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by ethhics
2364 days ago
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Good article, interesting material to think over. I don’t think the author’s patronizing attitude towards historical theories is helping his thesis much. He starts off proposing that chemistry in 50 years will be way ahead of chemistry today, and so we need to focus on how evidence from experimentation leads to theories to back them up instead of the converse. Alchemy and humors and the four elements all had some amount of observation of outcomes which lead to those theories, and later on evidence disproved them and a new theory took hold. There’s no need to talk about how silly and wrong those people were—rather, more so just how much more we know about the world. Additionally there’s a hidden assumption that introductory chemistry should be teaching people what chemists do. I’d venture that a majority of people who take an intro chem class won’t go on to do any experimental chemistry other than baking. Their curriculum specifies that they need the class, and perhaps those theoretical concepts are built upon from a biological, medical, or physical angle. In this case, the important things to know are 1) the theory, and 2) that the theory explains the world as we know it, so that if another theory comes around to explain new evidence we don’t have “new math”-style public backlash of unfamiliarity. |
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[1] https://online-learning.harvard.edu/course/science-and-cooki...