There is much truth to the current "dumbing' down of our students as having arisen from the NGSS...Next Generation Science Standards. Many states adopted these standards directly while others based their own state science standards on this core. Sadly, the NGSS is just one of the many attacks on the science content contained in the education standards that constrain what most K-12 teachers can do in the classroom.
The proponents of NGSS and their allies also had several other objectives in their "reforms". One of these was the idea that academic freedom applies only to university level instructors and NOT to K-12 teachers. In a classic, rights for me but not for thee move, the idea was to impose a strict ideological set of standards on teachers (both in science and other areas) and then prevent them from straying from the canon with threat of termination. (This is why claims about threats to academic freedom from academics are about as convincing to most people as Marie Antoinette's advice to the starving poor to eat cake!)
Other parts of the attack on the science standards were a clear effort to remove any understanding of how science works as shown by the history of science by literally removing any content related to how we got to where we are. This was done in the guise of being "inclusive" because the history of science is too Western, too white and too male and thus must be suppressed and replaced with DEI inspired drivel based in far Left ideology. It is not important that we understand how, say the great theories that led to plate tectonics, the geologic time scale and deep time came about with all their white male investigators when we should be learning about Indigenous Native Knowledge as "science" and insure that we know the names of the first women to work on an oil rig despite thousands of unnamed men having done this for years before. Indeed, the attempt to claim that "other ways of knowing" whether women's glaciology or indigenous astronomy and climate understandings muddles the unique manner by which science seeks to improve our understanding of the world by elevating the mythology and religious beliefs of "oppressed" Stone Age cultures to the equivalent if not superior state of modern science. The replacement of objective fact and reproducibility by anyone with expert knowledge that only some are born with the ability to know and speak is the antithesis of science, but is being imposed in these DEI inspired standards.
Ironically, this occurs while the religious connections to Western science are removed entirely as a violation of the separation of church and state. I have literally seen curricula that demand Dakota creation myths and their flood story be taught as science while any mention of the Judeo Christian idea of Noah's Flood, even in the context of how early geologists explained the predominance of sedimentary rocks worldwide, would result in the teacher's termination. As with all DEI, the Burning Bush is only permissible if the story comes from a person of color whose "way of knowing" must be elevated and respected.
My own studies with college general education students and pre-service teachers of the requirements of the prior 1980's era National Science Education Standards showed that most students agreed that the context and history of science is important to its understanding and should be taught. Interestingly, this work also revealed that students recognized the politicization that was occurring by attempts to restrict the teaching the history of science and selective inclusion of "other ways of knowing" in its place. NGSS and standards of its era made this far, far worse!
For this who are interested, take a look at how the history of science and science in general is treated in the National Science Education Standards which were far superior to NGSS and you will see how The Franklin Standards go along way to restoring the proper understanding of science to the curriculum....if they are adopted directly or in modified form by states of course. Academics in science have a huge role to play in getting these standards adopted and into the schools in the various states (and countries) where you live. It's time to use that academic freedom as it was intended to help science and the community, not as a personal license to say whatever one wants.
Lastly, do not despair if students seem to have less background than they did in the past. When I encounter such students outside the classroom in venues where they feel safe to talk, all the curiosity and desire to understand the world that students brought in the 90's and 2000's when I first began teaching is still there just waiting for a place where it is safe to talk about. That such discussion now must occur in off campus venues says far more about what the academic community has done to freedom of inquiry on campus than any failing of the K-12 system and its university imposed flaws.
I am happy to say that over the semester, the students feel not only safe to talk but a duty to talk in class. I think that this trust arises from three factors: 1) I present science as a search for truth where nobody has a monopoly on what is truth; 2) I present my ownbeliefs with their justifications, while at the same time I let them know 3) not to believe anything I say.
I am sure that is true in your classroom as it is in mine. Sadly, what the students tell me is that such environments are the exception rather than the rule...especially if their questions in any way suggest that the far Left narrative is even subject to review let alone refutation.
Thank you for this profoundly important essay. Unfortunately, the goal of teaching students to question assumptions, engage in open discussion, and remain comfortable with doubt often conflicts with the social and political certainty prevalent among faculty at many universities. Perhaps it is the faculty, even more than the students, who most need to read this essay.
You make great points. It is well known that the incentive structure rewards students that just parrot back the accepted conclusion. It is less well known that in the golden age of bureaucracy, the incentive system is the same for faculty.
"If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress."
It is for exactly this reason that I constantly rail against these [I'll be polite] people carrying the label of being "progressives." They're exactly the opposite--they're Luddites. All they progress toward is the world of Harrison Bergeron.
As for the 1700+ page syllabus--this is pure genius. Only someone madly and passionately in love with teaching could have written it. It lives at the same tier as Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, and Bach. And it's just as much fun to read.
It is, in fact, almost like the unforgettable lectures of the late, extraordinarily great, Jerry Lettvin of MIT. They were so good that some of the more adventurous guys even brought dates to them. No tests, no homework, everyone got an A, and nobody ever missed a class. The only penalty for missing one would have been... missing one.
Thank you for the great story about Jerry Lettvin. My brother knew him and his wife as house parents at MIT and introduced us when we saw him in a restaurant. That was great because I had based some of my work on calcium signalling on his prediction that lanthanum should mimic calcium in some ways. I retire this year, but I hope before I do, a student will bring a date to my class!
I will-especially when I teach about the chemical history of the candle. Thr room is filled with candlelight...and I play soft jazz. It is a very romantic class!
Do you ask them first what's burning in the candle? Why the wick burns so slowly? Most people don't get it, even when they're looking at it. I'd suggest to them they bring wine and maybe a bit of pate or bon-bons.
I do not ask them that first. We start with an oil lamp and talk about how the liquid oil is vaporized to create the flame. I also talk about the structure of the wick...braided instead of solid to increase the surface area and greater wicking ability..which brings us into a discussion of the Dalkon shield and how it transported bacteria into a place that they should not be. The class meets at 8 AM...I may have to suggest something better than pate!
Eggs Benedict with a sufficiency of Hollandaise? That's a pretty sybaritic dish. Or perhaps just small pizzas.
Or--and this is a major offer--I'll give you my recipe for bread pudding. Born and raised in New Orleans, I got--and optimized--recipes from various famous restaurants. And that's one of the biggies. If cooking for a date is seductive, the bread pudding is a lot like the Dark Side of the Force. You definitely want to be careful who you serve it to.
You’re familiar with what has come to be called The Great Debate between JL. And Timothy Leary, right? It’s on youtube. We were in about the 4th or 5th row. It was a hit-it-out-of-the-park performance.
Leary was like a moth flitting around from topic to topic. Jerry was like a cannon waiting to be fired. He was a looming presence on the stage until he took his turn at rebutting TL's points. It almost looked like ACME v coyote. With Leary playing the coyote and Lettvin playing the ACME cannon he ordered.
I can't speak for others, but the debate certainly changed my mind about turning on, tuning in, and dropping out. Didn't seem like such a good idea after ward. And, of course, there was an acute attack of hero worship that never went away.
The man was a colossus. He was captivating. I still remember a fair number of his lectures--if you want to call them that. They were more like musings, recollections, etc. He derived the subject matter from axioms that everyone uses unconsciously, then lead the class on the journey based on them. Always different, always fascinating. Always mind-altering, and with no chemicals.
He operated in the Jacob Bronowski mold--being brilliant, but showing how much fun it is to be brilliant. Most approach that level with some trepidation of being marginalized, having girls run away, etc. Spend some time with people like that and you find out that being smart really is a ~lot~ of fun, and the really pretty girls are drawn to you like moths to flames.
(If I were being exceptionally helpful to the (male) students, I'd also let them know about the aphrodisiacal effect of cooking for your date. What year class is this? Are th ey substantially underage? ;-) )
Your descriptions are beautiful. Tell me about you.
The class was created for freshmen, but mostly seniors take it. I actually had one married couple in class that really contributed to the depth of the conversation.
Thanks, Randy. I'm a mostly retired neurointerventional surgeon. At this point, having retired from academic medicine in '11, I don't do surgery any more, but I do take care of family and friends--and unsurprisingly, their friends--as a concierge. I don't charge them for it, and though I'm still licensed, I don't carry med mal insurance. Hopefully they won't sue me.
The journey that got me where I am is kinda interesting, and reflects back to the denouement of Vonnegut's novel, The Sirens Of Titan: "I was the victim of a series of accidents. As are we all." Initially I was going to be a chemist, and I was quite excellent at most of it. Got accepted by Yale grad school and Tulane Med school. You may or may not be old enough to remember Lewis Hershey czar of the "Selective Service System," aka the draft board. We were having a nasty little disagreement down in southeast Asia back then (late '60s to early '70s), and I didn't want to go. In my junior year, they abolished automatic deferments for graduate students, but kept the policy for medical students. So I went back home for med school..
I was going to be a psychiatrist until about day 2 of my neurology and psychiatry rotation, at which time I realized that whatever else I was going to be, that sure wasn't it. Everyone told me to go into radiology--solve puzzles all day, get paid a lot, work short hours, have a good life. Seemed ideal for me. But it also entailed spending another year specializing in something. Neuroradiology was fascinating to me, so I went into that. And along came a guy who was blazing a trail in what is now called neurointerventional surgery. Got dragged--kicking and screaming--into that. And loved it.
So now I'm really screwed: I had wanted limited patient contact, but if you're treating patients rather than just diagnosing them, not a little interaction is required. Which I found I loved and actually had some talent with. And doing the surgery itself gave me insight into what addiction must be like. Couldn't get enough of it. Have to do it inside of universities since it's a brand new specialty being made from whole cloth--where else are you going to get referrals? So much for free time. So much for all the private practice riches. I loved it.
Eventually started a company back in '96 to make some devices I invented for treating intracranial aneurysms. That took off, IPO in '06, and J&J bought us in 2010 for just under $500MM. I only had a small slice of t hat pie left of my founder's shares, but it was a seriously big pie, hence my very comfortable retirement.
Along the way I've had a zillion colorful, fascinating (to me) experiences, branched out hobbies all over the place. and am trying to start a new company--at age 79--to obsolete the technology of the first one. Other than that, just a kind of stick in the mud...
I did not know about this debate. I will look it up. I saw Timothy Leary speak at Cornell when I forst got here. Thanks for the memories (and future memory after I watch the Great Debate!!!)
I will admit that I had somewhat wondered about Professor Wayne previously.
Seeing his teaching materials and reading his philosophy, I realize I was mistaken. He might be a tad eccentric, true, but that is probably necessary in these times.
I would love to take this course without any mathematics in it, even though I am a mathematical physicist. It looks fascinating to me, and actually pretty challenging if you take the course seriously. I think most people would get quite a bit out of taking this class, to be honest. And that includes his fellow academics and scientists.
I hope that I will still evoke wonder!!!! I do give the students two quizzes that are mathematical to let them know that they can do the math and overcome any fear.
This situation does not come up; but I can tell you that they will argue about what is a "correct" hypothesis and why one might consider it to be correct and whether it is correct in limited situations but not generally correct.
Sure thing. It's an excellent ~hypothesis~. The fact that they're synchronous--they really aren't, but let's leave that aside for the moment--doesn't prove causality. Many things are synchronous without being causally related. So, the hypothesis is fine and dandy.
In order to prove it that A causes B, there are other criteria that have to be shown. Merely observing synchronicity doesn't get you there. I take a bite of delicious steak. My taking the bite didn't make it delicious, but it hadn't been tasted before....
I'd be grading them on the hypothesis--maybe 10%, but ~much~ more importantly, how they'd go about testing it--the remaining 90%. That's where the meat is.
I read some of the letters students wrote to themselves. The one that struck me hardest was the one in which the student (who loved this class) commented that [you'll] not be memorizing Latin nomenclature. My god, does anyone actually still require that? This reminds me of the way paleontology was taught up to about the 1960s. The students who became paleontologists were those with enough imagination and intelligence to think of the fossils as once-living entities, but it wasn't actually taught that way until about the early 1970s. I tried to bring geology and paleontology to life for my students, but Randy Wayne clearly has gone above and beyond (whether I succeeded or not is another question).
I am so done with political signaling DUMBASS from "conservatives" on climate, vaccines, Covid-19 origins AND the same kind of dumbass political party insanity on "gender" (Angie f**king RASMUSSEN asserting Trans women are women!?), PaIestine, Oct 7th, Marxist-Leninists and murder of "offenders" like Charlie Kirk, from "liberals".
It's ALL stupid and incredibly dangerous. Vaccines save millions of lives! mRNA tech is ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED FOR BIODEFENSE!
CO2 is the primary greenhouse gas causing our planet to heat up - giving us fire season we just didn't have (going back 2000 years. But we can't just "cut energy" because energy (productively used) is what gives money its value. So energy poverty = poverty, which means war, probably world War. We have been doing that.
You lost me here: "The sufficiency of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions in causing climate change is one of these concepts."
The gas equations for CO2 were shown by experiment and projected in Fourier's time. None of that chemistry has changed. However; to CO2 we have added N2O, CH4, and halogenated hydrocarbons. In recent years the spectrum overlap between them has been pretty well finished.
We have also worked out the chemistry of CO2 absorption by the ocean, which buffers between the atmosphere and CO2 in solution. (Soda pop uses CO2 pressure on water.)
Milankovitch cycles and asteroid impact and the changes from ice redistribution and reflectance (albedo) have been accounted for.
Meanwhile we'll meaning people that can't handle the math and computation invented "CO2 equivalents". There is no gas LESS suited to equivalence than CO2 because like soda pop, CO2 comes out of the ocean over millennia too. This results on overestimate of CH4 quickly. It makes others way under, then over. And the ocean absorbs huge amounts of heat moderating earth's climate.
All of this is clear and demonstrably fits the data we have so well, the first time you put it together it's stunning.
But you can't do it by dumbing down. It requires math as part of the science.
You did it again here: "The sufficiency of natural selection in explaining the origin of species is one of these concepts."
No theory is more clear and effective, and straightforward. Anyone who farms knows selection. Farmers and goldfish breeders have done it for thousands of years. Even pre-life the masses of building blocks for life appear by chemical processes.
Evolution is as mechanical as a pair of pliers. May as well objectvto the wind.
How consciousness is involved in the physics of our appearance is not understood, but hinted at by the quantum physics of observation.
Everything you wrote about his two choices of examples raise eyebrows. Still, 99% security about climate change and evolution still leaves some room for wondering about added components not yet perceived. I agree with you, however, that these two examples seem less than perfect.
While the evidence for the origin of species by natural selection is "stunning" it is neither complete nor final. I present T. H. Huxley's Romanes lecture and Alfred Russel Wallace's on the limitations of the theory of origin of species by natural selection on the origin of species. Their objections are still valid today and knowing their objects provide opportunities for scientists to perform critical experiments to show the value and limitations of the theory.
While the evidence for climate change is stunning, the evidence for anthropogenic climate change is far more limited. I present to my students the willfully neglected work of de Saussaure, Robert Angus Smith, and Fonselius et al. (1956) that challenge the idea that the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration rose drammatically at the onset of the twentieth century. I also teach about the historical relationship between the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and the temperature of the earth and teach how we can determine causality vs. correlation.
Perhaps you can tell me how the climate sensitivity factor is calculated based on integrating the curve under the absorption/scattering spectrum of the gas and integrating the emission spectrum of the earth. This is the fundamental factor on which the climate models are based, but heretofore, I have not found a climate scientist who can answer this question. I offer my students an automatic A+ if they can give me an answer. Therefore, I do not believe that the conclusions about climate change are final--even when using the math.
There are also questions regarding the orgin of life. I asked Jack Szostak how the matter that gave rise to life appeared. He told me that that question was beyond his pay grade. SInce I guess that a Nobel Prize winning scientist has a pretty good paycheck, I guess that the answer to the origin of life question is also not final.
I want to stress, it is very scientific to see where theories are NOT final. This is exactly where great scientific discoveries can be made.
Spart, I think he chose those 3 examples because the climate change one is clearly not correct and the other two are our best interpretations to date, but still not final since they can be improved.
Yes, if we say that something in science cannot be improved, we might as well say that research on the topic should not be funded. Perhaps the money could be better used to feed the hungry!
Hogwash. You have swallowed a pack of lies on CO2. Tol and Pielke are political "science" majors. Yes, fossil fuel companies have perverse incentives. Those lies are wrong and stupid.
Climate is political also because our civilization is based on burning carbon. The people don't accept being forced into poverty by overlords who lie about "just cut energy".
Real world? The climate "deniers" on carbon at least don't attack nuclear. Those "liberals" who do, from the evil little Asperger's troll-child, to David Brower (founder of Friends of the earth) have been a project of fossil fuel curation and funding (overt and covert) since the late 1960's.
There's one way through that problem. Nuclear conversion of our global energy system. The hour is very late now. This should be done with wartime urgency.
But instead, trillions have been thrown away on solar and wind, which cannot work because EROEI is so low.
The party that declares it's acceptance of the science on climate is the one that has systematically shut down nuclear power. And made the people believe that sooar and wibd can work. In other words corrupt liars.
It's a web of stupidity and venal corruption accelerating towards mass death. For the USA, it's destroying us.
There is much truth to the current "dumbing' down of our students as having arisen from the NGSS...Next Generation Science Standards. Many states adopted these standards directly while others based their own state science standards on this core. Sadly, the NGSS is just one of the many attacks on the science content contained in the education standards that constrain what most K-12 teachers can do in the classroom.
The proponents of NGSS and their allies also had several other objectives in their "reforms". One of these was the idea that academic freedom applies only to university level instructors and NOT to K-12 teachers. In a classic, rights for me but not for thee move, the idea was to impose a strict ideological set of standards on teachers (both in science and other areas) and then prevent them from straying from the canon with threat of termination. (This is why claims about threats to academic freedom from academics are about as convincing to most people as Marie Antoinette's advice to the starving poor to eat cake!)
Other parts of the attack on the science standards were a clear effort to remove any understanding of how science works as shown by the history of science by literally removing any content related to how we got to where we are. This was done in the guise of being "inclusive" because the history of science is too Western, too white and too male and thus must be suppressed and replaced with DEI inspired drivel based in far Left ideology. It is not important that we understand how, say the great theories that led to plate tectonics, the geologic time scale and deep time came about with all their white male investigators when we should be learning about Indigenous Native Knowledge as "science" and insure that we know the names of the first women to work on an oil rig despite thousands of unnamed men having done this for years before. Indeed, the attempt to claim that "other ways of knowing" whether women's glaciology or indigenous astronomy and climate understandings muddles the unique manner by which science seeks to improve our understanding of the world by elevating the mythology and religious beliefs of "oppressed" Stone Age cultures to the equivalent if not superior state of modern science. The replacement of objective fact and reproducibility by anyone with expert knowledge that only some are born with the ability to know and speak is the antithesis of science, but is being imposed in these DEI inspired standards.
Ironically, this occurs while the religious connections to Western science are removed entirely as a violation of the separation of church and state. I have literally seen curricula that demand Dakota creation myths and their flood story be taught as science while any mention of the Judeo Christian idea of Noah's Flood, even in the context of how early geologists explained the predominance of sedimentary rocks worldwide, would result in the teacher's termination. As with all DEI, the Burning Bush is only permissible if the story comes from a person of color whose "way of knowing" must be elevated and respected.
My own studies with college general education students and pre-service teachers of the requirements of the prior 1980's era National Science Education Standards showed that most students agreed that the context and history of science is important to its understanding and should be taught. Interestingly, this work also revealed that students recognized the politicization that was occurring by attempts to restrict the teaching the history of science and selective inclusion of "other ways of knowing" in its place. NGSS and standards of its era made this far, far worse!
For this who are interested, take a look at how the history of science and science in general is treated in the National Science Education Standards which were far superior to NGSS and you will see how The Franklin Standards go along way to restoring the proper understanding of science to the curriculum....if they are adopted directly or in modified form by states of course. Academics in science have a huge role to play in getting these standards adopted and into the schools in the various states (and countries) where you live. It's time to use that academic freedom as it was intended to help science and the community, not as a personal license to say whatever one wants.
Lastly, do not despair if students seem to have less background than they did in the past. When I encounter such students outside the classroom in venues where they feel safe to talk, all the curiosity and desire to understand the world that students brought in the 90's and 2000's when I first began teaching is still there just waiting for a place where it is safe to talk about. That such discussion now must occur in off campus venues says far more about what the academic community has done to freedom of inquiry on campus than any failing of the K-12 system and its university imposed flaws.
Dear Dean,
I am happy to say that over the semester, the students feel not only safe to talk but a duty to talk in class. I think that this trust arises from three factors: 1) I present science as a search for truth where nobody has a monopoly on what is truth; 2) I present my ownbeliefs with their justifications, while at the same time I let them know 3) not to believe anything I say.
Thanks,
randy
I am sure that is true in your classroom as it is in mine. Sadly, what the students tell me is that such environments are the exception rather than the rule...especially if their questions in any way suggest that the far Left narrative is even subject to review let alone refutation.
Dear Dean,
I agree completely...and so do our students!
thanks,
randy
Thank you for this profoundly important essay. Unfortunately, the goal of teaching students to question assumptions, engage in open discussion, and remain comfortable with doubt often conflicts with the social and political certainty prevalent among faculty at many universities. Perhaps it is the faculty, even more than the students, who most need to read this essay.
Dear Geoff,
You make great points. It is well known that the incentive structure rewards students that just parrot back the accepted conclusion. It is less well known that in the golden age of bureaucracy, the incentive system is the same for faculty.
thanks,
randy
"If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress."
It is for exactly this reason that I constantly rail against these [I'll be polite] people carrying the label of being "progressives." They're exactly the opposite--they're Luddites. All they progress toward is the world of Harrison Bergeron.
As for the 1700+ page syllabus--this is pure genius. Only someone madly and passionately in love with teaching could have written it. It lives at the same tier as Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, and Bach. And it's just as much fun to read.
It is, in fact, almost like the unforgettable lectures of the late, extraordinarily great, Jerry Lettvin of MIT. They were so good that some of the more adventurous guys even brought dates to them. No tests, no homework, everyone got an A, and nobody ever missed a class. The only penalty for missing one would have been... missing one.
Dear Joe,
Thank you for the great story about Jerry Lettvin. My brother knew him and his wife as house parents at MIT and introduced us when we saw him in a restaurant. That was great because I had based some of my work on calcium signalling on his prediction that lanthanum should mimic calcium in some ways. I retire this year, but I hope before I do, a student will bring a date to my class!
thanks,
randy
Why not suggest that people bring dates to your class? Might liven things up. Your notes/syllabus are fantastic. They really are.
Dear Joe,
I will-especially when I teach about the chemical history of the candle. Thr room is filled with candlelight...and I play soft jazz. It is a very romantic class!
thanks,
randy
Do you ask them first what's burning in the candle? Why the wick burns so slowly? Most people don't get it, even when they're looking at it. I'd suggest to them they bring wine and maybe a bit of pate or bon-bons.
Dear Joe,
I do not ask them that first. We start with an oil lamp and talk about how the liquid oil is vaporized to create the flame. I also talk about the structure of the wick...braided instead of solid to increase the surface area and greater wicking ability..which brings us into a discussion of the Dalkon shield and how it transported bacteria into a place that they should not be. The class meets at 8 AM...I may have to suggest something better than pate!
thanks,
randy
Eggs Benedict with a sufficiency of Hollandaise? That's a pretty sybaritic dish. Or perhaps just small pizzas.
Or--and this is a major offer--I'll give you my recipe for bread pudding. Born and raised in New Orleans, I got--and optimized--recipes from various famous restaurants. And that's one of the biggies. If cooking for a date is seductive, the bread pudding is a lot like the Dark Side of the Force. You definitely want to be careful who you serve it to.
You’re familiar with what has come to be called The Great Debate between JL. And Timothy Leary, right? It’s on youtube. We were in about the 4th or 5th row. It was a hit-it-out-of-the-park performance.
Dear Joe,
I just saw the debate and I brought my wife as a date. We both enjoyed Jerry Lettvin and agreed with his argument.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6gYM_LsnvQ
thanks,
randy
Leary was like a moth flitting around from topic to topic. Jerry was like a cannon waiting to be fired. He was a looming presence on the stage until he took his turn at rebutting TL's points. It almost looked like ACME v coyote. With Leary playing the coyote and Lettvin playing the ACME cannon he ordered.
I can't speak for others, but the debate certainly changed my mind about turning on, tuning in, and dropping out. Didn't seem like such a good idea after ward. And, of course, there was an acute attack of hero worship that never went away.
The man was a colossus. He was captivating. I still remember a fair number of his lectures--if you want to call them that. They were more like musings, recollections, etc. He derived the subject matter from axioms that everyone uses unconsciously, then lead the class on the journey based on them. Always different, always fascinating. Always mind-altering, and with no chemicals.
He operated in the Jacob Bronowski mold--being brilliant, but showing how much fun it is to be brilliant. Most approach that level with some trepidation of being marginalized, having girls run away, etc. Spend some time with people like that and you find out that being smart really is a ~lot~ of fun, and the really pretty girls are drawn to you like moths to flames.
(If I were being exceptionally helpful to the (male) students, I'd also let them know about the aphrodisiacal effect of cooking for your date. What year class is this? Are th ey substantially underage? ;-) )
Dear Joe,
Your descriptions are beautiful. Tell me about you.
The class was created for freshmen, but mostly seniors take it. I actually had one married couple in class that really contributed to the depth of the conversation.
thanks,
randy
Thanks, Randy. I'm a mostly retired neurointerventional surgeon. At this point, having retired from academic medicine in '11, I don't do surgery any more, but I do take care of family and friends--and unsurprisingly, their friends--as a concierge. I don't charge them for it, and though I'm still licensed, I don't carry med mal insurance. Hopefully they won't sue me.
The journey that got me where I am is kinda interesting, and reflects back to the denouement of Vonnegut's novel, The Sirens Of Titan: "I was the victim of a series of accidents. As are we all." Initially I was going to be a chemist, and I was quite excellent at most of it. Got accepted by Yale grad school and Tulane Med school. You may or may not be old enough to remember Lewis Hershey czar of the "Selective Service System," aka the draft board. We were having a nasty little disagreement down in southeast Asia back then (late '60s to early '70s), and I didn't want to go. In my junior year, they abolished automatic deferments for graduate students, but kept the policy for medical students. So I went back home for med school..
I was going to be a psychiatrist until about day 2 of my neurology and psychiatry rotation, at which time I realized that whatever else I was going to be, that sure wasn't it. Everyone told me to go into radiology--solve puzzles all day, get paid a lot, work short hours, have a good life. Seemed ideal for me. But it also entailed spending another year specializing in something. Neuroradiology was fascinating to me, so I went into that. And along came a guy who was blazing a trail in what is now called neurointerventional surgery. Got dragged--kicking and screaming--into that. And loved it.
So now I'm really screwed: I had wanted limited patient contact, but if you're treating patients rather than just diagnosing them, not a little interaction is required. Which I found I loved and actually had some talent with. And doing the surgery itself gave me insight into what addiction must be like. Couldn't get enough of it. Have to do it inside of universities since it's a brand new specialty being made from whole cloth--where else are you going to get referrals? So much for free time. So much for all the private practice riches. I loved it.
Eventually started a company back in '96 to make some devices I invented for treating intracranial aneurysms. That took off, IPO in '06, and J&J bought us in 2010 for just under $500MM. I only had a small slice of t hat pie left of my founder's shares, but it was a seriously big pie, hence my very comfortable retirement.
Along the way I've had a zillion colorful, fascinating (to me) experiences, branched out hobbies all over the place. and am trying to start a new company--at age 79--to obsolete the technology of the first one. Other than that, just a kind of stick in the mud...
Dear Joe,
I did not know about this debate. I will look it up. I saw Timothy Leary speak at Cornell when I forst got here. Thanks for the memories (and future memory after I watch the Great Debate!!!)
He often spoke of Maggie, and with great admiration.
I will admit that I had somewhat wondered about Professor Wayne previously.
Seeing his teaching materials and reading his philosophy, I realize I was mistaken. He might be a tad eccentric, true, but that is probably necessary in these times.
I would love to take this course without any mathematics in it, even though I am a mathematical physicist. It looks fascinating to me, and actually pretty challenging if you take the course seriously. I think most people would get quite a bit out of taking this class, to be honest. And that includes his fellow academics and scientists.
Dear Thomas,
I hope that I will still evoke wonder!!!! I do give the students two quizzes that are mathematical to let them know that they can do the math and overcome any fear.
thanks,
randy
Would you give a full credit to students who developed an independent but a wrong hypothesis?
Dear Alexy,
This situation does not come up; but I can tell you that they will argue about what is a "correct" hypothesis and why one might consider it to be correct and whether it is correct in limited situations but not generally correct.
thanks,
randy
How would you know it was wrong without testing it?
Hypothesis: wind is blowing because trees are shaking. Testing: indeed, observations show that wind and trees movement is synchronized. Accepted?
Sure thing. It's an excellent ~hypothesis~. The fact that they're synchronous--they really aren't, but let's leave that aside for the moment--doesn't prove causality. Many things are synchronous without being causally related. So, the hypothesis is fine and dandy.
In order to prove it that A causes B, there are other criteria that have to be shown. Merely observing synchronicity doesn't get you there. I take a bite of delicious steak. My taking the bite didn't make it delicious, but it hadn't been tasted before....
I'd be grading them on the hypothesis--maybe 10%, but ~much~ more importantly, how they'd go about testing it--the remaining 90%. That's where the meat is.
I read some of the letters students wrote to themselves. The one that struck me hardest was the one in which the student (who loved this class) commented that [you'll] not be memorizing Latin nomenclature. My god, does anyone actually still require that? This reminds me of the way paleontology was taught up to about the 1960s. The students who became paleontologists were those with enough imagination and intelligence to think of the fossils as once-living entities, but it wasn't actually taught that way until about the early 1970s. I tried to bring geology and paleontology to life for my students, but Randy Wayne clearly has gone above and beyond (whether I succeeded or not is another question).
I went to the HxA conference in Laramie.
I am so done with political signaling DUMBASS from "conservatives" on climate, vaccines, Covid-19 origins AND the same kind of dumbass political party insanity on "gender" (Angie f**king RASMUSSEN asserting Trans women are women!?), PaIestine, Oct 7th, Marxist-Leninists and murder of "offenders" like Charlie Kirk, from "liberals".
It's ALL stupid and incredibly dangerous. Vaccines save millions of lives! mRNA tech is ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED FOR BIODEFENSE!
CO2 is the primary greenhouse gas causing our planet to heat up - giving us fire season we just didn't have (going back 2000 years. But we can't just "cut energy" because energy (productively used) is what gives money its value. So energy poverty = poverty, which means war, probably world War. We have been doing that.
You lost me here: "The sufficiency of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions in causing climate change is one of these concepts."
The gas equations for CO2 were shown by experiment and projected in Fourier's time. None of that chemistry has changed. However; to CO2 we have added N2O, CH4, and halogenated hydrocarbons. In recent years the spectrum overlap between them has been pretty well finished.
We have also worked out the chemistry of CO2 absorption by the ocean, which buffers between the atmosphere and CO2 in solution. (Soda pop uses CO2 pressure on water.)
Milankovitch cycles and asteroid impact and the changes from ice redistribution and reflectance (albedo) have been accounted for.
Meanwhile we'll meaning people that can't handle the math and computation invented "CO2 equivalents". There is no gas LESS suited to equivalence than CO2 because like soda pop, CO2 comes out of the ocean over millennia too. This results on overestimate of CH4 quickly. It makes others way under, then over. And the ocean absorbs huge amounts of heat moderating earth's climate.
All of this is clear and demonstrably fits the data we have so well, the first time you put it together it's stunning.
But you can't do it by dumbing down. It requires math as part of the science.
You did it again here: "The sufficiency of natural selection in explaining the origin of species is one of these concepts."
No theory is more clear and effective, and straightforward. Anyone who farms knows selection. Farmers and goldfish breeders have done it for thousands of years. Even pre-life the masses of building blocks for life appear by chemical processes.
Evolution is as mechanical as a pair of pliers. May as well objectvto the wind.
How consciousness is involved in the physics of our appearance is not understood, but hinted at by the quantum physics of observation.
Everything you wrote about his two choices of examples raise eyebrows. Still, 99% security about climate change and evolution still leaves some room for wondering about added components not yet perceived. I agree with you, however, that these two examples seem less than perfect.
Dear Geoff,
Yes science and wonder go together like peanut butter and jelly--although even better!
thanks,
randy
Dear Spartacus,
While the evidence for the origin of species by natural selection is "stunning" it is neither complete nor final. I present T. H. Huxley's Romanes lecture and Alfred Russel Wallace's on the limitations of the theory of origin of species by natural selection on the origin of species. Their objections are still valid today and knowing their objects provide opportunities for scientists to perform critical experiments to show the value and limitations of the theory.
While the evidence for climate change is stunning, the evidence for anthropogenic climate change is far more limited. I present to my students the willfully neglected work of de Saussaure, Robert Angus Smith, and Fonselius et al. (1956) that challenge the idea that the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration rose drammatically at the onset of the twentieth century. I also teach about the historical relationship between the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and the temperature of the earth and teach how we can determine causality vs. correlation.
Perhaps you can tell me how the climate sensitivity factor is calculated based on integrating the curve under the absorption/scattering spectrum of the gas and integrating the emission spectrum of the earth. This is the fundamental factor on which the climate models are based, but heretofore, I have not found a climate scientist who can answer this question. I offer my students an automatic A+ if they can give me an answer. Therefore, I do not believe that the conclusions about climate change are final--even when using the math.
There are also questions regarding the orgin of life. I asked Jack Szostak how the matter that gave rise to life appeared. He told me that that question was beyond his pay grade. SInce I guess that a Nobel Prize winning scientist has a pretty good paycheck, I guess that the answer to the origin of life question is also not final.
I want to stress, it is very scientific to see where theories are NOT final. This is exactly where great scientific discoveries can be made.
thanks,
randy
Spart, I think he chose those 3 examples because the climate change one is clearly not correct and the other two are our best interpretations to date, but still not final since they can be improved.
Dear Big T,
Yes, if we say that something in science cannot be improved, we might as well say that research on the topic should not be funded. Perhaps the money could be better used to feed the hungry!
thnaks,
randy
Hogwash. You have swallowed a pack of lies on CO2. Tol and Pielke are political "science" majors. Yes, fossil fuel companies have perverse incentives. Those lies are wrong and stupid.
Climate is political also because our civilization is based on burning carbon. The people don't accept being forced into poverty by overlords who lie about "just cut energy".
Real world? The climate "deniers" on carbon at least don't attack nuclear. Those "liberals" who do, from the evil little Asperger's troll-child, to David Brower (founder of Friends of the earth) have been a project of fossil fuel curation and funding (overt and covert) since the late 1960's.
There's one way through that problem. Nuclear conversion of our global energy system. The hour is very late now. This should be done with wartime urgency.
But instead, trillions have been thrown away on solar and wind, which cannot work because EROEI is so low.
The party that declares it's acceptance of the science on climate is the one that has systematically shut down nuclear power. And made the people believe that sooar and wibd can work. In other words corrupt liars.
It's a web of stupidity and venal corruption accelerating towards mass death. For the USA, it's destroying us.