Galileo’s Big Mistake

Philip Goff
Scientific American Blog
Originally posted November 7, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

Galileo, as it were, stripped the physical world of its qualities; and after he’d done that, all that remained were the purely quantitative properties of matter—size, shape, location, motion—properties that can be captured in mathematical geometry. In Galileo’s worldview, there is a radical division between the following two things:

• The physical world with its purely quantitative properties, which is the domain of science,
• Consciousness, with its qualities, which is outside of the domain of science.

It was this fundamental division that allowed for the possibility of mathematical physics: once the qualities had been removed, all that remained of the physical world could be captured in mathematics. And hence, natural science, for Galileo, was never intended to give us a complete description of reality. The whole project was premised on setting qualitative consciousness outside of the domain of science.

What do these 17th century discussions have to do with the contemporary science of consciousness? It is now broadly agreed that consciousness poses a very serious challenge for contemporary science. Despite rapid progress in our understanding of the brain, we still have no explanation of how complex electrochemical signaling could give rise to a subjective inner world of colors, sounds, smells and tastes.

Although this problem is taken very seriously, many assume that the way to deal with this challenge is simply to continue with our standard methods for investigating the brain. The great success of physical science in explaining more and more of our universe ought to give us confidence, it is thought, that physical science will one day crack the puzzle of consciousness.

The blog post is here.

Teaching Ethics Should Be a STEM Essential

Ann Jolly
Middle Web
Originally posted October 11, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

Do you have ethics built into your STEM curriculum? What does that look like? For a start I’m envisioning kids in their teams debating solutions to problems, looking at possible consequences of those solutions, and examining the trade-offs they’d have to make.

Some types of real-world problems lend themselves readily to ethical deliberations. Proposed environmental solutions for cleaner air, for example, resulted in push-back from some industries that faced investing more money in equipment, and even from some citizens who feared a rise in price for the products these industries produce. So how do you lead your students through a productive discussion of these issues?

In my search for answers to that question I located a free Ethics Primer from the Northwest Association for Biomedical Research (downloadable as a PDF). This publication strongly recommends that the study of ethics begin through exploring a case study or a scenario.

A STEM lesson provides a perfect kickoff for an ethics discussion, since a scenario generally accompanies the real-world problem kids are trying to solve. From there, ethics principles and practices can be built naturally into the lesson.

The article is here.