Cut deep and travel far.*
Jul. 21st, 2008 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bending_sickleEdward O Wilson (2006)
Part 4: Teaching the Creation
The only way to save the diversity of life and come to peace with nature is through a widely shared knowledge of biology and what the findings of that science imply for the human condition.
14. How to Learn Biology and How to Teach It.
“The basic ingredient for a love of learning is the same as for romantic love, or love of country, or of God: passion for a particular subject.”
“Because she cared, I cared. Because Septima Smith expected excellence, she got it.”
“[Allan] Archer was a professional, and he treated me as though I were one also. He gave me self-confidence. He taught me how to talk the talk of a real research scientist. He didn’t care about wealth or fame; he cared about the classification and biology of spiders. I didn’t understand all the words, but I got the music.”
“[Ralph Chermock] believed that evolutionary biology should be built upon a solid bedrock of natural history acquired in the field. 'You’re not a real biologist until you know the names of ten thousand species.’”
“Education in biology is important not just for the welfare of humanity but for the survival of the rest of life. Every conservationist with whom I have discussed the subject agrees that the general indifference of people to the living world is the failure of introductory education in biology. The shortfall has been worsened by the common misperception that ‘rigorously scientific’ biology means molecular biology, neurobiology, and biomedical research; it does not mean evolutionary or environmental research. But, as I have urged, half of biology now, and probably more than half in the future, lies in the study of biodiversity and the living environment.”
“The breadth of biology offers entry to a liberal education, which sets out to develop human beings who know not just facts but concepts, understand how to learn, and are able and motivated to think for themselves.”
“The principles I learned over the years about teaching […]:
Teach top-down. […] teach each subject from the general to the specific. Address a large question of the kind already interesting to the students and relevant to their lives, then peel off layers of causation as currently understood, and in growing technical and philosophically disputatious detail, in order to teach and provoke. […] Don’t paint the picture in pointillist dabs to easily bored students. Instead, put it up whole as quickly as possible, and show why it matters to them and will matter for a lifetime. Then dissect the whole down to the foundations.”
“Yet genetic variety as the ultimate cause of sex is only a theory. […] (In fact, it is strongly supported, but not yet definitively proved, by the evidence.”
“By such means provoke the students, give them a new slant, challenge the assumptions and comfortable beliefs they brought with them, turn them into colleagues, propel them on intellectual and spiritual searches of their own.”
“Like science teachers everywhere, I encountered a major obstacle in math phobia, the pandemic curse of Homo sapiens in training.”
“Math phobes are wrong! Mathematics is just a language, and language is only a habit of thought. […] Once the standard symbols and operations of mathematics are learned and used repeatedly to the point of second nature, scanning an equation is not very different from reading a passage in a book.”
“Those who have avoided the language of mathematics are best led into it with a top-down approach to some important and interesting problem in real life.”
“Once a student has learned the elementary principles of Mendelian heredity, which are actually mathematical formulas without the abstract mathematical notations, he is ready for the Hardy-Weinberg equation, a cornerstone of population genetics and evolutionary theory.”
“p² + 2pq + q² = 1.0”
“You can also derive the Hardy-Weinberg equation from first principles of Mendelian heredity, much the way Godfrey H. Hardy and Wilhelm Weinberg did a century ago, and on the back on a envelope.”
“Reach outside biology. The ongoing explosive growth of knowledge, especially in the sciences, has resulted in a convergence of disciplines and created the reality, not just the rhetoric, of interdisciplinary studies.”
“Biology has also expanded to the borders of the social sciences and humanities, and they do it.”
“Focus on problem solving. […] There is, in my opinion, an inevitability to the unity of knowledge. It reflects real life. The trajectory of world events suggests that educated people should be far better able than before to address the great issues courageously and analytically by undertaking a traverse of disciplines. We are into the age of synthesis, with a real empirical bite to it. Therefore, Sapere aude. Dare to think on your own.”
“Cut deep and travel far. By the sophomore year all college students should have begun some strategic thinking about their own education. The best pattern to follow is T-shaped. The vertical shaft represents the drive deep into a specialty, and the horizontal bar the breadth of experience obtained from a liberal education. The specialization is for a trade or preparation for graduate school. The liberal arts are for flexibility and maturity of intellect.”
“Although, as expected, a majority of students assigned to me as biology concentrators were aiming for medical school, a quarter or more wanted to be field biologists. They made this choice even though opportunities for careers were consistently few. I have never wavered in my advice to these would-be naturalists: follow your heart.”
“Commit yourself. […] Secondary school and college students seek their personal identity, but they also yearn for a cause larger than themselves. By some means they will acquire both these marks of maturity, whether base or noble. In transit they need mentors to trust, heroes to emulate, and accomplishments that are real and enduring.”
15. How to Raise a Naturalist
“Today, most of humanity dwells in an artifactual world. The cradle and original home of our species has been largely forgotten.
The ancestral instincts nevertheless still live within us. They are expressed in art, myth, and religion, in gardens and parks, in the strange (when you think about it) sports of hunting and fishing. Americans spend more time in zoos than at professional sports events, and more time yet again in the increasingly crowded wildlands of national parks.”
“A touchstone of personal wealth is the second home, typically in pastoral or natural environments.”
“To be a naturalist is not just an activity but an honorable state of mind.”
“The cognitive psychologist Howard Gardner […]:
A naturalist demonstrates expertise in the recognition and classification of the numerous species – the flora and fauna – of his or her environment. […] In cultures without formal science, the naturalist is the person most skilled in applying the accepted ‘folk taxonomies’; in culture with scientific orientation, the naturalist is a biologist who recognizes and categorized specimens in forms of accepted formal taxonomies.’”
“The cognitive skills of the talented naturalist play out in many other ways, including the practical activities of industrialized societies. ‘The young child who can readily discriminate among plants or birds or dinosaurs,’ Gardner observes, ‘is drawing on the same skills (or intelligence) when she classifies sneakers, cars, sound systems or marbles’; and ‘it is possible that the pattern-recognizing talents of artists, poets, social scientist, and natural scientists are all built on the fundamental perceptual skills of naturalist intelligence.’”
“The brain is programmed for what psychologists call prepared learning: we remember with ease and pleasure some experiences. In contrast, we are counterprepared to avoid learning, or else to learn and then avoid, other experiences.”
“I have several time-tested suggestions for parents and teachers […] who wish to cultivate the naturalist’s capability in a child. Start early; he is ready. Open doors to Nature, but don’t push him through. […] Provide opportunities to explore the outdoors and its surrogates […]. Encourage and praise his initiative. […] At the end of this process he may choose a career in law, marketing, or the military, but he will be a naturalist al his life, and thank you for it.”
“It would be a mistake to introduce a child to Nature by a walk through a park or arboretum, with labels naming the species of trees and shrubs. The child is a savage, in the best meaning of his word. He needs to thrill to the excitement of personal discovery […].”
“At eight to twelve years of age, many children establish secret places, ideally caves or abandoned buildings, but in fact any out-of-the-way spot that offers privacy.”
“Children are born treasure hunters and collectors.”
“Ants are as relaxing as fish in an aquarium […].”
“As an adult I thrill, even myopic entomologist that I am, at the sight of eagles, cranes, and ibises.”
“It is among birders, all of them naturalists and adventurers, that the child can find role models. There are a few eccentric loners in their ranks, but also physicians, ministers, plumbers, business executives, military officers, engineers, and in fact members of virtually every trade and profession. They are united n a common focus.”
“People, including children, love sharks almost as much as they do dinosaurs – and sharks can be seen alive.”
“From the freedom to explore comes the joy of learning. From knowledge acquired by personal initiative arises the desire for more knowledge. And from mastery of the novel and beautiful world awaiting every child comes self-confidence. The growth of a naturalist is like the growth of a musician or athlete: excellence for the talented, lifelong enjoyment for the rest, benefit for humanity.”
16. Citizen Science
“Scientific natural history is also one of the few endeavors in which almost any interested person can make original contributions to science.”
“To move the exploration of Earth’s fauna and flora forward, these overworked researchers need more eyes, more boots on the ground, and more fresh ideas.”
“At the cutting edge is the effort to make complete censuses of all forms of life found in selected localities.”
“One of the most intensive such initiatives in the United States is the one ongoing (as of 2006) in the Great Smoky Mountains national Park […] called ATBI (for All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory) […].”
“The highest concentration of salamander species known in the world live in the mountains and foothills […].”
“Legions of tardigrades, slow-moving spore eaters also known as bear animalcules”
“From early days in 1998 to the summer of 2004, a total of 3,314 species of all categories of organisms were added to those previously recorded from the Park, hence to the known composition of Appalachian mountain ecosystems; and 516 species were discovered that were entirely new to science […].”
“By thus decoding a 700-base-pair section from each specimen’s mitochondrial genome, and entering the data in a ‘Barcodes of Life’ website, scientists could identify many of the species collected on later excursions, even from fragments of adult tissue or caterpillars.”
“The convergence of databases on biodiversity into a few free, single-access, on-command systems has begun to benefit biologists and students dramatically.”
“Within a decade or two it will be possible to assemble a made-to-order field guide of any group, to the degree that it has been explored, living in any part of the world.”
“The next stage in the mapping of earth’s biodiversity is the assembling of the aforementioned Encyclopedia of Life, a program already begun at the U.S. National Museum of Natural History. An electronic page is created for each kind of organism […] into which everything learned about the species is recorded and continuously updated.”
“Scientific natural history […] is labor-intensive and relatively slow […]. The collaboration of amateur naturalists improves the process substantially.”
“The engagement of citizen scientists in biodiversity exploration often starts with bioblitzes, which are treasure hunts designed to find and identify the largest number of species possible in one place during a twenty-four-hour period.”
“Bolstered by food and a pleasing variety of refreshments, the adventures exchange notes and war stories.”
“The first bioblitz was, to the best of my knowledge, the one held out of Walden Pond In Massachusetts on July 4, 1998, and in addition covered adjacent areas in Concord and Lincoln. Walden Pond was chosen because it was the site of the cabin where, in his two-year hermitage, Henry David Throeau conceived the founding philosophy of American environmentalism. July 4, 1845, was the date he moved into the cabin. Our event was called Biodiversity Day.”
“…the famous marine underwater explorer Sylvia (“Her Deepness”) Earle.”
“New technologies in cell cloning and DNA sequencing have recently made it possible to make a quantum advance in the separation and identification of bacterial species.”
“The portable nature of biodiversity technology also makes it an ideal conduit for transfer of frontline biological research to developing countries.”
“…just as in industrialized countries, the information technology and biodiversity science employed here [Consortium for Biodiversity of the Caribbean] can be directly introduced into local educational curricula, all the way from grammar school through college.”
“As the information comes together online, the big picture of Earth’s biodiversity will emerge as a mosaic at high resolution. […] What is to be learned will at last reveal the full magnitude of the Creation.”
* ibid
