THE INTERACTIVE ART OF CRITICAL...

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“MORE THINGS THAN DREAMT …” COLLABORATIVE TREASURE HUNTS FOR THE INVISIBLE Barclay Hudson, Fielding Graduate University. Citation: Hudson, Barclay (2007). More Things Than Dreamt … Collaborative Treasure Hunts for the Invisible.” Chap. 5 (pp. 75-93) in Jack A. Chambers, (Ed.), Selected papers from the 18 th International Conference on Teaching and Learning. April 4-7, 2007. Jacksonville, FL: Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning. THE SPIRIT OF SCIENCE — SEEING GHOSTS There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy William Shakespeare, “Hamlet” Act I, Scene V These words, spoken by Hamlet, refer to an earlier, tense conversation with his father’s ghost, a being capable of discerning things that most mortals cannot. He is a benevolent but tormented spirit: Hamlet, listening to him, cries out, “Alas! poor ghost,” and is answered, 70404 “Treasure Hunt for Invisibles” 7 Jan 07 Pg. 1 of 32

Transcript of THE INTERACTIVE ART OF CRITICAL...

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“MORE THINGS THAN DREAMT …” COLLABORATIVE TREASURE HUNTS

FOR THE INVISIBLE

Barclay Hudson, Fielding Graduate University.

Citation: Hudson, Barclay (2007). “More Things Than Dreamt … Collaborative Treasure Hunts for the Invisible.” Chap. 5 (pp. 75-93) in Jack A. Chambers, (Ed.), Selected papers from the 18th International Conference on Teaching and Learning. April 4-7, 2007. Jacksonville, FL: Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning.

THE SPIRIT OF SCIENCE — SEEING GHOSTS

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,Than are dreamt of in your philosophyWilliam Shakespeare, “Hamlet” Act I, Scene V

These words, spoken by Hamlet, refer to an earlier, tense conversation with his father’s ghost, a being capable of discerning things that most mortals cannot. He is a benevolent but tormented spirit: Hamlet, listening to him, cries out, “Alas! poor ghost,” and is answered,

Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing / To what I shall unfold…. a tale … whose lightest word / Would harrow up thy soul, … make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, … and each particular hair to stand … like quills …

A point often made by leading scientists is that the natural world casts forth its own strange and wondrous miracles, depicting stories of genesis and evolution, violence and serenity, order and beauty, explanation and meaning, that far surpass any of the stories attributed in past centuries to the work of gods and the supernatural.

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(Hawking, 2001; Rees, 2000; Sagan, 1985, 1995, 2002, 2006a, 2006b).

There are two important, complementary points to be made here. First, the focus on “natural miracles” does not imply a stance against spiritualism, but on the contrary —most scientists would describe their work as deeply emotional, and even a mystical pursuit (Wilber, 1984). Second, this recognition of mystery and wonder is not contrary to scientific pursuit, either. Instead, it strongly complements the central idea of science as rigorously dedicated to testing ideas against evidence, and refusing to make claims about things that are untestable.

Indeed, a key to the power and mystery of scientific ideas is that the stories told by nature are not just knowable and elegant, producing an intense, intrinsic, aesthetic satisfaction when discovered; but they are also terribly demanding, and defiant of what anyone would like them to be. As Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman once put it, “Nature cannot be fooled. It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong” (Feynman, 1986, p. 169).

The complementary match of wonder and rigor is beautifully illustrated by Feynman in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Stockholm in 1965, where he talks about pursuing an idea “so elegant that I fell deeply in love with it … like falling in love with a woman” (Feynman, 1965, p. 157). But here’s the other side of the coin: Feynman went on to say,

And, like falling in love with a woman, it is only possible if you do not know much about her, so you cannot see her faults. The faults will become apparent later, but after the love is strong enough to hold you to her (Feynman, 1965, p. 157).

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So the motivation of pursuing something elusive and mysterious is always there. But the idea that you pursue does not stay the same. And it is this possibility of seeing something different from what you expected that makes scientific learning so special. This is what makes science as deeply engaging as mysticism and love, yet also capable of generating continual progress, by demanding the habit of open-mindedness. As Feynman said about his own prize-winning work: “It is most striking that most of the ideas developed in the course of this research were not ultimately used in the final result” (Feynman, 1965, p. 176). He then goes on to describe how he developed one theory after another in pursuit of his goal, and abandoned them all—all but the last—before reaching his conclusion. At the end of the lecture, Feynman asks,

So what happened to the old theory that I fell in love with as a youth? Well, I would say it's become an old lady, that has very little attractive left in her and the young today will not have their hearts pound when they look at her anymore. But, we can say the best we can for any old woman, that she has been a very good mother and she has given birth to some very good children. (Feynman, 1965, p. 157).

So the thrust of this scientific thinking is not anti-spiritual, but instead pro-wonder, aimed at opening wider the windows to seeing things that lie beyond immediate appearances. These are ideas that can be described and tested—falsified if untrue, but reinforced by experiment if true.

There are volumes upon volumes of writing on the scientific method, but most address the issue of testing ideas through experiment. Much more elusive is the earlier step of seeing something that others don’t see, or measuring

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qualities that are invisible to the naked eye—falling in love with an idea, as it were.

Also missing from most accounts is the way that “insights into the invisible” can be generated through dialogue, or evolved through systematic processes of collaboration. The Feynman Nobel Prize lecture is full of these anecdotes of his conversations with other researchers, that provided clues and inspirations leading to answers.

AN EXERCISE IN SEEING THE INVISIBLE

So, now, the goal of this paper is to think about how to structure “collaborative treasure hunts” for things at first invisible, then brought out from the mists of strangeness into a dim shape in the mind’s eye, and then finally tested through development of objective measures and instruments. Is this really possible in a classroom? OR in a distance-learning forum? Yes. And here’s how.

Let us start with a cubic meter of nothingness. Or a cubic yard or cubic foot, if you prefer. There it is, hovering above an empty table set out in the middle of the classroom, or floating above the computer of each student in a virtual forum. Picture it: Nothing. Zero. Empty.

But in that apparent emptiness, there is a host of unseen things—ghostly presences waiting to speak. The treasure hunt begins here, starting with nothing—or at least the appearance of nothingness—to capture what resides behind that veil of invisibility. It is a creative process, and a challenge to the imagination, and yet rigorously bound to the rule of testability. The dozens, even hundreds of phenomena in that cubic meter are all measurable, some by the human senses, others by instruments of small or great sophistication. Knowing how to “see” them draws on centuries of science, and the treasure hunt can be turned to the purpose of illuminating the history of scientific ideas, or the nature of scientific method, or the accessibility of

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scientific instrumentation, or the design of experiments, or the nature of knowledge and learning.

Another purpose of the exercise is to help students “see” things through other senses than eyesight. Vision is a powerful sense—it reveals much—yet it also obscures, by tending to dismiss things that are not obvious to the naked eye. (On the perceptive powers of sensory deprivation, see Hudson, 2002, pp. 82-84.)

The same can be said for every other frame of perception, including facts, theories, intuitions, and lesson plans. Education consists of providing all these tools for thinking, but each tool can have the unintended effect of closing our minds to other ways of seeing things, formulating ideas, and solving problems.

One of the frequent complaints about math—from strong and well as weaker students—is that they sometimes come up with the answer in their head, but their solution is dismissed because it doesn’t follow the particular steps that happen to have been chosen by a particular teacher or textbook. This is a lesson for teachers as well as students: education should help make us more aware of the richness of things outside of what we take for granted, and outside of the ways we present ideas in pre-packaged formats. Education is not a lock-step process—the very word, Education, is based in the Latin word, educare, “to draw out” or “draw forth, …, to bring into manifestation something latent” (Merriam-Webster’s, 1939, p. 818). Which is exactly what we’re trying to do here—drawing forth something latent into manifestation.

So, what’s in that cubic meter of nothingness? At first, the student thinks, “Huh? Like, what do you mean, ‘What’s there in that space?’ I don’t see anything.” Let the silence sink in for a moment. Then ask someone just to blow into the space. Anything there? Ah, air. There’s air in there. Once the first thing is glimpsed, other ideas follow more quickly. “Okay. If there’s air, what else? Close your

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eyes. What could you sense that you couldn’t sense, say, on the moon?” “Ah, okay, sound waves.”

Great. Okay, now, what if we were in space, on the way to the moon. What’s there in empty space, that you might need to shield against? Yes, cosmic rays. Sunlight. Dust.

Now, coming back to earth, what’s here that isn’t in space? Clouds. Water vapor. Vapor pressure. Gases: Oxygen. Carbon dioxide. Methane.

Scary things: Radioactive waste emissions. Pollen. Ozone. Germs. Electromagnetic fields. Radon. Toxic air pollutants (tobacco smoke alone has about 2,000 different chemicals).

This kind of brain storming can go on for a long while (Table 1 below). In fact, one of the difficulties of doing this kind of experience (based on personal experience) is that students get diverted from the main task of simply listing what’s there, when they start looking into each thing in more depth. Those air pollutants, like ozone—are they really dangerous? Well, so the danger depends on the dose. So how much is there? How do people measure it? Can we tell if it’s there without fancy instruments?

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Table 1An illustrative Taxonomy of Invisibles

Category Examples Issues generated

1 Radiation ~ Cosmic, Solar, terrestrial;

~ Natural, man-made~ Particle vs. wave

depictions~ Magnetism vs.

electricity~ Electro-magnetic

spectrum (including visible light)

Cosmology, virtual particles, dark matter, dark energy (“Most of our universe is missing” — or at least not visible).How to tell if there’s life on earth? (Remote sensing)

2 Fields ~ Electromagnetic fields (EMFs)

~ Gravity (and gravity waves)

~ Weak and strong forces

~ Repulsive gravity (Einstein’s cosmological constant)

~ Time-space distortions from special & general relativity

Are EMFs dangerous? (Weighing risks and evidence.).Einstein’s several errors (but the one he called his greatest blunder, may have been correct, after all).

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Table 1 (Cont’d) An illustrative Taxonomy of Invisibles

Category Examples Issues generated

3 Gases ~ Atmospheric (natural)

~ Atmospheric, man-made

~ Pollution~ Temperature,

Pressure

Global warmingEcology (carbon, nitrogen and water cycles)

4 Chemicals ~ Natural (e.g., from plants, volcanoes, oceans)

~ Signs of planetary life (e.g. methane, oxygen)

~ Pollutants

Major improvements in public health through this kind of science. Longevity and life expectancy gains.

5 Particles ~ Windblown soil~ Volcanic~ Pollutants (diesels,

smokestacks)

Sometimes, tinier is deadlier.

6 Micro-organisms

~ Pollens, Bacteria, Insects

~ Germs (e.g., from sneezing)

The great majority of germs are good for us.

7 Miscel-laneous

~ “Auras” (but can they be tested?)

~ “Ghosts” (Phen-omena yet to be discovered)

It’s not as if scientific discovery is all over.

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A COLLABORATIVE TREASURE HUNT

Perhaps the most important aspect of this exercise has to do with the power of collaborative investigation— here, several minds are usually much better than one. So to keep the treasure hunt going, it may help to divide into three groups, competing to make the longest list. At this point, there are several ways to proceed.

Different Paths. Each group might take a different path to find answers. One might go to the nearest library and fan out, browsing books in the science section for clues. (Part of that assignment would be keeping full, accurate, and correctly formatted reference citations for sources.) Another group might go to the Web for answers (keeping a record of which keywords served best in the search, a list of the fruitful URLs found, and notes on criteria used to judge the authority of a particular site, and the validity of its information.) A third group might simply stay together at the original desk, to continue brainstorming, with help from the teacher if they get stuck.

Sharing Findings. The next stage gets deeper into the collaborative work, with the different groups coming back together to share their findings. An outstanding method for sharing ideas is the World Café format (Brown & Isaacs, 2005). This method begins simply with people informally sitting around tables, three or four people per table, trading ideas. One person takes notes (sometimes on a paper table cloth), and then after about 15 minutes the groups are scrambled to put new people together, and a second round begins. The note-taker stays at the same table once, to “brief” the newcomers on what has been learned just prior, and then hands the note-taking role to another person. This goes on for another round or two, then there’s a break, and it all ends with the final note-takers making a

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joint presentation. The World Café technique has been used in international conferences, at MIT, and yet it is also completely appropriate and usable in a third-grade classroom.

Final Steps. From here, it depends on the level of education and the time available, and whether the next steps are assigned as group collaboration or individual tasks. One direction would be to research the kinds of scientific instruments used to measure each element (light meters, pollen counters, air samples, agar jellies, microphones, scintillation counters, chemical sniffers, barometers, hygrometers, iPod and cell phone reception, compasses, thermometers). Another might be to record things that can be identified by normal human senses (sound, hairs standing up from electrostatic fields, smells, UV heat sensations).

Another follow-up exercise would have students develop a classification or taxonomy of phenomena that might be found in that cubic meter of “nothingness.” (Table 1 suggests a possibility.). Classification is often a valuable contribution of science, where partial knowledge about one area serves understanding of others (the periodic table of elements, the taxonomy of animals and plants, the assignment of rock strata and geological periods).

Or, students could investigate which careers are involved in further pursuit of the fruits of such investigations into the void.

STORIES OF THE INVISIBLE

Learning often happens through a process of “making meaning,” beyond the memorization of facts. One approach to this is story-telling, or finding stories that start with questions and confusion, and end with a punch-line of discovery, especially in explaining the unexpected. As Claude Shannon, the father of information theory,

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described it, “Information consists of surprise—learning is figuring out something that challenges what you already know” (Park,1998, Web page). So another activity might be for students to research incidents when an appreciation of the “invisible” had important effects as historical events.

Examples of the Invisible

A Melting Chocolate Bar. In 1945, Percy Spencer, a self-taught engineer with the Raytheon Corporation, was researching a new vacuum tube called a magnetron, and found that his chocolate bar would melt in his pocket during some of these experiments. That discovery led to the microwave oven (Brown, 2002, pp. 80-82).

A Hospital Wing that Didn’t Get Sick. In April 2005, a virulent strain of influenza hit a California hospital, but in one hospital wing, run by Dr. John Cannell, nobody fell ill from the flu. Later, reading an article on compounds that defend the body against germs, the proverbial light bulb went on in this head: Cannell had been routinely administering to everyone in his ward high doses of vitamin D because so many of his patients, like many other people in the industrial world, had shown a deficiency. Maybe the vitamin D had boosted their natural arsenal of the antimicrobial, called cathelicidin, and protected them from flu. Later research by Cannell and others has strengthened this hypothesis, and clinical trials have now been planned to evaluate the antimicrobial benefits of vitamin D supplementation. As one expert now says, “we can imagine one day treating infections not by giving somebody a drug, but by giving them safe and simple substances—like a vitamin” (Raloff 2006, p. 313).

The Undertakers Alone Could See It. The problem of smog in London had been recognized and railed against since the 13th century, when burning of high-sulfur coal became common, starting centuries of regulation that never

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had much effect on the problem. Nobody could really link the heavy vapors of pollution with anything more than coughing and inconvenience, until one severe episode in December 1952, when the undertakers ran out of coffins. Until then, public authorities had never kept accurate enough records to statistically link death rates and smog episodes, but the sudden run of demand for coffins was a wake-up call. It was soon calculated that about 5,000 people died from that one event. The disaster brought about better collection of health data and better research on smog dangers, and—after 700 years of failed political action—a ban on coal burning in London (Bell, Devra & Davis, 2001).

The Slow Realization Of A Very Fast Event— EMFs. The northern lights are a visible reminder of the earth’s bombardment by solar winds, particularly during solar flares and sun spot cycles when intense bursts of particles affect the earth’s magnetic field, sometimes interfering with satellites and power grids, as happened on March 13, 1989. But in testing nuclear weapons, it took more than a decade of tests before scientists connected the dots, even when they kept experiencing unexpected electrical failures around the test sites. It was finally realized that such bomb explosions produce strong electromagnetic pulses (EMPs), whose potential for knocking out a nation’s power grids, communications, and computer memories could ultimately produce as much disruption as the physical destruction of a small city.

The Bacteria That Didn’t Grow. Then there’s that famous story of Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin—his observation that something was keeping a patch of Staphylococcus bacteria from growing in a laboratory culture dish. Others had seen similar patterns before—what made Fleming different was his training in observation of subtle patterns in the way cultures responded to stains, temperature, light, and other conditions (Lax,

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2004). In short, he had a mind sensitized to seeing things that were on the edge of perception, while other researchers were simply observing the more obvious, gross manifestations of what they had already intended to find.

Developing Skills to See New Things

The exercise described here, using a “cubic meter of nothingness,” may be an effective way to train students’ minds to see things “on the edge of perception,” helping develop other kinds of sensitivities than gross visual cues and pre-packaged, conventional answers. Thus, up to now in this paper, the focus has been on physical phenomena, but the exercise of looking for real ghosts can be extended to looking at things in other domains—such as cultural mindsets and psychological states, and philosophical perspectives. To give a few brief examples:

The Notion Of Zero. For most of its span, Western civilization resisted the idea of a void, to such an extent that it refused to allow the concept of “zero” to be used in systems of counting. Among other things it was a religious tenet that only God could deal with a perfect vacuum, or with “infinity” (which results from dividing by zero). It was only in the middle ages that merchants began to borrow the digit “zero” from the Arabic number system (whose own origins trace to India in 200 BCE). For merchants, the zero allowed decimal calculation, and double entry bookkeeping, which were impractical or impossible using Roman numerals. But it took a long time for the church to condone the practice, and centuries of philosophical debate among scholars (Barrow, 2000; Seife, 2000; Kaplan, 2000). The notion of a vacuum—nothingness—is embraced and celebrated among other Eastern cultures, but in the West, there is a much stronger cultural emphasis on “engineered” reality. What you see is what you get. Why look deeper into more elusive qualities? That skepticism

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may be a constraint on vision and imagination, in ways that can only be cast in relief by cross-cultural comparisons. It may also be a constraint on what we can ask—or allow— our students to perceive and deal with in Western school systems.

The Whiff of Congruence. Another perceptual skill that can be suppressed by an emphasis on “engineered” reality is the sense of personal states of mind and emotion. In schools, emotional states are often dealt with as distractions from the more important things to be learned. But the ability to read states of mind and emotion, both in others and self, is an important basis for all social relationships. Howard Gardner’s depiction of “multiple intelligences” includes two categories (out of a total of eight) that speak to these abilities (Gardner 1993a, 1993b). One of them is “Interpersonal Intelligence,” which enables students to see things from others’ point of view, encourage cooperation, organize activities, and use non-verbal as well as verbal communication. These are the skills that we can help develop in the classroom by an exercise like the treasure hunts described here, and they can then be applied to other forms of collaborative learning (Hudson 2005).

Being Yourself. It’s difficult to “read” what others’ are thinking and feeling, however, without being at least somewhat aware of one’s own thoughts and feelings. This is where Gardner’s “Intrapersonal Intelligence” comes in—sometimes described as being smart about yourself. It involves a recognition of one’s own strengths and weaknesses, an awareness of inner feelings, an ability to develop dialogues with one’s own inner voices, which are sometimes in disagreement, and an understanding of one’s own affect on others, and the effects of others on one’s own emotional state.

Again, in the cowboy culture that permeates much of American life, this kind of introspection is seen as irrelevant, or even a weakness. But increasingly, the

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literature on organizational management is paying attention to the importance of employees’ states of mind, and their ability to manage and make use of what goes on inside. Stober and Grant (2006) describes this in a recent book on coaching in organizations, starting with the tradition of humanistic psychology (Combs, 1999; Maslow, 1970; Rogers, 1951, 1959) to strengthen people’s capacity for self-actualization, empathy, positive regard (valuing others for who they are), and genuineness (or authenticity). An important skill in all this is an accurate awareness of one’s own thoughts, feelings, and sensations (Stober, 2006). This is what’s meant by “congruence” —the ability to accurately be aware of one’s own experience, and thus “be yourself.”

To be yourself. What could be more important in life, and education, than to learn how to be fully your own person, in a way that also nourishes productive relationships with others. It’s a most elusive goal, dealing with elusive qualities. A “cubic meter of nothingness” may be not be the worst playing field for practicing these kinds of perceptions.

Seeing Beyond the Visible. For millions of years, humans and their ancestors have learned from observation, and when things happened that couldn’t be explained, the events faded from consciousness. Some 30,000 years ago, people began to explain the unknown by inventing deities — gods and goddesses to account for good or bad harvests, death and birth, wrath and love (Aphrodite gave Paris his wish to possess Helen of Troy, though she was already married to Menelaus).

About 2500 years ago, people began using their imaginations to “see” things not apparent to the eye. The Egyptians estimated the diameter of the earth—imagined to be round—with remarkable accuracy, by measuring how the sun’s shadow fell differently on the ground at noon, at distant points separated north and south. The Greek, Democritus (born 460 BC) developed a theory of atoms,

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closely resembling the modern theory of chemistry. The whole thrust of modern science is based on observation, and extrapolation from what can be seen directly to what cannot, and setting aside (as Galileo and Francis Bacon and others did), supernatural or religious explanations in favor of evidence and free debate among alternative theories.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS

The process of modern education is, at its best, a continuous process of regenerating the capacity to observe, and then see beyond what is visible, without conceding the explanations to dogma, or groupthink, or the intervention of deities. When those external solutions hold sway, not only does thinking come to a stop, but the fantastic wonders of the natural world, and the miraculous powers of scientific imagination are buried beneath a layer of obscuring explanations.

So much depends, then, on helping students “see” what is not directly observable, and making the connection between the invisible and the real, without the ancient habits of interpretation—it was the gods, or it is because our leaders have said so, or because it was posted on the Internet, so it must be true.

Perhaps all it takes to start a cascade of thinking in this way is a simple classroom exercise that can reveal how much lies beyond the visibly obvious, and yet can be brought to the surface with systematic preparation, starting with a mindset of searching out what is invisible. What is suggested in this paper is that schools can provide some practical tools for seeing and learning beyond the obvious —perhaps a cascade of subtle miracles—just as things can be found in the apparent void of space hovering above the desk, just there, before us.

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REFERENCES

Barrow, J. D. (2000). The book of nothing: Vacuums, voids, and the latest ideas about the origins of the universe. New York: Pantheon.

Bell, M. L., Devra, L., & Davis, D. (2001). Reassessment of the lethal London fog of 1952: Novel indicators of acute and chronic consequences of acute exposure to air pollution. Environmental Health Perspectives, 109, 389-394.

Brown, D. E. (2002). Inventing modern America: From the microwave to the mouse. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Brown, J., & Isaacs, D. (2005). The world café: Shaping our futures through conversations that matter. San Francisco, Berrett-Koehler.

Feynman, R. P. (1965). The development of the space-time view of quantum electrodynamics. Retrieved November 30, 2006, from http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/ laureates/ 1965/feynman-lecture.html

Feynman, R. P. (1986). Personal observations of reliability of shuttle. In J. Robbins (Ed.), Report of the presidential commission on the space shuttle Challenger accident (Vol. II, apdx. F). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Gardner, H. (1993a). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books.

Gardner, H. (1993b). Multiple intelligences: The theory in practice. New York: Basic Books.

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Hawking, S. (2001). The universe in a nutshell. New York: Bantam Books.

Hudson, B. (2002). Critical dialogue online: Personas, covenants and candlepower. In Rudestam, K. E., & Schoenholtz-Read, J. (Eds.) Handbook of online learning. Innovations in higher education and corporate training (pp. 53-90). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Hudson, B. (2005). The interactive art of critical thinking. In J. A. Chambers (Ed.), Selected papers from the 16th International Conference on College Teaching and Learning (pp. 97-119). Jacksonville, FL: Florida Community College at Jacksonville.

Kaplan, R. (2000). The nothing that is. A natural history of zero. New York: Oxford University Press.

Lax. E. (2004). The mold in Dr. Florey’s coat. The story of the penicillin miracle. New York: Henry Holt.

Merriam-Webster’s new international dictionary of the English language (2nd ed.). (1939). Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster.

Park, Y. (1998). Information theory: Surprise, uncertainty, and entropy. Retrieved June 29, 2004, from http://www.pha. jhu.edu/~xerver/seminar2/node2.html

Raloff, J. (2006). The antibiotic vitamin. Deficiency in vitamin D may predispose people to infection. Science News, 170(29), 312. Retrieved November 28, 2006 from Science News Online database.

Rees, M. (2000). Just six numbers. The deep forces that shape the universe. New York: Basic Books.

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Selected Conference Papers 19

Sagan, C. (1985). Contact: a novel. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Sagan, C. (1995). The demon-haunted world: Science as a candle in the dark. New York: Random House.

Sagan, C. (2002). Cosmos (new edition). New York: Random House.

Sagan, C. (2006a). Conversations with Carl Sagan. T. Head, editor. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press.

Sagan, C. (2006b). The varieties of scientific experience: A personal view of the search for God. A. Druyan, editor. New York: Penguin.

Seife, C. (2000). Zero: The biography of a dangerous idea. New York: Penguin.

Stober, D. (2006). Coaching from the humanistic perspective. In D. Stober & A. Grant (Eds.), Evidence-based coaching handbook (pp. 17-50). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Stober, D., & Grant, A. (Eds.), Evidence-based coaching handbook. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Wilber, K. (Ed.). (1984).Quantum questions. Mystical writings of the worlds great physicists. Boulder, CO: Shambala/New Science Library.

World Café. See www.theworldcafe.com See also Juanita Brown and David Isaacs (2005) above.

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