The Joy of Science

Abstract

With a title like The Joy of Science, the British physicist Jim Al-Khalili’s book might be assumed to attempt to impart the elation of scientific discovery to a wide audience. But, with the exception of a few remarks in its conclusion, that is not its project. Rather, as Al-Khalili explains in the introduction, “I aim to distill what is best about science and its method and how it can be used as a power for good if applied to other walks of life” (p. 16). For biology teachers, who are already appreciative of the power of thinking scientifically but are primarily concerned with educating their students to exercise it in the scientific realm, it is the first part of the distillate—amounting to a discussion of the nature of science—that is likeliest to be of interest. Unfortunately, it is far from adequate.Al-Khalili offers eight broad recommendations, each of which provides the title for a chapter of his book: something is either true, or it isn’t; it’s more complicated than that; mysteries are to be embraced, but also to be solved; if you don’t understand something, it doesn’t mean you can’t if you try; don’t value opinion over evidence; recognize your own biases before judging the views of others; don’t be afraid to change your mind; and stand up for reality. Not all of these are clear on their face, and indeed not all are clearly jointly tenable, as the tension between the first and the second illustrates. With due clarification, however, each is plausibly based on a principle of scientific thinking, although they don’t appear to be unique to science: the same recommendations could be presented in The Joy of Accountancy.The writing in The Joy of Science is superficially appealing: enthusiastic, fluid, and peppered with topical examples and amusing asides. But there are serious problems with the exposition. For example, Al-Khalili acknowledges that the phrase “the scientific method” is misleading, but he continues to use it nevertheless. In chapter 7, which is devoted to discussing cognitive dissonance, he fails to distinguish between the phenomenon and ways—some better, some worse—of reducing it, resulting in a thoroughly confusing presentation. He is also not a reliable guide to the literature, misusing the term “implicatory denial,” despite citing the book in which it was coined and defining it correctly in the glossary, and misdefining the problem of induction, a classic topic in the philosophy of science.Worse, Al-Khalili sometimes offers as obvious what is at best philosophically controversial. Of particular concern to biology teachers will be his claim that “the theory of evolution implies that life evolves randomly and without purpose” (p. 40; a similar claim appears on pp. 68–69). Overlooking the ambiguity of the adverb randomly, there is a crucial difference between evolutionary theory not entailing that there is a purpose in life’s evolution and it entailing that there is not. In 1997, the National Association of Biology Teachers revised its statement on teaching evolution to avoid a similar confusion. It is ironic for someone as outspoken about the need for clear thinking as Al-Khalili to have failed to appreciate the difference between these claims.Amusingly, just as Al-Khalili offers eight recommendations, Appendix H of the Next Generation Science Standards, “Understanding the Scientific Enterprise,” offers eight “understandings” about the nature of science. These are not perfect, but they are more carefully researched and developed than their counterparts in The Joy of Science, and of course they already inform the standards that are the ultimate source of guidance for the majority of America’s biology teachers. But research (such as a study by Vance Kite and his colleagues published in the Journal of Science Teacher Education in 2021) suggests that they have not been fully assimilated by science teachers. It would be nice to see a book that expounds the content of Appendix H with all of the élan but with none of the flaws of The Joy of Science.