ABSTRACT
Two eminent scientists differ in their views as to the transfer of scientific thinking to everyday problems. Bruce Alberts, a biochemist, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, and editor of Science, believes in the generality of scientific thinking for all citizens. For Alberts, citizens can be taught to think and reason scientifically and they should apply scientific thinking in their everyday decisions and actions. Richard Feynman, a theoretical physicist, who helped develop the atom bomb and expanded understanding of quantum electrodynamics, doubts the generality of scientific thinking once problems fall outside of one’s expertise. For Feynman, ordinary citizens are not in a position to do such thinking. All of the papers that I reviewed dealt with the question of whether scientific reasoning is a general skill that can be taught and applied across science disciplines and perhaps more generally to real life, as Alberts would have, or whether it is domain specific, as Feynman would have. The chapter authors pretty much conclude that scientific reasoning is domain specific and, if taught by inquiry and bottom-up modeling, there is reason either to hope for or to doubt the possibility of developing more general scientific reasoning skills that transfer to another science domain. But what about scientific reasoning applied to everyday problems like deciding how to raise an autistic child? or whether to believe that climate change is not influenced by human behavior? Is Bruce Alberts smoking us? If forced to choose, I would conclude that Richard Feynman’s view holds sway with the papers reviewed. To modify his statement, “I believe that a [non] scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.” Contrary to the papers’ conclusions, I, with Alberts, believe that scientific reasoning can and should be taught in and out of school, albeit not with all the rigor envisioned in the papers. Such reasoning can be supported by preparing students to explore and evaluate scientific information available widely to them in various media and to teach them to seek and evaluate practical advice using what competence they have in reasoning scientifically, drawing on their notion of reliable and valid evidence and argumentation, however limited that might be. And I believe that general reasoning is developed both in the sciences and in disciplines and professions outside of science. Students are taught in many disciplines and professions to use evidence and argumentation to justify knowledge and practice claims. Both science reasoning and reasoning in other disciplines (e.g., English literature) and professions (e.g., law) contribute to the goal of educating informed citizens capable of contributing to democracy.
