Scientific Facts and Methods in Public Reason

Opposing Laws with Religious Reasons

Religion & Democracy: Interactions, Tensions, Possibilities

Rawlsian idea of public reason refers to the boundaries on political justification of coercive laws and public policies that have wide impact on lives of citizens. The boundaries of public reason means that political justification should be based on reasons we can expect every citizen can reasonably accept independently of any comprehensive religious, philosophical or moral doctrine to which she adhere. In modern liberal democracies characterized by reasonable pluralism of comprehensive doctrines it is unjustified for political argumentation to be based on claims that many citizens can not accept. As I understand it, the point of idea of public reason is to strengthen the relationship of civic trust or civic friendship that can ensure inherent stability of just political regime. An important part of the idea of public reason is how it incorporates scientific claims in political argumentation. Rawls writes that citizens are to base their public justification on „presently accepted general beliefs and forms of reasoning found in common sense, and the methods and conclusions of science when those are not controversial.“ If the idea of public reason is the source of political stability it is necessary to answer what it means that conclusions of science are controversial in political and social context? First, scientific controversy is different from controversy of comprehensive doctrines. Science stands outside of comprehensive doctrines so conclusions of science will not be controversial because they clash with comprehensive beliefs, but they will be controversial if they rely on comprehensive beliefs. Second, if conclusions of science are controversial within scientific community, if there are some expert witness disputing its validity, then maybe value-judgments can enter to set standards for certification of the scientific claim. If potential consequences of scientific claim are bad for welfare of some group in society than standards of evidence that will certify this claim must go up. Finally, even if some scientific claim has been certified it still can be controversial as a premise in political justification. The reason can be that certification has not been transparent and many citizens do not realize that this claim is part of scientific consensus. Again, the criterion for controversy of scientific conclusions in political context is connected to the notion of trust and not to the validity of scientific claim or supportive evidence by itself.

Despite the fact that evolutionary theory is the central and unifying theme in biology, it has not been well received by the general public in the United States. Several studies reveal that many Americans have a poor understanding of evolution and reject it as a valid explanation of the current state of life (Gallup, 1993; National Science Board, 2000; Recer, 1996). In response to this, there has been a significant effort by the science education community to improve the effectiveness of evolutionary biology education. A primary focus of this endeavor has concerned the development of curricula and instructional strategies that foster student learning of evolutionary biology. Many of these efforts emphasize the lines of evidence supporting evolutionary theory and the theory's scientific validity in light of science as a method of inquiry (Farber, 2003; Cherif, Adams & Loehr, 2001; Alles, 2001; Nickels, Nelson & Beard, 1996; McComas, 1994; National Academy of Science, 1998; Scharmann, 1993). These strategies may be particularly effective because they equip students to make informed decisions about the scientific validity of evolution by focusing on the evaluation of evidence within the framework of the discipline, rather than presenting information as facts that must be memorized or by focusing on religious belief (Clough, 1994). Determining the effectiveness of these novel instructional strategies remains an important challenge of evolutionary biology education. One method of measuring the effectiveness of instruction in evolutionary biology is by assessing changes in student acceptance of, rather than belief in, evolutionary theory as a scientifically valid and explanatory theory. This strategy is consistent with conceptions of science as a method of inquiry that stress empirical adequacy and explanatory power over belief (van Frassen, 1980), and has been advocated as an effective method for effectively teaching evolution (Clough, 1994; Scharmann, 2005). Schwabb (1978) framed the issue by observing that a discipline consists of substantive and syntactical structures, both of which must be considered in assessing a theory. The substantive structure of a discipline consists of theories, concepts, and facts (the substance of the discipline) while the syntactic structure consists of the process by which knowledge is warranted or its validity is determined (the discipline's methodology). Thus, informed decisions of acceptance of scientific theories are appropriately made as a result of the critical analysis of available data in light of the established methods of the scientific discipline. Instrumentation has been developed to assess acceptance of evolutionary theory. Rutledge and Warden (1999) developed and established the and validity of the Measure of Acceptance of the Theory of Evolution (MATE), a 20-item Likert-scale instrument designed to assess high school biology teachers' overall acceptance of evolution (Appendix A). As informed decisions of acceptance or rejection of a scientific theory are based on evaluations of substantive and syntactical elements of a domain, fundamental concepts of evolution and of the nature of science as a method of inquiry are the focus of MATE items (Table 1). The MATE has been utilized to assess high school biology teachers' acceptance of evolution in Indiana (Rutledge & Warden, 2000) and Oregon (Trani, 2004), and is currently being utilized at the University of Waikato in a study of New Zealand secondary teachers (http://sci.waikato. ac.nz/evolution/aboutus.shtml). Alters and Nelson (2002), in their review of effective pedagogy of evolution in higher education, noted the potential of the MATE with respect to research in evolutionary biology education. However, the of the MATE in a test-retest scenario-needed to assess the effectiveness of instruction in evolutionary biology--has yet to be evaluated. The reliability of an instrument is a measure of its consistency. …

The publication of John Rawls’s Political Liberalism put public reason squarely on the agenda of contemporary political theory. Ever since, it has been a central topic in the field. Although Rawls developed a distinctive account of public reason, his account is but one among many. Indeed, some commentators have insisted that public reason is a very old notion, one that can be found in the political writings of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant, for example. Public reason has a distinctive subject matter. It applies to the common good of a modern political society and the political institutions that serve that common good, and it contrasts with forms of reasoning that apply to less inclusive associations and communities that exist within a modern political society, such as churches, voluntary clubs, or professional associations. Public reason also contrasts with applications of reason that are not transparent and/or acceptable to adult citizens of modern political societies. The demands of transparency and acceptability have proven to be complex and contentious, and rival articulations of these notions have generated rival accounts of public reason. Public reason informs public political justification, and proponents of public reason often hold that public, political justification of at least the fundamental political arrangements of a political society is necessary for its political order to be legitimate. The reasons for insisting on public reason and the reasons for rejecting it are diverse. Common to all defenses of public reason is the thought that it represents a fitting response to the fact of intractable disagreement in modern political societies.

According to John Rawls, the methods and conclusions of science—when these are non-controversial—constitute public reasons. However, several objections have been raised against this view. This paper focuses on two objections. On the one hand, the associational objection states that scientific reasons are the reasons of the scientific community, and thus paradigmatically non-public in the Rawlsian sense. On the other hand, the controversiality objection states that the non-controversiality requirement rules out their public character when scientific postulates are resisted by a significant portion of the citizenry. The paper replies that both objections miss their mark. To the associational objection, it replies that the relevant test for a reason to be public is whether the reasons have been construed under the rules and constrains of a public frame of thought. Insofar as scientific methods and conclusions correspond to the principles of reasoning and rules of evidence that liberals understand as public, their associational origin is secondary. To the controversiality objection, it replies that the standard for a scientific argument to be regarded as non-controversial should refer to its degree of intra-scientific consensus, since ordinary citizens accept or reject scientific pronouncements conditioned to their particular comprehensive views. Nonetheless, a wide extra-scientific agreement on the epistemic virtues of the scientific method will be needed. The paper concludes that there is a good case to think about scientific reasons as public to the extent that scientific reasoning is a mode of inquiry that mirrors a central aspiration of Rawlsian political liberalism: having a public way of thought and an impersonal standpoint to adjudicate between competing claims.

Public reason is an important concept in Rawls’ political liberalism. As Rawls puts it, ‘it is the reason of the public and its subject is the public good concerning questions of fundamental political justice, which deals with constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice.’ He further explains that ‘the content of public reason is given by a family of political conceptions of justice’ and that ‘a citizen can engage in public reason when he or she deliberates within a framework of what he or she sincerely regards as the most reasonable political conception of justice.’ Rawls’ specification of public reason assumes that a political conception of justice is already given. He does not attempt to explain the role of public reason in the process of constructing a political conception of justice. Rawls is unclear on the distinction between the two roles of public reason, theoretical construction and practical interpretation. In my paper I shall argue that there should be two stages of public reason, theoretical construction and practical interpretation of a political conception of justice. In the theoretical stage, public reason is to construct a political conception of justice, with the help of two moral powers, the capacity for a conception of the good and the capacity for a sense of justice, within the condition of original position as the device of public representation. Through this stage a political conception of justice appears. And then in the practical stage, public reason gets its content from the political conception of justice that we obtained in the theoretical process. In this understanding, public reason is primarily independent from a political conception of justice and becomes the most fundamental capability for constructing a political conception of justice. Thus a political conception of justice is always theoretically challenged by public reason through cultivating new understanding and interpretation, that opens to reconstruction process, even if it has reached an overlapping consensus from the citizens divided by comprehensive doctrines as the source of nonpublic reasons in civil society.

Maps ... are superimposed in such a way that each map finds itself modified in the following map, rather than finding its origin in the preceding one: from one map to the next, it is not a matter of searching for an origin, but of evaluating displacements. Every map is a redistribution of impasses and breakthroughs, of thresholds and enclosures, which necessarily go from bottom to top. There is not only a reversal of directions, but also a difference in nature: the unconscious no longer deals with persons and objects, but with trajectories and becomings.... --Gilles Deleuze (1) Disclaimer experiment, n. The action of trying anything, or putting it to proof; a test, trial; (2) the following article. The beautiful thing about the sciences (e.g., chemistry, physic, etc., and I mean no disrespect to those fields that fall outside of the common designation hard sciences), is the experiment. Or rather, more wonderful than even the experiment is the inherent acknowledgement that the scientist begins with only a hypothesis and that the evidence gathered sculpts the hopefully-publishable paper. The scientist cares not what path the evidence takes him or her, or whether or not his or her hypothesis was right in the first place. A successful scientist gets paid to evaluate the differences in his or her findings with the scientist's hypothesis. Scientists must reconcile each turn within a rhizome. This is the Scientific Method, the dominant form of scientific inquiry for five hundred or so years. This paper is an experiment testing a two-fold hypothesis. The two hypotheses are as follows: 1) a modified Scientific Method can be used effectively to conduct research in the field of English Literature, Critical Theory (Cultural Studies) and Human Sciences (as well as, I presume, every other social science) 2) this paper, which is an inquiry on maps will, in fact, function as a map. The two hypotheses may, however, be in fact one. A paper which acts like a Deleuzean map has similar properties to that of the Scientific Method: observation, hypothesis, experiment, conclusion. I, however, do not want to spend my time on this paper trying to employ the strict Scientific Method or trying to show similarities to it. I invoke the Scientific Method for the possibility it presents. Basically every paper in the field of English Literature has an observation, hypothesis (thesis), experiment (evidence) and a conclusion (they already resemble the Scientific Method). But how often does the writer prove his or her hypothesis incorrect? Never (or at least I have never encountered this). My aim in this paper is to 'experiment' with a new method of inquiry. This inquiry works like a Deleuzean map. Method of Inquiry I will describe this paper as a series of displacements. I am beginning the paper with the above quote from What Children Say. This is the observation (or Deleuze's observation). I will then hypothesize about this quote. It is the experiment that will seem extraordinary. Each piece of new evidence will take the paper in a different direction. After each piece of evidence is introduced, it will be my job to draw conclusions about the displacement. This conclusion is only meant to be a conclusion to one part of the whole rhizome (whose nature is infinite). Let me put it more simply, I am following one possible path this paper could take. This will be only one of the many possible papers produced. This paper may be continued ad infinitum, either from the 'end' of this paper, or from any point within it. I hope this will give you some idea as to how this paper will work, but I hesitate to explain any more, for I want to leave the possibilities as open as humanly possible. A becoming-rhizome is what is desired for this paper. Mapping Maps To begin this first section, I hesitate to copy the exact same quote that this paper started with, but I feel as though, even though these are the exact same words, when superimposed on the first, they will have a different ring to it because of the displacement that occurred from the start of the paper to this point: Maps . …

This research is motivated by the lack of attention from the teacher to the learners’ scientific attitude in learning science at elementary school . This happened because of the lack of balance in developing the nature of learning science which resulted in the students’ low scientific attitude. The researchers applied inquiry based learning method . The purpose of this study is to determine the influence of the scientific method of inquiry on the attitudes of students in learning science. T his research used quasiexperimen t designthrough Non-equivalent control group design . T he subject of this study focused on 30 students of class VI A and 34 students of class VI B. The research instrument sare a questionnaire to measur e the students’ scientific attitude in the pretest and posttest, and the observation sheet. The empirical result demonstrated; 1) an increase in the dimensions of scientific attitude in control class with N-Gain value of 0.15 which are included in the low category; 2) an experimental class increased scientific attitude with N-Gain 0.53 which are included in the category; 3) There are significant differences to the scientific attitude of sixth grade students of primary school in the experimental class who obtain ed learning by using the methods of inquiry and control classes by applying the conventional approach . The results from analysis test, the average difference in gain, with a P value <α (H 1 acceptable), showing that there were differences in scientific attitude of students because of the effect of applying the method of inquiry. This research is expected to contribute to education, especially the improvement of primary school science teaching.

The aim of the study was to describe, categorise and analyse students’ (aged 14–16) processes of scientific inquiry in biology and chemistry education. Therefore, a theoretical structure for scientific inquiry for both biology and chemistry, the VerE model, was developed. This model consists of nine epistemological acts, which combine processes of scientific thinking and inquiry methods. Based on the theoretical structure, a paper-and-pencil test was developed to investigate the students’ abilities in the acts of scientific inquiry. Each of the nine acts was operationalised to generate multiple-choice items. For each act, ten items were constructed. In total, ninety items per subject were tested in a field study to evaluate their psychometric quality. The article focuses on the outcomes for testing in biology. In biology, 537 students were tested with a paper-and-pencil test, following a multi-matrix design in which each student solved twenty-seven items. Data from 260 students have been analysed so far. Seventy-five items showed satisfactory item characteristics. The distribution of the items’ difficulties fits the students’ abilities appropriately. We conclude that theory-driven epistemological acts can be operationalised in tasks that assess students’ abilities in scientific inquiry.

This research was motivated by the low of motivation learning of class V students of Pasi Pinang elementary School academic year 2016/2017. This research was held to decribe the effort to improve motivation learning by using inquiry methods and improve learning motivation by using inquiry methods in science. The type of this research was class V students of Pasi Pinang Elementary School year academic 2016/2017 school year which had 24 students. The object of this research was the improvement of students’ motivation using inquiry methods in science subject. The results of this research showed that the use inquiry methods can improve students’ motivation learning in learning science subject in class V Pasi Pinang Elementary School academic year 2016/2017.

This study broadens the knowledge base about how to use pedometers to further pre-service teachers’ (PT) understanding of measurement: a key concept in science and mathematics education at the elementary level. Two groups of elementary PT—one enrolled in a science methods and the other enrolled in a mathematics methods course at a major university in the MidAtlantic region of United States— completed instruction on how to use pedometers as a technology tool to teach mathematics and science. Lesson plans developed by the PT were collected, and a 40-item instrument to measure attitudes about pedometers, mathematics and science was administered at the end of each course. Data, measurement, and number were the most common mathematics standards targeted by PT lesson plans. No statistically significant differences were found between PT enrolled in science and mathematics methods courses on their perceptions of technology and pedometers as a technology tool. However, PT in the science methods course rated more highly (F = 4.90, p = .03) science-mathematics integration. Future research should examine more extensively a coordinated pedometer experience where the same cohort of PT pose questions and collect data in science methods, then analyze/represent that data in math methods.

This research aims at understanding teaching, t1ainlng, scientific research of reforming the tactics of China's competitive sport integrate, explore from policy evolution to roles function and countermeasure and proposing. The way studied through analysis of documents and history in this research, consult a large amount of documents and materials is put with analyze in order, approach a subject and propose some following results and propose to this research institute: 1. build and construct the sports universities and colleges and has not reached and built and formed and trained the ideal goal on integrated bases of scientific research for teaching yet, it is that the competitive sport reforms the focal point in the China 21st century 2. put emphasis on it is the policy that China returns to the global sport that science and technology serve the importance with tackling of key scientific arid technical problems, it is to train the integrated idea of scientific research to want the gold medal from science bring the new direction fur the development of sports activity of China, 《fundamental of Rising Contribute Ability for Olympic Games》 policy define teaching train the integrated importance of scientific research3. put forward several great scientific and technological problem research approaches about the fact that the competitive sport of our country is developed》 in initial stage of 21st century, put emphasis on the importance of turning the sports universities and colleges into scientific research, training, teaching and combining by three-in-one on the base again, implement 《fundamental of Rising Contribute Ability for Olympic Games (2001-20l0 years)》, 《the sports reform and development outline of 200l-20l0 year》, and the wanting one of policy of 《scientific and technical development plan of sports of 1991-2000 year》, it is China that becomes the indispensable tactics of powerful country of the competitive sport of the 4orld even more.

This article explores the historical and philosophical backgrounds that inform the appropriation of the term “public reason” in liberal theory. Particularly, it studies the differing nuances attached to public reason by Kant and Rawls. The article suggests that, while Kant viewed the public use of reason as a conditio sine qua non for Enlightenment to take place within the Prussian society, Rawls’s notion of public reason in Political Liberalism serves a different purpose in our contemporary world. Rawls sees public reason as a tool, which would enable citizens of the pluralistic liberal state to unearth tolerable bases for coexistence, despite their trenchant and often conflicting ideological, cultural and religious differences. Moreover, Rawls’s notion of public reason aims at liberal legitimacy: the normative and political justification of the legal power of the state in liberal democracy.

This study is aimed at determining the correlation between students' scientific thinking ability and students’ learning outcome of the eleventh science (hereafter XI IPA ) in schools at tourism area of the Special Region of Yogyakarta. This research is a quantitative research employing p earson’s correlation analysis. The population of this research is all school at tourism area of the Special Region of Yogyakarta. The sample used in this research is 112 students in high schools located at tourism area of the Special Region of Yogyakarta. The sample of this research is taken through cluster random sampling. The students' scientific thinking skill data were obtained through a scientific thinking skill test consisting of 25 multiple choice questions developed based on aspects of scientific thinking skill. The students' cognitive learning outcomes were obtained through the student's daily tests documentation. The result shows that there is a correlation between the students’ scientific thinking and learning result with the significance level of 0,000 < 0,05 and the Pearson’s correlation value 0.681. This means that there is a strong correlation between the scientific thinking ability and the learning outcome. Based on the finding s , it can be concluded that the scientific thinking ability and the learning outcomes are strongly correlated. The higher the students 'scientific thinking ability , the higher the students' learning outcomes.