I am reading an interesting book called The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science, by Natalie Angier. What I am writing about now is an interesting way to teach scientific thinking to children – the example was given in the book. Do you remember the game called “Mastermind?” Where one person arranges colored pegs and the other person attempts to guess the arrangement? Well check out this excerpt:
“Mastermind…is a microcosm for how science works…Science is not a body of facts. Science is a state of mind. It is a way of viewing the world, of facing reality square on but taking nothing in its face. It is about attacking a problem with the most manicured of claws and tearing it down into sensible, edible pieces.”
“If science is not a static body of facts, what is it? What does it mean to think scientifically, to take a scientific whack at a problem?...If you’re trying to pose a question in a way that gets you data you can interpret, you want to isolate a single variable, and then you see what happens when you change that variable alone, while doing your best to keep everything else in the experiment unchanged. In Mastermind, you change a single peg and watch the impact of that deviation on your experiment.” (p. 20-21)
While the reference is to quantitative research (experimental method), this game has broader implications. Consider, for example, how many times scientists “fail” before finding a solution? How many independent observations over time are needed to reveal historical processes as they unfold? In Kmt (Ancient Egypt) scientists collected and documented data over time – analyses and conclusions drawn from the data permitted scientists and decision-makers to make predictions about when the Nile could be expected to flood, for example. Examples abound.
The point is that science is a state of mind…a way of looking at the world and drawing conclusions based on those observations. It is seeing reality in motion and attempting to understand that reality and explain it; not make it up or improvise. In addition, the science textbooks we use only go so far in what they can offer learners. The development of a truly scientific mind requires active participation in the collection and analysis of data and drawing conclusions based upon those observations.
“Mastermind…is a microcosm for how science works…Science is not a body of facts. Science is a state of mind. It is a way of viewing the world, of facing reality square on but taking nothing in its face. It is about attacking a problem with the most manicured of claws and tearing it down into sensible, edible pieces.”
“If science is not a static body of facts, what is it? What does it mean to think scientifically, to take a scientific whack at a problem?...If you’re trying to pose a question in a way that gets you data you can interpret, you want to isolate a single variable, and then you see what happens when you change that variable alone, while doing your best to keep everything else in the experiment unchanged. In Mastermind, you change a single peg and watch the impact of that deviation on your experiment.” (p. 20-21)
While the reference is to quantitative research (experimental method), this game has broader implications. Consider, for example, how many times scientists “fail” before finding a solution? How many independent observations over time are needed to reveal historical processes as they unfold? In Kmt (Ancient Egypt) scientists collected and documented data over time – analyses and conclusions drawn from the data permitted scientists and decision-makers to make predictions about when the Nile could be expected to flood, for example. Examples abound.
The point is that science is a state of mind…a way of looking at the world and drawing conclusions based on those observations. It is seeing reality in motion and attempting to understand that reality and explain it; not make it up or improvise. In addition, the science textbooks we use only go so far in what they can offer learners. The development of a truly scientific mind requires active participation in the collection and analysis of data and drawing conclusions based upon those observations.
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