When I teach research and argument I always discuss with students that the idea is not that we need to show the audience that our evidence definitively proves a thing beyond all doubt, but that we need to construct a thesis based on what the best evidence we're able to find suggests.
18 year olds often have strong inclinations toward black and white thinking and have a hard time digesting this but I use the example, just as you do, that no scientist can guarantee to you beyond all doubt that "the sun will come up tomorrow" -- nor can they explain to you *why* gravity works, but we have models to allow us a great deal of confidence that we can count on the sun to come up and that if we trip on a rock that we're going to fall down.
People want science to be certain because in some ways their world view, in some way or another, requires science to function very much like a religion. This is, for example, at the root of the accusation that atheists are expressing "faith" in science but I think also in the insistence that if science cannot provide definitive proof then it's wrong.
But I've also posed the argument: assume that it turns out for example, that evolution or global warming were somehow proven to be wrong, like some scientist was like, "oh, Darwin forgot to carry the 2, it turns out he was totally wrong" -- would we have been silly for following it? No more than the ancients were for buying into Aristotle's model of physics, which was the best thing going at the time. There isn't a finish line for science!
My mother use to point out the fact (scientific or otherwise) that there were more horse's rear-ends than horses. I'm not sure how she came to this conclusion or if she used proper research methods, but mothers don't lie to their sons, do they?
Wow, Professor, this is what I call a proper beat down of poor Senator Emrich. If only someone like you would stand on the Senate floor to immediately deconstruct the nonsense that is often brought to the table. Emrich would like his State to bow to his own personal outlook. No virtue in that!
I should add, also, that Nick Matzke has analysed the *evolution* of bills like Emrich's, using methods similar to those of molecular phylogeny (or tracing the provenance of ancient texts):
I disagree with the last part about the attitude to experts. It's true that an expert knows things better than I do, but I have to be able to question his or her expertise. Just like I'm doing with you right now :-)
The alternative is to passively accept the expert's opinion, and I doubt that this is a viable solution.
We know the language of this kind is only deployed against the theory (or should that really be fact, or collection of theories, or research programme?) of evolution. I'm pretty sure that the Senator has no objection to teaching atomic theory, or the theory of gases.
This line of attack on evolution science and deep time geology goes back as far as George McCready Price, while the parallel claim that historical investigations are therefore not science is stated explicitly in Whitcomb and Morris' * The Genesis Flood*, key text in the emergence of 20th-century Young Earth creationism.
The latest on the Montana bill: https://www.mtpr.org/montana-news/2023-02-07/bill-would-ban-the-teaching-of-scientific-theories-in-montana-schools
When I teach research and argument I always discuss with students that the idea is not that we need to show the audience that our evidence definitively proves a thing beyond all doubt, but that we need to construct a thesis based on what the best evidence we're able to find suggests.
18 year olds often have strong inclinations toward black and white thinking and have a hard time digesting this but I use the example, just as you do, that no scientist can guarantee to you beyond all doubt that "the sun will come up tomorrow" -- nor can they explain to you *why* gravity works, but we have models to allow us a great deal of confidence that we can count on the sun to come up and that if we trip on a rock that we're going to fall down.
People want science to be certain because in some ways their world view, in some way or another, requires science to function very much like a religion. This is, for example, at the root of the accusation that atheists are expressing "faith" in science but I think also in the insistence that if science cannot provide definitive proof then it's wrong.
But I've also posed the argument: assume that it turns out for example, that evolution or global warming were somehow proven to be wrong, like some scientist was like, "oh, Darwin forgot to carry the 2, it turns out he was totally wrong" -- would we have been silly for following it? No more than the ancients were for buying into Aristotle's model of physics, which was the best thing going at the time. There isn't a finish line for science!
My mother use to point out the fact (scientific or otherwise) that there were more horse's rear-ends than horses. I'm not sure how she came to this conclusion or if she used proper research methods, but mothers don't lie to their sons, do they?
Wow, Professor, this is what I call a proper beat down of poor Senator Emrich. If only someone like you would stand on the Senate floor to immediately deconstruct the nonsense that is often brought to the table. Emrich would like his State to bow to his own personal outlook. No virtue in that!
I should add, also, that Nick Matzke has analysed the *evolution* of bills like Emrich's, using methods similar to those of molecular phylogeny (or tracing the provenance of ancient texts):
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.aad4057
I disagree with the last part about the attitude to experts. It's true that an expert knows things better than I do, but I have to be able to question his or her expertise. Just like I'm doing with you right now :-)
The alternative is to passively accept the expert's opinion, and I doubt that this is a viable solution.
We know the language of this kind is only deployed against the theory (or should that really be fact, or collection of theories, or research programme?) of evolution. I'm pretty sure that the Senator has no objection to teaching atomic theory, or the theory of gases.
This line of attack on evolution science and deep time geology goes back as far as George McCready Price, while the parallel claim that historical investigations are therefore not science is stated explicitly in Whitcomb and Morris' * The Genesis Flood*, key text in the emergence of 20th-century Young Earth creationism.