Recommended Read: Why Science?

While I'm on a roll, I'd also like to recommend Why Science? by James Trefil. Trefil focuses on the current state of scientific (il-)literacy in the U.S. and makes recommendations for reforming science education.

Trefil defines scientific literacy as "the matrix of knowledge neede to understand enough about the phyusical univers to deal with issues that come across our horizon, in the news or elsewhere." (p. 28)

Many of his arguments bear an uncanny resemblance to the debates that librarians hold about information literacy. He says that scientific literacy isn't about the math (Boolean?), doing the science, or technical competencies (keystrokes?). He argues that the goal of many science professors at the college level is to turn students into miniature scientists. (p. 154)

The emphasis on advanced mathematics, laboratory exercises, and disciplinary silos works well for students majoring in the sciences, but it rarely meets the scientific literacy needs of non-science majors. Indeed, Trefil suggests that the current approach to science education is lacking even for science professionals:
"...PH.D. scientists themselves are usually scientifically illiterate in all fields except their areas of specialty." (p. 156)

What Trefil advocates instead is a general education based on the "Great Ideas" of science. (p. 176-191) He spells them out as:

• The universe is regular and predictable.
• The energy of a closed system is conserved.
• Heat will not flow spontaneously from a cold to a hot body.
• Maxwell's equations govern electricity and magnetism.
• Matter is made from atoms.
• The properties of materials depend on the identity, arrangement, and binding of the atoms of which they are made.
• In the quantum world you cannot measure an object without changing it.
• The laws of nature are the same in all frames of reference.
• There is a great deal of energy in the atomic nucleus.
• The nucleus is made of particles, which are made of quarks...
• Stars live and die like everything else.
• The universe began in a hot, dense state about 14 billion years ago and has been expanding ever since.
• The surface of the Earth is constantly changing.
• The Earth works in cycles.
• Life is based on chemistry.
• The behavior of molecules in living systems depends on their shape.
• Life's chemistry is coded in DNA.
• All living things share the same genetic code.
• Life evolved through the process of natural selection.

What may be Trefil's most contentious belief is his conviction that non-science majors shouldn't be required to take labs. He argues that the students' level of knowledge and experience, combined with the expense of equipping labs, limits experiments to the level of those performed by scientists in earlier centuries. He describes the effect as "Training for Galileo in the World of Craig Venter." (p. 161)

After reading this book, I'm tempted to buy his college textbook and go back for all the sciences I missed!