Chapter 21 Chapter Eighteen

Why do so many people find science difficult to learn and teach?I try to suggest several reasons—its precision, its unintuitive and disturbing appearance, its prospect of being misused, its authority-independent quality, and so on.But is there a deeper reason?Alan Krummer is a professor of physics at Northeastern University in Boston.In the classroom, he was amazed to find that so many students could not grasp the most basic concepts.In Unusual Ideas: The Heresy of Science (1993), Krummer argues that science is difficult because it constantly innovates.He writes: We, a species hundreds of thousands of years old, discovered the scientific method only a few hundred years ago.Writing, for example, is only a few thousand years old, and we have yet to get the hang of it—or at least not because of very serious and active research.

He argues that if coincidences of historical events are ruled out, we may never discover science: The fact that we remain hostile to science in the face of its many obvious achievements and benefits ... just proves that it is a thing outside the mainstream of human development, perhaps just an accident and a fluke. The Chinese civilization invented movable type printing, gunpowder, rockets, the compass, and the seismograph, and also systematically observed space and recorded it in the annals of history.Indian mathematicians invented zero, which enabled the smooth development of arithmetic and thus promoted the progress of the science of quantity.The Aztec civilization established a calendar more advanced than European civilization. They could predict the position of the planet more accurately for a long time, but they themselves were submerged and destroyed by European civilization.But none of these civilizations, Krummer said, built science that was skeptical, questioning, and experimental.All this comes from ancient Greece: the development of objective thinking among the Greeks required some specific cultural factors, first of all parliamentarianism.There, first, man learns to persuade others through reasoned debate; second, a maritime economy that prevents isolation and parochialism; third, the presence of a vast Greek-speaking world around him, where travelers and scholars can roam; The fourth is the existence of an independent merchant class, who can hire their own teachers; the fifth is the "Iliad" and "Odyssey", literary masterpieces are themselves the epitome of free rational thinking; the sixth is that religious literature is not controlled by priests. hands; the seventh is to persist these factors for 1000 years.It's very lucky that all of these factors combined to make a great civilization; it didn't happen a second time.

I agree with some of the arguments.The ancient Ionians, as far as we know, were the first to formulate that it was the laws and forces of nature, not gods, that determined the order and even the existence of the world.As Lucretius sums up their point of view: "Nature born free from her haughty master, it may be thought that all things arose spontaneously, without divine intervention." However, except in the first week Outside of an introductory philosophy class, the names and views of the early Ionians are almost never mentioned in our society.Those who do not believe in God seem to be easily forgotten.We are not eager to preserve the memory of these skeptics, let alone their ideas.Heroes who tried to explain the world in terms of matter and energy appeared many times in many cultures, only to be wiped from history by priests and philosophers who monopolized conventional wisdom - after the time of Plato and Aristotle The Nian perspective has been almost completely lost.Many cultures have tried this many times, but only rarely have the idea taken root.

Only 10,000 or 12,000 years ago, plants and animals were grown, domesticated, and civilization began.The Ionian attempt was 2,500 years ago, and it was almost completely erased.We can see traces, albeit faltering, incomplete, and seldom fruitful, to science in ancient China, India, and elsewhere.But if the Ionians never existed, and Greek science and mathematics never flourished, is it possible that science would never have occurred in human history again?Or, given many cultures and many other historical processes, somewhere, sooner or later—say, on the islands of Indonesia, or in the Caribbean on the fringes of Mesoamerican civilization undisturbed by conquerors, or on the shores of the Black Sea Norwegian colony—wouldn't it have been the right confluence of factors to bring science to the fore?

In my view, the main obstacle to scientific thinking is not the difficulty of the problems themselves, but the reliance of even repressed cultures on complex intellectual outcomes.Shamans, warlocks and theologians are also highly skilled in their intricate and mystical craft.No, the hindrance comes from political or priestly rule.In cultures that lack new challenges, whether external or internal, there is no need for radical change and thus no need to encourage novel ideas.In fact, heresy can be declared dangerous under such circumstances; ideas can become rigid; sanctions for impermissible ideas can be intensified—all without much harm.However, under a variety of changing environmental, ecological or political conditions, simply copying the same old ways no longer works.Those, then, who do not follow tradition blindly, nor try to impose their likes and dislikes on everything in nature or society, but are willing to accept what the universe has taught them, will be rewarded.Every society must decide where, on the continuum of openness and rigidity, points of safety exist.

Greek mathematics took a glorious step forward, while Greek science, on the other hand - whose first developments were naive and generally ignorant of experimentation - was riddled with errors.They believe that vision depends on a wave that emanates from our eyes like radar and bounces off the objects we see, ignoring the fact that we can't see at night. (They made important advances in optics, however.) Regardless of the obvious resemblance of the child to the mother, they believed that hereditary traits were carried only by sperm, and that women were merely passive repositories.They believed that a rock thrown horizontally would acquire some kind of buoyancy and thus stay in the air longer than a rock dropped vertically from the same height at the same time.A fascination with simple geometric shapes led them to consider the circle to be "perfect"; disregarding "men of the moon" (dark shadows in the moon) and sunspots (occasionally visible to the naked eye when the sun was setting), they insisted that the sky was too "Perfect"; therefore, planetary orbits must be circular.

Simply getting rid of superstitions is not enough for science to grow.One must also think of asking nature questions and verifying them experimentally.There are some excellent examples of this - such as Eratosthenes' measurements of the Earth's diameter, or Empedocles' clepsydra experiment illustrating the materiality of air.But in a society, such as the traditional Greco-Roman world, where manual labor was considered inferior and fit only for slaves, experimental methods would not have thrived.Science requires us to be rid of both serious superstitions and serious prejudices, which are often imposed by church and secular regimes in hand in hand.Not surprisingly, political revolutions, religious skepticism, and the rise of science would all go hand in hand.Freedom from superstition is a necessary but not sufficient condition of science.

At the same time, it is undeniable that the transition from medieval superstition to modern science seems to have been deeply influenced by one of the most important concepts, that is, a supreme God who created the universe not only created the precepts on which people live but also Established laws that nature itself must obey. The 17th-century German astronomer Johannes Kepler—without whom Newtonian physics might not have existed—described his pursuit of science as a desire to understand the idea of ​​God.In our time, leading scientists, including Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, have described their pursuits in similar terms.The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead and Joseph Needham, an expert on the history of Chinese technology, have also argued that what is lacking in the development of science in non-Western cultures is monotheism.

However, I think, in these 1000 years, a powerful counter-evidence to this thesis is crying out to us. Hunting parties follow hoof prints and other tracks.They paused for a moment beside a grove of trees.They knelt down to examine the tracks carefully.The trail they had been following was crossed by another.Soon, they unified their opinions and determined what kind of animal it was, how many there were, its age and sex, whether it was injured, how fast it ran, how long it had been running, and whether other hunters were also following it. Can it catch up with the prey, and if so, how long will it take.With their decision made, they flicked the trail they were about to follow, with a slight sound like the wind between their teeth, and loped at a jog.Despite bows and poisoned arrows, they continued the marathon tournament that had begun for hours.They almost always read the message accurately on the ground.The buffalo or the antelope or the okapi (the giraffe-like animals) were where they thought, in numbers and in exactly the same condition as they had reckoned.The hunt was successful.The prey were brought back to the makeshift camp.Everyone had a good meal.

This somewhat typical hunting passage is a description of the Kunsang people, who inhabit the Kalahari Desert in Botswana and the Republic of Namibia.Unfortunately, they are on the verge of extinction.But for decades, anthropologists have studied them and their way of life.The Kunsang people lived a typical hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and we humans may have spent most of our time in this way-until 10,000 years ago, plants and animals were planted and domesticated, and the human condition occurred Change, maybe forever.Because of their legendary prowess, they were recruited by the apartheid South African Army to scout people during South Africa's war with the "front-line states."Various forms of contact with the Afrikaner army hastened the destruction of the Kunsang way of life—indeed, a way of life that was dying out bit by bit with every contact with European civilization over the centuries.

how do they do itHow are they able to tell so much from just a glance?It's not enough to say they watched carefully.What do they actually do?According to anthropologist Richard Lee: They carefully examine the shape of the dimples.A track left by a fast-moving animal shows an elongated symmetry; Only heavier animals leave larger and deeper cavities.The relevant formulas are in the hunter's mind. Over the course of the day, the footprints will erode away a little.The walls of its pit gradually collapse.Sand blown up by the wind will accumulate inside the cavity.Maybe a little blade, twig, or blade of grass gets blown in.The longer the time, the greater the erosion. Planetary astronomers use much the same approach when analyzing craters created by meteorite impacts: The shallower the crater, the older it is.A crater with a worn-out rim, a small depth-to-diameter ratio, and an accumulation of fine sand inside is older—since erosion must have taken a long enough time to achieve this effect. Different regions, different deserts, or different ages have different sources of erosion.But if you know what they are, you can tell a lot about how fresh or obscure a crater is.If traces of insects or other animals are superimposed on top of the corridor, this will indicate that the footprint is not very new.The moisture of the soil below the surface and the rate at which it dries after it has been trampled on determine the degree to which the walls of the pit disintegrate.All these factors have been carefully studied by the Kunsang people. Flying herds do not like the hot sun.Animals will use whatever shade they can find, and they will change course to take advantage of the shade of a grove.But the location of the shade is determined by the time of day as the sun moves across the sky.In the morning, the sun rises in the east and the shadows are just west of the woods.In the afternoon, as the sun moves west, shadows are cast to the east.By changing the direction of the turn of the track, it is possible to tell how long ago the animal passed.This calculation is different in different seasons of the year.Therefore, the trotter must have an astronomical calendar in his mind to predict the movement of the sun. To me, all of these intimidating forensic stalking techniques are science at work. Hunter-gatherers are not only experts at studying the tracks of other animals, but also of people.Everyone in a group is identifiable by his or her footprints; each other is as familiar as their faces.Lawrence von Pastor described it this way: Miles from home and separated from the others, Nguesso and I, on the trail of a wounded stag, suddenly found another set of marks converging with ours.He grunted with satisfaction and said that it was Boxhower's footprint a few minutes before.He decided that Boxhower was running fast, and that we would see him and the animal soon.We climbed up the dunes ahead and there was Boxhall, skinning the animals. Richard Lee also recounts a Kunsang story where the Pigman, after briefly checking some traces, said, "Oh, look, Tunu and his brother-in-law are here. But where's his son?" Is this really science?During training sessions, does each tracker spend hours crouching on the ground, watching the slow erosion of the antelope's footprints?Anthropologists ask this question, and the answer is that hunters have always used this method: They watched their fathers and experienced hunters as apprentices, and they learned by imitation.Universal principles are passed down from generation to generation.Local variables—wind speed, soil moisture—are renewed as needed each generation, day by day, season by season. And modern scientists are doing exactly the same thing.Every time we try to determine the age of craters on the Moon, Mercury, Neptune's moons by their erosion, we don't start from scratch.We dust off a scientific paper and read tried-and-true values ​​that were established perhaps a generation ago.Physicists don't derive Maxwell's equations or quantum mechanics from scratch, they understand its mathematics and principles, and observe its utility.They notice how nature obeys these laws, and they take the results of science to heart and make them their own. Yet someone had to first determine the principle of tracing, perhaps some Paleolithic genius, or more likely many geniuses in generations and generations widely separated from each other.There is no trace of witchcraft in Kunsang's tracing principles--examining the stars of the night or the entrails of animals beforehand, rolling dice or interpreting dreams, or chanting incantations to summon ghosts, or whatever else human beings have occasionally tried. tricks, but only specific, definable questions: In which direction did the prey go, and what were its characteristics?You need an exact answer that witchcraft and divination alone can't give—or at least not often enough to keep someone from starvation.In contrast, pig pickers—who are not very superstitious in their daily lives, save for a haunted dance around a fire or under the influence of soft euphorics—are down-to-earth, hard-working, purposeful, and social. Live, and often be happy.The techniques they use are derived from distinguishing the truth from past successes and failures. Scientific thinking has been with us almost from the beginning.You can even see this in gorillas patrolling territory boundaries or preparing reed poles to insert into termite nests for a small but essential source of protein.The development of tracking skills has brought about a strong evolutionary selection advantage, and those groups that cannot figure this out get less protein and leave fewer offspring.Organisms that are scientifically inclined, those that observe carefully, those that love to solve problems, get more food, especially more protein, and live in a greater variety of habitats; they and their Genetic traits will prosper.The same is true for people, for example, Polynesian sailing skills.This scientific inclination has paid off substantially. The other primary method of obtaining food prior to farming was gathering.To gather food, you must know the properties of many plants, and you must be able to clearly distinguish one plant from another.Botanists and anthropologists have often found that hunter-gatherer races around the world can identify various plant species with the accuracy of Western taxonomists.With the skill of a cartographer they draw a mental map of their territory.All of these are prerequisites for survival. It has been argued that, just as children are immature to accept certain concepts of mathematics and logic, so primitive man is intellectually incapable of mastering science and technology.This view is extremely absurd.The day-to-day activities of the homeless and penniless surviving hunter-gatherers—living specimens of our distant past—prove wrong the remnants of colonialism and racism. By the criteria of Krummer's "objective thinking", we can certainly find positive and sufficient arguments from hunter-gatherers, direct participatory democracy, extensive travel, no monks, and persisting these factors for not 1000 years Rather, 300,000 years or more.By Krummer's standards, hunter-gatherers should have science.I think they are, or have been. What Ionia and ancient Greece offered were not many inventions, technologies, or projects, but a method of systematic investigation and an idea that the laws of nature, not capricious gods, ruled the world.Water, air, earth, and fire are alternated as candidate "explanations" for the nature and origin of this world.Each of these interpretations - identified by various philosophers before Socrates - is deeply flawed in detail.But this mode of interpretation, as a substitute for divine intervention, is fruitful and novel.Similarly, in the history of ancient Greece, we can see that almost all major events brought about by capricious gods are recorded in "Homer", only a few events are recorded in "Herodotus", And in "Susydides" it's not at all.In a few hundred years, history shifted from being driven by gods to being driven by men. Similar laws of nature have been found in firmly polytheistic societies.Some scholars in this society are enthusiastic about atheism.These pre-Socratic studies, beginning about the 4th century BC, were extinguished by Plato, Aristotle, and then Christian theologians.If the contingencies of history were any different—if the atomists' great conjectures about the nature of matter, the multiplicity of the world, the immensity of time and space could be cherished as the basis for scientific development, if Archimedes' technological innovations were Teach and imitate, if the idea that human beings must seek and understand the immutable laws of nature was widely propagated - I think the world would be different today. I don't think science is hard to teach because people are unprepared for it, or because it happens by fluke, or because our brains aren't big enough to master it in general.On the contrary, what I have seen of the enormous passion for science among first-year students and the evidence from surviving hunter-gatherer tribes speaks eloquently to the fact that scientific tendencies are deeply embedded in us, at any time, any place, or in any culture.It has become our means of survival.It is our birthright.When we disenfranchise children in science through indifference, carelessness, powerlessness, or fear of skepticism, we disempower them and take away the tools they will use to manage their future.