Word: basic
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...rudimentary knowledge of science helps provide insight in dealing with political and social issues which scientific developments continually thrust upon us. Just as important, however, is that Harvard's claim to turn out graduates with a modicum of education seems only justified if students are introduced to the basic approaches of science...
...present Natural Sciences program does not seem the best way to endow the student with this basic knowledge. The non-science concentrator must be introduced into the process of hypothesis and experiment and must realize that the claims of science are limited: that measurement is always inexact; that the constructs it offers are not images of "reality" but working models for prediction; that statements are true until controverted by further sense data. The best way to appreciate this is not to learn about science but to learn science itself...
...completed this equivalent. Such an introductory semester of math might give the rudimentary concepts of functions, calculus, and the limit--a requisite for understanding the idea of approximation and measurement. With a semester of math under his belt the student could continue on to a semester of basic physics--perhaps mechanics and thermo-dynamics--to get the fundamental concepts of energy...
...third semester in such a natural sciences program could also be one of a number of offerings. A continuation of physics might go into basic electrostatics, electricity and the atomic model. Such a course would introduce the student to the implications of constructs as in field theory and raise questions of scientific truth, existence, and the ideas of operationalism. A basic chemistry option, or a semester which stressed the atom and the universe--ideas of astronomy, galactic origins, relativity--would also have value. In each of these courses, the subject matter would represent a compromise between the dilletante survey...
Thus the natural science program could provide a basic level of math achievement and a certain working with science itself. To place science in its historical setting is a fine objective and might be valuably continued to some degree, but primary emphasis should be placed on learning science itself, not its cultural setting. Such a program as the above is no panacea to the problems attendant upon teaching science, but without sacrificing choice (since commitments to any particular course would be only for a semester, not a year), it offers a higher level of achievement. The demands and satisfactions...