Chemistry Education, Science Literacy, and the Liberal Arts. 2007

Chemical Education Today

Award Address

Chemistry Education, Science Literacy, and the Liberal Arts1 2007 George C. Pimentel Award, Sponsored by Rohm and Haas Co. by A. Truman Schwartz

I am deeply honored by the George C. Pimentel Award in Chemical Education and grateful to its sponsors, Rohm and Haas. The previous recipients of this award are a distinguished group, and I am humbled to be in such good company. But I am even more humbled when I consider the contributions of my many deserving chemist colleagues who have yet not been recognized in this manner. I had the good fortune of working with George Pimentel during the summer of 1985. I was doing most of the lecturing in an NSF/ICE workshop for high school teachers at Berkeley, and George graciously agreed to give a few lectures. I asked him to talk about the second law, and he did so using the approach he had employed in Understanding Chemical Thermodynamics, written with Richard Spratley (1). George was a highly effective teacher, as well as a fine writer, a first-rate researcher, and a national leader in science education. Opportunities in Chemistry: Today and Tomorrow (2), which George wrote with his daughter Janice Coonrod in 1987, was a resource, model, and inspiration for those of us on the Chemistry in Context team. My delight at the Pimentel Award is tempered by the realization that so much more needs to be done to advance chemistry education and science literacy. Millions of Americans suffer from a lack of scientific knowledge and, even worse, they have no notion of how that knowledge is acquired, tested, and refined. Many of our national leaders and opinion shapers, including extremists at both ends of the political spectrum, demonstrate their scientific illiteracy with frightening frequency. “The Two Cultures” Revisited This condition is nothing new. In 1956, the year I graduated from college, C. P. Snow, the British physicist and novelist, published an essay in the New Statesman (3), which he subsequently expanded as the 1959 Rede Lecture at Cambridge University. In it, he described what he called “The Two Cultures”—the scientific establishment and the literary establishment. Snow had made contributions to both of these cultures, but his lecture concentrated on the vast chasm of mutual ignorance and misunderstanding that he saw separating these two intellectual traditions. He even went so far as to propose a test of scientific literacy: A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: “Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?” (4)

I believe that every educated man and woman, no matter what his or her interests or profession, should be able to describe the second law of thermodynamics and to know and love at least a half dozen of Shakespeare’s great dramas. One of my favorite essay questions on take-home physical chemistry examinations was to ask students to use the second law to interpret one of Shakespeare’s plays (their choice). I got some marvelous answers. The second law seems to drive the tragedies: entropy runs wild in King Lear and Othello actually says, “chaos is come again”. By contrast, in the comedies, artistic license permits at least temporary reversals of nature’s arrow, as when Maxwell’s Demon in the form of Puck restores order at the end of A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream. Shakespeare’s understanding of natural, spontaneous change was as profound as that of Carnot, Clausius, and Boltzmann. Chemistry in the Context of the Liberal Arts I cite this example from my own teaching because it reflects what I have found to be an effective strategy for teaching chemistry and advancing scientific literacy—to embed science, and chemistry in particular, in the liberal arts tradition. I am painfully aware that to some, “liberal arts” is synonymous with “soft-headed and impractical”. It should be a label of distinction. I have written two college-level textbooks for nonscience majors, and have waged an on-going battle with publishers who like to call the corresponding course “liberal arts chemistry”. In the first place, I would argue that Chemistry in Context (5) and Chemistry: Imagination and Implication (6) are, in their own very different approaches, as rigorous and demanding as more traditional texts intended for science majors. But more importantly, all chemistry courses are, or should be, “liberal arts chemistry”. By that I mean a course that strives for conceptual understanding, mastery of the necessary related skills; awareness of practical, social, and ethical applications and issues; and some knowledge of the historical roots of the discipline and its place in the broader intellectual tradition. Above all, the liberal arts approach emphasizes the importance of learning how to learn, and that makes a liberal arts education a much better preparation for a career in our rapidly changing society than narrow vocational training. The fact that a disproportionately large number of graduates of liberal arts colleges complete doctorates in chemistry and the other sciences suggests that we must be doing something right. But an undergraduate degree in chemistry is also superb preparation for a wide range of professions. Let me quickly add that I do not wish to suggest that a liberal arts education can only be acquired at a small undergraduate college—that just happens to be where I have spent my teaching career. It is important to remember that instruction in mathematics and natural philosophy has been part of higher education

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Science, like the other liberal arts, contributes to the satisfaction of the human desire to know and understand… Ideally, a liberal education produces persons who are open-minded and free from provincialism, dogma, preconception, and ideology; conscious of their opinions and judgments; reflective of their actions; and aware of their place in the social and natural worlds.

In arguing the importance of teaching science as it is practiced, the Study Group used these words: Education in science is more than the transmission of factual information; it must provide students with a knowledge base that enables them to educate themselves about the scientific and technological issues of their times; it must provide students with an understanding of the nature of science and its place in society; and it must provide them with an understanding of the methods and processes of scientific inquiry.

The report also recommends that liberal education in the sciences should address the nature of scientific understanding, include fundamental integrative concepts that characterize all the sciences, and place science in its historical, cultural, ethical, social, economic, and political contexts. In addition, the Study Group proposed specific pedagogical strategies for teaching science as it is practiced. The summaries of courses that exemplify the goals of the study constitute perhaps the most useful part of the report. Although many of these courses no longer exist, they are still valid models. Common Misconceptions and Criticisms of Science In this paper, I will describe various educational efforts I have made over the last 40 years in my attempts to humanize the scientist and Simonize the humanist. (In fact, I have tried to achieve something deeper than a surface polish.) Macalester College has been very generous in tolerating my dilettantism, humoring my hubris, and permitting me to work on my own education as well as that of my students. I have participated in more than 20 courses with an interdisciplinary emphasis and collaborated with colleagues in at least 15 departments. The courses and seminars have variously carried academic credit in chemistry, biology, history, English, and interdisciplinary studies. Some of these offerings have been designed primarily

Tr u m a n S c h w a r t z (at right), winner of the George C. Pimentel Award in Chemical Education, with Wayne Wolsey, colleague and organizer of the award symposium.

photo by J. W. Moore

since its very beginnings. But over time, specialization brought separation, and the unified intellectual enterprise began to fragment. In the late 1980s I was a member of an interdisciplinary Study Group created to reexamine some of these issues. It was part of the AAAS Project on Liberal Education and the Sciences. Our report, The Liberal Art of Science: Agenda for Action (7), was published in 1990, along with a spate of other educational studies. Like most of these studies, it appears to have had little impact, but many of the recommendations are as relevant as they were 17 years ago. The summary statement makes two major assertions: “Science is one of the liberal arts and should be taught as such”, and “Science should be taught as science is practiced at its best.” The first assertion is followed by this elaboration:

for science majors and some have attempted to meet the needs of those who are not concentrating in the sciences. But most of the courses have specifically sought to bring together in the same classroom students (and often faculty) from both cultures. I will describe certain of these endeavors in the context of some all-too-common misconceptions and criticisms of science. It’s Only a Theory Frequently scientific ideas are dismissed with the statement: “It’s only a theory”. The problem is that the public misunderstands the meaning of the word “theory”. It is not just a good guess, but a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena. These days it is hard to find anyone who does not believe in atoms and the atomic theory. The theory of gravitation does not get the public riled up. Dropped bodies fall; and even some of the astrologers claim that gravity is the mechanism by which planetary influences are transmitted. Most people may not understand the theory of relativity, but they accept it. But, after 150 years, the theory of evolution through natural selection remains tentative and unproven for about 50% of Americans. Yet, massive amounts of evidence have been collected supporting and extending Darwin’s dangerous idea. We can observe it in the laboratory and the field. We understand the molecular basis and mechanism for genetic mutations and know how to cause and control such changes. In short, the theory of natural selection is as firmly established as atomic theory, quantum theory, or any of the other great guiding principles of science. It has met the scientific criteria for acceptance. There are millions who wish this were not so. But wishing has nothing to do with the facts. Instead, we would be well advised to heed the words with which Darwin concludes The Origin of Species: There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved. (8)

www.JCE.DivCHED.org • Vol. 84 No. 11 November 2007 • Journal of Chemical Education 1751


Award Address

Scientific Explanations Can’t Be Proved To Be Absolutely Correct A very important part of “Ways of Knowing” was our study of the process of scientific discovery and claims for validity. Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (11) was always required reading. This introduces another supposed

All Scientific Knowledge Is Subject to Inherent Uncertainty Some critics have used the findings of science to impose limitations on science as a way of knowing. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle surfaces from time to time in the guise of Schrödinger’s Cat, or on the pages of Michael Frayn’s Co-

photo by M. Z. Hoffman

There is indeed grandeur in this view of life, whether or not one includes a Creator. And recent discoveries have only increased the grandeur. We are all made of star stuff that is 14 billion years old. The genetic instructions for you, me, Charles Darwin, and slime mold are written in the same DNA code. I can think of no better argument for universal brotherhood and sisterhood. The Darwinian revolution was a case study in a multisection first year course I helped develop and taught for five or six years in the 1980s. Eleven self-selected faculty members from ten different departments (representing all the divisions of the College) constituted the teaching cadre. With funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, we met in a four-week summer workshop to read, plan the course, and educate each other. Our focus was on the phenomenological and conceptual issues involved in some major scientific revolutions, the factors that brought about these innovations, their reception by society, and their impact on society. The title of the course, “Ways of Knowing”, reflected the major theme of how one chooses between or among conflicting claims for the truth. In addition to evolution, we included the reconfiguration of the geocentric universe in the 16th and 17th centuries and the creation of a newly perceived physical reality through relativity theory and quantum mechanics in the 20th century. For several years I also included a unit on the chemical revolution of the late 18th century, when Lavoisier restructured our science. The reading list for each module included primary scientific sources, for example The Origin of Species, secondary interpretations, e.g. Emilio Segre’s From X-Rays to Quarks (9), and one related work of literature, e.g. Brecht’s play Galileo (10).

critique of science: “Scientific explanations can’t be proved to be absolutely correct.” Of course science does not make such claims. Science is designed to work by gathering new data; developing new methods, instruments, and calculations; testing and revising in a self-correcting iteration. The great majority of scientists believe that this process brings us closer to approximating physical reality, even though we may never attain complete understanding. Most changes are incremental—what Kuhn called normal science. But there is always the possibility that some new observation will lead to a major revision of our model of the natural world, as with our chosen case studies. It is also important for the public to know that sometimes a new theory subsumes and extends the previous one, as the theory of relativity did to the theory of gravitation. NASA still uses 300year-old Newtonian mechanics to send up the space shuttle. And for ideal gas behavior, non-attractive point (zero volume) molecules are adequate. One of the great strengths of science is that falsifiability is built into its modus operandi. If an explanation could not possibly be disproved, it is not a scientific explanation. That is why creationism and its latest manifestation, intelligent design, are not science. Intelligent design is not even new. The metaphorical watch that William Paley found on the heath in 1802 has simply been replaced by bacterial flagella. The distinction between real science and its pretenders must be clearly delineated, but too often science sounds dismissive, defensive, intolerant, and even anti-intellectual in staking its justifiable claims. Unfortunately, not all efforts to separate sense and nonsense succeed. Honesty demands that I reveal one of my failures. I once offered a January Interim Term course called “Flatworlds and Flying Saucers”. It was meant to be an investigation of the paranormal and the pseudoscientific along the lines of the Skeptical Inquirer. We read Martin Gardner’s Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (12) and Science and the Paranormal by George Abell and Barry Singer (13). Among the strange aberrations we discussed were UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, astrology, perpetual motion machines, Atlantis, pyramidology, spontaneous generation, young-earth creationism, monsters of various sorts, strange sexual theories, unusual diets and food fads, flat worlds and catastrophism, past lives, and extrasensory perception and related psychic phenomena. I even went so far as to invite a number of true believers to talk to the class, and I found myself torn between a desire to be polite and tolerant and a need to refute the nonsense I was hearing. In fact, a similar ambivalence dogged me throughout the entire month. I naively thought that truth would triumph and drive away all the dumbheit. It didn’t work that way, and I suspect that the students who entered the class entertaining fanciful ideas emerged uncorrected. For me it was a frustrating experience.

Truman Schwartz with his wife, Bev, at the awards symposium.



penhagen (14), a thought-provoking play that I have taught in a course on “Literature and Science”. The non-commutivity of the operators for position and momentum suggests that “All scientific knowledge is subject to inherent uncertainty”—at least at the fundamental subatomic level. But to extrapolate Heisenberg indeterminacy to the positions of the planets, the behavior of baseballs, or the existence of free will (as some have attempted), is to push it far beyond its useful limit. After all, h is really very small. Most scientific probabilities come close to being certainties. We must empower our students and the public to have some sense of what is physically reasonable— something my colleagues and I tried hard to do in Chemistry in Context. Scientists Don’t Always Agree There are those who disparage science because “Scientists don’t always agree.” To which I would add, “Thank goodness for that.” Years ago I wrote a provocative opinion piece in this Journal (15) in which I argued for admitting ambiguity into our chemistry classes. We do our students a great disservice by protecting them from the controversies in our discipline. If chemistry were as bereft of ambiguity as it is sometimes taught to be, no one with more than half a wit would ever become a chemist. Intellectual controversy propels science just as it does any discipline worth studying. But in science there is reasonable and unreasonable dissent. There is general agreement on methodology and what counts as acceptable evidence. Reproducibility of results is required. To be sure, scientists make errors of execution and interpretation. And, too often we encounter examples of scientific fraud. But the system is so constructed that eventually error and fraud will be detected—something not all disciplines can claim. Consensus does eventually emerge and carries great weight in science. I have found that the history of chemistry is an excellent way to introduce ambiguity. Although I have taught stand-alone history of chemistry courses on only a few occasions, I have incorporated historical material in all of my courses. Studying the competing claims of the phlogistonists and Lavoisier’s new chemistry can help contemporary students gain a better appreciation for the experimental and intellectual foundations of the discipline. Other pedagogically useful topics include 19th century controversies over the atomic theory, uncertainties concerning atomic weights, and competing theories of atomic and molecular structure. The historical approach not only helps students learn contemporary chemistry, they also learn why certain models, concepts, and interpretations have become widely accepted. Conceptual understanding, not rote memorization is the goal, and with it comes a better knowledge of how science works. It is also important to introduce students to current controversies in chemistry, for example by comparing the valence bond and molecular orbital approaches to chemical bonding. A well-designed laboratory program that is truly experimental and not just confirmatory can model a search for understanding and explanation. Best of all are research opportunities in which students directly confront uncertainty.

Unfortunately, legitimate differences between scientists are sometimes misinterpreted to mean major disagreement. Those who want to argue against the massive evidence for evolution or global warming can inflate minor professional differences in an attempt to undermine broadly accepted principles. Advocates of a particular political position can always find “experts” (often well beyond their field of expertise) who are willing to counter broadly held scientific consensus. This is a favorite strategy of those who find efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emission to be economically inconvenient. The trouble is that it is difficult for the public to know which scientists to trust. Too often policy makers decide on a course of action and then find a scientist who supports their position. One of the aims of Chemistry in Context, as stated in the preface to the first edition, was to “empower readers to respond with reasoned and informed intelligence to the complexities of our modern technical age”. That emphasis has continued through the five subsequent editions. Chemical phenomena, methodology, and theory are presented as needed to inform understanding of critical contemporary issues. The goal remains to motivate readers; equip them to locate information; and develop analytical skills, critical judgment, and the ability to assess risks and benefits. In short, we strive to make our students “Sceptical Chymists”. Needless to say, such outcomes are equally important in courses that prepare future chemists. It has been gratifying to see this approach used in other innovative projects such as the ChemConnections modules prepared by the ModularCHEM Consortium and the ChemLinks Coalition (16), the various products of SENCER (Science Education for New Civic Engagement and Responsibilities) (17), and Chemistry: The Science in Context (18), a textbook for the large service course. The new ACS general chemistry text (19) also owes a pedagogical debt to ChemCom (20) and Chemistry in Context. All Knowledge Is Socially Constructed Some of the critics of science come from within the academy. According to many postmodernist deconstructionists, even if all scientists were to agree on their interpretation or explanation of some natural phenomenon, that consensus would not prove that they were correct. The postmodernist claim is that “All knowledge is socially constructed and hence relative and subjective.” Thus, what we regard as scientific fact is really arbitrary and unsupported. My temptation is to dismiss this argument out of hand. The charitable interpretation is that humanities and social sciences are so complex that some of their practitioners find it difficult to appreciate the more reliable ways of knowing that have proved effective in the much simpler physical world. The less charitable reading is that the deconstructionists are so uncertain about what they know and how they know it that they attempt to extend their insecurity to disciplines of which they are even more ignorant. It appears to be a case of a common affliction, science envy, turning into science enmity. Scientists Don’t Have All the Facts A convenient excuse for inaction is “Scientists don’t have all the facts; more study is required.” Scientists are trained to



Award Address be thorough and methodical, and we can always think of more questions to ask. That’s why we have nerdy reputations. But most chemists will grant that sometimes it is necessary to publish or to act before all the possible experiments have been done and all the data have been collected. For example, there are still unanswered questions about the expected extent of global warming and the effects of such a temperature increase. But with the publication of each study, more compelling evidence is amassed. The report released in February 2007 by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (21) concludes that there is a greater than 90% chance that the Earth’s temperature increase since 1950 has been caused by anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions and land-use changes. The fact that the report estimates that during the 21st century average global temperature will rise somewhere between 1.8 and 4.0 °C does not represent serious disagreement. Even before the report appeared, Alcoa, BP, DuPont, Caterpillar, and General Electric joined a consortium of corporations and environmental groups to ask Congress to pass legislation to limit greenhouse emissions. This is a time when the negative consequences of inaction are so serious that it is essential to act on less than complete knowledge. Unfortunately, we have also seen instances where costly decisions have been based on faulty and fragmentary information. Education in science should provide some guidance for establishing the reliability of evidence. The far right is not alone in misunderstanding scientific evidence and misusing it to promote public policy. Many environmentalists on the far left refuse to consider nuclear power as an acceptable energy source. The N-word, haunted by the ghosts of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Chernobyl cuts off all rational discourse. Radioactivity does carry risks, but those risks have been blown completely out of proportion. We report in Chemistry in Context that more than 100,000 workers have been killed in American coal mines since 1900, but no Americans have been killed in nuclear power plants. Admittedly, the two examples are not strictly comparable, but the differences in the risks are real and profound. Coal-burning power plants bear the burden of mining accidents, black-lung disease, air pollution, environmental degradation, and the release of massive quantities of carbon dioxide. They even produce more radioactive emissions, in the form of smoke, than do nuclear power plants. Emotion clouds the ability of many to rationally weigh risks and benefits. Some of these same people couple their pessimism concerning nuclear power with unrealistic optimism about the ability of environmentally benign energy sources to meet our needs. I am a strong advocate of capturing solar and wind energy, developing renewable fuels, reducing pollution, and improving efficiency. Supporters of the status quo have been too slow to move on these options. But to expect our lust for coal and oil to abate within a few years is completely unrealistic. Again, we may not like that conclusion, but to deny it is folly. It would be nice to invent a perpetual motion machine or a device that converts heat to work with 100% efficiency, but the second law informs us that that just cannot happen. Knowledge of science has some value in informing us about what is and what is not possible in this particular universe.

Science Is Mechanical, Sterile, and Dehumanizing Some of our fellow citizens seem to believe that “Science is mechanical, sterile, and dehumanizing.” All that is required is to put in the data, turn the crank, and out comes the correct answer. Could it be that they acquired this idea in a chemistry class? Perhaps such an experience led a student in one of my courses for nonscience majors to describe chemistry as “antiseptically arrogant”—a stinging indictment that has stayed with me for 25 years. I hope that most chemists would agree with Warren Weaver: Science is not technology, it is not gadgetry, it is not some mysterious cult, it is not a great mechanical monster. Science is an adventure of the human spirit. It is essentially an artistic enterprise, stimulated largely by curiosity, served largely by disciplined imagination, and based largely on faith in the reasonableness, order, and beauty of the universe of which man is a part.

In other words, science is one of the liberal arts. But I fear that in our quest for efficiency, our need to cover the content, our drive to pack as much information as possible into a 50minute period we sometimes forget that fact. We forget that both cultures are striving to discover beauty in truth and truth in beauty. And that requires insight and imagination. Vladimir Nabokov, an able lepidopterist as well as a novelist and literary scholar once said: “There is no science without fancy and no art without fact.” Have we neglected, to the detriment of our students, the element of fancy? After all, we chemists are a pretty pragmatic bunch, and with the notable exceptions of Roald Hoffmann and the late Primo Levi, we do not exploit the poetry of our discipline or revel in its metaphors. Again I return to the milieu of the liberal arts college. In 2005, a professor of Spanish at Macalester organized two panels to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the publication of Don Quixote. In keeping with our interdisciplinary traditions, he invited colleagues from history, political science, economics, international studies, anthropology, Spanish, mathematics, biology, and chemistry to give their perspectives on this classic novel. I chose to speak on “Don Quixote, Technology, and the Death of Imagination.” Don Quixote is a work of towering imagination, and the Don himself is the embodiment of imagination gone wild. Cervantes knew that what we observe of the world can be misleading. Scientists know that as well. Scientific understanding can occur only if we get beyond appearances, and that requires imagination. Growing up in a small town in South Dakota, my imagination was fed by radio and books. I escaped to Oz, Grand Central Station, ancient Egypt, a bullring in Seville where Carmen waited for me. In short, radio and books helped me create an imaginary world every bit as fantastic as Don Quixote’s. It will undoubtedly label me as a Luddite when I confess that I worry that technology and visualization have become so sophisticated that today’s children, college students, and adults do not have much opportunity to exercise their imaginations. Who needs to imagine anything when everything is laid out in



brilliant special effects? I admit that the technicians who create these special effects are amazingly imaginative. In fact, they are so good that they relieve the docile and passive TV and movie viewers of the necessity and the joy of imagining. But there may be some things that even the latest technology cannot capture: two creative geniuses, Orson Wells and Terry Gilliam failed in their efforts to transfer Don Quixote to film. During my career, technology has also transformed science and science teaching. There are marvelous representations of molecular structures and simulations of dynamic processes occurring at the atomic and molecular level. But will this graphical representation enhance or impair the ability to think beyond the black box of transistors and wires? Will our students simply accept the model as reality and go no further? Recall that Albert Einstein said his special theory of relativity emerged when he imagined what the world would look like if he could ride along side a light beam. The movie that he saw played only in his head. I submit that that is where the physical world is imagined and how science gets done. I called my first book Chemistry: Imagination and Implication. Both words of the subtitle are essential components of the discipline, and perhaps if we explicitly emphasized them, our students would form a more accurate picture of what we do and how we do it. Scientists Know Everything—or Nothing: Trust and Responsibility I conclude with two related fallacies about science: “Scientists don’t really know anything—don’t trust them” and its inverse, “Scientists know all the answers—trust them (us).” I don’t know which of these statements is more dangerous—both can be disastrous for the human condition. I have already offered examples of how the public and its leaders are at great peril when they dismiss and disregard the well-established findings of science. But to unquestioningly accept all the pronouncements of science can also court catastrophe. I think that at present, the public’s ignorance, misunderstanding, and skepticism about science constitute more of a threat than its uncritical acceptance. But let me end with a cautionary tale. During my graduate student days at MIT, George Scatchard’s research group often ate lunch together in a dining hall decorated with some dramatic murals. One of them was centered on an androgynous angelic figure presumably representing truth. On its left was a snarling dog, on its right a beautiful child. In front of the allegorical angel was a scientist, clad in a white lab coat, holding a test tube, and looking wise. But it was the caption that gave the mural a perhaps unintended meaning. It read “And ye shall be as gods, knowing good from evil.” I remind you that those were the words that the serpent spoke to Adam and Eve as he tempted them. I have often wondered whether the artist was as naïve as his style suggests, or had he successfully smuggled an ironic warning into that bastion of science and technology. The point is that scientists are not gods. We do not have divine wisdom. And science and its applications are too important to be left to the scientists alone. The health of modern society demands that the public understand the strengths and limitations of science, its potential for good and evil, and how

The health of modern society demands that the public understand the strengths and limitations of science, its potential for good and evil, and how its discoveries can be used wisely.

its discoveries can be used wisely. This is no easy task, given the complexities of modern science. The misconceptions I have identified are learned. And those of us who teach chemistry are especially responsible for not eradicating them, for allowing them to flourish. We need to communicate to all our students—not just the potential scientists—knowledge of the natural world and how that knowledge is acquired, tested, refined, and revised. But that is not sufficient; the world also needs wisdom—that illusive essential. Wisdom is the province of all disciplines and that is why science should be fully integrated within the liberal arts. The habits of mind acquired by our students should lead to a lifetime of learning. And that, I suggest, while not a guarantee, is the beginning of wisdom. Of course, it has been said before and said better in the book of Proverbs: Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting, get understanding.

Note 1. This article is based on the award address for the 2007 George C. Pimentel Award in Chemical Education, sponsored by the Rohm and Haas Company. The address was presented at the American Chemical Society National Meeting in Chicago, IL on March 25, 2007. Information about the nominating procedures for this award (as well as a list of recipients) can be found on the ACS Website at http://www. chemistry.org/awards (accessed Jun 2007).

Literature Cited 1. Pimentel, G. C.; Spratley, R. D. Understanding Chemical Thermodynamics; Holden-Day: San Francisco, 1969. 2. Pimentel, G. C.; Coonrod, J. A. Chemistry: Today and Tomorrow; National Academy Press: Washington, 1987. 3. Snow, C. P. New Statesman, October 6, 1956. 4. Snow, C. P. The Two Cultures: and a Second Look; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1964, p 20. 5. Schwartz, A. T.; Bunce, D. M.; Silberman, R. G.; Stanitski, C. L.; Stratton, W. J.; Zipp, A. P. Chemistry in Context: Applying Chemistry to Society; Wm. C. Brown: Dubuque, IA, 1994. 6. Schwartz, A. T. Chemistry: Imagination and Implication; Academic Press: New York, 1973. 7. The Liberal Art of Science: Agenda for Action; Report of the Project on Liberal Education and the Sciences; American Association for the Advancement of Science: Washington, 1990. 8. Darwin, C. The Origin of Species; Penguin Books: London, 1968, 459–460.



Award Address 9. Segre, E. From X-Rays to Quarks: Modern Physicists and Their Discoveries; Freeman: San Francisco, 1980. 10. Brecht, B. Galileo, trans. C. Laughton; Grove: New York, 1966. 11. Kuhn, T. S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1962. 12. Gardner, M. Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science; Dover: New York, 1957. 13. Abell, G. O.; Singer, B., Eds. Science and the Paranormal: Probing the Existence of the Supernatural; Scribners: New York, 1981. 14. Frayn, M. Copenhagen; Methuen: London, 1998. 15. Schwartz, A. T. J. Chem. Educ. 1981, 58, 334–336. 16. ChemConnections. About the Chem Connections Project. http:// chemistry.beloit.edu/modules.html (accessed Jun 2007). (Modules published by W. W. Norton: New York.)

17. SENCER. Science Education for New Civic Engagement and Responsibilities. http://www.sencer.net (accessed Jun 2007). 18. Gilbert, T. R.; Kriss, R. V.; Davies, G. Chemistry: The Science in Context; Norton: New York, 2004. 19. Bell, J.; et al. Chemistry; A Project of the American Chemical Society; W. H. Freeman: New York, 2005. 20. ChemCom: Chemistry in the Community; A Project of the American Chemical Society; Kendall-Hunt: Dubuque, IA, 1988. 21. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. http://www.ipcc.ch (accessed Jun 2007).

A. Truman Schwartz is DeWitt Wallace Professor Emeritus at Macalester College, Saint Paul, MN 55104; schwartz@ macalester.edu


Chemistry Education, Science Literacy, and the Liberal Arts. 2007

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