Computer Models as Play

There is, indeed, an "art" to worldplay in the social sciences that fuses narrative with analytical technique. There is also a kinship with the arts in the relationship between imagined world and reality, a point brought home by political scientist and ellow Robert Axelrod. In the early 1960s the teenage Axelrod won the Westinghouse kience Talent Search for a very simple computer simulation of hypothetical lifeforms behaving in an artificial environment. Ever since, he has worked on the appli...

 Meaningful, Transferable, and Purposeful Understanding

...meaningful, transferable, and purposeful understanding: • Meaningful: The understanding is relevant to the students’ lives and needs. Students connect with the learning. • Transferable: The understanding fosters creative problem-solving and application. Students can apply their understanding to unique and out-of context situations. • Purposeful: The understanding is focused. Students know that the understanding has value and a function.

 Science is Culture, Not Just Methods

The fruitful pursuit of scientific truth and its application, once discovered, is not just a matter of talented individuals well trained in foreign universities and supplied with the equipment they desire. These are very important, but the cultivation of science is a collective undertaking [written as 'understanding'! and success in it depends on an appropriate social structurc. This social structure is the scientific community and its specialised institutions.

 Mathematics Should Also Inspire

So why do we learn mathematics? Essentially, for three reasons: calculation, application, and last, and unfortunately least in terms of the time we give it, inspiration. Mathematics is the science of patterns, and we study it to learn how to think logically, critically and creatively, but too much of the mathematics that we learn in school is not effectively motivated, and when our students ask, "Why are we learning this?" then they often hear that they'll need it in an upcoming math class o...

 Ideas and Principles are Independent of People

In truth, ideas and principles are independent of men; the application of them and their illustration is man's duty and merit. The time will come when the author of a view shall be set aside, and the view only taken cognizance of. This will be the millennium of Science.

 Microscopic and Macroscopic Perspectives in Science

In science, simultaneous macroscopic and microscopic exploration is quite customary, especially in biology. Molecular biology, for example, which derived from the application of chemical analysis to biological problems and led to the discovery of DNA and its function as the carrier of information for every form of life, has developed independently from physiology, which concerns the whole animal and the way it functions as an integrated living system. In like manner, the difference between th...