shakespeare play (Hamlet and Ophelia in Act III, scene i, perhaps, or the hysterical play within the play that is Act V of A Midsummer Night's Dream) rather than read a synopsis of the plot. I think the same is true for science. If we want students to really see what science is all about they must be offered a tasty delicacy, not fed fast-food.

Well, those are my thoughts. Now I need to go ... I think I hear hoofs clattering on my rooftop.