“Each rock is a moment of time, a sharp comment on

our fragile accident of life.”

David Leveson, A Sense of the Earth, 1971

f

“What we sense as stone is an elusive flicker

in a blur of change.”

“Even the stones disappear . . . Only the chants remain.”

Chinook Proverb

The theme:

The importance of diversity among the sciences—distinctive styles of thought and rhetoric, appropriate methods, responsiveness to particular challenges, use of metaphor to construct concepts, contexts of value, and appeals to aesthetics.

The struggle to grasp “geologic time” underscores how these distinctive elements combine to answer “What to teach?” once the quest for unity has been abandoned.

The geosciences well illustrate the “disunity” of the sciences and thus counter the codification of science as a unified enterprise.

Teaching the Geosciences as a

Subversive Activity: It’s About Time

Kip AultTeaching the Methods of Geoscience

Montana State UniversityJune 28, 2012

What to subvert?

The Quest for Unity

And its Big Blue Blank Box

Scientific Inquiry:

Understand science process concepts and skills that

characterize thenature and practice of

science.Oregon Department of Education

We need to question the notion that all sciences ascribe to the same habits of mind and the implication that this principle ought to guide planning what to prioritize in teaching science and scoring achievement.

The issue:

• Teaching generic processes of science contrasted with

• An approach that emphasizes methods of inquiry adapted to context.

The premise:

Concepts are vital tools of inquiry. Concept and process exist symbiotically, not independent of each other. “The” scientific method is myth, with the myth persisting in generic “process, nature, and culture” approaches to teaching science.

The “forbidden” question:

Does a strong distinction between content and inquiry (or process) skills contribute to student alienation from science?

Thinking in “plurals” is a place to start: cultures and natures of the sciences. . . However . . .

Whether starting with culture or ending with the nature of science, the Basic Science Process Skills

—observe, infer, classify, measure, predict, communicate—always seem to dominate.

For 50 years the Footprints Puzzle has typified teaching a distinction between observations and inferences

The first portion of the fossil is exposed.

(Bell, 2008)

The entire fossilIs exposed.

MAD Magazine1970

“A Dinosaur

Walks Into the

Museum”

Roland T. Bird

Natural History

v.47(2) 1941

PALUXY RIVER

TEXAS

Roland T. Bird’s scenario of a carnosaur attacking a sauropod.

Roland T. Bird’s scenario of a carnosaur attacking a sauropod.

But were the tracks laid down at the same time?

The Footprints Puzzle at the Oregon Zoo along the Cascades Trail

Megatherium tracks, where Darwin walked on the Patagonian coast.

Fossil Rhea footprint. Walking rheas provide a modern analogue for bipedal carnosaur locomotion. Tracks of fighting hippos help to infer behaviors of sauropods.

On the trail of a Patagonian Flamingo

When studying the behavior of extinct beasts from fossilized footprints, keep in mind that hippos are to sauropods as rheas are to carnosaurs.

We need to pursue a deep concern for:

We need to pursue a deep concern for:

How the conceptualization of the phenomenon of interest interacts with the methods of its investigation.

We need to pursue a deep concern for:

How the conceptualization of the phenomenon of interest interacts with the methods of its investigation.

How this interaction generates different techniques in order to achieve distinctive explanatory ideals.

We need to pursue a deep concern for:

How the conceptualization of the phenomenon of interest interacts with the methods of its investigation.

How this interaction generates different techniques in order to achieve distinctive explanatory ideals.

How the methods of investigation yield results calling for the invention of new concepts.

“The enterprise [of science] . . . has a geography of its own. In fact, it is not one enterprise, but many, a whole landscape—or market—of independent epistemic monopolies producing vastly different products.”

Attention to diversity, to “different architectures of empirical approaches , specific constructions of the referent, particular ontologies of the instruments, and different social machines . . . brings out the diversity of epistemic cultures. This disunifies the sciences.”

Karin Knorr Cetina, Epistemic Cultures, 1998

“The enterprise [of science] . . . has a geography of its own. In fact, it is not one enterprise, but many, a whole landscape—or market—of independent epistemic monopolies producing vastly different products.”

Attention to diversity, to “different architectures of empirical approaches [map], specific constructions of the referent [synchrony], particular ontologies of the instruments [gravitometer], and different social machines [field camp]” (p. 3) . . . brings out the diversity of epistemic cultures. This disunifies the sciences.”

Knorr Cetina, Epistemic Cultures, 1998

Whether laboratory, field, or experiment the “extracted aspects” of the natural object are inscripted; these representation—often graphical—are subject to scrutiny and interpretation.

Representations encode what is deemed “real.” These realities constitute the fundamental categories of explanatory thinking at the same time as they “purify the malleable extract.” (Knorr Cetina)

For example, fundamental categories of geologic phenomena—faults, deltas, volcanoes, mantle plumes, plates—include objects that differ from each other due to unique histories; in contrast, members of chemical categories—elements, isotopes, compounds—have no individual identities that bear upon making reliable predictions.

As a consequence of historical reality, many of the “extracted aspects” of the natural world inscripted as geologic phenomena embody a story: the dimension of time becomes implicit in the geologic term. For example, “erosion” has a beginning, middle, and end; “igneous rock,” a story of origins to tell. The rhetoric, not just the methods of investigation, of the geosciences, are distinctive. The culture has a distinct way of speaking.

It is my judgment that geoscientists are well positioned to argue the

diversity and distinctiveness of various scientific enterprises, the

plurality, rather than unity, of the sciences.

Acknowledge disunity!Embrace diversity!Subvert the quest for unity!Contradict standardized inquiry!Exploit plurality!

. . . and interest will follow

Avoid being hornswoggled by those who prioritize the “habits of mind, methods of science, processes of inquiry, nature of science, practices of science, big ideas, or cross-cutting themes” common to all sciences.

Strive, instead, towards a different kind of unity—a heuristic that ferrets out the distinctiveness of a domain, that exposes the traits that disunify, that nests an inquiry within multiple contexts including value, aesthetics, rhetoric, and theory.

Effectively teaching the geosciences undermines the quest to depict unity among the sciences. Distinctive styles of reasoning, responsive to the demands characteristic of particular problems and derived from patterns of meaning, are what to teach. The meaning of “time” is central to meeting these demands.

Meaning is use..

How do geoscientists use the concept of time?

Geoscientists use time as Place, Referee, Number Length, Clock, Art, & Value

Time as Place

Place substitutes for time.

Place on Earth

Place in Time

Place in the Mind

Time as Referee

Sequence and synchrony in time referee arguments.

For example, Correlation Charts illustrate:

Before and after

At the same time

For the same time

Time as Length

Pacing a geologic timeline to scale and locating significant events: Backwards or forwards in time, what is the psychological difference between the two experiences?

What difference does “compression” of intervals (1 meter = 1 million years changing to 1 meter = 10 million years) make to navigating the timeline?

Lengths represent durations.

Comparing durations requires clocks.

“In order to time something, you have to compare it to something else that

always goes at the same speed. But to know it goes at the same speed, you

have to time it. It’s kind of confusing.” --John in 4th Grade, 1979

ClockTime as

Equal intervals of time derived from the randomness of decay (analogous to kernels popping).

Measuring Timewith the “Popcorn” Clock:

What to count?

How do geoscientists represent time?

Visual forms in geosciencepicture time artfully.

Visual depictions of temporal relationships include:

Correlation Charts

Cross-sectional Diagrams

Stratigraphic Columns

Block Diagrams

Cartoons and Animations

Contour Maps

Geologic Maps

Selected elements of reality, in vivid, coherent form that adhere to Elliot Eisner’s criteria of artistry.

What is the value of understanding geologic time?

.004% of timeline?

“The variety of rock is infinite but circumscribed by

process and substance. It may suggest eternity, but

it is constantly being createdand constantly being destroyed.

It is, at each instant, the summary of its past

and the threshold of its future.”

David Leveson, A Sense of the Earth, 1971

The past reaches into the present . . .

. . . fostering deep respect for the present moment.

My Thanks to all for Thoughts on:

Translate Nature into CultureDiscipline Specific MethodsGeologists Didn’t Write EquationsDisconnected Knowledge StructuresThe Localized PresentVisualizations . . . Highly SocialLithic LiteracyPlace-based DisciplineRelevance to EveryonePersonal EncounterDecide, Revisit, DecideContinuously InquiresIsolated Silos Process-orientedCritical Thinking SkillsCritical ReasoningScientific Method Starting PointObservations from InterpretationsEarth Science Default CourseScience-fair-model Does Not WorkTwo Independent Methods