great men history and science

"Great Men" History and Science Education

There is an interesting thread here:

http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/talk_about_not_getting_the

_concept/

about "faith" in science and the way science is taught. Why no science

textbook is a "Bible" of a field. Here are some of my musings....

So much science teaching, not just in high school but also in college,

is rote learning. Memorize Latin names for body parts, Krebs cycle,

taxonomy of worms... Taught that way it does seem like that is all

there is.

I got excited about my area of research BECAUSE of the way the course

was taught on it. Every topic started with "the first guy" who thought

about it, then went through the history, stopping to analyze the key

experiments and how they were interpreted by the authors and readers

at the time (and why - the importance of context), and ended with the

current knowledge, including some "hot off the presses" stuff. There

was no way anyone could have taken the class without leaving with an

impression that everything is tentative, that new research can change

stuff really fast, and how much still there is to learn. That feeling

that the field is wide open, feeling I got due to the way this was

taught, made me want to jump into the discipline and do my own

research.

A couple of years ago I taught an intro bio "speed-class" to adults at

a local community college. The school insisted I follow the syllabus

to the `t' and, of course, the two chapters that were explicitely on

evolution were not included. Yet I found a couple of paragraphs on

evolution in the Introduction (which the students were asigned to

read) and used that as an excuse to spend the very first two hours of

the very first class meeting talking about evolution. I covered

EVERYTHING in those two hours, frothing at the mouth, frantically

drawing red and green "animals" on the board, dividing them by new

rivers and mountain ranges - the whole shpiel. I was dead scared -

there were 20 or so people in front of me, in their 40s and 50s,

mostly African Americans, trying to get a business degree so they

could get a promotion at work. And they were staring at me with poker

faces all along. Like Darwin in the "Origin" the one and only time I

used the word "evolution" was at the very end: "And everything I told

you in the past two hours is called evolution!". Silence....lasting

about two minutes (endless). Finally, a lady in the back row raised

her hand: "Thank you, sir, for explaining this. I thought evolution

had something to do with monkeys turning into humans. But what you

just explained purely makes sense!". Oh was I relieved.

Publius has an interesting post, with a great thread of comments,

using Sistani as an example of possible validity of the "Great Men"

way of understanding history:

http://lawandpolitics.blogspot.com/2004_12_01_lawandpolitics_archive.h

tml#110248315884786046

My quick thoughts:

The "Great Person" history is usually scorned by professional

historians. One would understand that historians of art would stick to

it - Beethoven, Leonardo and Dickens were one of a kind: if they did

not produce their works of art, nobody ever would.

Interestingly, in history of science, in which abandonment of the

"Great Men" approach would be most expected as discoveries would be

made sooner or later no matter who did it, there is instead quite a

layering of contingency and personality. The social environment shapes

the person, but person also has to be unique in some way in order to

produce the revolutionary scientific discovery.

For instance, evolution by natural selection would have been

postulated anyway, and probably at about the same time, as the social

conditions and the state of biology at the time were ripe for this

discovery. However, some historians believe that, if it was not for

Darwin, the theory would have been discovered in a piece-meal fashion,

by a number of people over a period of time, producing a number of

"warring factions" and generally requiring much more time for the

whole theory of evolution to crystallize.

Darwin is considered by some professional historians of science to be

a "genius" in the "great person" sense, as he put the entire theory

out all at once, in an ubelievably tight and well-thought-through

argument that, almost in its entirety, is still valid today. He also

did it in a clear prose quite uncharacteristic for the Victorian

times, making the "Origin" an instant besteseller and a great hit with

the crowds. If anyone else did it, the book may have just been

un-noticed at the time and forgotten soon after.

As for "Great Men" as leaders of revolutionary movements, it appears

that they are not always neccessary. The great movements of the past

used to be associated with great men - Valessa, Mandela, Gandhi.

Today, the movements PURPOSEFULLY avoid this. Removal of dictators by

popular demand in Serbia, Belarus and Ukraine was not associated by

great men. We may remember that Milosevic was deposed, or Kuchma, but

who but the locals even knows the names of the leaders of the

movements - Kostunica anyone? Yushchenko's name will be forgotten when

the Ukrainian election is all over with. The movements do it on

purpose. First three attempts to remove Milosevic were not successful

mainly because the movements were associated with charismatic leaders

(e.g., Vuk Draskovic in Serbia) who had a large but not universal

following. When "Otpor" in Serbia organized for the final push they

consciously decided not to rally around a popular leader in order to

get all the leaders of the opposition to join in. They also came up

with great marketing strategies. It worked. Now the "Otpor" organizers

sell their experience on the market - they have organized the

demonstrations in Belaruss and Ukraine. Sometimes a "Great Leader" is

a hindrance.

How about the Progressive movement in the USA today? Was the Deniac

revolution wrong in putting so much stake into a "Great Person", i.e.,

Dean, who in the end did not turn out to be so great? The Kerry

movement was most definitely not a "Great Person" movement. The

closest to a movement defined by the Man and not the troups was the

Edwards primaries cohort - people abandoned their policy qualms and,

ranging from conservative Republicans to uber-liberals, rallied around

the guy they loved on a visceral level. Should the Progressive

movement of the next few years be defined by a Great Leader? Perhaps

it depends on the perception of the gravity of the situation and the

level of earthshaking that the movement intends to trigger. Perhaps,

righting some mid-size political wrongs via elections is better done

without a charismatic leader, while a large overhaul of societal norms

requires a Lightning Rod, someone like Martin Luther King or Nelson