Connected Knowledge: Science, Philosophy, and Education
Oxford University Press: 1997. Pp. 221 $25, £19.99
Alan Cromer is a man with a mission. A self-described “optimistic know-it-all”, he wants US science education to shape up and abandon constructivism and other trends that he feels are not only failing to educate young Americans but are also mis-educating them. As in his earlier book, Uncommon Sense (Oxford University Press, 1993), he presents science as a non-intuitive way of knowing about phenomena whose causes are not obvious. To learn how the world works requires systematic introduction of principles that build upon one another. Scientific understanding is based on feedback between theory and experience, spiralling up to a more complete understanding of nature. He blends this philosophy of science with the teaching of science, taking us through quantum physics, the nature of the social sciences, his personal theory of human social organization, a history of education, some idiosyncratic views of learning theory, an even more idiosyncratic commentary on genetics, race, class and IQ, and finally his recommendations for reorganizing US science education.
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