It makes more sense when you see it (Do-Vember #16)

Do-Vember

Scientists experiment. They change the variables and see what happens. What's the optimum range for whatever? How much is too much, what amount is just enough, and how much margin do you have? This kind of testing goes on all the time, everywhere from high-tech labs testing pharmaceuticals, to parents figuring out how long a child's afternoon nap should be or how many toys are enough without being too many, to the people who figured out that Ted Talks should be exactly 18 minutes long.

Sometimes it's nice when someone else does the work for you. If you trust their reporting, it could save you having to reinvent the wheel, or, as in today's Pinterest link, the cake and the cookie. What happens if you put in one egg? Two? Three? How do cookies change if you use white sugar? brown sugar? Some other sweetener? Butter, margarine, or some other kind of fat? You may have seen magazine articles illustrating this before (I have one stuck in my recipe binder that shows different oatmeal cookie results), but the post linked on Pinterest has collected up a few useful ones. It's helpful when the muffins turn out tough or pointy, or the cookies spread too much. Like a scientist, you can ask: what caused that? What do I need to change?

This kind of experimenting is actually something that Charlotte Mason wanted her students to practice--within reason, as they didn't want to waste food on things that wouldn't work. There were times when you might want your little cakes to be richer, or sweeter, or have some other special quirk--so knowing how to adjust a recipe for taste or ingredients was a useful thing to learn. If I were teaching that to children now, I think I'd use muffins as an example: there's a basic formula (I took mine from The Tightwad Gazette years ago), but the special ingredients, amount of sweetener, amount of fat and so on can be up to the baker.  Sometimes you can take advantage of a material's particular quirks: a non-food example would be strips of crocheting that tend to curl and twirl around themselves. That can be a problem, but if you're making legs for an octopus, it's exactly what you want.

But it can be useful just to see someone else's results.

"Uncle Eric" study guide for chapter 8

Book studied:  "Uncle Eric" Talks About Personal, Career, and Financial Security, by Richard J. Maybury

Why a study guide for chapter 8, when I haven't posted any for the previous chapters?  This is where we're at in our term's work, and it's an important chapter.  Plus it shows you both why I both appreciate Uncle Eric (or Richard J. Maybury) and occasionally disagree with him--or at least want to raise a few questions about where he's coming from.  Which just shows that I've read chapter 8.

Dollygirl and I last read chapter 5 of this book, and discussed why the storytelling model is an effective one, especially for children (it's something our minds can more easily grasp than a list of rules).

We will skip chapters 6 and 7 for now--they're important in Uncle Eric's overall plan, but they don't make especially compelling reading at this point, at least for a sixth grader.

Chapter 8 is "A Model for Selecting Models."

"How do we know we have a good model?" Uncle Eric asks.

What are some ways you can make up your mind about which belief (about a given problem) makes more sense?  Flip a coin?  Ask a celebrity (the "prestige" model)?

Ask a specialist?  Uncle Eric points out that this is at least better than asking someone famous who doesn't specialize in that area, but, on the other hand, some specialists may be reluctant to give up their own accepted models, even if new evidence brings what they believe into question.  For example, read about Ignaz Semmelweis (we like the chapter in Exploring the History of Medicine).  Uncle Eric also uses Galileo as an example.

Sidewinding questions:  Does the Bible teach that the earth is the center of all God's creation?  Uncle Eric says that today we honour Galileo and regard his opponents as "closed-minded tyrants."  Are things different for scientists today?  What about Christian scientists?

Back to the main issue:  what is the final problem with the "prestige" model, that Uncle Eric points out at the top of page 52?

A third method of choosing which model is true:  do your own research.  What are the pros and cons of this?

Why does Uncle Eric say that if "everybody" believes something, then, mathematically speaking, there's a good chance that they're wrong?  Do you agree with this?

What is the scientific method?  What is a working hypothesis?  Watch this excellent, if somewhat silly, demonstration of the scientific method at work:




On page 54, Uncle Eric explains his beliefs about certainty/uncertainty.  Why does he feel it is safer to stay "uncertain" about many things?  Is there anything we can be certain of?  See Isaiah 12:2; Isaiah 25:9; Isaiah 33:6; Matthew 27:54; Matthew 28:20; Romans 6:5; Hebrews 6:13.  Does that certainty contradict the point that Uncle Eric is making?

For further thought:  does science also demand an element of faith, or does that contradict the definition of science?  "In science, one must commit oneself to the belief that the world we see and touch is real, that nature is uniform, and that it operates according to the principle of cause-and-effect.  Without these prior 'leaps of faith,' reasonable though they are, one cannot undertake science."----What Does the Bible Say About...The Ultimate A to Z Resource