We open the year talking about what science means, then roll into the definition of life.
This is my third year, which means I'm up for tenure, so advertising this might not be in my best interests, but I am not sure what the words "science" or "life" mean.
High school texts will list 6 or 7 characteristics of anything alive:
- composed of one or more cells (highly organized)
- can reproduce
- change over time (evolve)
- respond to stimuli (boo!)
- maintain homeostasis (well, try to anyway--we all die eventually)
- need energy/metabolism (gobble gobble)
- growth and development
Tells you a thing about high school texts.
Using that kind of thinking, though, millions of Americans are not alive since they are infertile.
I think most people would consider sperm or eggs alive, though each without the other cannot reproduce either.
I'm sure it unnerves a few kids to start the year unclear what even constitutes life, but a big part of science is recognizing its limits.
***
If you accept that sperm and eggs are alive, then life does not start at conception. It just is.
If you accept the cell theory, then life, for whatever reason, started happening, and all life since then goes back to some primordial event leading to the first cell.
(Seems to me if the conditions were right for life to start at some arbitrary "here", then little reason to suppose it didn't start at some arbitrary "there" as well.)
These kinds of discussion in the classroom can be dangerous to one's teaching career, but if you're truly interested in defining life, sooner or later a wise child is going to ask the impertinent question.
Until a wise child does, I do not know how I will answer it. I hope I do not just punt.
***
Last year I spent a few moments in class discussing alive, dead, and non-living (in the sense of never alive). I facetiously argued that something is alive if it can eventually be dead, but it was 1st period (which starts at 7:45 AM), and tangents like this are (relatively) safe when most of the adolescent world is still fighting off the delta waves of sleep.
I could have brought it up in 4th period, but my frontal lobe kicked in, and I like my job. So I didn't.
This year I will.
***
Fire has a lot of characteristics of life. It doesn't have cells, true, and development is arguable, but I had fun when I asked the class to convince me fire is not alive.
The danger in these kinds of discussions is that someone goes home and complains that their idiot science teacher thinks fire is alive. (I like to play with fire.)
Still, any discussion at home about science that presents the discipline as something more than a recitation of facts makes me smile.
We use the Holt, Rinehart, and Winston text Modern Biology in CP science here in Bloomfield. It's nice and thick with lovely pictures, and it's not bad.
On page 13 (oooh, unlucky number), it talks about science as a process. In two paragraphs.
Two freakin' paragraphs.
Oh, it goes on to spend a few pages about the scientific method (and more on that in a future post), but science as process warrants just two paragraphs. About 150 words.
In those "about 150 words" it covers two major principles of faith in science. It also man
ages to throw in a Greek myth about Zeus and lightning.
The textbook is over 1100 pages long.
It spends about 2 inches of space on the faith in science.
Faith is a funny word--it can get you kilt in public education.
Kudos to Holt for at least mentioning the faith in science. The editors did not, of course, use the word "faith"--you need to sell these books in Texas, after all.
Here are the lines:
Uniformity requires faith. Not belief--if we ever find that it's not true, scientists will drop the concept like a hot potato. But it's truly unprovable.
Science is a philosophy. Even "hard" science.
Some kids will scribble in their notebooks: "Science...philosophy...faith" with no more thought than I gave the mosquito that tried to suck my blood today, before I severely reduced its chances of reproduction.
Others will text their friends, electronically rolling their eyes at a madman ranting about life.
But one or two (or maybe more) will perk up. They have in the past.
I have faith in uniformity. I know a few will perk up this September as well.
Fire has a lot of characteristics of life. It doesn't have cells, true, and development is arguable, but I had fun when I asked the class to convince me fire is not alive.
The danger in these kinds of discussions is that someone goes home and complains that their idiot science teacher thinks fire is alive. (I like to play with fire.)
Still, any discussion at home about science that presents the discipline as something more than a recitation of facts makes me smile.
***
We use the Holt, Rinehart, and Winston text Modern Biology in CP science here in Bloomfield. It's nice and thick with lovely pictures, and it's not bad.
On page 13 (oooh, unlucky number), it talks about science as a process. In two paragraphs.
Two freakin' paragraphs.
Oh, it goes on to spend a few pages about the scientific method (and more on that in a future post), but science as process warrants just two paragraphs. About 150 words.
In those "about 150 words" it covers two major principles of faith in science. It also man
ages to throw in a Greek myth about Zeus and lightning.The textbook is over 1100 pages long.
It spends about 2 inches of space on the faith in science.
Faith is a funny word--it can get you kilt in public education.
***
Kudos to Holt for at least mentioning the faith in science. The editors did not, of course, use the word "faith"--you need to sell these books in Texas, after all.
Here are the lines:
When trying to solve a puzzle from nature, all scientists...accept that there is a natural cause to solve that puzzle."Natural" is a two dollar word. Really. We need to spend time I class talking about what it means.
A second principle of science is uniformity. Uniformity is the idea that the fundamental laws of nature operate the same way at all places at all times.
Uniformity requires faith. Not belief--if we ever find that it's not true, scientists will drop the concept like a hot potato. But it's truly unprovable.
Science is a philosophy. Even "hard" science.
***
Some kids will scribble in their notebooks: "Science...philosophy...faith" with no more thought than I gave the mosquito that tried to suck my blood today, before I severely reduced its chances of reproduction.
Others will text their friends, electronically rolling their eyes at a madman ranting about life.
But one or two (or maybe more) will perk up. They have in the past.
I have faith in uniformity. I know a few will perk up this September as well.
All the pictures are from the National Archives--EXCEPT the sperm and egg (Wikipedia Commons) and the lightning (C. Clark, NOAA'S National Severe Storms Laboratory)--I'd be much obliged if some techo-savvy reader could show me how to get captions under photos without disrupting the text flow.
