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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 12, Issue 1,
Foreword (Jun., 2011) Dana L. ZEIDLER Global sustainability and public understanding of science: The role of socioscientific issues in the international community
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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 12, Issue 1,
Foreword (Jun., 2011) Dana L. ZEIDLER Global sustainability and public understanding of science: The role of socioscientific issues in the international community
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A Worldview of Scientific Literacy in a "Free Market State"
The important tenet that bundles these ideas is that the Scientific Community, which mirrors the ‘free market’ state of Community proper (Gemeinschaft), is in its ideal form, open and inclusive to the free exchange of arguments and ideas (Tönnies, 1963/1887). Communities based on Gemeinschaft shared a common work or calling, kinship or neighborhood, spirit or mind – hence common beliefs, virtue, and morality could spontaneously arise. Thus, an artisan or professional could create and produce goods without calculation of units of time and compensation. (In contrast, Gesellschaft represented a process, as well as a state of affairs in which individual associations were guided by a network of legal and moral relations that were not naturally produced, but imposed with calculation to aggregate citizens into a type of polis based on instrumental economic utility.)
The claim that I wish to advance here is that when the scientific community reaches a degree of consensus that arises organically out of common interests, like the pursuit of knowledge through evidence-based inquiry, a state of Gemeinschaft is achieved. What unifies us, therefore, is the presupposition of personal utility and social value placed on evidence and the construction of knowledge. Such a worldview subsumes both the cannons and orthodoxy of western science (i.e., positivism, scientism, etc.) as well as that which western science describes as ethnoscience (i.e., native science, indigenous ways of knowing, etc.)
I am keenly aware that some may see such an inclusive view of “scientific” knowledge systems as conflating. But I am suggesting that when the derivation of knowledge through persistent observation and exploration is coupled with clear reasoning, and the subsequent decisions that follow are based on known evidence, when one can provide justification and be open to criticism, revision or refinement, thereby reconceptualizing that knowledge, then an open, unfettered state of (scientific) community may be said to exist.
Copyright (C) 2011 HKIEd APFSLT. Volume 12, Issue 1, Foreword (Jun., 2011). All Rights Reserved.
