Letter: Limits of science
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Your support makes all the difference.Sir: Paul Dawson (letter, 16 July) is putting an unwarranted gloss on
my earlier letter in suggesting that I would like to see "abstruse philosophical
debate" on the nature of science brought into the GCSE classroom. This
would be just as inappropriate as teaching abstruse scientific theories.
Nevertheless an elementary science curriculum would be seriously inadequate
if it took no account of the development of "abstruse" concepts such as
quantum theory, relativity and the double helix.
Similarly a science curriculum, even at GCSE, should show pupils that
widely accepted ideas can be discarded, and should cause them to consider
the extent to which the concepts of science are provisional and its predictions
mutable. Otherwise they will be at the mercy of the common device of unscrupulous
public relations officers and politicians who use the "science has proved"
method to clinch a dubious argument.
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