I Like Philosophy

@HerKing Really? How do you mean?

@DeepDreamer You're the philosopher, you'll work it out. ☺

@HerKing No I won't. Everybody has their own personal perspectives that are mostly invisible to those around them. Are you coming from the viewpoint of a public school teacher that knows what is being taught in school now, the viewpoint of a parent who has a child in school now, the viewpoint of someone who went to school forty some years ago and received a different kind of education than is given these days, or from another perspective entirely that I haven't guessed at? If I worked away at it for long enough I could find hundreds of different possibilities for what you meant and it might be that every single one of them is wrong because I just don't know enough about you.

So seriously, I would like to hear your opinion.

@DeepDreamer [quote]it is teachers telling people scientific theories as if they are true[/quote]

Only if that scientific principle is proven..A theory is a theory. No-one has said that Einstein's theory of relativity is correct and proven beyond reasonable doubt because it hasn't yet. However, science CAN prove that gravity exists and demonstrably how it effects us and the universe we live within.

The thing with science is it's dynamic, but there are provable absolutes. We work in three dimensions, are there more? We have no idea because we don't have the knowledge yet to know. That neither proves there are or aren't.


[quote]nd telling people that the scientific method is infallible. [/quote]


See above. Although I would add that until relatively recently, the perennial paradox of a Bumble bee in flight wasn't known. Aerodynamically it couldn't theoretically fly with it's wing area and it's mass. The advent of ultra fast video capture (Another scientific discovery) showed in precise and infinitesimal detail how it flies and the way it folds and changes it's wings to do so. The theory didn't say that it couldn't fly; Just that with what was known at the time didn't show how it could. And now we know.

@HerKing Okay, I get it now. I wasn't implying that scientists claim that scientific theories are true. Or even that teachers actually say it, for that matter.

What I am claiming is that, throughout grade school, the various science classes that children take end up teaching the children the mainstream scientific views without taking the time to make sure that the children are told which theories are theories and which theories are fact. By nature, most of these children take these things as fact. The a similar concept exists in a lot of mathematics classes, where the teachers will only accept one method of solving a problem instead of allowing children to actually use their brains to find ways that work for them (though it appears that common core is addressing this problem somewhat, to the chagrin of much of society). And, similarly, philosophy is looked down on as something outdated and wrong because most branches of philosophy have a tendency to not prove things right or wrong.

The similarity, that I am pointing out, that connects these things is the view that binary systems are 'right' and any other systems are 'wrong'. By nature, children pick up on this and grow up into adults that think in binaries. This kills critical thinking abilities.

Now, we could say "well why don't we just have them teach science the way that science is instead of as the binary system that it definitely isn't", but I would argue that this way of thinking has already been proven to be a slippery slope (where people call the 'slippery slope' a fallacy, I don't think that it is unreasonable to assume some logic behind a slippery slope if there is a precedent for it). Instead they could teach and work on the scientific method in a core philosophy course, and could even cover a lot of things that are covered in science classes through the scope of both science and philosophy. This would encourage critical thinking skills instead of discouraging it the way that modern grade school science classes do.

On top of teaching general critical thinking skills, 12 years of philosophy would expose people to a huge range of viewpoints from some of the greatest minds of the last few thousand years, which would make for a much more intelligent populace. For one, they would learn about rhetoric and propaganda and be better able to discern when political figures and organizations are manipulating them.

People like to think that science single-handedly brought about the rise of modern technology, but the truth is that science is just a set of tools that helped us to get where we are. We shouldn't have stopped teaching the mental tools gained through thousands of years of hard thought just because a new set of tools helped us to advance our knowledge and technology in ways that the old tools couldn't, because the old tools help us to understand things in ways that science cannot possibly hope to do alone.

@DeepDreamer [quote]I wasn't implying that scientists claim that scientific theories are true. Or even that teachers actually say it, for that matter[/quote].

Yes you were...

[quote]it is teachers telling people scientific theories as if they are true [/quote]

@HerKing look at those quotes again.
[i]teachers[/i] telling people scientific theories [i]as if[/i] they are true is different from [i]scientists[/i] saying things [i]are[/i] true. They are entirely different concepts that seem to be the same

@DeepDreamer .[quote] Or even that teachers actually say it, for that matter[/quote]

[quote]it is teachers telling people scientific theories as if they are true[/quote]

🤔

@HerKing [quote]I wasn't implying that scientists claim that scientific theories are true. Or even that teachers actually say it, for that matter. [/quote]

I can't tell if you're misrepresenting what I say or misunderstanding.

Here is an example:

"Tectonic plates are pieces of Earth's crust and uppermost mantle, together referred to as the lithosphere. The plates are around 100 km (62 mi) thick and consist of two principal types of material: oceanic crust (also called sima from silicon and magnesium) and continental crust (sial from silicon and aluminium)."

This is how they teach things at public school. This is a theory being presented as a fact. If it were brought up to the person who wrote this that it was a theory, they would probably say that this is obvious rather than claiming this thing to be a fact. If you brought it up to a teacher, they would probably say the same. They don't claim that these are facts, they [i]present[/i] them [i]as if[/i] they were facts. There is a distinct difference, but just as you have trouble seeing the difference so do children. They take these things as fact because they are not presented as theory and then they spend the rest of their lives not being able to discern truth theory, thinking that science is a divine producer of truth instead of a human producer of theories. Then, as an adult, every time they see scientific studies that present theories as facts they end up believing those theories and thinking people are idiots for opposing mainstream scientific beliefs, or even beliefs that aren't mainstream but they just happened to see a theory about.

@DeepDreamer I was quoting YOU!! What don't you get? If you're not implying something, then don't imply it then it won't be inferred!


And as for this:

[quote]"Tectonic plates are pieces of Earth's crust and uppermost mantle, together referred to as the lithosphere. The plates are around 100 km (62 mi) thick and consist of two principal types of material: oceanic crust (also called sima from silicon and magnesium) and continental crust (sial from silicon and aluminium)."[/quote]

What is your problem with that?

I think you need to stick to philosophy and not worry too much about nuts and bolts topics. They're not your field.

Quit taking implication from my statements. I mean what I say, not what you gather as an implications.

The problem with that is that it is a THEORY stated as a FACT. What don't you understand about this? When THEORIES are stated as FACTS to CHILDREN throughout their entire EDUCATION, the children start to believe that theories and hearsay are facts and you end up with a society full of simple minded people who apparently can't understand the difference between implication and statement.

@DeepDreamer Oh jeeze..WHICH theory? Tectonics? That is fact. What do you think it is? The Easter Bunny having a bad day?