jumpingjacktrash:

seananmcguire:

animatedamerican:

animatedamerican:

So @your-biology-is-wrong wrote this excellent post, which attracted some wrongheaded comments and a lengthy, well-documented, frankly stunning rebuttal by @millenniumvulcan.  I recommend you go read them.

But the whole conversation got me thinking.

I’ve been saying for some years now that we’re teaching science terribly wrong in schools, and quite possibly the wrongest thing we’re doing is making no distinction between “facts about the universe that we have observed” and “categories and models that we have constructed in order to organize the facts we have observed”.

Essentially, kids are being taught that “cats are mammals” is the same kind of scientific fact as “cats give birth to live young,” and it isn’t.  At all.

Which is why we get discussions like the one linked above.  Or like the ones about Pluto being declared a dwarf planet instead of a planet, where people assert that the change in nomenclature is because “we understand better now what a planet is” and not because we’ve chosen to narrow the definition to (disputably) better organize our constructed categories of Things In Space.  Or, for that matter, like the ones that call out “scientific error” in the Bible by citing references to calling a bat a “bird,” or calling a whale a “fish,” as though the classification system we use today is objective scientific fact instead of constructed model.

Because nobody is teaching kids how to tell the difference, or even that there is a difference.

@fredweasleyfreak said: i am very confused. giving birth to live young is a criteria for being a mammal? so what is wrong with teaching them both as scientific fact? 

What’s wrong with it is that the definition of mammal isn’t scientific fact, it’s nomenclature.  Which is to say, a thing we made up as a way of organizing scientific facts.

“Does/does not give birth to live young” is observed data.  “Mammal” is a name we attached to a particular collection of observed data.

They’re both facts, but they’re not the same kind of fact at all.  And in most grade-school science classes, they’re taught as though they are.  To the point where it can be really difficult for most of us who were taught that way to get our heads around the difference.

Also, giving birth to live young is NOT a criteria for being a mammal.  There are egg-laying mammals.  We thought, at one point, that all mammals must give birth to live young; then we found mammals that didn’t.  Our understanding of the natural world is constantly changing, because of discoveries just like this one.

think of the universe as your kitchen. in order to understand and make use of it, you keep it organized, and you name things. you say, this is a fork, this is a whisk. the fork goes in the silverware drawer. the whisk goes in the spatula drawer.

and then you go and scramble eggs with a fork.

does that mean you have to reclassify it as a whisk and keep it in the spatula drawer? if so, is it just that one fork, or all forks? any fork you’ve scrambled eggs with ever? what a mess. mistake classification for reality and suddenly everything is a terrifying whirl of impossible decisions that have to be made yesterday.

but if you understand that classifying forks and whisks differently and storing them in different drawers is just how you make sure you can talk about things and find them when you need them, that it’s a reaction to the form and function of the object rather than a part of it, everything runs smooth like butter.