PHYS 100: Foundations of Physical Science
Course Philosophy and It’s Implications
(Tips on Being Successful in this Course)
Dewey Dykstra, Professor of
Physics
Welcome to what promises to be one of the more
interesting courses you will take at Boise State. It is almost certain to be different than any you have taken
in science. The intent of this
course is for you to examine and develop with your classmates an understanding
of some physical phenomena and to personally experience the process of making
sense of the physical world. Class
periods will not be lectures
in the normal sense. As such they
are not easily recorded or summarized.
It is very important that you come to each meeting of the class. The
course is heavily based on experiences in lab, therefore it is also very
important that you attend every lab. Since the course is neither based on
a textbook nor on standard lectures,
if you have not participated in lab, what happens in class will not make sense
or be of any real value to you on exams.
A quotation consistent
with the foundations of this course:
“[Ian] Malcolm had long been impatient with
the arrogance of his scientific colleagues. They maintained that arrogance, he knew, by resolutely
ignoring the history of science as a way of thought. Scientists pretended that history didn’t matter,
because the errors of the past were now corrected by modern discoveries. But
of course their forebears had believed exactly the same thing in the past, too. They
had been wrong then. And modern
scientists were wrong now. No episode of science history proved it
better than the way dinosaurs had been portrayed over the decades.”
I have added italics for emphasis. This comes from Michael
Crichton’s sequel to Jurassic Park, titled, The Lost World. The novel is a good read; much better than
the movie. …pretty gory in
the end. Ian Malcolm, the
mathematician who specialized in chaos theory in Jurassic Park, is held over to carry this sequel. The Ian Malcolm character is played by
Jeff Goldblum in both movies.
Michael Crichton was educated in science and
medicine and is an astute observer of our society. I share his sentiment about the status of scientific
knowledge and the arrogance often displayed by the scientific community and I
carry it to its logical conclusion.
I do not think that it is appropriate to associate rightness or truth in
the traditional sense with scientific knowledge. The best we can say of a scientific explanation is whether
or not that explanation of a phenomenon fits our experience with that
phenomenon.
Stephen Hawking, perhaps the best known Physicist
of the second half of the 20th century, stated it well when he wrote
in his book, Black Holes and Baby Universes (Bantam Books, 1993): “A theory is a good
theory if it is an elegant model, if it describes a wide class of observations,
and if it predicts the results of new observations. Beyond that, it makes no
sense to ask if it corresponds to reality, because we do not know what reality
is independent of a theory.”
What this course is NOT about.
In
most introductory level science courses the point is to transmit the collected
knowledge of the scientists to the students. This process is usually referred to as “teaching
science.” This
“knowledge” to be transmitted is generally considered as close to
the Truth as we can possibly get at this point in time. We generally start with elementary or
simplified versions of this Truth or sometimes with previous versions of it
which are still found useful.
Nonetheless, these quibbles about the Truth are generally glossed over
and the knowledge is taught and “received” as Truth.
If
this knowledge, properly presented, does not make sense to a particular student
then it is usually assumed to be a short-coming of the student. The
knowledge itself is handed down from the authority of Science via its
representatives, the instructor and the textbook author. In the case of a conceptual physics
course such as this, it is knowledge handed down from the authority of
Physics. This knowledge is considered
to be correct, assuming the professor is a sufficiently true authority on the
subject. Non-science major
students are considered not capable of questioning it. It is the students’ job to
“get” as much of this knowledge as possible (and keep it at least
long enough to pass the exams). In
the case of some of your classmates who will be elementary teachers for
example, it is seen as their job to “get” this knowledge so that
they can transmit it as accurately as possible to their students in the future.
Knowledge as the Best
Description of Truth at Present.
In the above view of science
courses, knowledge consists of statements or descriptions of Truth or as close
as we can come to it. The Truth it
describes exists in nature and can in principle be found by anyone who wishes
to look closely and carefully enough (an approach sometimes called the
Discovery, Guided Discovery or Inquiry
Method). This knowledge can
be transmitted from one person to another, as long as it is transmitted
properly and appropriately and the receiver is capable and prepared.
In
contrast to this description of typical science courses, ask yourself: How many
courses have you taken in which the professor states, in black and white, on
the first page of the course description handout: “Reading in advance of
assignments is NEITHER
suggested NOR
encouraged!”? This should be
a clue that something is fundamentally different about this course. This course, PHYS 100, is neither about
transmitting knowledge to students, nor is it about knowledge which is as near
as possible to Truth. This is the case because the position in this
course that such a Truth which exists independent of people and which can be
transmitted from one person to another does not exist. Hence,
the course is not about guessing
the right explanation or “real” answer. Neither is it about trying to come up with the same thing as the scientists.
If
you try to “take” this course as if receiving the Truth, the real
answers, the real reasons, is your role in the course, you will not do as well
in the course as you could. In
fact you are likely to have an unhappy experience and a very unsatisfactory
grade in the course. Hence for one
thing, reading textbooks early in a unit, either the optional one for this
course or ones from the library, will not only be not useful, but reading the texts has proven to be
highly counter-productive to some students in previous semesters.
There will be readings provided at the library, but not until the end
of each unit.
What this course IS
about.
This
course is about “doing” science. To “do” science is to make up as good an
explanatory story (theory) about our experiences so far with the phenomena as
one can, in concert with others trying to do the same thing. In each unit some
particular phenomena will be studied and a particular starting point for
generating our explanations will be identified. By “good explanatory story” we mean one that
fits our experience with the phenomena (It explains our experiences.) and
enables us to make predictions that seem to work out. Remember what Hawking said: a good theory “describes a
wide class of observations, and … predicts the results of new
observations.” In this
course, knowledge is probably something entirely different than in any science
course you have experienced previously.
Knowledge as Explanatory
Stories Which We Generate.
For the purposes of this
course, knowledge can be thought of as “stories” we make up to
explain our experiences. It is the
meaning we make of our experiences.
Meaning is not in the
experiences. It comes from our own
minds. Since we make the meaning or the explanation for ourselves, it
cannot be “discovered out there”. It can change as we think and interact with each other about
the experiences and as we have further experiences. We can think of these explanations or meanings on two
levels. One is the personal level,
the explanation or meaning we make up to associate with experience. The other level is
“public,” the meaning we come to “take-as-shared”
between us when we interact with each other about our respective meanings for
common experiences.
In
keeping with this description, examining your own personal and each
other’s initial ideas, then comparing them with the actual phenomena and
deciding on how well you think they fit the phenomena will be major parts of
this course. Whenever you decide
that these initial ideas do not fit the phenomena very well, you will work on
dreaming up new possible explanations (or modifications of existing ones) and
testing these new ideas to decide how well you think they fit our experience
with the phenomena; the other major part of this course. The goal in each unit will be to come
up with an explanation of the phenomena that you can decide as a class that you
can share at least for the purpose of exams.
Experience with many semesters and
literally several thousand students reveals that students who attempt to take
this course as if it was a typical science course; i.e., to be receivers of
“truth,” generally earn a disappointingly low grade. Such students are frequently heard to
claim that the course was hard, unfair, unreasonable, disappointing, etc. On the other hand, students who decide
to actually examine their own ideas with each other, compare their ideas with
the phenomena, and dream up and test new explanations with each other when
existing ideas appear not to fit the phenomena do much better in the
course. This latter group also
generally finds the course a much more pleasant experience and they get better
grades. The choice is up to you.
The Role of Lab in This Course
In
a normal science course, the lab is the place that students are supposed to
find out that the instructor and the text have been telling them the Truth (or
close to it) about the phenomena.
Apparently the Truth is there to be seen in the phenomena. Since in this course the view is taken
that such Truth neither exists nor can be found out there in the phenomena, you
should not expect to “see” the Truth in the phenomena experienced
in lab in that traditional sense.
Lab in this course is the place in which you examine how well your ideas
fit with the phenomena you are experiencing. It is the setting in which you compare those ideas with the
actual phenomena and can begin to consider modifications of your original ideas
where it seems appropriate. Hence,
a majority of time in lab will be spent examining, talking about, and writing
down ideas. Some time must of
course be spent testing the phenomena and writing down what is observed, but a
majority of the time will be spent on our ideas.
Almost
all activities in lab will consist of 4 steps in a process designed to
encourage and facilitate elicitation and examination of our own ideas about the
phenomena. Usually there will be
some apparatus at your lab table already set up and functioning to produce some
phenomenon. Most activities are
focussed on a question which asks you to make some sort of prediction about
what might happen if you make a certain change or try something out. You will find usually it will not be
too hard to make the prediction.
The
point of this prediction is not to correctly guess what happens. It is to enable you to reveal to
yourself aspects of how you think the phenomenon works. What is of utmost importance is how you
justify the prediction you make. We have found that making predictions
is an easy way for a person to reveal her or his own ideas to her or
himself. This process is called
the elicitation of one’s own personal ideas.
You
will work in lab groups of 4 on the following steps:
1. What
do you think?
In the first
step, you are being asked to make a prediction and then to examine your own
prediction and ideas about the phenomenon so that you can explain why this
prediction makes sense to you at this point in time. You will be expected to write this down in some detail
(words and diagrams) because it is part of your text for the course. It does not matter whether your
prediction is accurate or not. It
only matters that it makes sense to you. Getting your ideas down on paper is so
important that you are not allowed to manipulate the apparatus at this
point. What is most important is
to use this part of the exercise to elicit from yourself as much as you can
concerning your own ideas about the nature of the phenomenon at hand.
This step
is not about guessing, predicting, or otherwise getting the “right”
answer. It is about examining our
own ideas. “Looking” to see what actually happens will
completely destroy the process we are looking for in this course for you and
your lab partners. DO NOT
MANIPULATE THE APPARATUS UNTIL YOU ARE INSTRUCTED TO DO SO IN THE MATERIALS.
2. What
does your group think?
In this step
you will share your ideas with your lab partners and make a careful record of
the new ideas you hear; both the predictions and the reasons given in support
of them. You should listen to see
if the group might be able to come to some consensus. It is very important to make a record of other
people’s ideas whether you agree with them or not. This collection of ideas (the
predictions and the reasons given for them) is also part of the text for the
course. Interact with your lab
partners in order to make sure you have an accurate picture of their ideas
whether you agree with them or not.
It is not necessary to come to a consensus, just check to see if you can
as a lab group.
This
discussion with your lab group should be about eliciting each other’s
ideas and attempting to make them more clear. It is not about trying to convince everyone that you are
right. You will find that during the discussion you may change your
opinion of your own or someone else’s ideas. When you do, you should make a note of this change and what
it is that influenced you to make the change.
This step
is also not about guessing, predicting, or otherwise getting the
“right” answer. It is about examining each
other’s ideas. At this step
in the process, it is still the
case that “looking” to see what happens will completely destroy the
process we are looking for in this course for you and your lab partners. DO NOT MANIPULATE THE APPARATUS UNTIL
YOU ARE INSTRUCTED TO DO SO IN THE MATERIALS.
3. Making
Observations:
Finally when
you have come to a point in your discussion of predictions and reasons
supporting them that no progress is being made in the discussion of ideas, it
is time to look and see what actually happens. NOW YOU CAN MANIPULATE THE APPARATUS. Do it carefully. Sometimes there are directions and some
specific observations suggested in the form of questions to be checked into and
answered. Again, make careful
notes. These notes are part of the
text for the course.
4. Making
Sense:
In this step
you will be asked to look back and decide, “Did what actually happened
match any of the predictions we made?” and to think about the
implications of matching or not matching for each of the various explanations
given. What does matching or
not matching say about the various ways of explaining the phenomenon? Do some of the existing ideas seem to
work pretty well or do modifications or whole new ideas seem in order? You will
not be expected to come up with final conclusions at this point during lab, but
you should make a start on these issues.
You should try to accomplish two things at this point: make a list of
anything new that you have decided about the phenomenon or your tentative
explanations of it and another list of unanswered questions the group comes up
with or issues that seem not to have an obvious resolution at this point.
Lab
sessions will be focused on a series of activities each of which will usually
involve a repeat of the steps described above. There are three basic types of these activities for the
course. The first type involves a
prediction about some aspect of the phenomenon we are studying. This type of activity will involve all
four steps of the process described above and be carried out in lab. The second type of activity is usually
about drawing some sort of conclusion about what you have seen and discussed so
far. This type of activity will
involve the first two steps in the process above, the first of which will often
be reserved for homework. The
third type of activity asks you to take a closer look at some feature of the
phenomenon. This third type
usually involves at least the first two steps in the process and will be
usually conducted in lab, but it usually starts in effect with a directed
“Making Observations” or “Try This”–type step.
As
it turns out we will share and discuss our ideas in groups of increasing
size. You will be given a chance
to think and make notes about your own ideas first. At the next level you will be sharing and discussing ideas
with your lab group which will have four people including yourself. The next larger sized group for sharing
and discussing ideas will be your lab section of 24 classmates. The largest size group involved
in sharing and discussing ideas will be the whole class during class meetings
in MP 101.
The Role of the Class Meetings in This Course
Two
things that have been written so far should indicate that the full class
meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays should not be expected to be lecture
sessions. The first and most
fundamental factor is the notion of the nature of knowledge involved in this
course. We will be constructing
the “knowledge” with which we will be working. This knowledge is not available to your
instructor before we construct it, so he cannot lecture you on it. The second factor is that we, as a
“community of learners or investigators,” must interact with each
other in order to 1) determine if our experiences with the phenomena in lab are
sufficiently similar to discuss them and 2) develop consensus explanations that
we can take-as-shared between us for the phenomena we are studying. We will need plenty of class time to
conduct these discussions in order to develop and refine our explanatory models
of the phenomena.
As
has been indicated, by the end of lab on any week you will have had the chance
at most to discuss ideas with the other 23 people in your lab section. Often there will not be a clear
consensus because no obvious resolution to the discrepancies between your
predictions and the actual behavior of the phenomena will have come up as
yet. As has been indicated, lab in
this course is not for the purpose of achieving such closure. It is in the large class discussions
that we will achieve what closure is possible. A way to view the large class meetings is to think of them
as what might be called “town hall” meetings to try to resolve the
dilemmas that have cropped up in lab.
To accomplish the goals indicated in this section there will be no real time
for any sort of lecture.
A Different Function for Discussion in This
Course.
If
one considers the different notion of the nature of knowledge to be used in
this course (“Knowledge as explanatory stories we make up” on page
3 of this document), the role of discussion must be different in this
course. In a traditional course
the role of discussion is for someone to convince someone else of some
“truth,” or as close to “truth” as we can come
today. This means that someone is
wrong and someone else is right, because that “truth” is out there
in the phenomena to be discovered by the properly prepared and hard working
person who has the requisite natural capabilities.[1] Since in this course the intent is to
collaborate in making our own knowledge to fit our experiences, discussion in
our course is not about proving or convincing someone else that they are
wrong.
At
the start we have no way of knowing what ideas will be the ideas we feel make
the most sense at the end of our discussion. As a result we must treat all ideas with equal respect. Of course this does not mean that all
ideas are “right” or “correct” or “true” in
the traditional sense since such notions (rightness, correctness, or truth) do
not really apply in our scheme of knowledge for this course. We are searching for ideas to use in
constructing good explanatory models.
Ideas we find that fit, we use.
Ideas that do not appear to fit, we do not use in our explanatory scheme
or model. Even those ideas we do
not use are important because they help us understand what our explanation is
not.
How
do we generate the best possible explanatory models? For one thing, we have to examine and understand as many
reasonable ideas as possible and compare them with the behavior of the
phenomena. To do this we have to
pool all of our ideas. This means
that much of our discussion must be about explaining to each other our
ideas. We need the desire to
communicate our ideas. We need to
be willing to risk our ideas on the open field (not a battlefield) of the
discussion. But, if we do not try
to understand each other’s ideas, whether we agree with them initially or
not, then there is no real interaction and little chance of coming as a group
to some new and better ideas.
Hence, we need to be able to live with ambiguity while we consider and
test possibilities against the phenomena.
It
is important to exercise respect for each other and each other’s ideas in
this process. We need to be actively
interested in understanding the ideas of others and how those ideas make sense
to them as well as ourselves. If
not, then sharing of ideas will be a waste of time and each of us will be
limited in our resources to merely the ideas that occur to us individually; a
serious impoverishment of our opportunities in this course and in our lives. These are some of the inadequate
results of typical science courses we have all had.
FOUR DISPOSITIONS
NEEDED FOR SUCCESS IN THIS COURSE
These are responsibilities of students to
themselves and to each other.
1. Desire
to communicate and share ideas with others
Because
this course is about you
really trying to make sense of the phenomena which we will study, we all need
to communicate with each other what we think about the phenomena we experience
in lab and then respond to each other’s ideas. The course is not about what has been written or said by someone outside of our class
about the phenomena and not
about memorizing something the text, instructor or some “smart”
student says. It is not about what is a right or wrong explanation of the
phenomena. Instead it is about
you and your classmates building explanations that fit our experiences so
far. To do this we must
communicate with each other.
2. Willingness
to take risks with one’s ideas
The only
way that satisfying and useful understandings of anything have ever been
achieved by human beings is through people being willing to express tentative ideas to their colleagues and then participate in
the testing of these ideas to see if they appear useful and satisfying. This means that sometimes
someone’s idea ‘falls apart’ and is discarded. Only through working together and
sifting through all the possibilities we can come up with is there true
progress in developing satisfying and useful explanations of the phenomena we
experience. It is not wrong nor
is it a ‘failure’ to
have proposed an idea that is eventually discarded. The class needs
your ideas. It is a
‘failure’ not to
propose one’s ideas to the class.
3. Willingness
to live with ambiguity
If one
cannot live with the uncertainty that exists while one is trying to build
satisfying and useful explanations, then one will always avoid the process and
will always be dependent on, and at the mercy of, others who have pursued the process and claim to have
worked out useful understandings for themselves. Furthermore, those who avoid uncertainty now will not have
had the practice and experience dealing with it and will be more at a loss to
face it when it inevitably
occurs later in life and there is no one around to help.
4. Respect
for and interest in the ideas of others
In
order to actually hear the ideas of others, to understand the ideas of others,
one must suspend judgement and be tolerant of the ideas of others. Without this disposition the sharing of
ideas with others is just so much wasted time. If we cannot truly share ideas with each other, we are truly
each alone in trying to make sense of the world around us. We do not have to be alone in this
process. In fact culture and
society are what we as human beings have constructed in order take advantage of
the tremendous power of multiple, interacting minds working toward common
goals.
REFLECTION AND THE REFLECTIVE TEACHER:
Many (but not all) students in this course are
preparing to be teachers of one sort or another. Those of you who are should be aware that the BSU Teacher
Education Model and Philosophy is based on the notion of the Reflective
Teacher. The following statement
by a famous educator/philosopher, John Dewey, is descriptive of the meaning
intended by the expression, reflective teacher.
“To
reflect is to look back over what has been done so as to extract the net
meanings which are the capital stock for intelligent dealing with further
experiences. It is the heart of
intellectual organization and of the disciplined mind.”
Although
not all students in PHYS 100 are intending to be teachers, it is the case that
reflection is a major component of what students in this course should be
prepared to, and try to, do during the semester. John Dewey’s statement gets at one of the fundamental
reasons for having such things as core course requirements at the University.
REFLECTION:
A standing assignment for all students in PHYS 100:
A
major activity in class will be to reflect on what we have experienced in lab
and how things that various members of the class say relate to what we
experienced and whether or not these things make sense to us. After each class meeting, each member
of the class should: (This is a
basic journal assignment.)
• take
some time and browse their notes,
• reflect
on what was said and done in class and
• write
a few notes concerning their thoughts, any questions and tentative conclusions,
so far.
Most of the time in lab and in class there is not
time to thoroughly annotate everything that is said and every idea that occurs
to you. You note making style
should be to jot down enough to remind you what was going on in your mind. This of course will be inadequate if
you wait weeks to look back at it.
On the other hand, if you look back at these brief notes the same day as
you took them, you will be in a position to expand them so that they will be
clear weeks later. In addition,
the process will reveal to you apparent holes in your ideas and raise
questions. These are exactly what
you need to have revealed to yourself to prepare for the next class
period. You should all the time be
trying to write down lists of what we can definitely say about the phenomena so
far and lists of questions we should examine about the phenomena.
The purpose of all this reflection is for each
person to be continuously constructing the best explanations they can of the
physical phenomena observed in lab and class in collaboration with their
classmates. It is most effective
to do this journaling as soon after class as possible, but in a setting where
you have a chance to think about the events in the course for the day. It would not hurt your progress in any
course to do the same for that course.
Looking over such notes to prepare for the next class meeting
facilitates discussion and helps us avoid going over old ground.
PHYS 100 and
Core courses at Boise State.
A grade of at least a “C” enables the four
credit hours earned in PHYS 100 to count toward the Core Requirement in Area
III for a degree at Boise State.
As such the course is expected to be consistent with the general
philosophy and goals of the Core and to meet some of the specific objectives
set out for courses in the Core program.
The following is a description of those objectives and goals of the Core
program which PHYS 100 meets.
Philosophy
of Boise State Core
The
core curriculum at Boise State University is designed to provide undergraduate
students with a coherent experience leading to the acquisition of knowledge and
the ability to engage intellectually with ideas so that they will be able to
continue independent learning and analysis of information over the course of
their lives. Moreover, they will
confront the ideas, events and issues necessary to a sense of community and an
appreciation of the pluralistic nature of our society.
As a general principle, courses in Core are
designed to stimulate critical and analytical reasoning, effective
communication, tolerance, aesthetic and ethical understanding, and a sense of
individual, social and environmental welfare. By taking a combination of Core courses students will
participate in a learning environment designed to further the following
specific educational goals:
1. Courses in Core provide continual
opportunities for students to refine those skills essential to sound
communication and reasoning in a variety of contexts. The capacity for effective and constructive communication is
fundamental and is developed and expanded by repeated application throughout
the core.
2. Courses
in Core foster the development of habits of independent analytic inquiry. They also encourage the formulation and
articulation of the reasons, parameters and consequences of choice, with the
aim of increasing students’ understanding of the significance of their
choices for themselves and others.
The
design of PHYS 100 fits this philosophy in the course it is possible for
students to achieve these goals.
The preceding descriptions of the course (what it is and what it is not)
and the descriptions of the roles of lab and discussion should make this clear.
There
are, in addition, specific criteria for Core courses in the statement of
philosophy and goals for Boise State University's Core. It is indicated that Core courses are
expected to “incorporate these criteria, where appropriate”. The particular criteria that PHYS 100
can reasonably be said to meet are the following. The numbering scheme is used in the statement describing the
Boise State University Core. The
course is designed so that it is almost impossible to be successful without
doing the things described.
Content Area Criteria: (Area
III Criteria)
3.0 Natural and Applied Sciences: Courses in the Natural and Applied Sciences will
provide students the opportunity:
3.1 To understand basic scientific
concepts…
PHYS 100 is not a survey of
all possible concepts related to the subject of physics, but we will deal in
some depth with a few significant phenomena treated in physics. A single semester is simply too short a
time period to allow a survey and to accomplish the goals of Core.
3.4 To participate directly in the scientific
process and thereby gain an appreciation of the scientific method.
As was indicated starting on
page 2 (“WHAT THIS COURSE IS ABOUT.”) PHYS 100 is an exercise in
“doing” science all semester long. To actually participate in PHYS 100 is to participate in the
process of science.
General Intellectual Criteria: Courses in the Core will provide students the
opportunity to enhance the following skills:
4.0 Critical
and Analytical Reasoning
4.1 To think
critically…
You will have to engage in critical thinking in order
to understand the ideas of others, formulate and express your own ideas and to
assess any of the ideas as candidates for use in the explanatory models (or
stories) we generate about the phenomena we study.
4.2 To use evidence to
construct arguments and test conclusions.
We will be constructing logical arguments in support
of our ideas to explain the phenomena.
We will test our explanations against the phenomena they are intended to
explain.
4.3 To examine the question
of truth and to investigate the interrelationship of fact and value judgment.
Few courses abandon the conventional notion of the
nature of knowledge as completely as we are attempting in PHYS 100. Through participation in this course
you will be in a position to examine “the question of truth” from a
different perspective. The issue
of the nature of “fact” and its interrelationship with “value
judgement” are inevitably aspects of this examination. Many students in the past have found
this the most challenging feature of PHYS 100. In normal science classes such considerations are
essentially non-existent.
4.4 To read and understand a
variety of materials both literally and conceptually.
Although there will be occasions during which you will
be reading things, much of the PHYS 100 class is not focused on reading so much
as spoken verbal communication.
You will have the opportunity to “hear” a variety of ideas
expressed to you by your classmates for both literal and conceptual
understanding. Certainly
conceptual issues, issues of meaning, will be a focus of attention in this
course. The course is intended to
fit Paolo Freire’s notion of “reading the world” in order to “read
the word.”[2]
4.5 To understand the context within which ideas
develop.
Since the major agenda in PHYS 100 is to construct our
own explanatory models of the phenomena we will be developing our own
ideas. What better way to
understand the context in which ideas develop than to directly experience the process
of developing ideas? The bases for
conviction about the models and definitions we develop for ourselves in this
course are exactly the same type as those of the scientists.
5.0 Effective
Communication
5.1 To demonstrate facility with
language and other symbolic systems in interpersonal communication
The comments on page 6 (A DIFFERENT FUNCTION FOR DISCUSSION
IN THIS COURSE.) should make it clear that this will be a part of your
experience in PHYS 100. While we
will do little formal mathematics (one of the chief symbol systems used by
professional scientists) we will engage heavily in the use of standard
diagrammatic symbols such as lines for light rays and graphs of motion and
forces, for example.
5.2 To develop and
demonstrate advanced traditional and technological literacy skills
This semester you may make use of computers to
generate graphs of motion and forces.
If so, without ever actually constructing a graph yourself, by the end
of the semester you will be able to read, interpret, and discuss motion on the
basis of graphs of that motion. (Amazingly
enough it is possible for you to do this in a manner, if not superior to at
least as well as, the typical capabilities of students who have taken a
calculus-based physics course.
Many PHYS 100 students have done this in the past. Yet as has been indicated you will do
almost no formal mathematics in this course.)
5.3 To write clearly and
correctly; and to speak and listen effectively.
Again, it should be clear from the description of the
course on previous pages that this will be a part of your daily work in PHYS
100. Since the “text”
for this course is the conversation of the course, the ideas brought up and
examined by the class, writing (for your own personal record of the ideas),
speaking (to express your ideas or to test your understanding of the ideas of
another), and listening (to try to understand the ideas of another) will be
necessary activities in PHYS 100.
6.0 Tolerance
6.1 To investigate and
appreciate pluralistic representations of human knowledge and experience.
You will frequently be surprised at the different ways
your classmates think about the phenomena and interpret each other’s
explanations of the phenomena. You
will have the opportunity to use these differences constructively. You will find that rejecting these
ideas out of hand is not a formula for success in the course. The contrast between the traditional
notion of Truth used in most other courses and that used in PHYS 100 is a major
example of the alternatives.
6.2 To appreciate the variety of ways in which
we gain knowledge and apply it to enhance our understanding of the universe,
society and ourselves.
You have already experienced one “way” of
“gaining knowledge” in previous science classes, i.e., being given scientific knowledge. In
PHYS 100 you will experience another major “way” of “gaining
knowledge” which is to co-construct it yourselves with each other.
6.3 To recognize the
diversity of potential interpretations arising from information.
Again, you will be amazed at the range and variety of
the different explanations your classmates come up with when they first
experience some of the surprises we will see with the phenomena. They have been doing this all the time,
but in standard lecture courses which do not focus on the ideas of the students
you have not had an opportunity to notice this fact. This is borne out in the readings provided at the end of
each unit. You will have many such
opportunities in PHYS 100, if you pay attention.
7.0 Ethical
Considerations
7.3 To cultivate intellectual
honesty.
Since
we will be constructing shared explanations of phenomena, which we all have,
the opportunity to experience in lab, there will be little or no space for
intellectual dishonesty. Everyone
will have access to the same raw data.
The discussion of ideas is an open forum and anyone is free to question
any idea. There will be no quarter
in which to hide from the intellectual scrutiny of the class as a community of
learners. In the long run,
intellectual honesty will have to be practiced by each class member in order to
be taken seriously by others in class.
Of course, the burden here is as much in the hands of the listener as in
those of the proposer of any idea.
If the listener does not intellectually scrutinize what is proposed,
then anything can be proposed.
8.0 Social
and Environmental Responsibility
8.3 To recognize the needs,
obligations, rights and responsibilities of self and others, especially as
these may be influenced by race, class gender, ethnic, religious, social,
economic or ideological considerations.
We are interested in
generating an experience for you which involves sharing and discussing ideas
with the goal of reaching an explanation which can be agreed upon in some way
by all of the class. In the give-and-take
of these discussions, although they are not intended to turn out this way, it
sometimes happens that “the needs, obligations, rights and
responsibilities” of some are
temporarily ignored by others.
This gives rise to discussions of such issues in class and negotiations
concerning methods of resolving the problem and conducting ourselves in such a
way as to better understand and maintain an appropriate recognition of these
needs, obligations, rights, and responsibilities we have to each other and
ourselves. Because the discussions
in this course need to be different than in the typical course as indicated on
page 6 (A Different Function for
Discussion in This Course.), conducting ourselves with tolerance of all
ideas is a generally unpracticed skill.
Class discussion will at some point turn to “the needs,
obligations, rights and responsibilities” we have to each other in the
general area of our practice of tolerance of each other’s ideas.
[1] In a traditional course, it’s “too bad for everyone else!
” Right? We go on to make
excuses by saying, “…but that’s okay. After all science is hard. Not everybody can do
science.” Promoting this attitude
in any way is a kind of violence perpetrated by our system of education.
[2] Freire, P. (1983) “The Importance of the Act of Reading” The Journal of Education 165: 5 - 11. Boston, MA: Boston University.