Re: Ban on teaching evolution in schools and Bruno Latour

Paul Dillon (dillonph who-is-at northcoast.com)
Sat, 14 Aug 1999 08:20:18 -0700

Eugene,

That story is as amazing as it is disquietening insofar as it reveals the
state of public consciousness. According to my dictionary's 5th definition
of "fact" the link between "theory" and "fact" is made via reference to
"objective reality". Facts usually refer to "things done" and "states of
actuality" and are used to provide evidence for theories. I don't know if
Kansas has the death penalty but I wonder how many there have sat on juries
that sentenced people to death on the basis of theories for which "facts"
provided inferential support. How many who voted to oust the theory of
evolution since noone could observe the 8 million years that lead from
Ramapithecus to Australopithecus, or the 2 million years leading from the
african hominid radiation through to Cromagnon, nevertheless are certain
that it's a fact that OJ Simpson killed his wife and her lover. Beyond all
the circumstantial evidence, the strongest evidence (Barry Schecht
notwithstanding) DNA evidence. Yet DNA evidence is the strongest support
for the theory of evolution. Of course it's moot to ask exactly who was
around to write down the events in the Garden of Eden, let alone when
Lucifer got the boot for leading a failed palace coup.

To me the most troubling issue is precisely this disjuncture between the way
people think about different domains of their experience.

At what age should children begin to learn the relationship between
different stages of theory and different types of facts. My oldest son is
going to be a junior in high school and I have been closely involved with
his educational process from the beginning. Although kids are taught "the
scientifc method" and develop a formal understanding of how scientific
theories are constructed according to the scientific method, I don't get the
feeling that the difference between facts and theories is dealt with very
well if at all. Theories, for one thing are always mental constructs,
whereas facts (e.g., it's raining) don't need to be so. The key link
between fact and theory, the relationship with what the dictionary calls
"objective reality", isn't really dealt with in the schools. ; i.e., the
difference in ontological status between "it is raining", the speed of
light, and ohm's law (voltage=amperage*resistance).

Similarly, not much attention is paid to the rather peculiar transformation
of a theory into a fact. Here, for example, the history leading from
Mendel's discovery of genetic laws through the discovery of DNA would seem
to be a very accessible case study. A little more contentious would be the
how the Ptolemaic system was supplanted by the Copernican one but now that
the Catholic church has finally admitted that Galileo was right, I guess
it's not that dangerous. When I taught physical anthro, during my first
lecture I asked my students whether the sun moved across the sky. Not one
ever said yes. I'd say, "What are you talking about? Let's go outside and
make some marks on the wall and see if the sun moves. Of course the sun
moves across the sky." The students always could tell me that the sun just
appeared to move, just as they'd learned in school. At this point I would
discuss how we would be dealing with the theory of evolution and the
relation between theory and observed phenomena.

At what age should children begin to be taught to distingish between
different ontological domains? This would be natural if dialectics formed
part of the education of our children since the positivist distinction
between logic and ontology disappears.

I'm not sure what you refer to as Latour's definition of fact, having only
read the interobjectivity piece, but the National Academy of Sciences'
definition, "something that has been tested or observed so many times that
there is no longer a compelling reason to keep testing or looking for
examples", doesn't really help matters. I can't understand why no one has
attempted to refer to issues of "scientific truth" rather than fact when
dealing with these cases. But I'm not really that surprised that the
prevailing scientific wisdom isn't very reflective on its own activity.

Paul H. Dillon