Flood of Mysteries and Science

Sam Harrelson on February 22, 2011

Well worth your time time to read:

How We Know by Freeman Dyson | The New York Review of Books: “The information flood has also brought enormous benefits to science. The public has a distorted view of science, because children are taught in school that science is a collection of firmly established truths. In fact, science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries. Wherever we go exploring in the world around us, we find mysteries. Our planet is covered by continents and oceans whose origin we cannot explain. Our atmosphere is constantly stirred by poorly understood disturbances that we call weather and climate. The visible matter in the universe is outweighed by a much larger quantity of dark invisible matter that we do not understand at all. The origin of life is a total mystery, and so is the existence of human consciousness. We have no clear idea how the electrical discharges occurring in nerve cells in our brains are connected with our feelings and desires and actions.”

Vernier’s Physics App Blows My Mind

Sam Harrelson on February 7, 2011

Vernier Video Physics for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store: “Vernier Video Physics for iOS brings physics video analysis to iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Take a video of an object in motion, mark its position frame by frame, and set up the scale using a known distance. Video Physics then draws trajectory, position, and velocity graphs for the object. Share video, graphs and data to facebook, your Photo Library and to your computer running Vernier’s Logger Pro software.”

I can’t tell you what this means to me as a teacher.

Wow.

We’re living in the future, folks.

The Kids Are Alright

Sam Harrelson on July 27, 2009

Children are unconsciously the most rational beings on earth,” says Alison Gopnik, “brilliantly drawing accurate conclusions from data, performing complex statistical analyses, and doing clever experiments.” And not only does empirical work reveal this about babies and small children, but what is thus revealed throws light on some of philosophy’s more intriguing questions about knowledge, the self, other minds, and the basis of morality.

via barnesandnoble.com

Beautiful thought-provoking post pertinent for us parents, us teachers and humanity-at-large.

My how we damage kids with our “absolute” truths, marketing, advertisements, career paths and buffets.