Lecture Notes: The Socratic Method

So, we start the course again. We are at the beginning so now if the time to start good habits and eliminate bad ones. The readings in this course have a way of building up and can overwhelm you if you let them slide more than a week or two.

The lectures will follow the Socratic Method in terms of style following a form laid down by yet another dead Greek ... Socrates. Just once it would be nice to reference a living Greek. In any event this is the description of his method.

"To illustrate the use of the Socratic method; a series of questions are posed to help a person or group to determine their underlying beliefs and the extent of their knowledge. The Socratic method is a negative method of hypothesis elimination, in that better hypotheses are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those which lead to contradictions. It was designed to force one to examine one's own beliefs and the validity of such beliefs. In fact, Socrates once said, "I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others.""

Now, to be fair, in my opinion the Socratic Method is a bit aggressive and students can be a bit intimidated. You should come to class expecting to be asked questions. The first part of the lecture will be the easy stuff ... what did the source actually say and this. We will then likely have a class exercise : assignment or debate and finish with an analysis of the source for the day.

But Prof. H. I hear you say ... I am just a timid woodland creature and do not have an opinion until you tell me what it is. Well, to paraphrase the immortal Soup Nazi ...

NO A FOR YOU !

So, in the face of such a harsh system what is a poor student to do?

1) Read the source
2) Know the source
3) Form an opinion
4) Ask questions and make comments (this last point is an important one, in past years I have had students that had the knowledge base of a well trained Labrador Retriever but they still had exceptional subjective evaluations because they would ask questions. I have also had students that easily threw away 10% of their final mark (three whole grade fractions) because they refused to particpate). You get to decide. Decide well.

We Have to Draw the Line Somewhere Don't We?

In our course on the relationship of Christianity with the Natural Sciences we are going to be exposed to a wide spectrum of theist-agnostic-atheist thought. Even within the theist camp we will see a significant variation in thought.

There is a blog by Chet Raymo that I keep an eye on and he posted a thoughtful response that he titled Capax Dei on recent changes of thinking in the Catholic Church. LINK TO POST. He makes reference to the current Pope's position on Science and Faith which is interesting in it's own right.

While Raymo's blog makes for interesting reading, and is definitely a position that we will need to deal with in our course, it does beg the question of where we draw the line between conservative evangelical theism and liberal theism. I think that his revised Creed at the end makes the line clear for us. I will reproduce it here:

"We believe in God, the source and animator of heaven and earth, and all that is seen and unseen.

We honor the personhood of Jesus Christ, light of the world, who gave his name and inspiration to the Christian fellowship, and who taught us to love all women and men as we love ourselves. For us he made the ultimate sacrifice, that we might live more freely and graciously.

His spirit lives on, in the mystical body of the Church. Together, in his name, we celebrate the mystery of life, and await the time when his dream of universal peace is fulfilled.

With the water of Baptism we affirm our desire to wash away our sins and live the love he exampled in his life. In remembrance of him, we share together the bread and wine of the Eucharist, and invite all persons of good will, regardless of faith, to join our table.

We commit ourselves for as long as we shall live to the continuance of his message of charity and hope, to provident stewardship of the planet, and to the fulness of life in the terrestrial world to come.

Amen"

A Time to Pick Up Stones: The Heavens Pour Forth

It is time to re-activate this blog for the Christianity and Natural Sciences course for the coming semester. I will be posting mostly comments and internet links on this blog related to Faith and Science issues. These links and posts may be part of classroom discussions.

A writer for Discover Magazine has selected the 10 most amazing astronomy photographs of 2008. The one above spoke to me but they are all pretty astonishing. I especially like the image of a exploding star from the other side of the Universe (the light would have had to start more than 4 billion years before our star the Sun formed). But the one I have to post is the one above of a spiral galaxy among other spiral galaxy. If you got far enough away from our Milky Way Galaxy this is what home would look like. It is so beautiful and complete one would assume it is a cheap starfield background painting but not only is it real it was taken with a ground based telescope. Beautiful, simply beautiful.

It is a bit gimmicky but this little video of the Moon passing across the face of the Earth as seen from a satellite sent to look at comets is kinda neat also.

LINK TO TOP 10
LINK TO VIDEO

Galileo In the News

Galileo made the list of "50 must read" books for all educated people according to the Globe and Mail.

I like this statement that makes him sound like a early version of Carl Sagan ...

"Unlike other scientific tomes of its time, which were written in Latin and addressed a scholarly audience, the Dialogue spoke in Italian to an underserved public of intelligent, curious laymen who couldn't afford a university education. Galileo's direct appeal to this mass market fanned the church's anxieties over the message his Dialogue delivered."

LINK TO GLOBE AND MAIL ARTICLE

I'm Back and Reading Comics

Oddly enough a rather weak cartoon strip called "Mother Goose and Grimm" has taken an interest in the Faith and Science debate.

LINK TO CARTOON

Striking NASA Image

LINK TO NASA PAGE

Carl Sagan would have loved this image. If you were on Mars and trained a reasonably powerful telescope on Earth and the Moon this is what you would see. This is an image from a satellite that is currently orbiting Mars. There is just something precious about this image that makes me think of the famous Earthrise image from the the surface of the Moon.

A Quote and An Image

It has been a while and I doubt that I have an audience on this blog right now but I am slowly coming back into the ABU system after my sabbatical and I thought I was due for a posting.

I have been reading alot of Richard Feynman this past year and I like this quote:

"Scientists are explorers,

philosophers are tourists"

Richard Feynman

What gets me about both of these images is that neither explorers or tourists are "home", both set out with real intentions of returning to where they started. I would really like to talk to Feynman about this ... he was too thoughtful and intelligent for this to not be an intentional link but where did he think "home" would be for scientists? The past is not home for a positivist scientist that believes in progress. Does Feynman mean that we are all lost in space and our only purpose is to explore and never get home? Really? Man oh man.

I tripped across this image recently and it made me stop and really, really think.

Yes, it is just another pretty sunset ... but it is a sunset on Mars as captured by NASA's Mars Rover Spirit. There are a number of concentric spinning thought wheels on this image. The dominant one being how small the Sun seems and how a change of perspective changes everything. Then again, think of how blessed Earth is to be "just the right distance" from the Sun.

LINK to NASA image