The Independent Center for Integrative Education: Learning without Limits


11/16/2010

 

Dear Integrative Science Class participants:

 

Thank you all for your input and interest. It was a pleasure to work with you today. Please read the summary below and the homework assignment at the bottom.

 

Our first class was an introduction to the series. First, we all introduced ourselves and described our interests and expectations of the course. Then we talked about what science and its place among other parts of human culture such as engineering, art in a wide sense, religion and  philosophy, languages and math is. All of them are different ways to communicate knowledge. In science, we are interested not only in facts and rules but also in the ways those facts were obtained and those rules were derived. We also need to know the limits of their validity.

We discussed the differences between various sciences such as physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy and astrophysics. Even though it is common to distinguish sciences by the objects they study (physics studies inanimate objects, chemistry studies transformation of substances, biology studies life, etc.), it is apparent that you can study the same object by the means of different sciences depending on the questions you ask. For example, you use tools of physics to analyze how people move, chemistry if you are interested in metabolism, molecular biology if you need to know how specific proteins work, etc.

 

The main tool of physics is building a simple model that ignores everything but what is important for the problem at hand. The model is usually described and analyzed by the means of mathematics. The results are compared with the results of experiments. The discrepancies are used to modify the model or, in some cases, to abandon it and develop a new one. There is very little use for experiments that are performed without a specific model to validate or refine. When we don’t know what to expect, we will never find something unexpected! We illustrated the physics approach by building a simple model of a pendulum.

 

Originally, the goal of chemistry was to predict the properties of substances obtained by mixing other substances. Chemists identified various properties and attempted to classify the substances by those properties. They identified acids and bases, metals and so-called metalloids, etc. Eventually, they came up with a list of elements, such as oxygen, carbon, iron, etc., and put them all into a table grouped by common properties called the periodic table of elements. (After that, physicists developed a physical model that explained the table, and many people talked about the end of chemistry. This did not happened because physicists with their simple models could only explain the simplest chemical reactions).

 

Biology deals with problems when it is not clear what is important and not important. In biology, we study and describe different relationships among objects -- who eats whom, who evolves from whom, etc. We observe and describe, compare and classify.

 

After that, you expressed your expectations of performing many hands-on experiments. We also decided to chose an imaginary project which would require a variety of scientific tools. Here is the initial list of potential projects that you suggested:

 

  1. Building a colony on Mars
  2. Building a colony deep under water
  3. Building a colony  inside the living body
  4. Building a clean source of energy that would provide enough power for all our needs
  5. Building a colony underground
  6. A Big Foot hunt
  7. Building a planet from scratch
  8. Developing a way to destroy a planet
  9. Building a colony in the past (with a use of a time machine)
  10. Bringing the mammoths back to life
  11. Genetically engineering new animals and plants
  12. Finding a way to prevent aging

 

All these projects are exciting and could serve our purposes.

 

HOME ASSIGNMENT:

 

  1. Chose a project form the list or suggest a new one
  2. Prepare a presentation (about 5 min long) that would defend your project and convince us to choose it from the list. I suggest that in your presentation you focus on the following questions:
    1. What makes this project important for humanity?
    2. How would this project require a multidisciplinary approach to succeed?
    3. What do you expect to learn from working on this project?

 

When preparing your presentation, please feel free to use all the available resources. You can talk to people (including me, you can reach me at edu@fradkov.com), read, google around, etc. In your presentation, you may want to use visual aids and all other expressive means your creativity would suggest.

 

I look forward to seeing you all next Tuesday.

-Valery