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John Dewey, a professor at Columbia University and one of America's famous educator-philosophers, wrote How We Think in 1910 (revised in 1933). He, along with many others, approved of teaching the scientific method. This method was developed over the centuries and has been called by many other names (e.g., process of discovery, method of investigation, method of inquiry, creative problem solving, operation research, etc.). Then, in the first half of this century, the scientific method (and the associated thinking skills) started to be taught on an increasingly larger scale because:
It is the basic method or guide to the way we originate, refine, extend, and apply knowledge in all fields; for it is the complete method of creative problem solving that includes problem origination, prevention, solution, and challenge of solution.In 1946, Dr. James Bryant Conant (who was then President of Harvard University and one of America's greatest educators, leaders, and scientists), in a lecture at Yale University and later in several books, put forth this concept: "Let me now be specific as to my proposal for the reform of the scientific education of the layman. What I propose is the establishment of one or more courses at the college level on the Tactics and Strategy of Science. The objective would be to give a greater degree of understanding of science by the close study of a relatively few historical examples of the development of science. . .I also draw confidence from the knowledge of how the case method in law schools and a somewhat similar method in the Harvard Business School have demonstrated the value of this type of pedagogic device."To support his concept, he made claims that:
Conant makes this acknowledgment in Education in a Divided World (1948): "At the risk of being redundant, I shall pursue my analysis of the so-called scientific method further. There is no doubt about it, this phrase is still in favor; almost every program of general education includes it. Indeed, in the last twenty-five years, indoctrination in the scientific method has been put forward with more and more insistence as one of the primary aims of modern education." [emphasis mine]
In order to understand Dr. Conant's influence then (and even today), consider who he was and his accomplishments:
In Modern Science and Modern Man (1952), Conant makes this research-inhibiting statement: "It would be my thesis that those historians of science, and I might add philosophers as well, who emphasize that there is no such thing as "the scientific method" are doing a public service."
Professor Jack Easley falsified all of these contentions in 1958 (Paper in Schleffer, 1958). It is well known that humans – no matter how great they are – do make mistakes! Conant's case history method of teaching science was tried for a few years and then abandoned – even by Harvard. In Edmund's Idea & Research Report on THE GENERAL PATTERN OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD (SM-14) (1993), and in my other reports, Conant's contentions are falsified in greater detail. Because of Conant's statements as set forth above and the influence and reputation that Conant and Harvard possessed, his associates and followers accepted his claims without exercising the usual skepticism accorded new, important, and unusual concepts. The non-existence of the scientific method quickly became the prevailing concept in national government, science, educational, testing, and professional organizations and spread to most state departments of education. It became politicized and institutionalized, prevailing now for over fifty years. However, most science textbooks (and other books) continue to devote space to it. Those in national circles ignored this condition and Easley, failing to include it in national school reform programs, past or present, thus drastically inhibiting the teaching of the complete method of creative problem solving and decision making in science classes, as well as in all other subjects. |
