ok, so, what specific knowledge or criterion makes someone able to be a true scientist?
The silliest thing about the "children are natural scientists" line (which is common amongst scientists for whatever reason) is it actually underemphasizes how hard it is to be a scientist, and how many millennia it took before we really had "science" in the modern sense.
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Being a scientist (true or not) isn't specific knowledge or a criterion. It is patterns of thought, experience, worldviews, tacit knowledge. It is about being indoctrinated into the practices and habits of a discipline. Same as for non-scientific disciplines, like mine: history.
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The exact practices and habits of thought vary dramatically across the spectrum of what is called science (or expertise more broadly). The work to become a paleontologist has little in common with that of a theoretical physicist, as just an example.
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There is great work that has been done in the history, anthropology, and sociology of science on what exactly these practices are, how they are taught, and how students at different levels of education are disciplined into becoming professional scientists.
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But the general point is, there's a reason it tends to take around 10 years of education for someone to be able to really contribute novel, reliable knowledge (in ANY field). Because it's not at all a basic part of human nature to do that — it's a product of education.
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I think that people who have been experts for so long (in whatever field) tend to forget how much work was involved in all of those years, and tend to see their way of seeing the world as more "normal" and "natural" than it really is. But it's the product of a long process.
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To put it another way: curiosity without rigor leads to junk. Even curiosity WITH rigor easily leads to junk. But without it, it's like 99% junk.
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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I HIT THIS REPEATEDLY WITH A HAMMER: I’m doing science!
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My favorite part is when he never said that.
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This is not the first time he has expressed such sentiments — it is a common thing of his: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvFOeysaNAY …
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As a science teacher, I can tell you emphatically that children are actually natural scientists. They're just incredibly bad at all those many skills, like measuring things accurately, or evaluating their results rationally, that make science useful and valid.
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By that measure, everyone is a natural you-name-it, once you teach them how to do it, how to think about it, how to integrate it into their worldview, etc. etc. I'm not saying children can't be scientists. But they aren't scientists. Or plumbers, for that matter.
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You mean funded by government and corporate interests?
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Modern day science is looking at the world from a very tiny lense and saying if I cant see it its not there.
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This. Same w/ expecting kids - given certain data on a worksheet by a person who DID NOT discover any mathematical process - to "discover" mathematical principals through sheer intellect.
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Inquisitiveness alone =/= scientific practice...pic.twitter.com/x9YBB6oSKr
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