Re: Wisconsin

Don/George/Jim,
    Thank you for your comments. It was consistent with my initial reaction and it helped me respond. I am very concerned about any legislative or judicial attempt to define science. The scientific community develops its own evolving consensus of what constitutes science, though the process may not always be smooth. Nor should there be an authoritative board to make such pronouncements, even if it is the NAS. As for testability, that is indeed an important element but it really shouldn't be considered an absolute or ultimately definitive. Some concepts are not testable, even in principle, when first articulated but in time ways are found to test the ideas. String theory is a great example. It still isn't considered science by many physicists because of its lack of testability. But does that mean it shouldn't be taught? And who's to say that there will never be a way to test it? As for natural processes, as George pointed out, the focus in science is only on natural causes but I can just see a lawsuit by someone trying to claim that dark matter or dark energy isn't a natural cause.

Randy

----- Original Message -----
    From: Randy Isaac
    To: asa@calvin.edu
    Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2006 3:01 PM
    Subject: Wisconsin

    In that vein, I just received a request for the ASA perspective on the bill before the Wisconsin legislature that would add section 118.018 Science Instruction to the Wisconsin statutes.
    http://www.legis.state.wi.us/assembly/asm76/news/PDF%20Files/05-24631.pdf

    The full text of the legislation is:

      SECTION 1. 118.018 of the statutes is created to read:

      118.018 Science instruction. The school board shall ensure that any material presented as science within the school curriculum complies with all of the following:

      (1) The material is testable as a scientific hypothesis and describes only natural processes.

      (2) The material is consistent with any description or definition of science adopted by the National Academy of Sciences.

      There's been a lot of blog activity on this in the last few weeks. Any comments from this group?

      Randy
Received on Sun Mar 5 20:29:35 2006