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Fall 2006
Volume 06, Number 1

Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy

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Making Philosophy of Science Accessible—and Useful—to Non-Majors: Five Innovations Worth Trying

Lawrence Adam Lengbeyer
United States Naval Academy

Philosophy of science is not ordinarily thought to be a suitable course for introducing curious potential philosophy majors to the discipline, or for providing non-majors with some exposure to philosophy. The standard set of ideas covered in the course, and the classic texts in the field, appear to be more demanding and less accessible than those that can be presented to undergraduates in, say, ethics. Moreover, the subject matter is rather specialized; understanding it depends somewhat upon conversance with substantive scientific fields, and it lacks obvious applicability to the practical life choices of college-aged students.

Yet there are greater possibilities here than might be apparent. Needing to teach philosophy of science to my students at the Naval Academy—none of them philosophy majors, and most of them being required to take this one philosophy course for their General Science major—I have sought to make a virtue of necessity by devising a curriculum that attempts to overcome the traditional limitations of the course and its lack of perceived accessibility and practical relevance.

After providing an overview of the situation confronting the philosophy of science teacher at my institution, I will spell out the five innovations with which I have experimented, supplementing this in an Appendix with an abridged version of the detailed course syllabus.

Overview. The Philosophy of Science course at the Naval Academy poses a special challenge to the instructor: most of the students taking it are required to, and are not happy about that requirement—most of these students would much prefer to avoid philosophy altogether. Many of them are drawn from among the less intellectually polished and well-prepared segments of the student body. Some of them are majoring in science in large part because of an aversion to the humanities or to any field whose focus is upon (imprecise, unsystematic, uncertain) language. Many of them possess underdeveloped verbal skills—precisely the skills needed for any philosophy course, but especially for philosophy of science, whose substance tends to be more conceptually difficult, less susceptible to simplification, and more cumulative than many other areas of philosophy. Some of them are aware of this deficit in themselves but want not to address it, claiming (falsely) that verbal skills are not relevant to their future lives. And whether aware of the deficit or not, their resulting struggles with challenging philosophical material often cause them frustration, which can easily turn outward into resentment toward the course and its teacher. On top of everything else, philosophy teachers at the Naval Academy encounter the widespread impression (due to some odd historical circumstances) that their courses are fluff—demanding little work and distributing high grades.

Rather than succumb to the temptation to water down the course in response to student complaints, I have instead thoroughly reworked it in a way that has actually elevated the rigor, work demands, and grading standards, while maintaining the focus upon classics of the literature (I use Janet Kourany's Scientific Knowledge anthology as the central course text). But I have shifted the focus toward areas of greatest student need and interest, attempting to make it more relevant and understandable to those lacking strong backgrounds in the natural sciences. The changes described are specific to philosophy of science and can be implemented, if desired, along with general teaching enhancements (such as in-class discussions conducted in small groups) aimed at encouraging active learning on the parts of students.

• Innovation 1. First, I have shifted much of the course’s focus away from philosophical content and toward improving students’ crucial, and oft-neglected, skills of reading comprehension, logical thinking and writing, and clear oral expression of complicated ideas. At first, I tried requiring designated students to present prepared lectures on the readings, but this provided little motivation for the others to prepare conscientiously for class. So I rethought and revamped the entire incentive structure of the course.

Students are now expected to highlight or otherwise mark up their texts as they read them (with me examining their texts occasionally); to provide extemporaneous lectures on (parts of) the readings (not knowing who will be called upon, all are given several minutes to prepare—their text markings being invaluable for this task), and to offer "friendly amendments" to others’ lectures; and, most important, to submit a demanding four-part Daily Email for every reading assignment in the course. In it, the students must provide an accurate and reasonably comprehensive summary Recap of the day’s reading, Contrast the present reading with the prior one (by setting out points of agreement and disagreement), and then, in an exercise that encourages creative and critical thinking, Challenge or Extend some idea that they have found in the reading. (The fourth part is described in the next section.) I then provide concrete, individualized feedback via email to every student on nearly every email throughout the entire semester. (This is somewhat arduous, but doable due to class sizes being limited to twenty or fewer students. With a larger enrollment, one might elect to provide written feedback to, say, half the class each day.)

• Innovation 2. Second, I have shifted the course’s substantive orientation: away from one exclusively devoted to the content of philosophy of science (the scientific method), which tends to be of little inherent interest or practical value to most of my students, and toward a more accessible and focused, yet more universal, examination of the nature of knowledge and belief-revision generally, using science as the comparison and model. The aim is to enlighten the students on both scientific and everyday belief systems—and the rational, and irrational, methods of revising these—by shifting back and forth between the two realms. I hope, too, that this heightens each student's awareness of how s/he does—and ought to—oversee his or her own belief system.
This reorientation, in addition, allows more freedom for class discussions to roam into areas of belief and theory that the students find most interesting (e.g., socializing and dating; or supernatural phenomena—the topic of one of the course texts, How to Think about Weird Things). It also provides extra motivation for students to work at the difficult readings, and an additional angle of approach that helps illuminate the ideas in the text—"How do these practices of scientists compare to those that we use every day?"—because the fourth and final required part of the Daily Email assignment is an Everyday Analogue that examines everyday life (or some field of human knowledge outside of natural science, such as history, politics, journalism, carpentry, military affairs, the arts, basketball, religion, law/police/detective work, etc.) and asks how the two compare in their methods of knowledge acquisition and testing. (At the instructor’s option, the consideration of Everyday Analogues can be removed from the Daily Email assignments and shifted exclusively to classroom discussion. This permits a lightening of the homework load upon the students, even if the task is then replaced by, say, having students write out a specific text-provoked Confusion that they hope to have clarified.)

Some question of non-scientific application is ordinarily included on the Final Exam for the course, and students are apprised of this fact (or of the question itself!) early in the semester, thus providing a further incentive for them, as we proceed through the term, to think through the course’s substantive issues with an eye to their broader implications.

• Innovation 3. Third, I have taken the unusual step of introducing into the course a lively book about birth order and receptivity to innovation (scientific and otherwise), Frank Sulloway’s Born to Rebel, in order to serve multiple purposes: the book presents a theory about the development of scientific knowledge that competes with others studied in the course; it is, itself, an example of a research report in (social) science, and a controversial one at that, and so offers an illustration of the scientific method in action that is illuminating in its own right but that also serves as a "test case" for some of the more abstract theories studied in the course; its liveliness and obvious applicability to the experience of every student provide another useful contrast (like the Weird Things text) to the denser, more abstract, more demanding classic readings in philosophy of science. And there is one further, important purpose that this book serves:

• Innovation 4. It forms the basis for the fourth major experimental aspect of the course: a hands-on, team-based, multi-stage Research Project that teaches the students about scientific practice from the inside. Students are to do original research that applies and tests Sulloway’s theory on some novel population, obtaining the data via interviews, questionnaires, and/or research in the library. Many students find this to be the most gratifying part of the course.

• Innovation 5. Finally, I send the students regular emails of enriching and entertaining Optional Readings about up-to-the-minute theoretical debates and practical applications in the world of science. Reading these alone could provide a not insubstantial education in the nature of scientific knowledge and scientific method. I also include my philosophy of science "alumni" on the mailing list for these Optional Readings (those who do not take up my offer to opt out) in order to provide a form of continuing education (and enjoyment!). Though I have not yet researched how often or how seriously the supplemental materials get read by the students overall, I know that some students do value these glimpses into the application of course ideas in the wider world.
Conclusion. A philosophy of science course thus restructured presents a serious challenge to the students who take it—the workload is a not uncommon source of complaints—but its educational value for them is substantially enriched. Most important, perhaps, is that the students can grasp this themselves, particularly if the teacher openly explains the pedagogic purposes (as I try to do in my syllabus, below). They can thus feel more actively in charge of their own learning, a result not often enough achieved but much to be desired.

APPENDIX: Philosophy of Science Course Syllabus (abridged)

How do we know what to believe about the ordinary, natural world we live in? Well, if we’re being rational, we collect evidence—directly, by trusting some of the "observations" made with our various senses, and indirectly, by trusting some of the oral and written "testimony" of other people—then apply the thinking tools that we have (in part) been taught and (in part) figured out for ourselves. Using these "facts" and "theories," we formulate the additional beliefs that we commit ourselves to—beliefs we then assert and, more important, go on to use in figuring out further truths about the world, formulating our own judgments and evaluations, and reasoning about what we should do, feel, or want.

Some of the authorities on whom we rely for inputs into this process are scientists, of course. But how do scientists know what to believe? Are their techniques of belief-formation (which seem at least similar to the ones that we all use) so good that they make science a fully reliable source of truth? More specifically: What exactly is it that scientists do, anyway? What’s the "scientific method"? Are scientists objective? Do their personal perspectives or cultural identities affect the positions they take? How do they discover—or construct—facts? How do they explain those facts? How do they test the theories they formulate, and choose among competing theories? Just what do their experiments accomplish? What happens during scientific "revolutions" that overturn established, authoritative views? Do the unobservable theoretical entities that scientists posit (like electrons) really exist, or are they just fictions, convenient ways of talking? Are we entitled to regard scientists as discoverers of truth and producers of knowledge? Does science make progress? Notice that the very same sorts of questions—Who are the researchers? How do they find/make their facts? How do they choose which theories to believe, and which ones deserve the special title of "knowledge"? …—arise in social sciences, such as history, economics, and psychology, and even in literary studies and other humanities fields.

Practicing scientists themselves have views on these matters, of course. But, in general, they are so busy doing science, and so enmeshed in their disciplines’ methods and assumptions, that they are not the ones best positioned to answer these questions. For that, we turn to philosophers (and historians, and sociologists) of science. (Likewise, it’s the rare entrepreneur who can duplicate the economist’s insights, the unusual soldier who has the broad horizon needed to make a good military historian or analyst.)

So, will you be taught by your professor in this course about these topics? No. Or at least not primarily. You will find this to be an unusual course, in that you will be taught mostly by (i) the thinkers whose writings you will read; (ii) yourself, as you grapple to extract understanding from those writings and from others’ classroom remarks; and (iii) your classmates, who will be ready to assist you whenever they think you have fallen into a misunderstanding.

A few years after I began teaching, it occurred to me that being a teacher—not being a student—provides the best education. ‘To teach is to learn twice’ ….
—Joseph Epstein, The American Scholar, Spr ‘87

We will thus function in NP340 as a quasi-scientific community, collectively seeking the truth (about the meanings of the articles that we’re reading) in a spirit of teamwork and mutual support, even—or especially!—when corrections and disagreements are being aired.

In place of the periodic pressures (and cramming) of quizzes and tests, you will be asked to put in serious day-to-day effort in carrying out a routine set of assignments. The pressure will be less, but it will be unrelenting; as in a math or language class, falling behind will be deadly.

The course is focused on reading comprehension and clear expression of complicated ideas—not on scientific concepts or creative thinking (though these come into play). You will be asked to work at mastering each reading assignment, in part by marking up the text as you go, in part by submitting an email in which you recap the text in your own words, contrast this reading to the preceding one, challenge or extend it with a critical question, and analogize what it says about scientific knowledge to some aspect of how we acquire or test knowledge in everyday, non-scientific life. Once in the classroom, we will attempt together to get clear about just what the reading says, utilizing students’ extemporaneous Lectures (and others’ subsequent Friendly Amendments), a variety of directed learning activities, and free-form exploratory discussion.

There will be more to the course, however, than learning what our authors have to say about the nature of the scientific enterprise. There will also be a creative component: a Research Project, done in teams (and in consultation with me), that will aim to apply and test one particular historian of science’s recent theory of birth order and personality. The hope is that this will bring the philosophy-of-science issues alive and be fascinating and fun in its own right.

Course objectives (what you should aim to gain from this course)

- Acquisition/Improvement of skills

- Reading of challenging, complicated texts with comprehension; attentive, perceptive listening to ideas expressed by others.

- Awareness of one’s own confusions and gaps in understanding.

- Critical questioning and analysis of positions taken by oneself and by others, orally and in writing, in science and elsewhere; revision of one’s own beliefs.

- Clear, fluid, logically organized oral and written expression of ideas.

- Learning of content:

- The methods and standards used in the scientific community to produce knowledge.

- The standards of rational defensibility used for beliefs and theories, including in everyday life; how and why these beliefs and theories change over time.

- The thinking that goes into doing a scientific research project, from design through analysis of data and write-up.

Course requirements

Readings. Our reading assignments are comparable to a tough and varied cross-country course. Some parts are level, with good footing; others are extremely demanding steep ascents over boulders and loose gravel; the rest fall somewhere in between. Everyone who runs the course—no matter how well or poorly—will be better off for doing so, better able to run this course and others in the future, even if you happen never to encounter such challenging terrain again. Analogously, you can expect to find some (maybe many) of our readings difficult, frustrating, even exhausting. But they’re not beyond the reach of normal college upperclassmen. Force yourself to do them, however slowly, and you’ll become a stronger reader. Marking up the text (highlighting, underlining, marginal commentary) will help, and is therefore required of all students for all reading assignments. You should simply refuse to accept the possibility of graduating from college as an incompetent, or even mediocre, reader—no matter what your major. Reading ability is just about the most fundamental skill that schooling provides, and it’s tightly linked to the ability to think and communicate in clear, logically organized fashion; if you can’t develop those skills while in college, you’ll live to feel regret and shame over the failure.

Your responsibilities in this area during the semester will be to

- study the readings carefully enough to comprehend them (reading >1 time if needed);

- mark up each reading, so you can better recall its content and your observations on it; and

- come to class ready to discuss and debate the readings’ meanings.

Daily Emails.

Lectures & Friendly Amendments. Some classes will feature at least one student Lecture that aims to summarize and explain all or part of the reading. When Lecturing, none of the content is to consist of your own ideas or commentary; make believe you are the author, trying to convey the central ideas of "your" article. You may use only your own notes/outline + your marked-up text. (You’ll have only a minute or two to review the text before being called on to Lecture, so it’ll really pay off if your markings on the text are careful enough that they let you quickly recall its main arguments and overall organization.) Do NOT quote or read from the text, or rely upon the author’s phraseology.

As with Recaps, your goal is a Lecture that is accurate, clear, and comprehensive. Following the Lecture, the floor will be thrown open for Friendly Amendments that attempt to enhance the accuracy, clarity, or comprehensiveness of the ideas presented. As Lecturer, you may defend or elaborate your statements, with the entire class participating in the discussion.

Research Project, Report, & Presentation. Early on, we will read a substantial portion of Frank Sulloway’s Born to Rebel, which presents a theory about the relationship between birth order and personality (in particular, openness to new ideas). You will have the opportunity, working in a two-person team, to do original research that applies and tests Sulloway’s theory. You will plan out your research in detail, revise the plan in response to comments, gather the data (keeping careful records of how you do so), analyze it, offer your own theoretical explanations for it, and assess its relevance for Sulloway’s theory. Your Project will be assessed (by your peers, and by me) for (i) its novelty/creativity; (ii) the cleverness and ambition of its design and execution; (iii) its logic (whether it in fact puts Sulloway’s theory to the test, whether the right sorts of evidence are gathered, whether the evidence is accurately and insightfully analyzed); and (iv) the clarity of presentation.

Note that while you will design your Project and collect data as a team, you will write up your own individual 8-20-page Research Report, without collaborating on this with your teammate (or anyone else). Finally, our last class meetings will see us share our results via 10-15-minute presentations in class.

Research Project stages

1. individual Research Project Concept (format to be supplied)

2. individual Peer Reviews of RPCs

3. formation of teams - team submission of Revised RPC, now including draft Research Instrument

4. team oral presentation of Revised RPC for feedback

5. team submission of RPC Modifications (simple email list of revisions made to Research Project plans in light of feedback received)

6. team execution of the study: obtaining data, analyzing data

7. individual (collaboration forbidden) write-up of Research Project Report (format to be supplied)

8. team oral presentation of Research Project and findings to class (informal is fine, but visual aids—e.g., diagrams, graphs, charts—are required)

Format for Research Project Concept ("RPC" and "Revised RPC"):

1. Population to be studied:

2. Purpose: The goal of this study is to see whether _____________________, or whether instead _____________________ [or ________________________, or …].

a. Rationale (How connects to Sulloway theory? Supply extensive description of the theory as it applies to your RP’s hypothesis, + citing specific page #s from the text):

3. Data to be gathered (what information will be sought?):

a. Rationale:

4. Method(s) for data gathering:

a. Rationale:

5. Hypothesis/Prediction (results expected):

a. Rationale (in light of Sulloway theory, again with specific page #s):

6. Alternative Explanations (other than functional birth rank) for Possible Results:

7. Measures to Be Taken to Isolate Birth-Rank Explanation from Other Possible Explanations:

8. [for Revised RPC only] Research Instrument (detailed list of specific questions for survey, interviews, or library research): **Very Important**

9. [for Revised RPC only] What if the results are unexpected? (Imagine how exactly they might surprise you, what Sulloway would say about such results, and what other data you might then wish you had)

Format for Research Report

1. Introduction

2. Method

3. Results (quantitative/numerical AND qualitative/descriptive; graphs, charts, etc. are often helpful, as long as they’re done in careful, non-misleading ways)

4. Analysis

5. Conclusions

6. Directions for Further Research

a. To improve this study

b. To supplement with further studies

7. Bibliography (if needed) (not on separate sheet)

8. Appendices

a. Research Instrument (e.g., survey questions)

b. Data (if needed)

Texts

Janet A. Kourany, Scientific Knowledge: Basic Issues in the Philosophy of Science, 2d ed (Wadsworth, 1998) ("K")

Theodore Schick, Jr. & Lewis Vaughn, How to Think about Weird Things, 4th ed. (McGraw-Hill, 2005) ("SV")

Frank J. Sulloway, Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives (NY: Vintage, 1996) ("S")

Schedule [Readings in {curved brackets} are strongly recommended, but not required]

class 1 Introduction to the course

class 2 Kourany, "Philosophy of Science: An Overview" (K 1-4)
Sulloway, "Introduction" (S xi-xviii) [object of your Daily Email]

class 3 Handouts on everyday theorizing; reading for the "architecture" of a work

- THE SOCIAL CONTEXT IN WHICH SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE(?) IS PRODUCED -

class 4 Believing Weird Things (SV 3 (top)-4, 6-13, ix-x, 15-30)

class 5 Kourany, section intro ({K 5-8})
Gerald Holton, "On the Psychology of Scientists, & Their Social Concerns" (K 9-24)

class 6 Richard C. Lewontin, "Dishonesty in Science" (handout/email) [object of your Daily Email]
Richard Monastersky, "Scientific Misconduct Is Rampant, Study Suggests" (handout/email)
http://whoismaryrosh.com/lottresearchblog.html
http://www.reason.com/0305/co.js.the.shtml
http://timlambert.org/category/lott/cherry-picking/ (30 Sept 2004 post only)
browse http://timlambert.org/category/MaryRosh/

- THE IMPLICATIONS OF BIRTH ORDER -

class 7 Popper, on ideological vs. non-ideological revolutions in science (K 294-95)
Birth Order & Revolutionary Personality I (S 3-54)

class 8 Birth Order & Revolutionary Personality II; All in the Family I (S 55-79 [object of your Daily Email]; 83-86, 95-96, 98-99, 112-13, 118)

class 9 All in the Family II (S 119-47; 170-71)

class 10 Sulloway’s Scientific Claims; Birth Order & Political Attitudes (S 195-97, 202, 203-05, 211 bottom-214, 363-65, 366-68, 217, 284-305)
- THE EMPIRICAL BASIS OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE -

class 11 Kourany, section intro (K 65-67; {68-74})
Norwood Russell Hanson, "Observation" (K 81-99) [object of your Daily Email]

class 12 Trusting Our Senses & Our Reasonings (SV 35-60 middle, 62 sidebar, 63-67, 76-81)

class 13 Karl Popper, "The Problem of the Empirical Basis" (K 75-80)

class 14 Steve Shapin, "Pump & Circumstance: Robert Boyle’s Literary Technology" (K 100-16)

class 15 Knowledge, Belief, & Evidence (SV 114-35, 142-49, incl. pp.121, 123 sidebars)

class 16 Ann Oakley, "Interviewing Women: A Contradiction in Terms" (K 117-34)

- THE VALIDATION OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE -

class 17 Kourany, section intro (K 153-54; {155-63})
Rudolph Carnap, "The Confirmation of Laws and Theories" (K 164-75) [object of your Daily Email]

class 18 Karl Popper, "Science: Conjectures and Refutations" (K 176-86)

class 19 Pierre Duhem: "Physical Theory and Experiment" (K 187-94)

class 20 Forming & Testing Hypotheses (SV 176[bottom para], 178-82, 164-65, 182-97)

class 21 Imre Lakatos, "Falsification & the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes" part 1 (K 195-201[top para.])

class 22 Lakatos, part 2 (K 201["I should like …"]-211)

class 23 Thomas Kuhn, "Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice" (K 212-24)

class 24 Ruth Hubbard, "Have Only Men Evolved?" (K 225-42)

- THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE -

class 25 Kourany, section intro (K 253-56; {257-60})
Thomas Kuhn, "The Function of Dogma in Scientific Research" (K 301-15) [object of your Daily Email]

class 26 Thomas Kuhn, "The Nature and Necessity of Scientific Revolutions" (K 316-26)

class 27 Frank Sulloway, Synthesis (S 329-51 [object of your Daily Email], reread 18; 352-57, 361-63, 365)

class 28 Debate on Intelligent Design (research on your own)

class 29 < Research Project presentations, wrap-up, review>

class 30 < Research Project presentations, wrap-up, review>

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APA Newsletters

Fall 2006 Volume 06, Number 1

Fall 2006
Volume 06, Number 1