history of science

 I went down to the park to where I took a walk carrying a piece of cake (red velvet) but there were no ducks on the pond let alone a red one.

Just as nature abhors a vacuum, Uncle Ken hates blank space, so I am making an entry here.  It is one of those meandering pieces where I don't know exactly what my point will and am writing until it comes up so if you have better things to do you can just shine it on. On the other hand it is pretty short. 

Picked up this odd duck of a book at the Newberry Library book sale this July, Critical Problems in the History of Science edited by Marshall Clagett.  Big fat book, three bucks, but half that if you bought it on a Sunday which I did. 

The history of science is a subject which interested me when I was subbing and thinking seriously of actually becoming a teacher.  I am a big fan of science but the way they were teaching it appalled me.  It was just like a bunch of facts: three states of matter, Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun, amebas reproduce by dividing.  How do we know this?  Never mentioned.

When you are teaching something and there is a going to be a quiz afterwards you tend to teach what can easily be tested with the focus here on the multiple choices: 3, 5th, dividing.  Those horrible textbooks had a whole section full of little recaps and sample quizzes to guide you to what was really important so that the student could get a good grade on the test and pass the course and move on to the next grade.  There was no time for discussion or speculation.  Just the facts Ma'am.

But how do we know this crap, how did they discover it all?  What discovery led to another discovery?  Here is interesting stuff, but you know it is hard to dissect that stuff so that it fits into multiple choices.

To be continued.