Imagination, Intent, Luck, Method, Science. Discuss the meaning of the word premeditated until all students are comfortable with its meaning.

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Roger Barnard Gaines
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1 Can Scientific Discovery be Premeditated? by Peter Brian Medawar HS / Science Imagination, Intent, Luck, Method, Science Discuss the meaning of the word premeditated until all students are comfortable with its meaning. Ask participants to take part in the following Opinion Corners activity: 1. Post signs in the four corners of the classroom: Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree. 2. Write on the board the following quote from the text: Scientific discovery can be premeditated. 3. Have participants move to the corner that reflects their response to this statement. 4. Give participants three to five minutes to discuss in their corners why they chose that response. Have each group select a spokesperson to share their ideas. 5. Each spokesperson in turn summarizes that group s thinking. 6. Allow students to change corners of the room if their opinions have changed as a result of the discussions. 1

2 Distribute the text and have students examine it without reading it. Share that it s from a book titled The Limits of Science. Ask what they think a text with these titles will be like: fiction or non-fiction, etc. Have them number the paragraphs in their copies of the text (1-7). Have them work in pairs to read the text aloud (taking turns paragraph by paragraph), highlighting unfamiliar words or phrases. Share as appropriate: Sir Peter Brian Medawar ( ) was a British biologist born in Brazil, whose work on graft rejection and the discovery of acquired immune tolerance was fundamental to the practice of tissue and organ transplants. He was awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet. For his works he is regarded as the "father of transplantation". He is remembered for his wit in real life and popular writings. Famous zoologists such as Richard Dawkins, referred to him as the wittiest of all scientific writers, and Stephen Jay Gould, as the cleverest man I have ever known. Ask the pairs of readers from the Inspectional Read to identify their unfamiliar words or phrases from each paragraph while a volunteer lists them on the board (including: incompatible, elucidating, obstinate, hypotheses, poesy, fabrication, etc.). Note especially the following phrases: calculus of discovery (paragraph 1) exploratory stratagems (3) happy guesses (3) felicitous strokes of inventive talent (3) speculative adventure (4) Also note that Washington and Whitehall (paragraph 1) are the seats of government of American and England, and so the source of much funding for scientific research. Break the whole class into seven reading groups and assign each group one of the paragraphs; have them use a standard dictionary plus context clues to define the unfamiliar words or phrases from their paragraphs. 2

3 Now have the participants read the whole text silently and mark all the places where the author discusses cause and effect (note for example his use of if then constructions). Discuss as a whole group what the individuals have found. 3

Based on this text, what adjective would you use to describe its author, Peter Brian Medawar? (round-robin response) What in the text caused you to choose that adjective?

4 Based on this text, what adjective would you use to describe its author, Peter Brian Medawar? (round-robin response) What in the text caused you to choose that adjective? (spontaneous discussion) What does Medawar mean when he says that scientists use a very great variety of exploratory stratagems (paragraph 3) rather than one scientific method? Do you agree? Why does Medawar argue that an act of the imagination, a speculative adventure (paragraph 4) precedes any observation or experiment? Why would this argument upset the high-ups in Washington and Whitehall? Why do you think Medawar a scientist uses a poet s definition (of poetry as the act of creation ) to make his argument in paragraph 6? Based on Medawar s argument, is a scientist by definition a poet? Why or why not? Is a poet by definition a scientist? Why or why not? Do you agree with Medawar and Shelley that poetry comprehends all science? Why or why not? Where in your life are these ideas (cause & effect, science and imagination) evident? 4

5 Repeat the opinion corners activity from the Launch (see above) with the same prompt. During steps 4 & 5 of the Opinion Corners, remind students to refer freely to what they said, heard, and thought during the seminar discussion. Can scientific discovery be premeditated? After reading Medawar s answer to this question from The Limits of Science, write an essay in which you agree or disagree with Medawar and argue that scientific discovery can OR cannot be premeditated. Support your position with evidence from the text. (Argumentation/Analysis) (LDC Task#: 2 ) Display the writing task and then have students talk in pairs for two minutes to share thoughts about what the writing task is asking and how they might respond. Discuss for clarity with the entire class. 5

6 Ask students to design an outline for this multi-paragraph essay based on the task. Encourage them to consider carefully what Medawar says about this question because they must either agree or disagree with him in writing their arguments. Challenge all to draft their arguments by writing the paragraphs defined by their outlines. Refer to the Medawar text in detail for negative and/or positive examples. Remind students that in order to create the strongest arguments, they need to deal with counter-arguments effectively. Those who agree with Medawar will need to answer the supporters of the traditional scientific method; those who disagree with Medawar will have to refute his arguments. Have participants work in pairs to read their first drafts aloud to each other with emphasis on reader as creator and editor. (Stress that each paper must state a clear argument and support that position with evidence from the texts.) Listener says back one point heard clearly and asks one question for clarification. Switch roles. Give time for full revisions resulting in a second draft. Once the second draft is complete, have participants work in groups of three-four and this time take turns reading each other s second drafts slowly and silently, marking any spelling or grammar errors they find. (Have dictionaries and grammar handbooks available for reference.) Take this opportunity to clarify/reteach any specific grammar strategies you have identified your students needing. Give time for full revisions resulting in a third and final draft. Publish these essays in a collection to be circulated through both the classroom library (as exemplary arguments) and the school media center. Also recruit one or more science professors from a local college or university to read the collection and respond in general to the ideas discussed therein by attending class one day and discussing them with students. Stress that this is the kind of thinking and writing that is required of college students during this discussion. 6

7 Terry Roberts National Paideia Center 7

8 Can Scientific Discovery be Premeditated? Peter Brian Medawar Our present-day understanding of the methodology of science is, I believe quite incompatible with the idea that scientific discovery can be premeditated. Administrative high-ups in Washington and Whitehall firmly believe that scientists made their discoveries by the application of a procedure known to them as the scientific method the belief in which, considered as a kind of calculus of discovery, is based on a misconception. If such a method existed, none of us working scientists would be secure in our jobs, for consider a research worker in an institute devoted to elucidating the causes of and finding a cure for rheumatoid arthritis. If he fails to do so, his failure could only be either because he did not know the scientific method, in which case he should be sacked, or because he was too lazy or obstinate to apply it, an equally valid reason for dismissal. There is indeed no such thing as the scientific method. A scientist uses a very great variety of exploratory stratagems, and although a scientist has a certain address to his problems a certain way of going about things that is more likely to bring success than the gropings of an amateur he uses no procedure of discovery that can be logically scripted. According to [Karl] Popper s methodology, every recognition of a truth is preceded by an imaginative preconception of what the truth might be by hypotheses such as William Whewell first called happy guesses, until, as if recollecting that he was Master of Trinity, he wrote felicitous strokes of inventive talent. Most of the day-to-day business of science consists in making observations or experiments designed to find out whether this imagined world of our hypotheses corresponds to the real one. An act of imagination, a speculative adventure, thus underlies every improvement of natural knowledge. It was not a scientist or a philosopher but a poet who first classified this act of mind and found the right word to describe it. The poet was Shelley and the word, poiesis, the root of the words poetry and poesy, and standing for making, fabrication or the act of creation. With this wider sense of the word in mind, Shelley roundly declared in his famous Defence of Poetry (1821) that poetry comprehends all science, thus classifying scientific creativity with the form of creativity more usually associated with imaginative literature and the fine arts. What is more to the point is that Shelley went on to assert: A man cannot say I will write poetry the greatest poet even cannot say it. 8

9 No more, I submit can a scientist say I will make a scientific discovery; the greatest scientist even cannot say it. By permission of Oxford University Press (Pages from The Limits of Science by Peter Brian Medawar (Oxford University Press, 1988). 9

Sources of Knowledge (excerpt) by Roger Bacon

Sources of Knowledge (excerpt) by Roger Bacon HS / Science Experience, Epistemology, Reasoning, Scientific Method, Truth FOUR CORNERS: Ask participants to choose a corner that best describes how they come