James E. Boggs The University of Texas Austin, 78712
Science and Contemporary Social Problems A course for nonscience students
Science, at best, is unrelated to the important forces which are acting to change the world; at worst, it is one of the main forces of evil tending toward the destruction of human values. Such a visualization of science, while foreign to a scientific audience, is held by a quite significant fraction of the undergraduate population of our universities, the young people who in spite of present appearances will he the leaders in the cultural, business, and political life of the world in another two decades. Starting from the premise that such attitudes are incorrect, or at least grossly oversimplified, this paper describes a course which has been offered at the University of Texas for several years in a modest effort to alter suchviews. It is interesting to speculate on the origin of the antiscientific attitudes held by some students, and a more fundamental approach to the problem would be to work on the factors which first induced the antagonism. It seems clear that the previous exposure of the students to science has given them little conception of the relationship between science and society. I n many cases it would appear that when efforts in such a direction have been made, the presentation tended to glorify science, to present scientists as a superior sub-species of mankind t o whom we should pay homage, and to neglect any adverse effects of scientific or technological developments. Reaction against the obvious fallacies of such claims can lead to equally erroneous views at the opposite extreme. More often, perhaps, the attitude of students whose primary concern is with man and society arises from simple disinterest in a field The author would like to thank the Norges Almenvitenskapelige Forskningsrad and Professor Otto Bastiamen of the University of Oslo for providing this haven for reflection.
which appears to concern itself with unreal pictures of bouncing balls representing atoms, with balancing equations for no obvious reason, with making up nice rules for imaginary ideal gases, and similar amusing but impractical games. At the University of Texas, as at most other American universities, students in nearly all fields of study are required to take a certain number of courses in science. The population we are considering consists of students majoring in such diverse fields as French, fine arts, political science or English literature plus a steadily increasing number of students who have no idea what their field of specialization will be. Furthermore, in a large state university there are thousands of such students in every entering class, all required to take ~ciencecourses. On the average, they are certainly neither more nor less intelligent than science majors, but their interests arevery different, and they are nearly unanimous in considering the required science courses as stupid, artificial barriers to be surmounted before they can get on to more practical courses dealing with man, with values, and with society. The problem seems to be peculiarly one of American universities. This paper is being written during a period of temporary refuge at the University of Oslo, and the notion of requiring large numbers of university students to take many courses in which they have no interest seems alien indeed as viewed from here.' Nevertheless, it does provide an opportunity for essentially remedial work and an opportunity for dealing specifically with those aspects of science which are of significance to the nonscientists who must certainly constitute the vast majority of our population. What, then, does science have to say that is of interest to the nonscientist? The contribution may be
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3, March 1972
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divided into two parts, philosophical and sociological. The philosophical implications of the second law of thermodynamics, of evolut,ion, of the indeterminancy principle, of recent advances in cosmology and particle physics, are obvious to the thoughtful scientist and could be made comprehensible to university freshmen. The course to be described has been limited to the sociological implications of science, howcver, so no further comment will be made on the philosophical contributions, except to urge teachers dcvcloping courses dealing with such matters to lay aside Aristotle and Ptolcmy and Copernicus and perhaps even Darwin. While some students are fancinated by history, the majority are very contemporary mindcd and will be more interested in current patterns of thought than in the historical developments which led to them. The course "Science and Contemporary Social Problems" at the Univcrsity of Texas concerns itself primarily with the interactions between science and socicty. The treatment is perhaps the only one a scientist knows how to us-observat.ion of phenomena and thc derivation of general principles from these events. Just as a course in thermodynamics would derive principles and then show the application of these principles to many diversc problems, the course works through many social problems as illustrations of a few fundamental ideas. At the beginning of the semester there is a basic disagreement bctween the instructor and many of the studcnts in the class. The students t,hink that science is irrelevant to most .of the problems which concern t,hem as individuals or as members of society while the instructor believes that science is basic to nearly all of them. Since the instructor has confidence in his bclief, he is willing to use almost anything of interest to the students as subject matter for his examples. The illustrations used vary from semester to semester, but such arcas as population growth and control, drugs that affect mental states, present and future availability of natural resourccs, pesticides, food additivics, chcmical and nuclear weapons and applications of computers are typically included. Studcnts in this agc group.are quite self-centered, and t,opics which rclate to their own personal problems are the most popular and possibly of some importance in the individual dcvclopment of the student. In each cxamplc used, the presentation begins with a brief consideration of t,he present problem, proceeds to an evaluation of the past development leading to the prcscnt situation, considers in detail the current understanding of relevant factual matters, compares the feasibility of various proposed courses of action, and presents as fairly as possible the relevant ethical positions and value judgments of differing groups of peoplc. In t,his sequence by far the largest amount of time is spent on the development of the factual background needed to make decisions for action. A central idca is to cmphasizc thc tentative nature of all such "facts" and, by example, lead the students to an understanding of thc critical importance of e~aluat~ing the evidence which supports claims which they may hear. Nevertheless, it is emphasiwd that action must be takcn based on conclusions arrived a t from uncertain information (the decision to do nothing is an action), and that thc decisions made must involve value judgments and ethical considerations. In all of this the 190
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Journal of Chemicol Education
instructor tries to remember his purpose in discussing a given topic is to use it as an example. The class may think he is talking about hormone contracept,ives and current research on prostaglandins, but he knows he is really talking about the nature of medical research, the organization of the pbarmaceut,ical industry, the time scale involved in new product development and testing, and the need for basic understanding of the chemical systems involved before products of social utility can be developed. The course must be given in a large lecture section because of the overwhelming number of studcnts involved, but at Texas we arc fortunate to have available a 400-seat auditorium with superb audio-visual facilities. Very extensive use is made of slides, films, specially prepared videotapes, and taped or rccorded contemporary music. About the only teaching aid in thc room that is not used is the blackboard, since this is not believed to he an effective tool for a class larger than 100 student,^. Slides can now be prepared very easily by a number of techniques, and the instructor has never been able to understand that it is basically immoral to present chemical structures in color rather than in black and white. The simultaneous use of several projectors makes intercomparisons very convenient,. Somc videotapes available through National Education Television sources have been used, but the medium has been found most useful for locally produced special items, such as interviews with the county district attorncy and with a prominent defense attorney on the legal status of marijuana. Music is used before and after class, but some contemporary music makes very powerful statements on the subjects considered and it is also used for that purpose during the class period. Some work is being done with the production of short 16-mm sound movies, but these are rather expensive both in time and money although the finished product is superior to the other media for many purposes. The course capitulates completely to the lack of aptitude of the students for mathematics beyond simple arit,hmetic. In compensation for this, many of the students are found to be delightfully literate. They are asked to write scveral short papers and a term paper which covers in depth some very small topic related to the subject of the course. Many of these papers turn out to be of extremely high qualit,y wit,h t,horough and penetrating analyscs of selected portions of t>he society-science interface. In addition to the papers, the students are given objective tests on factual material. Since no suitable textbook is availahle, the lecture scrves as the central organizing part of the course. The students read papers which they are given, and a number, often four, of paperback books of semi-scientific character. It would bevery desirable to have small discussion groups with the course, but this has not yet been logistically feasible. The course was originally given as a second-semester course following a semester of conventional chemistry. It has now becn moved to the first semester for entcring freshmen. Other chemistry courses of a more conventional nature are also available for the nonscience studcnts, so they have a number of options depending on their interests. Nearly all of the students have had high school chemistry, but a few have not. Never-
theless, it has been possible to develop presentations of topics as sophisticated as a qualitative understanding of entropy, optical activity, and hydrogen bonding provided the students are sufficientlymotivated to feel a need for comprehending these concepts in order to understand somcthing in which they are interested. The coune cannot provide a background for more advanced chemistry courses in the regular sequence for science majors. If a student should decide to transfer to a scientific specialization, he will have an extra semester of work to make up. The course is certainly not taught with any intent to encourage such transfers, and in a few cases where it has happened who is to say a science major is worse off for a little understanding of the social implications of his field? Several questions have been raised about the course. Do students learn as much chemistry as in a regular chemistry course? Certainly not. The course is neither a course in chemistry nor about chemistry, but about the relationship between science and society. Nevertheless it is possible to hope that five years later the students may remember as much or more chemistry than they would five years after a regular chemistry course. That hope is fostered by a very pessimistic view of the retention after a conventional course. It is also hoped that the attitude of the students toward science and technology will be based on a more solid foundation. If it is not a course in chemistry, why should it bc given in a chemistry department? First, it is the author's opinion that the subject matter of the course certainly constitutes a valid ground for rational inquiry and, a8 such deserves a reputable place in the offerings of a university. Secondly, it again appears to the author that the course would be better taught by a scientist than by someone from the social sciences or humanit,ies. The fact that the course was developed within a chemistry departmcnt was partly a chance consequence of the details of the author's university appointment, but more fundamentally a reflection of the central position of chemistry in the problems of modern society. Is it possible to talk to students in these times about controversial matters? Don't they know more ahout drugs and sex than the instructor does? Thesc ques-
tions have often been asked, but they represent absolutely no problem. It is essential that the instructor maintain an objective position in presenting factual material (and the students know surprisingly little of this), and the instructor can also make an objective presentation of differing conclusions regarding action which should be taken. Beyond this, the students expect and respect an honest statement of the instructor's own opinions, as long as they are carefully labeled as such. Has the course been a success? The question is impossible to answer in any really objective way. I t has been tremendously popular with students in spite of a fairly heavy load of reading and writing assignments. Practically no one drops the course and attendance at lectures is sustained at an uncommonly high level even though attendance records are not kept. The students tend to be flattering in their evaluations, but students are often unexpectedly kind in such matters. From the subjective viewpoint of the instructor, there are some conspicuous successes and some conspicuous failures as in all large groups of students, but for the group as a whole he is satisfied that the course makes a major contribution to the education of the nonscientists and assists them in adapting to the technological society in which they must live. A final examination givcn five years later might decide the question, but this is impractical for obvious reasons. Should the same course be introduced at other schools? Definitely not. The course, as taught at Texas, is an intensely personal one developed in accordance with the instructor's own style, and its success is largely dependrnt on the development and maintenance of a personal relation between the instructor and the class. Any attempt to impose one person's style on another instructor would surely be the perfect recipe for failure in a course of this type for this group of students. What can be transferred is the conviction that the interrelationship of science and society is a valid subject for teaching in a science department to nonscience students and an example of one development which may encourage other instructors to find their ou7n individual means of expression. It takes some effort, but there is a compensating advantage. It's great fun!
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