Education distorting science and logic

[Kettch]

CaptJodan, some thing I've been curious about, just coming into this thread, can you paste what the course description for this call is in the Schedule of Classes?

Also how does the professor describe the class in the Sylabus?

Here's the class description. A damndable lie if I ever saw one...

Course Description:
An analysis of the historical development of technical and scientific writing from ancient Greece to the present.

I guess by ancient Greece he must mean the philosophical ramblings in ZAMM. Of course, nowhere in that description does it say "and philosophy from books written just between the 1970s to present".

Actually I should have looked at this earlier, because this ISN'T what we're doing. It's supposed to be a survey class, much like Brit Lit and American Lit. You read a bunch of technical documentation from the past to the present and take lessons from it. Gee, how ironically relevant to my major. At least that's how I read the course description.

The sylabus doesn't really even go into course description or what he intends to do short of how the class is structured, aka the 3 books, postings, papers, the fact that it's online and those guidelines, etc. It doesn't have anything to say about what he's trying to teach, I'm afraid.

My opinion is you need to address this with the department head or the dean. At the very least speak to your advisor. If you feel that you can do so from a very calm & inoffensive manner, inquire the professor why the class is so different than what you thought you signed up for.

From what you're telling us the prof is off the reservation. It's like taking a course on Quantum Mechanics & the prof basing the class off what the BLEEP do We Know & the Star Trek Tech Manuals. Yes there is academic freedom, if the prof has tenure, but even then it is not card blanche especially with a survey course. Those farther up the food chain put pressure for the professor to reform, or at the very least make sure not to assign him to this class again.

You know the more I think about this the more it reminds me of a Biblical History professor that I had who was good, but who recycled abou 1/3 of the same course matterials for 3 different courses. (But when he got to the new stuff he was quite excellent.) It makes me wonder if this English Professor is just recycling another course plan after being saddled teaching a Tech Writing course. Especially after the books & excerpts you've described he could be conducting an experiment / game / practical joke on 'altering the reality' of a Tech Writing course into a course he's more intrested & only marginally related to, but he's more interested in. Will the students follow along like sheep?

(Funny just remembered that I'm wearing my Far Side "Wait Wait we don't HAVE to be be just sheep shirt." )


Is anyone else in the class actually in the tech writing program?

[Darth Wong]

To be honest, if I read that course description in university I would have written it off as useless. Science is primarily not a literary body of work; it is a method and an ongoing human project. You may study past scientific theories and how they were disproven, but there's really no point studying past scientific literature. It sounds like a history or English lit course: something that would be taught by artsies. And that's leaving aside the fact that the professor didn't even keep to the course description.

Acutally there are some very important things one can learn from studying past scientific literature. The modern text books tend to simplify & linearize very complex developments into a few chapters & into Gaeleo begat Newton who begat Hamilton etc. The principia is a lot more than a colorfully writen & wordier description of Haliday & Resnick's first 12 chapters.

Second reading older scientific literature, gives an excellent window into the scientific method at work, not watered down in a text book or being overwhelemed by ooh new shiney! from recent science news. You can read these books or articles in the contex of how the theory is now established.

I've had professors take that track with Einstein,Fermi, Feinman etc. by giving us primary sources to read & it has been quite rewarding

I can see the point of reading the original writings of people who actually followed the scientific method, if only to see in detail how they came to their conclusions. But if we read all scientific literature going back to ancient Greece, most of it was made by people who did not follow what we would consider the scientific method. And the course description makes no mention of the scientific method at all; it looks like it intends to approach it the way an English literature major would study Olde English writings.

[CaptJodan]

I can see the point of reading the original writings of people who actually followed the scientific method, if only to see in detail how they came to their conclusions. But if we read all scientific literature going back to ancient Greece, most of it was made by people who did not follow what we would consider the scientific method. And the course description makes no mention of the scientific method at all; it looks like it intends to approach it the way an English literature major would study Olde English writings.

Well sadly I'll never know what the class was actually about. Even seeing how scientific and technical lit is structured and how it progressed is semi-useful compared to the philosophy course I'm being exposed to which is, at BEST, anti-science and technology. It would at the very least allow me to understand the kind of diction and sentence structure I should be using.

[Kettch]

I can see the point of reading the original writings of people who actually followed the scientific method, if only to see in detail how they came to their conclusions. But if we read all scientific literature going back to ancient Greece, most of it was made by people who did not follow what we would consider the scientific method. And the course description makes no mention of the scientific method at all; it looks like it intends to approach it the way an English literature major would study Olde English writings.

Well sadly I'll never know what the class was actually about. Even seeing how scientific and technical lit is structured and how it progressed is semi-useful compared to the philosophy course I'm being exposed to which is, at BEST, anti-science and technology. It would at the very least allow me to understand the kind of diction and sentence structure I should be using.

What I would have hoped for in a class such as laid out in the description would be a review of technical / scientific concepts as they were presented at the time & the efforts to describe phenonmina or convey technica information or medical information when constrained by limits in communication technology. How do you reliably repoduce diagrams with scrolls? How to show color hues before color printing. How to precisel describe anatomical or vivsection features before photography. How to convey dynamic processes with out time lapse photots or video. What worked well, what was lacking & then being able to use those lessions when given constrains by an employer. (We can only aford black & white text, now describe how to wire is up.)

I have small experience with this in reading (in translation) Medievel fighting manuals. Some like 1.33 are beatifully painted, but others have a handful of wood cuts, like Meyer, or no illustrations at all. All of these are being used to describe a highly dynamic situation and some do so quite poorly, others excel.

[CaptJodan]

For those who care I wanted to just post a brief update on this issue.

This past week I did go to his office to confront him on the issues regarding the book and the class in general. To no one's great surprise here, I was unimpressed.

In paraphrase form, he basically stated that this book is supposed to challenge our ideas of our western approaches to science and technology. That we base most of our "rules" of science and such off the Greeks and that there are, in his opinion, other ways of approaching problems/life/whatever. I can say with certainty that he's not doing this just to challenge people to defy him, he does believe this post-modernist material. He referenced an earlier assignment we had which dealt with the way a Navaho Indian would approach a broken fence and explain the situation in his language verses our own and how his language would be superior in describing it yadda yadda.

Additionally, I confronted him about the course description and it basically came out that he had to make up SOMETHING to have a brief explaination of the class for the course description, and that's what he picked (though it doesn't do a very good job, of course).

So yeah, it's not very helpful. I might have protested stronger, gone to a higher level to complain perhaps, but he managed to take the wind out of my sails before we really even got to the discussion of the class. He made it clear he wanted me in the graduate program now, and was going to help pull strings and all that to do so, and passed me to the head of the department. It wasn't what I was expecting.

Anyway, as much as I utterly despise this book and the rest of the class, it's now in my best interest to shut the fuck up. So that's what I'm going to do.

[Darth Wong]

I hate these fucking imbeciles who think that western science is but one of many possible approaches, without ever describing and logically justifying any of these competitors. If somebody's got some idea for improving the scientific method or even equalling it, then put your money where your mouth is and describe this alternate method. But noooo, they never do that. They just say that the scientific method is not omniscient, and expect that to somehow automatically justify these bullshit alternate ways of thinking.

BTW, he's completely wrong not only in his conclusions, but also his premises. The modern scientific method has pretty much nothing to do with the way the ancient Greeks performed scientific inquiry. Modern science is indebted to the ancient Greeks only insofar as they did a lot of early work in the fields of geometry, logic, and mathematics (three fields which only an idiot would contest).

[R. U. Serious]

He referenced an earlier assignment we had which dealt with the way a Navaho Indian would approach a broken fence and explain the situation in his language verses our own and how his language would be superior in describing it yadda yadda.

That sounds hilarious. Was that also in the Tech-Writing Class? Where's an undercover reporter with a miniature camera when you need him...

You think you can convince him to join this forum for... some challenging discussions...

[CaptJodan]

That sounds hilarious. Was that also in the Tech-Writing Class? Where's an undercover reporter with a miniature camera when you need him...

You think you can convince him to join this forum for... some challenging discussions...

As I said, I'm not going to poke the bear with a hand that feeds me. It's not at all worth that to me. But if you simply can't help yourself, here is the first assignment we had that he was referring to.

Please read the following passage carefully.

Imagine two forest rangers , one a white speaker of Standard English and the other an Indian speaker of Navaho, riding together on inspection in Arizona. They notice a broken wire fence. When they return to their station, the English-speaking ranger reports "A fence is broken". He is satisfied that he has perceived the situation well and has reported it conscientiously. The Navaho, though, would consider such a report vague and perhaps even meaningless. His report of the same experience would be much different in Navaho--simply because his language demands it of him.

First of all, a Navaho speaker must clarify whether the “fence” is animate or inanimate; after all, the “fence” might refer to the slang for a receiver of stolen goods or to a fence lizard. The verb the Navaho speaker selects from several alternatives will indicate that the fence was long, thin, and constructed of many strands, thereby presumably wire (the English-speaking ranger’s report failed to mention whether the fence was wood, wire, or chain link.). The Navaho language then demands that a speaker report with precision upon the act of breaking; the Indian ranger must choose between two different verbs that tell whether the fence was broken by a human act or by some nonhuman agency such as a windstorm. Finally, the verb must indicate the present status of the fence, whether it is stationary or is, perhaps, being whipped by the wind. The Navaho’s report would translate something like this: “A fence (which belongs to a particular category of inanimate objects, constructed of long and thin material composed of many strands) is (moved to a position, after which it is now at rest) broken (by nonhumans, in a certain way).”

The Navaho’s report takes about as long to utter as the English-speaking ranger’s, but it makes numerous distinctions that it never occurred to the white ranger to make, simply because the English language does not oblige him to make them.

--from Pete Farb’s Word Play, 195-6
After you have read this passage from Peter Farb, go to the Discussion and post some of your ideas about the following questions.

How do we use language in the act of understanding and describing the world? Can the languages we learn to speak with and think in limit our understanding of the world. Enhance it? If one language has several specific verbs to describe how a fence can be broken and another language does not have any specific verbs for this same task, how does this fact illustrate the way different languages might affect our thinking about the world we inhabit?

Are all things that we know a function of different languages or discourses? If your answer is something like "The Navajo language is a better language because there are more words," this is not what I am looking for. Please do not write this as it will mean that you have missed the basic concept of this exercise. What I am asking you to do is to describe how people from one culture might actually see an object (such as a fence) and know or conceptualize it in a different way than people from another culture because of the array of words they have learned from their language. If you do this, you will have a better understanding of what I am asking you to do in this assignment. Additionally, what we do in this exercise will inform the way I will be asking you to read the three books that make up the course. I cannot stress how important this exercise is.

[Il Saggiatore]

BTW, he's completely wrong not only in his conclusions, but also his premises. The modern scientific method has pretty much nothing to do with the way the ancient Greeks performed scientific inquiry. Modern science is indebted to the ancient Greeks only insofar as they did a lot of early work in the fields of geometry, logic, and mathematics (three fields which only an idiot would contest).

Actually, the book The Forgotten Revolution tries to argue that Hellenistic science had all the characteristics of modern science, beyond geometry, logic and mathematics. In particular, the author claims that Hellenistic science allowed to design technical systems (an example would be the Antikythera mechanism).

I read the first edition several years ago, and I was not that impressed. I do not know whether newer editions have improved his arguments.

[sketerpot]

That Navajo with a Broken Fence assignment sounds like just an example to introduce you to the Sapir-Worf Hypothesis, which is pretty interesting. Google it, and you might get some less braindead examples.

[Darth Wong]

Actually, the book The Forgotten Revolution tries to argue that Hellenistic science had all the characteristics of modern science, beyond geometry, logic and mathematics. In particular, the author claims that Hellenistic science allowed to design technical systems (an example would be the Antikythera mechanism).

I read the first edition several years ago, and I was not that impressed. I do not know whether newer editions have improved his arguments.

Does he indicate at any point that he even understands the falsification principle behind the philosophy of modern science? One of the things I've found common among people who try to equate science to alternate forms of inquiry is that they don't really understand how science works.

[Jaepheth]

At my university, 'Technical Writing' is a course where they go over how to write memos, user manuals, resumes, reports, etc.

you know... writing that's useful in a technical field.

But I guess we're just crazy like that.

[Il Saggiatore]

Does he indicate at any point that he even understands the falsification principle behind the philosophy of modern science? One of the things I've found common among people who try to equate science to alternate forms of inquiry is that they don't really understand how science works.

This is an old translation of the first chapter (PDF).

He starts with a definition of science by pointing out a few properties scientific theories have in common:

To arrive at our (provisional) definition of “science”, let us begin by noting that certain theories considered scientific by everyone, like thermodynamics, Euclidean geometry, or probability theory, share the following essential characteristics:
1. Their “scientific” affirmations are not about concrete objects, but rather about specifically theoretical entities.
Euclidean geometry, for example, is able to make affirmations about angles or line segments, and thermodynamics about the temperature or entropy of a system, but there do not exist in nature angles”, “line segments”, “temperature”, or “entropy”.
2. The theory has a rigorously deductive structure; it is constituted, thatis, out of a few fundamental pronouncements (“axioms”, “postulates”, or “principles”) about the characteristics of its entities, and by a unitary and universally accepted method for deducing from these an unlimited number of consequences.
In other words, the theory furnishes general methods for solving an indeterminate number of problems. Such problems, describable within the scope of the theory, are really “exercises”: problems, that is, about which there is general agreement among the experts on the methods which can be used both to solve them and to check the correctness of the solutions. The fundamental
methods are calculation and proof. The “truth” of “scientific” affirmations is in this sense guaranteed.
3. Applications to the real world are based on “rules of correspondence” between the entities of the theory and concrete objects.
The “rules of correspondence”, in contrast to the affirmations within the theory, come with no absolute guarantee. The fundamental method for checking the rules of correspondence, that is, the applicability of the theory, is the experimental method. The domain of applicability of the rules of correspondence is always limited, however.

He extends the term "scientific theories" to theories that have no rules of correspondence, yet (probably string theory would fit into this extended definition).

The great utility of “exact science” consists in furnishing models of reality within which there exists a guaranteed method for distinguishing false affirmations from true ones. While the philosophy of nature failed in its objective to produce absolutely true pronouncements about the world, science succeeds in guaranteeing the “truth” of its own affirmations, at the expense however of limiting its scope to models. Of course such models permit one to describe and predict natural phenomena, transferring them to the theoretical level by the rules of correspondence, solving the “exercises” thus obtained, and transferring the solutions back to the real world. There is even another possibility, most interesting: that of moving freely within the theory, arriving at points where the rules of correspondence associate no concrete thing. At that point, having the theoretical model for it, one can often construct the corresponding reality, modifying the existing world. Thus “scientific theories”, even if they originate as descriptions of natural phenomena, because they possess this possibility of self-extension by demonstrative methods, usually become models of sectors of technological activity.

The bolded part points to the idea that scientific theories allow to make predictions, that can be experimentally tested.

The author emphasizes the idea that a (correct) scientific theory brings engineering, that is, the possibility to design and build systems that do things that were not observed before and yet work as expected from the theory.
As far as I remember, this is an important point because he wants to prove that the Hellenistic technology has been essentially forgotten or underrated. And that this technology shows that Hellenistic science was much closer to modern science than we usually think.

At the moment I cannot remember how well he could support his claim that technology and science was much more developed in Hellenism than thought, but his definition of scientific theory is not too far off, although it is narrow.

[Darth Wong]

Ahh, so he's a Greece wanker. I should have known; Greece-wankers are a dime a dozen in some circles. To listen to your average Greece wanker is to believe that Greece was Numenor to our Gondor.

[Patrick Degan]

While there may have been some thinkers in Hellenestic civilisation who touched upon the genuine scientific method, the fact that Aristotle's view won out and that whatever inventions their culture may have produced were never developed beyond mere curiosities or toys destroys any argument that the Greeks were anywhere near our level of understanding regarding what science truly is.

[CaptJodan]

At my university, 'Technical Writing' is a course where they go over how to write memos, user manuals, resumes, reports, etc.

you know... writing that's useful in a technical field.

But I guess we're just crazy like that.

To be fair, you know, there are other classes besides this one bullshit class. The "Tech Writing 101" deals with this and I'm pretty sure the rest of the courses do as well. I can't tell you why this is required or what kind of value this really has...it doesn't have any. But I'm pretty certain this isn't the norm.

[Il Saggiatore]

Ahh, so he's a Greece wanker. I should have known; Greece-wankers are a dime a dozen in some circles. To listen to your average Greece wanker is to believe that Greece was Numenor to our Gondor.

That is more or less the impression I got from the book.

While there may have been some thinkers in Hellenestic civilisation who touched upon the genuine scientific method, the fact that Aristotle's view won out and that whatever inventions their culture may have produced were never developed beyond mere curiosities or toys destroys any argument that the Greeks were anywhere near our level of understanding regarding what science truly is.

One of the points the author of the book tries to make, is that our scientific revolution could go the same way as the hellenistic scientific revolution and be forgotten. Of course, there is at least a huge difference in scale between our technological development and the Hellenistic. And Hellenistic science was not studied in every corner of the Earth as modern science is.

[drachefly]

That 'fence' example was crap. It's not that the Navajo is better because he's Navajo, it's that he does a better job because the ranger chose to give a crappy report.

[Darth Wong]

That 'fence' example was crap. It's not that the Navajo is better because he's Navajo, it's that he does a better job because the ranger chose to give a crappy report.

Maybe that author should stop using computers designed with western science and its rigid inflexible close-minded ideology, and instead try to develop a computer based on Navajo science. Its central processing unit could be the Great Wolf Spirit. Its memory could be the wind and the water.

[brianeyci]

If there's any kids out there, let this be a warning to you all not to take a humanities degree, or at least bolster your humanities with something solid. Something Simplicus said awhile back really resonated with me, that is if you really want to learn literature or history, it's better checking books out on your own for a whole year and reading on your spare time than taking an English specialist. The ripshod way they teach it in university, combined with literary analysis which amounts to essay writing that doesn't give you any skill other than writing an essay is really a waste of money and time.

Thank god I didn't go for pure humanities or I'd have blown four years of my life on something completely useless. If you do go for humanities don't take it because it's easy and you can write a B- paper overnight. Take it because you've been a history/literature buff your whole life and you love being cooped up in the library reading, and if you want to get anywhere with it you're going to have to go Ph.D. level since Masters is apparently worthless in humanities... a Masters in English as a Second language was working at my call center as a manager. Also take it if your parents are rich since you can't expect anything other than Mike's picture of the best place in the world to work evidenced above.

[CaptJodan]

That 'fence' example was crap. It's not that the Navajo is better because he's Navajo, it's that he does a better job because the ranger chose to give a crappy report.

The basis for the assignment is to see that the Navajo has a language that can express concepts in a shorter amount of words in greater detail, thus (I'm guessing here) making it superior. Roughly the same length of sentence, according to the article, but with far more detail.

The professor would thus claim that the Navajo intrinsicly picks up on more detail on this particular scene because his language demands that such details be observed when making even a basic report such as this. An English version would be far longer with more words.

[Darth Wong]

The basis for the assignment is to see that the Navajo has a language that can express concepts in a shorter amount of words in greater detail, thus (I'm guessing here) making it superior. Roughly the same length of sentence, according to the article, but with far more detail.

The professor would thus claim that the Navajo intrinsicly picks up on more detail on this particular scene because his language demands that such details be observed when making even a basic report such as this. An English version would be far longer with more words.

How would the Navajo express "the indefinite integral of a polynomial function?"

[CaptJodan]

How would the Navajo express "the indefinite integral of a polynomial function?"

Beats the hell out of me. In my version of the assignment, I made the point that the Navajo language would likely not be as adapt at describing more modern phenomenon (let alone deeper math and science problems) such as computers, disks, planes, etc.

I didn't get a response, of course. But considering that ZAMM continues this by questioning science and logic itself, he would likely not take that answer as being good enough. After all, IF the Navajo were adept at math, science, etc, they may find a way of expressing it in a simplier and more well defined way (this isn't my argument, just his).

When in his office I attempted to explain as best I could that we live in the modern, western scientific world and that the issues in ZAMM were likely not going to assist us when we come up to our boss and say "Screw the scientific method, it doesn't have Quality (you'd have to have read the book)." You don't do that because as tech writers we're supposed to be writing things in our language that we can properly understand. Like it or not, western science is the way this society operates and Average Joe doesn't want to hear a philosophical way to take apart your computer. Basically the answer was "But it allows you to think in other terms and find solutions that you might not otherwise find through science. It's a different way of solving problems."

I have yet to solve a single problem with this new outlook. How do you solve any problem with terms the author refuses to even define? (ie Quality) ((By all means, people who have read this, what's the answer?))

[brianeyci]

An English version would be far longer with more words.

Wrong. English, when properly used, is a very concise language. I don't know how to say things in Navajo, but ever since 1918 and long before then the standard had been set. Obviously the English Professor has to brush up on his Strunk.

[CaptJodan]

Wrong. English, when properly used, is a very concise language. I don't know how to say things in Navajo, but ever since 1918 and long before then the standard had been set. Obviously the English Professor has to brush up on his Strunk.

He would reiterate his argument above thusly.

“A fence (which belongs to a particular category of inanimate objects, constructed of long and thin material composed of many strands) is (moved to a position, after which it is now at rest) broken (by nonhumans, in a certain way).”

Or, "A fence (single word that covers all criteria in the parenthesis) is (single word that covers all criteria in the parenthesis) broken (single word that covers all criteria in the parenthesis). Seven total words.
Now create an English sentence that can cover all of what that sentence says in Navajo in English using only 7 words.

This is just how he would respond to try and prove the point.