Science Awareness and Science Literacy through the Basic Physics Course: Physics with a bit of Metaphysics?

Abstract

Until the 1980s, it is well known and practiced in Indonesian Basic Physics courses, to present physics by its effective technicalities: The ideally elastic spring, the pulley and moving blocks, the thermodynamics of ideal engine models, theoretical electrostatics and electrodynamics with model capacitors and inductors, wave behavior and its various superpositions, and hopefully closed with a modern physics description. A different approach was then also experimented with, using the Hobson and Moore texts, stressing the alternative aim of fostering awareness, not just mastery, of science and the scientific method. This is hypothesized to be more in line with the changed attitude of the so-called Millenials cohort who are less attentive if not interested, and are more used to multi-tasking which suits their shorter span of attention. The upside is increased awareness of science and the scientific method. The downside is that they are getting less experience of the scientific method which intensely bases itself on critical observation, analytic thinking to set up conclusions or hypotheses, and checking consistency of the hypotheses with measured data. Another aspect is recognition that the human person encompasses both the reasoning capacity and the mental- spiritual-cultural capacity. This is considered essential, as the world grows even smaller due to increased communication capacity, causing strong interactions, nonlinear effects, and showing that value systems become more challenging and challenged due to physics / science and its cosmology, which is successfully based on the scientific method. So students should be made aware of the common basis of these two capacities: the assumptions, the reasoning capacity and the consistency assumption. This shows that the limits of science are their set of basic quantifiable assumptions, and the limits of the mental-spiritual-cultural aspects of life are their set of basic metaphysical (non-quantifiable) assumptions. The bridging between these two human aspects of life, can lead to a “why” of science, and a “meaning” of life. A progress report on these efforts is presented, essentially being of the results indicated by an extended format of the usual weekly reporting used previously in Basic Physics lectures.