Finally we come to the type of learning that is the main goal of the Scientific Reasoning Series. These learning modules focus on deep issues about the nature of scientific knowledge, to encourage widespread use of scientific modes of reasoning in everyday situations.
We can raise many questions in such material. How do we know what we know? What is observation? What is experimentation? What is the role of empirical data? What is a scientific theory? How does a scientist develop models and theories, perhaps from observational data? What is the structure of a model or theory? How is a theory discovered? What is the predictive power of scientific theories? How does one go about verifying scientific theories? How does one ``improve'' scientific theories no longer adequate for their intended tasks? All these and other related questions are the focus of the computer-based learning activities to be described.
``How is scientific knowledge transmitted, not to the specialists (this is easy enough), but to other scientists, and most difficult of all, to nonscientists? How is scientific knowledge to be taught to children, how is it to be diffused to the educated world? And, the most pregnant question of all, how can scientific methods and point of view be included in people's mind?''
George Sarton, The Study of the History of Science,'' Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1936, pp. 36-37.
This is not a simple endeavor. The type of process that is used in "simple "science is not the process used in Maxwell's discovery of electromagnetic theory. There is no single "scientific method". Scientific discovery covers a wide range of techniques, some little understood at present. It is important to let students know that no set of simple steps will guarantee that important scientific theories will be discovered.