Following are excerpts from an essay by a physics professor. I urge you to
read it in its entirety.
http://www.aip.org/pt/opin600.htm
I finally concluded that
most students believe me because they trust me, they feel that I have
their best interests at heart and that I would not deliberately deceive
them by teaching things that I myself did not believe. They also trust
the institution that awarded me a physics PhD, and the university and
the physics department that hired me and allow me to teach them.
Snip
And I use that trust to effectively brainwash them. We who teach
introductory physics have to acknowledge, if we are honest with
ourselves, that our teaching methods are primarily those of propaganda.
We appeal-without demonstration-to evidence that supports our position.
We only introduce arguments or evidence that support the currently
accepted theories, and omit or gloss over any evidence to the contrary.
We give short shrift to alternative theories, introducing them only in
order to promptly demolish them-again by appealing to undemonstrated
counter-evidence. We drop the names of famous scientists and Nobel
prizewinners to show that we are solidly on the side of the scientific
establishment. All of this is designed to demonstrate the inevitability
of the ideas we currently hold, so that if students reject what we say,
they are declaring themselves to be unreasoning and illogical, unworthy
of being considered as modern, thinking people.
Of course, we do all this with the best of intentions and complete
sincerity. I have good reasons for employing propaganda techniques to
achieve belief. I want my students to be accepted as modern people and
to know what that entails. The courses are too rushed to allow a
thorough airing of all views, of all evidence. In addition, it is
impossible for students to personally carry out the necessary
experiments, even if they were able to construct the long chains of
inferential reasoning required to interpret the experimental results.
snip
Students will forget most of the information they get in my classes. The
best that I can hope for is to enable my students to think critically,
to detect propaganda and reject intellectual coercion, even when I am
the one doing it. What troubles me is the assumption by some scientists
that it would be quite admirable if people believed what we say and
rejected the views of those who disagree with us, even though most
people have no real basis for preferring one view over the other. If
scientists want the spirit of true inquiry to flourish, then we have to
accept-and even encourage-public skepticism about what we say, too.
Otherwise, we become nothing but ideologues.
Mano Singham teaches in the physics department, and is associate
director of the University Center for Innovations in Teaching and
Education, at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.
Bertvan:
Can anyone imagine a biologist with such an attitude? (except for those
advocating ID) While it is true many scientists are silent in the present
debate, and perhaps some even acknowledge the obvious existence of design in
nature and don't wish to expose themselves to the abuse of typical "Darwin
defenders". I offer two examples from this board in just the last two days:
Elsberry in speaking of agnotics who consider the possiblity of desgn:
>The existence of fellow-travelers (I figure that phrase is
>less objectionable than the similar and possibly more
>applicable phrase "useful idiots") like Moody doesn't set
>aside the fact that the IDC movement is primarily populated by
>people whose religion underlies their anti-evolutionary
>activity and which finds its largest base of support among
>theistic anti-evolutionists.
And Richard, speaking of Stephen:
>All of us here who are familiar with Stephen's nonsense know this to be
>untrue. He is *not* able to follow logical arguments!
Bertvan:
While Stephen is the only Christian presently arguing design on this board,
there are surely others who would like to, but don't want to subject
themselves to such abuse. There are obvioulsy unprovable points about which
Stephen and I hold different beliefs, but he has reasons for his views and I
respect them. I even respect Chris's reasons for his beliefs, and there are
few people with whom I am in more disagreement. Singham claims the reason he
is successful at "brainwashing" students is that the public trusts
phisicists. The public is beginning not to trust biologists, and that might
be more the fault of the self-appointed "Darwin defenders" than the fault of
the scientists themselves. If there are biologists out there who recognize
that design is a legitimate scientific speculation, I hope some of them show
the courage to speak up.
Bertvan
http://members.aol.com/bertvan
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jun 11 2000 - 14:17:13 EDT