On Saturday, I had the opportunity to participate in (I believe) a first-of-its-kind event in Pittsburgh: Celebrating Science in the Steel City. Over 40 groups of scientists set up demonstrations and experiments for the general public to come and see, free of charge. The goal was simply to give people an opportunity to meet scientists who live and work in their community. If folks came away from the event discovering that a lot more science than they realized happens right here in their hometown, even better. And if they learned some new science, well that would just be fantastic.
Although I didn’t get to see all the displays (since I had to host folks at my own), I did get a few glimpses of how the event looked to the eyes of a wider audience. There were young kids there, so of course there was plenty that was new to them. But there was also plenty that was new to the adults as well–myself included. That’s one of the things about science–there is always more of it. No one can keep up with it all, but even just to be aware of the major developments or the broad strokes of what fields are growing and what questions are grabbing the most attention is more than many people are inclined to invest. That is not a criticism of anyone; I write a science news blog and I don’t think I should claim even that level of breadth.
We’ve discussed the connections and similarities between science and theology, but this is one significant area of divergence. For Christianity, and I believe for most major religions and life philosophies, there is a closed canon or comparable fixed set of writings or teachings to study. For sure, there are new questions of practice to consider as we invent new things for humans to do, but the answers to those questions will come from the same sources they have always come from. Science has no such fixed literature. The set of facts already known, the tools available to use in investigations, and even the list of things to be investigated continually expand. That is not just from discovery–something like the Higgs boson has existed for billions of years but was only recently available for examination–but also from genuine invention both by humans and the rest of creation. Who knows how many papers will be written in coming years about large language models or COVID-19, to name just two things which did not exist 10 years ago. But there are no new books of the Bible to study. Nor am I claiming there should be. I simply wonder how much it shapes one’s mindset to concentrate on an area with a closed canon versus an open one.
The expansion of science and other growing fields has implications for education as well. Perhaps I am wrong, but my sense is that compulsory education is frequently viewed as instilling our children with facts and values and skills they will need to be functioning and contributing members of society. This carries the implication of a passing down of a fixed body of knowledge–this is what we the adults need to know in our lives, and now we bestow it upon you. Yet increasingly we are aware that those kids will be adults in a very different world, so how do we prepare them?
These generational differences were also on display at the science expo over the weekend. My own display had an X-Men theme; the young people were generally less familiar with those characters than the adults, since they have not been the center of superhero pop culture the way they were 30 years ago. Further, I had a software demo for folks to try on the spot, with a QR code in case they wanted to play more at home. The pure contempt the children had for it because it was implemented as a webpage and not an app was fascinating–what could I possibly expect them to do with that? More than one parent had to try to explain, with mixed success, the concept of a browser bookmark to their digital-native offspring. I took this all in with amusement and no complaints. The kids were not being rude or ungrateful, just bewildered by the idiosyncrasies of last-gen tech.
Even that simple tech is something of a parable about the shifting contexts of teaching. The trend in software UI design is build increasing around icons instead of text. We are now several generations of interface conventions into software development now. And for folks like me, a hollow star is sufficient to signal how to save a website for later. But that’s because I have a history with web browsers and know that saving a website for later with a ‘bookmark’ (a metaphor that made more sense when the Internet was mainly just pages of text to read, not videos to watch and applications to interact with) is something I’ll need to do. There’s nothing inherent in that symbol which communicates any of that to the uninitiated. Yet it seems as though we craft our designs with the assumption that everyone will come with the same history. I’ve suspected this was the case, and it was illuminating to see the reality of it.
It seems unlikely that we’ll stop adding to our scientific knowledge anytime soon. At the same time, we can’t expect teachers to add more and more to their curricula. Events like the one I participated in can help, and I’d be happy to see more of them, but I’m not sure that’s the sort of thing we can count on. I imagine partly we will need to adjust expectations that our children will learn the same things we learned. And then we may also need to expand the opportunities for education. There have been times in the past when the church has played a role in reforming and expanding education. Maybe this could be another one of those times.
Andy has worn many hats in his life. He knows this is a dreadfully clichéd notion, but since it is also literally true he uses it anyway. Among his current metaphorical hats: husband of one wife, father of two teenagers, reader of science fiction and science fact, enthusiast of contemporary symphonic music, and chief science officer. Previous metaphorical hats include: comp bio postdoc, molecular biology grad student, InterVarsity chapter president (that one came with a literal hat), music store clerk, house painter, and mosquito trapper. Among his more unique literal hats: British bobby, captain’s hats (of varying levels of authenticity) of several specific vessels, a deerstalker from 221B Baker St, and a railroad engineer’s cap. His monthly Science in Review is drawn from his weekly Science Corner posts — Wednesdays, 8am (Eastern) on the Emerging Scholars Network Blog. His book Faith across the Multiverse is available from Hendrickson.
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