(ThyBlackMan.com) I firmly believe that if students, from Day One, were introduced to the enigmas at the heart of science, they would be much more likely to master the nuts and bolts. I wish that when I was a lad we were told that Rene Descartes’ X and Y coordinate system, the basis of calculus, the measuring tool of the sciences, was revealed to him one night in a dream. That Isaac Newton spent more time on alchemy and ancient Egyptian and Hebrew texts than on Chemistry and Physics. That Norbert Wiener, Father of Cybernetics, the study of communication in machines and living organisms, solved his most famous problem by examining the details of a dream of a subordinate. That Alan Turing, the Father of the Computer, launched his ground-breaking study while trying to determine if spirits live on after death and if the living can contact them. Were I told all this, I doubt that I, like many others, would have looked at Math and Science amiss.
Why did they wait until page 811 of my 814 page Physics textbook to inform me that everything solid is really only waves of energy? The average, even college educated, individual is convinced that 
everything, absolutely everything, has a logical explanation. The ongoing discoveries and advances in science, for the layman, are proof positive of this. The average person would be shocked to learn that atoms are not solid things at all. And to the extent that they do, in fact, exist, they are “waves of probability!”
Also, any conceivable logical system has to hold as true some ideas that it cannot possibly prove to be so. Furthermore, the three thousand year old absolute truths of Euclidean geometry are not absolute at all. Parallel lines can, under certain conditions, actually meet, and a plane is not necessarily flat. And, there are “real numbers” that cannot be expressed in a “rational” fashion, and scientists regularly work with “imaginary numbers.” It is as if textbooks are trying to hide these fundamental disconnects between our common sense understanding of reality and the actually quite murky concepts it rests upon. Mystery stimulates inquiry, and so they thereby relinquish a most powerful learning tool.
Most know who Albert Einstein was, and have some even if vague idea of what he discovered, the Theory of Relativity. As strange and counter-intuitive as Relativity appears, it nonetheless makes perfect sense, as its equations amply prove. But logic apparently breaks down on the sub-atomic level. Minute “things” pop in and out of existence, and can communicate with each other though separated by vast distances. And the “real” solid world we live in is composed of atoms which are made up of nothing but probability, which is not a thing at all.
Einstein, supremely logical as he was known to be, could not accept these contradictions. He spent the last 30 years of his life trying to sort things out, but could not. In the 60 years since his passing, theorists all around the world have picked up the torch searching, so far in vain, for Science’s Holy Grail, what they have dubbed “The Theory of Everything.” Should this not be laid out at the outset of any Physics class? Rather than presenting Western Science as the supremely confident, invincible mechanism for uncovering absolute truth, why not portray it as it really is, a three thousand year old turbulent struggle with fits and starts all along the way? Just as adolescents are insecure, so too is the very Science that they study. We should not hide, but instead show if not emphasize, this commonality, like themselves all Science is only human.
Meanwhile, many a student, struggling with math and science, is nonetheless an avid science fiction fan. Isn’t it ironic that though they might not understand the formulas, the recipes, that undergird science, they are nonetheless exploring and thinking through the continuing arc of scientific discovery and the cumulative effects of the scientific enterprise on the overall society.
Yes, it is true that some science fiction fudges the science with, for example, ideas like warp drive. However, it is this very straying from science fact that provides a great opening for real learning. Imagine if the first day of Physics class, the instructor were to play the closing scene in every Star Trek episode. Captain Kirk says, “Ahead Warp Factor Five, Mr. Sulu!” And then she turns to the class and asks, “Is that possible?” Thereby initiating a free-wheeling exchange in which the students themselves, piecing together the different bits and levels of knowledge they possess on the matter, enter into a full blown discussion, and begin to develop an understanding, of the theory of relativity.
We have the world’s best college and university system, but our primary education is sorely lacking. US elementary students do very poorly in math. Meanwhile, Baseball and Basketball are two beloved sports, and therein statistics rule the roost. However, though many a baseball game stretches beyond the three hour mark, and announcers end up talking about everything under the sun, they never mention, not even in passing, how batting averages are determined. This while millions of youths, struggling with math on a daily basis, are hanging onto their every word.
How about, and we are not talking about a math lesson, how about just mentioning that a batting average is the number of hits over the number of times at bat, or flashing a chart with this information for a second or two? And then there is ERA, earned run average, on base percentage and an endless number of other stats, again, not a lesson, but at some point at least touch on how they are arrived at.
Math and science, admirably break things down into their constituent parts and processes, but at the same time that everything is composed of parts, everything is also a whole, Science and Education included. Thus, present Science not just in particular pieces, but as a whole robust, intriguing enterprise. And let us not confine learning to the classroom but use all the tools we have at our disposal to promote genuine learning and discovery, and not just as youths but throughout all the days of our lives.
Staff Writer; Arthur Lewin
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