You are entering the science teaching profession at a time when many science educators, scientists, and the general public are calling for new directions in science education. Because of the growing impact of science and technology on societal and individual affairs, people from many sectors of society have expressed the desire that science education be reappraised and that new direction be charted. Paul DeHart Hurd suggests that the science curriculum of the future be based on interrelationships between human beings, natural phenomena, advancements in science and technology, and the quality of life. He suggests that science teachers examine closely the nature of science, especially the multidimensional changes in science, technology and society. He and other educators criticize the content of the present science curricula as being remote from human needs and social benefits, reflecting the concern that science is alien and separate from individual and public interests. To make science understandable and useful to people, it is essential that the nature of science be communicated to students in the science curriculum.

What is Science?

One scientist who had an effect not only on the scientific community, but the nonscience community as well was Richard Feynman, a theoretical physicist and popularizer of science. In his book "Surely Your're Joking, Mr. Feynman," he said, "Before I was born, my father told my mother, 'If it's a boy, he's going to be a scientist,'" Not only did he become a scientist, he also was a winner of the Nobel Prize. Feynman saw science as an attempt to understand the world. To him understanding the world was analogous to understanding the rules of a game, like chess:

"We can imagine that this complicated array of moving things which constitutes "the world" is something like a great chess game being played by the gods, and we are observers of the game. We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics. Even if we know every rule, however... what we really can explain in terms of those rules is very limited, because almost all situations are so enormously complicated that we cannot follow the plays of the game using the rules, much less tell what is going to happen next. We must, therefore, limit ourselves to the more basic question of the rules of the game. If we know the rules, we consider that we "understand" the world" (Feynman, 1963).

Another scientist, a chemist named Michael Polanyi explored the nature of science and said that there was a "republic of science," a community of independent men and women freely cooperating, collaborating and exchanging ideas and information. This community cuts across national boarders and brought scientists from over the globe together as a cooperative global community. Polanyi also claimed that to be a scientist, one had to be inducted into the profession by working with a master as an apprentice. Interestingly, he also believed that the practice of science was not a science, but rather an art to passed from one scientist to another.

If you look up the word science in a dictionary, the usual definition is "knowledge, especially of facts or principles, gained by systematic study; a particular branch of knowledge dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged." Yet prominent scientists, like Carl Sagan define science as a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. Sagan says this about science:

"Its goal is to find out how the world works, to seek what regularities there may be, to penetrate the connections of things---from sub-nuclear particles which may be the constituents of all matter, to living organisms, the human social community, and thence to the cosmos as a whole. Our perceptions may be distorted by training and prejudice or merely because of the limitations of our sense organs which of course perceive directly but a small fraction of phenomena of the world... Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly science sometimes requires courage---at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom".

Exploring the nature of science a little further, and relating it to the views of Feynman, Polyani and Sagan, we might consider several relationships, as described below.

Science and Courage.

One human quality that is important in science is courage. If we put this in terms of one's willingness, as Sagan said, to question conventional wisdom, then we are a led to an important notion: questioning all things is a fundamental value underlying thinking in science. For example, Nicholas Copernicus, the 16th century Polish scientist, questioned the conventional wisdom of the Ptolemaic, earth-centered universe. His questioning of an old idea led to a new one---that the sun was the center of the solar system and the planets revolved around the sun rather than the earth. About a hundred years after the publication of Copernicus's book, Galileo Galelei narrowly escaped the rack of the Holy Inquisition by recanting his support for the Copernican concept of the Universe.

 

Ptolemaic system showing the epicycle movement of a planet with the Earth in the center of the systme.

Questioning well established ideas, or proposing a radically different hypothesis to explain data is a courageous act. Quite often people who propose such ideas are shunned, considered crazy, or rejected by the "establishment." For example, in 1920, Alfred Wegener, a German meteorologist, proposed that the continents were not stationary masses but moving platforms of rock that had drifted apart over millions of years of geologic time. At the time his idea was considered farfetched and crazy. Physicists and geologist pointed out that there were no forces within Earth to move billions of kilograms of rock. Fifty years later, most geologists supported the theory of plate tectonics, that the earth's crust is composed of large plates which move about colliding, spreading apart and sliding past each other.

A more recent example of courage is the case involving Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey. In a book entitled, Women of Courage, Frances Kelsey is referred to as "the doctor who said no." After earning a Ph.D. in pharmacology (an infant field of science at the time she earned her degree), and then a medical degree from the University of Chicago, she moved with her husband and two children to Washington, and took a job with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Washington. Her job was to evaluate applications for licences to market new drugs. In the Fall of 1960, shortly after she arrived at the FDA, the William S. Merrell Company applied for a licence to market a new drug called Kevadon. Kevadon was a sleeping pill. It had been used all over the world, was very effective in relieving pregnant women from morning sickness, and was very profitable. Truman describes how Frances Kelsey showed great courage as a scientist in the case of Kevadon:

'While Merrell's application was being reviewed by Kelsey at the FDA, they were distributing two thousand kilograms of the drug. At the time this was a legal practice as long as the drug company labeled the drug "experimental." Merrell, in their advertising and marketing materials, informed their salespeople that they had firmly established the safety, dosage and usefulness of the drug by both foreign and U.S. laboratory clinical studies. They had not.

At the FDA, Merrell's application was being reviewed. Dr. Kelsey and her research team were not satisfied with the information Merrell provided as part of their application. For example, the drug when administered to animals showed no sign of toxicity but did not make the animals sleepy. The drug was being distributed to humans as a sleeping pill. Two days before the 60 day approval period was up, Dr. Kelsey told the Merrell Company that their application was not approved and would have to submit further information.

This initial rejection (November 10, 1960) of Merrell's application to distribute the drug was followed by a series of episodes between Dr. Kelsey and the Merrell Company. There were attempts by the Merrell Company to go over Kelsey's head and in so doing try to embarrass her in front of her superiors. This did not work. Merrell even supplied research reports supposedly documenting the safety of the drug. Upon investigation it was discovered that the researcher's name that appeared on the report did not even write it. And Merrell threatened Kelsey with a law suit saying that one of her letters to them was libelous. Through all this Kelsey stood firm and boldly held her ground. It culminated with the banning of the drug in December 1961 when thalidimide had been traced to an outbreak of deformities in new born babies by the thousands in Europe. Then in 1963, the American public was stunned when they read stories and saw the horrible pictures in their newspapers that one gallant woman doctor had stood between them and a repetition of this disaster in the United States. On August 7, 1963 President Kennedy present Dr. Kelsey the Distinguished Federal Civilian Service Medal. Kennedy applauded Dr. Kelsey's work saying she had defended the hopes that all of us have for our children. The courageous behavior of Frances Kelsey also lead to an increase in the FDA's staff and a change in the laws regulating the distribution and sale of drugs to humans" (Truman, 1978)

Science, Problem Solving and the Human Mind.

Thinking in science is often associated with creativity and problem solving. These are important aspects of the nature of science, and should be an essential goal of the science curriculum. In his book How Creative Are You, Eugene Raudsepp identifies a long list of qualities of the human that are characteristic of people who think creatively: innovative, risk-taker, mold-breaker, willing to ask questions, fearless adventurer, unpredictable, persistent, highly motivated, ability to think in images, to toy with ideas, tolerance of ambiguity, anticipates productive periods. The social implication of creative thinking is that we live in an ever changing world, impacted no less than by science and technological innovations. Many popularizers of science and creative thinking believe that all people are creative and are able to deal with change. Science courses have traditionally focused only on helping students learn scientific facts and concepts, and then stopped. Rarely are students encouraged to tackle real problems, thereby putting to use the facts and concepts they have learned. But as educators like Hurd warn, the future science curriculum should present problems to solve that are desirable to students, that is ones in which students have a stake in the solution, such as nutrition, chemical safety, space exploration, human ecosystems, drugs, population growth, ecocrises, quality of life, and others.

To solve problems, to deal with situations creatively requires the use of imagination. Historians of scientific discovery often point out that imagery and imagination have played important roles in intellectual discoveries and breakthroughs. This fact is nicely conveyed in the title of a book by June Goodfield, An Imagined World, A Story of Scientific Discovery. The book describes the drama of scientific discovery, and sheds light on role of creativity and imagination in this endeavor. The world of imagery is safe harbor for thoughts and images, and for the mind's participation in problem solving. For example, Einstein's famous thought experiments and his images led him to many of his concepts of space and time. Indeed, he used imagery to experience what he thought it would be like to ride on a beam of light.

Jacob Bronowski believed that imagination was one of the important qualities of the mind. In A Sense of the Future, he said this about imagination, the human mind and science:

"All great scientists have used their imagination freely, and let it ride them to outrageous conclusions without crying "Halt." Albert Einstein fiddled with imaginary experiments from boyhood, and was wonderfully ignorant of the facts that they were supposed to bear on. When he wrote the first of his beautiful papers on the random movement of atoms, he did not know that the Brownian motion which it predicted could be seen in any laboratory. He was sixteen when he invented the paradox that he resolved ten years later, in 1905, in the theory of relativity, and it bulked much larger in his mind than the experiment of Albert Michelson and Edward Morley which had upset every other physicist since 1881. All his life Einstein loved to make up teasing puzzles like Galileo's, about falling lifts and the detection of gravity; and they carry the nub of the problems of general relativity on which he was working" (Bronowski, 1977).

Science and Human Values.

When society acknowledges the importance of qualities of the mind such as independence in thinking, originality, freedom to think, or dissidence it is elevating them to social values. And as social values they are given special protection through laws governing society's behavior. Since science is an activity of men and women, certain values must guide their work. Bronowski claims, that because of this, science is not value free, and that the work of science is based on a search for truth. In his book, A Sense of the Future, Bronowski discusses the human values that are indeed the values that guide science:

"If truth is to be found, and if it is to be verified in action, what other conditions are necessary, and what other values grow of themselves from this?First, of course, comes independence, in observation and thence in thought. The mark of independence is originality, and one of its expressions is dissent. Dissent in turn is the mark of freedom. That is, originality and independence are private needs of the truthful man, and dissent and freedom are public means to protect them. This is why society ought to offer the safeguard of free thought, free speech, free inquiry, and tolerance; for these are needs which follow logically when men are committed to explore the truth. They have, of course, never been granted, and none of the values which I have advanced have been prized in a dogmatic society" (Bronowski, 1977).

Sometimes the values that motivate scientists result in behavior that wouldn't hold up to Bronowski's ideas. For instance, in the 1950's the race was on to discover the structure of the DNA molecule. Horace Freeland Judson in his book, The Eighth Day of Creation said, "DNA, you know, is Midas' gold. Everyone who touches it goes mad." In this case we ask: What part does ambition, achievement, and success play in the practice of science? How does a scientist's gender effect relationships? Are women scientists left behind their male counterparts? Is it possible for a scientist to literally "go mad" in the pursuit of what be an astonishing discovery? Are scientists sometimes motivated by blind ambition? The story that follows will enable you to think about these questions.

The setting for this tale is in England about 100 years after Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace co-discovered a theory of evolution.

In the 1950s a race was on to be the first to discover and unlock the secret that would reveal the basis for life. That secret was locked away in the structure of the DNA molecule---the substance of life. Two persons emerge at first, in this story: James B. Watson, a 24 year old American born scientist fresh out of graduate school with a new Ph.D., and Francis Crick, a 38 year old graduate student at Cambridge University, England, still working on his Ph.D.

Watson and Crick teamed up and decided to go all out to discover the structure of the DNA. Their reward, if they could make the discovery before the famous American chemist Linus Pauling, would be the Nobel Prize.

The process of discovering the structure of the DNA molecule was multifaceted. A driving force in the discovery was their motivation to discover and report their findings before Pauling did. Pauling, 6,000 miles away in Pasadena, California, was working diligently on the DNA problem as well. Watson and Crick, but especially Watson, were worried that news would break from Pasadena. Watson writes:

"No further news emerged from Pasadena before Christmas. Our spirits slowly went up, for if Pauling had found a really exciting answer, the secret could not be kept for long."

The process also involved a collaboration with Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, both of whom were researchers at King's College, England. Wilkins was trained in physics but became interested in the structure of the DNA and had been pursuing its structure for years.

At the time that Watson and Crick entered the DNA search, Wilkins was the only researcher in England giving serious attention to the DNA problem. However, there was Rosalind Franklin. She was trained in the study of crystals and how they were aranged. She used X-rays to study the structure of crystals and she was probably one of the most competent researchers in this field at the time.

Wilkins thought of her as his assistant. Rosalind Franklin thought of herself not as Wilkins assistant, but as a bonafide researcher pursuing the DNA structure as her main line of research. She was in fact hired to work in the same laboratory, but as the head of a research group, a position equal to that of Wilkins.

Vivian Gornick writes that the relationship that Watson and Crick had "was its own double helix: all attracting opposites and catalytic joinings. These two ate, drank, slept, and breathed DNA." Rosalind Franklin did not have this kind of relationship with anyone. "If she had someone to talk to, chances are she would have gotten to DNA first, it was all there in her notes and photographs, she just didn't know what to make of what she had."

Gornick, in the introduction of her book, Women in Science, raises questions about the work of women in science: What was it like to be a woman scientist? What if a woman working in science feels it is not so accesible to her? What if a woman in science feels she must prove herself many times more often than a man does; that her work is more often challenged and less often supported?

Was Rosalind Franklin, because she was a woman not allowed in on the discussions among Watson, Crick and Wilkons. In James Watson's book, The Double Helix, some insight on this assertiion is revealed:

"Clearly Rosy had to go or be put in her place. The former was obvriously preferable because, given belligerent moods, it would be difficult for Maurice (Wilkins) to maintain a dominant position that would allow him to think unhindered about DNA...Unfortunately, Maurice could see any decent way to give Rosy the boot. To which, she had been give to think that she had a position for several years. Also, there was no denying she had a good brain. If she could only keep her emotions under control, there would be a good chance she could really help him...The real problem, then was Rosy. The thought could not be avoided that the best home for a feminist was in another person's lab" (Gornick, 1990)

Anne Sayre, author of Rosalind Franklin and DNA finds Watson's description of Rosalind quite different than her own view. In her biography of Franklin, Sayre questions the accuracy of some of Watson's facts: She says:

"...a question arose concerning the accuracy of some of Watson's facts, simply because he presented in The Double Helix a character named 'Rosy' who represented, but did not really coincide, with a woman named Rosalind Franklin...The technique used to change Rosalind Franlin into 'Rosy' was subtel, but really not unfamiliar, part ofit, at the simplest level, was the device of the nickname itself, one that was never used by any friend of Rosalind's, and certainly not to her face...For we are presented with a picture of a deplorable situation. The progress of science is being impeded, and by what? Why, by a woman, to begin with, one labeled as subordinate, meant---or even destined---to occurpy that inferior position in which presumably all women belong, even those with good brains...But perhaps the progress of science is also being impeded somewhat by a man as well, one too inhibited by decency to be properly ruthless with female upstarts, and so to get on with the job" (Sayre, 1975)

Rosalind Franklin's work on the DNA problem was brilliant. Had she lived until 1962 (she died of cancer in 1958 at the age of 37), she no doubt would have shared the Nobel Prize awarded to Watson, Crick, and Wilkins.

Since the time of these events, the nature of science has been influenced by the increased participation of women in the field of science. However, the participation of women and minorities in science has excaserbated by the nature of school science, and the negative effect school science has had in attracting women to careers in science. In Chapter 11 we will explore this in more depth.

Since the 1970s there has been a movement in the field of science and science education that has supported an approach to science teaching based on women's studies, methods and theories to attract women in to courses in science in middle school and high school, and encourage women to choose fields in mathematics, science and engineering.

Science and Democracy.

When science is examined as an enterprise that involves the values of independence, freedom, the right to dissent and tolerance, it is clear that as a social activity, science can not flourish in an authoritarian climate. Some philosophers of science such as Bronowski claim that science can not be practiced in authoritarian regimes. In a democratic environment old ideas can be challenged and rigorously criticized, albeit, with some difficulty because of the human desire to hold on to old ideas, especially by the original proposers. Yet it is the essence of scientific thinking to propose alternative ideas, and then to test these alternative ideas against existing concepts. As pointed out in the American Association for the Advancement of Science report, Science For All Americans, "indeed, challenges to new ideas are the legitimate business of science in building valid knowledge." The principles upon which democracy is built are the very concepts that describe the scientific enterprise. Earlier it was pointed out that Polanyi felt science was organized as a republic of science in which independent people freely cooperated to explore and solve problems about the natural world. The values of a democratic society are the values that undergird Palanyi's concept of a republic of science.

The Scientific Enterprise and Teaching.

The concepts that have been presented about the nature of science have implications for science teaching. There should be a consistency between discussions about the nature of science and the nature of teaching science. If we are trying to convey to students not only facts and information of science, but the process of science, then we are obliged to establish environments in classrooms that presume the same values that guide the practice of science. Questions that we can raise about our classrooms in this regard are as follows: To what extent are students given the opportunity to challenge ideas? Are activities planned in which there are alternative methods, answers, and solutions? Are students encouraged to identify and then try to solve problems relevent to themselves? Is it acceptable for students to disagree with ideas, and propose new ones? Do the problems that students work on have any consequence in their lives now?

Science is defined as much by what is done and how it is done as it is by the results of science. To understand science as a way of thinking and doing, as much as "bodies of knowledge," requires that science teaching emphasize the thought processes and activities of scientists. Thus we are led to explore one of the fundamental thought process in science, namely, inquiry.