Steve Jamar writes:
Maybe they teach science differently now than when I went to school
and when my boys (now ages 19 and 22) went to school, but science was
inherently taught as conditional and subject to testing and change.
There are things that are known facts, but there is a lot that is
still unexplained -- the true nature of light, for example, and why
gravity is such a weak force compared to the others, and a whole host
of things in biology and geology.
[snip]
If the point is to teach the limits of our understanding, that can be
and in my experience was and is taught. There are lots of questions
still to which the answer is "we don't know."
There is an important difference between fallibility,
contingency, and modesty _within_ scientific inquiry and modesty
_about_ the scientific enterprise itself. All good scientists
accept the former. Many, but far from all, accept the latter.
Some scientists and philosophers -- folks like Richard
Dawkins and Daniel Dennett most vocally lately -- argue that the
conclusions of science, such as evolution, shred any possible basis
for belief in God. Would it be constitutional for this sort of
Dawkins/Dennett claim to be one of the propositions officially taught
as a part of a science curriculum? I assume not. Would it be
constitutional to tell students that there are no truths that are
unamentable, in principle, to scientific study and verification? I
assume not. (I'm not saying that these sorts of thing couldn't be
discussed in public school classrooms.) All that some of us are
arguing, then, is that it would be constitutional simply to advise
students that the methodological naturalism built into scientific
inquiry (and which properly excludes the teaching of "intelligent
design theory" as a subject _within_ science) should not be taken for
an official commitment to the ontological naturalism of folks like
Dawkins and Dennett.
Perry
*******************************************************
Perry Dane
Professor of Law
Rutgers University
School of Law -- Camden
217 North Fifth Street
Camden, NJ 08102
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.camlaw.rutgers.edu/bio/925/
Work: (856) 225-6004
Fax: (856) 969-7924
Home: (610) 896-5702
*******************************************************
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