Author: Mr. Lakhaney

TOK Teacher

The Scientific Method

February 10, 2015

“Too often the ‘scientific method’ is presented in schools and textbooks as a ‘recipe’ for doing science, with numbered steps even! That’s misleading. At the other extreme, someone said that scientific method is ‘Doing one’s damndest with one’s mind.’ I know many have said more profound things about this subject than I will offer, but here’s some informal comments about scientific method presented as a set of practical and general guidlines for doing science. Scientists have learned these through trial and error during the entire history of science.”

https://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/scimeth.htm

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences

February 10, 2015

“Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.”

–BERTRAND RUSSELL, Study of Mathematics

https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html

Universal Intellectual Standards

February 10, 2015

“Universal intellectual standards are standards which must be applied to thinking whenever one is interested in checking the quality of reasoning about a problem, issue, or situation. To think critically entails having command of these standards. To help students learn them, teachers should pose questions which probe student thinking; questions which hold students accountable for their thinking; questions which, through consistent use by the teacher in the classroom, become internalized by students as questions they need to ask themselves.”

http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/universal-intellectual-standards/527

Is there a humane and ethical way to execute people?

February 10, 2015

“When the United States at last abandons the abhorrent practice of capital punishment, the early years of the 21st century will stand out as a peculiar period during which otherwise reasonable people hotly debated how to kill other people while inflicting the least amount of constitutionally acceptable pain.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/opinion/the-humane-death-penalty-charade.html

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/death-penalty-pain/

No, Half of All Children Won’t Be Autistic By 2025, Despite What Your Facebook Friends May Tell You

February 9, 2015

“As for the headline claim that half of all children will be autistic by 2025, this claim blithely ignores the broad consensus that the increasing prevalence of autism is largely due to increasing rates of diagnosis and – as a new study has recently demonstrated changes in how autism is diagnosed. The baseless assumption that rates of autism diagnosis will continue into the stratosphere is dumbfounding.”

http://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/no-half-of-all-children-wont-be-autistic-by-2025-whatever-facebook-tells-you

Room for Debate: Are Economists Overrated?

February 9, 2015

“One in 100 articles in The New York Times over the past few years have used the term ‘economist,’ a much greater rate than other academic professions, according to a recent article in The Upshot. Economic analysis and pronouncements are crucial to most policy decisions and debates.

But given the profession’s poor track record in forecasting and planning, and the continued struggles of many Americans, have we given economists too much authority?”

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/02/09/are-economists-overrated?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&module=inside-nyt-region&region=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region