Re: Georg looks at that Georg! ;-)
Re: Georg looks at that Georg! ;-)
- Subject: Re: Georg looks at that Georg! ;-)
- From: Marco Scheurer <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2003 12:01:28 +0100
On Tuesday, March 4, 2003, at 06:34 PM, Dennis C.De Mars wrote:
BTW, this is not a matter of understanding - it is a matter of
definition!
"[...] The next day, Monday, we were playtime in the fields and this
boy said to me, "See that bird standing on the stump there? What's the
name of it?" I said, "I haven't got the slightest idea." He said, 'Its
a brown-throated thrush. Your father doesn't teach you much about
science."
I smiled to myself, because my father had already taught me that
doesn't tell me anything about the bird. He taught me "See that bird?
It's a brown-throated thrush, but in Germany it's called a
halsenflugel, and in Chinese they call it a chung ling and even if you
know all those names for it, you still know nothing about the bird. You
only know something about people; what they call that bird."
"Now that thrush sings, and teaches its young to fly, and flies so many
miles away during the summer across the country, and nobody knows how
it finds its way," and so forth. There is a difference between the name
of the thing and what goes on.
[...]
In order to talk to each other, we have to have words, and that's all
right. It's a good idea to try to see the difference, and it's a good
idea to know when we are teaching the tools of science, such as words,
and when we are teaching science itself."
--Richard Feynman, What Is Science?, Physics Teacher Vol. 7, issue 6,
1968
Marco Scheurer
Sen:te, Lausanne, Switzerland
http://www.sente.ch
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