Foundations of Science grew out of the strongly held belief that the many non-science majors who take science courses need something special. While many attempts have been made in the past to satisfy this need, for a number of reasons we felt that those approaches were not the ones for us to follow. For example, courses in which simply less was offered than in a main line course didn't address the question of what should be included in a non-majors course. By the same token, courses designed specifically for "poets" seemed often both to belittle and trivialize the science that was being taught and to insult the intelligence of the poets who were doing the learning. Alternatively, courses designed to acquaint students with "what's new and exciting," while well intentioned, often did not really explain why something that was new was exciting, or show what (if anything) was "wrong" with what was old, or for that matter, why it wasn't exciting. Finally, in too many courses, students faced with a lack of understanding (due to inadequate explanation) fell back on the age-old "solution" of memorizing, either what they were told, or what they hoped would be the answers to questions they would be asked. This did not seem to us to be worthy of our efforts or your time.

Several years of discussion and planning by many members of the Hunter faculty and a number of nationally known educators convinced us that what was needed was not so much a course that carefully rehearsed the "really important" "facts" of science, but, rather, a course that introduced students to what is characteristic of science. We believe that this major feature of all the sciences is the way scientists think, the way they identify and approach problems, and the way in which the result of these efforts is reflected in the science of a given time. As our planning proceeded, we realized that such generalizations as "thinking" and "an approach to problems" can only be reasonably discussed in the context of some part of science itself, and that part of science had to be something that could be understood by the student. It would not do to discuss the problems of nuclear energy without explaining what an atomic nucleus was, and how we knew anything about one, let alone what energy and atoms were, and how we knew anything about them.

We decided that the science that would most appropriately support the appreciation of the scientific approach would be the science that gave birth to that approach. This science can be found in the three themes that we will explore this year, all of which are critical to what may be called "the scientific view of the world today." Indeed, this fact justifies the title of the course. These themes are:

· The inseparable study of motion on earth and in the sky; despite appearances, the sun (unlike the moon) does not go around the earth.

· The long and difficult process of realizing that matter -- the stuff of the universe -- is fundamentally particulate in nature, and the properties of matter in bulk derive from the properties of these particles; as some ancient philosophers thought, there are indeed "smallest pieces" of the many kinds of matter we see.

· The manner in which it was recognized and accepted that the variations of the earth's form, and the diversity of life on earth, are not as unchanging as they seem, but have a history in terms of which they may be understood. The metaphor of "the sands of time" refers to more than the contents of an hourglass.

The conclusions of all of these themes share three properties:

· They all refer to a world outside of and beyond our experiences.

· They all illustrate the process by which scientific understanding is achieved.

· They all run counter to our immediate perceptions and naive interpretations.

At the same time, each theme tells us something different about this outside world:

· It is subject to mathematically precise laws.

· It has an invisible structure that is not, like a peeled onion, simply "the same only smaller."

· Over periods of time that are unimaginably long, it has changed dramatically to evolve to its current state.

The Foundations of Science will take you from the beginnings of science to an understanding of these conclusions. As we do this you will see how and why science developed the way it did, and at times how this history has been related to other aspects of the history of human activities and achievements.

Learning in this course will follow from your engagement in four activities: reading, listening, doing, and writing. The remainder of this preface will be concerned with each of these in turn. Accompanying this is the calendar for the course, including the list of lectures and laboratory exercises.

READING

The majority of the reading for the first semester will be from a book prepared for the course by Professor Bennick. In addition, there is an Introduction, which is distributed with this preface. The readings for the second theme will be largely from the book by Partington; these will be supplemented by a selection of reading materials to be distributed towards the middle of the term. Some of these selections will be from the "original" literature, others will be secondary sources. As the semester progresses, still other short selections may be distributed. In general, we do not require that you spend library time finding additional references. Of course, it is always possible that you may find a particular source that is better for you than what we have selected, but given the limited amount of time available during the semester, we do not encourage this. In any case, you should make an effort before each lecture to look at, or at least to skim, the assigned readings. This will provide an overview and an introduction to the main concepts to be discussed and any novel words that may be used. Some time after each group of lectures you should reread the material to make sure that you understand it. Questions will be distributed at the beginning of the term to direct your attention to key points or to make certain that you see relationships among concepts that are not introduced near each other. These questions will be the skeleton around which lectures are based (see below). The substance of these questions will appear on the midterm and final exams; for this reason they are also referred to as "Exam Study Questions."

LISTENING

Lectures are the most obvious part of a course; a room and a time are set aside so that you know where you are supposed to be, and when. It cannot be said too strongly that you really are supposed to be there, and on time. What you are to do there is another matter. Too often students act as though attendance and passive hearing are enough. Quite to the contrary, some sort of more active involvement is clearly needed. We have already suggested that before the beginning of each lecture you should read the assigned material. The lecture itself will not always simply be a retelling of the story in the assigned reading. It may include additional material, it may provide a critique of what you were asked to read, and it may relate the readings to things that you have already discussed or to current events. Occasionally a lecture may stand alone, but for the most part lectures are part of an ongoing experience that includes the previous lectures and the related reading material as well. In a course such as this, where there are also laboratory sessions, the lecture may provide the opportunity to tie these extended, and to some extent controlled, experiences with the real world together with the verbal content of the course.

While sitting in a lecture you should develop the practice of "listening with a pencil" as well as your ears. Not everybody responds the same way, so it does not make sense to say you should do one thing, and only that. Trying to outline what you hear is a good way to make sure you are following the presentation. However, it is unlikely that your outline can be more organized than your lecturer, and even the best of us often wander from the straight path to our conclusion. But on the other hand, in the course of an hour, even the worst of us make statements that in context are clearly important and worthy of note. You should find some way to capture and to note these statements, by a key word or phrase if not with a complete sentence. And, while important, these conclusions are only as strong as their support. Find some way to indicate why a conclusion was reached. Complete with their development, four or five key points may reflect the major content of an entire lecture. (It is often helpful to edit your lecture notes -- if not completely rewrite them -- after the fact. If you plan to do this, it might be a good idea to leave a bit of space where you can enter the parts of the lecture that you couldn't quite catch as they flew past.)

Of course, there will be more. Anecdotes, stories, examples -- the things that make listening so much more immediate than reading -- may all be there for you to remember, and to note if you have the opportunity. Eventually, and this takes time and practice to develop, you may learn to summarize a lecture to your satisfaction (and that of your friend who couldn't make it).

While outlining is a traditional way of organizing information, it is not the only way. As a supplement or an alternative, you might find it instructive to write the key words of a lecture or a chapter randomly over a page, and then to draw lines between those that are related to each other. This results in a primitive version of what is sometimes called a "concept map." The fact that some words are related to more than two others immediately shows that they cannot so easily be placed in a linear arrangement, as would be the case in a simple outline. Concept maps may be used to show the complexity of what you are studying and help you organize it.

This active participation in the lectures is an essential part of the work you agreed to do in signing up for this course. While an occasional absence may be understandable, it is not possible to fully benefit from this course without listening to the lectures. To encourage you do to so, we have decided to implement a system of checking attendance. At some lectures a class list will be distributed on which you are to sign opposite your name. If the number of signatures exceeds the number of students present that day, ALL students will be counted absent. For every absence from lecture beyond the first two, a point will be deducted from your total course grade.

DOING

We have noted above that a major conclusion that has found its way into the modern scientific worldview is that there is an outside world susceptible to objective observation. Not all observations can easily be described in words, or even in pictures. Before we can master the language that refers to the world, we have to become familiar with the "things" the language refers to. Some of these things are phenomena, or events that recur under standard or controlled conditions. Others are processes, or ways in which they occur. Still others are real "things" such as rocks and bones and flowers and mysterious white powders. The development of science follows the study of these various phenomena, processes and things; and the places where these are studied may be the field, the sky, the sea, or the laboratory. The study itself involves the act of doing.

In "traditional" courses, labs are sometimes seen as either wastes of time or places where known results are to be obtained (or at least reported) with as little effort as possible, often by following cookbook procedures. In this non-traditional course these are not our goals. Rather, we view the lab as an opportunity to come face-to-face with part of the real world. In the first instance this will enable you to identify (point to, or specify) what there is to be studied further (in a "that, there" sense) and then to name it. Next, "that, there" can be studied to find out what it is, how it is held together, how its workings can be described, and, if possible, how they can be explained. These are the activities of scientists, this is the process of science, and by doing it we will then be able to understand, more fully than we could if we were limited to words, what the nature of science is.

The labs have been designed to include time for discussion of observations and results. Some of these will be in the form of numbers and will require a degree of "manipulation." This approach to the management and analysis of data has grown up with science and cannot be avoided. By including this as part of the lab procedure we are demonstrating the connection between the "experiment" and the conclusion.

You should keep a record of what you do in lab -- including what you see and what you conclude -- in a spiral-bound lab notebook that opens flat. You will be expected to hand in some of your results, in the form of tables or graphs that summarize what you did. For this reason, a notebook with graph paper is excellent as it makes constructing tables and graphs much easier. The discussion of other results, and their relation to the material covered in other parts of the course, will be the subject of some of the questions about which you will be asked to write.

Lab sessions will typically begin with a short discussion period; this means that those students arriving on time will have the opportunity to have their questions addressed by the class, and time will not be spent just waiting for the stragglers to arrive. The subject of this discussion can be drawn from any part of the course: lecture, reading, previous labs or the exam/study questions. Lab instructors may well decide that some time should be spent each week on these questions, and that on a rotating basis, specific students should be assigned to discuss them. Regardless of the details, you should realize that the lab time is provided for tying all parts of the course together as well as for investigating the properties and nature of the world.

WRITING

You will find that one of the most significant ways in which this course differs from other science courses is in its emphasis on writing. This is because we strongly believe that a major part of appreciating the approach of science is the ability to "follow an argument," that is, to follow the reasoning processes that have led to some of the major advances of science, and that will be crucial to understanding current and future advances as well. This is not a skill that can be acquired simply by listening, or by reading, but like other skills it must be practiced. The Exam Study Questions mentioned above will direct you to think about problems in a new way; this is the beginning, these are the "warming up exercises." Beyond this the practice will be in the form of writing answers to specific types of questions. Other skills requiring finding numerical solutions for certain types of problems will also be pursued, primarily as they grow out of laboratory experiences.

Both traditional problem solving and short essay writing can be used to demonstrate mastery of material; because it is closer to the way most people think we have chosen to rely more heavily on the latter. In fact, we will ask you to write several short papers during the semester. These will ask you to describe, explain, discuss, analyze, etc. specific points that have been covered in the reading assignments, lectures or labs, or to make comparisons between or among different approaches.

A significant part of your grade will ultimately be based on your written work. However, we are not simply going to grade your "answers." Instead, we will return your "first drafts" to you with comments so that you may revise them and resubmit them for grades. In order for this system to work it is necessary that we all follow closely the calendar which we have set up. (The various dates referred to below are detailed in the calendar that follows this preface.) Each paper must be originally submitted by the specified date if you are to have the opportunity to revise it. We will return papers at the indicated times, and revisions must be submitted when indicated. These, too, will be returned as indicated. To the extent possible we have tried to leave a week for revising. Some of the initial deadlines, however, have been set to make sure that certain points in the lecture outline have been reached. We have also made sure that one paper is returned before the next is due. (Because there may only be a couple of days between a return date and a due date you should not wait until one paper is returned before you begin the next one. Rather, use the comments as you touch up a paper prior to handing it in.) In this way there will be the beginnings of a sort of dialogue between you and your lab instructor, who will be grading your papers, a dialogue which may be continued in the lab. This will enable you to improve your performance as the course proceeds. Your graders will not be required to accept revisions of late papers, or, if accepted, to return late revisions at the promised dates.

In general, in writing papers you should select as your target audience one of your classmates who has "missed some classes." That is, you should try to write to someone who knows about as much as you do, but who may not have done all the reading or thought about it as much as you have. You are not writing for an encyclopedia, for your graders, or for a friend or relative who has had no experience with the course material. Also, in general, our criticisms will be designed to help you meet this goal. We will indicate how organizational changes can help, and how restructuring paragraphs or sentences can make your writing clearer. We will also point out standard errors where we see them as being part of a pattern, or where they get in the way of clarity. But we are not your editors, and ultimately you are responsible for correct spelling and grammar. Remember that many word processing programs have spell checkers and grammar checkers; also remember that in a specialized area such as this course, the spell checker may not have all the words you will have to use. The final responsibility for the work you present is yours.

Unfortunately, it is also necessary to spell out the fact that plagiarism is not acceptable. Papers which include large segments of work that is not yours are plagiarized. You cannot cut and paste from encyclopedias or other library or on-line sources. Plagiarism does not happen by accident; it is the result of conscious decisions made in the process of preparing a paper. Thus, students who engage in this practice will fail the course, not just the paper that was plagiarized.

GRADES

The following table shows how your course grade will be generated by your work in the course. Exams will cover lectures, readings, and lab material.

Assignment Points

Essay 1 10 about 750 words

Essay 2 10 about 1200 words

Essay 3 20 1500 - 2000 words, plus data and diagrams, half of which deal with lab material

Essay 4 15 about 1500 words

Midterm 15 short (several sentence) answers to questions based on the Exam Study Questions distributed beforehand

Final Exam 25 same as midterm exam, plus one "long" essay

Labs 10 based on attendance, participation, and results

TOTAL 105 (Points will be deducted for excess missed lectures as discussed above)

Your letter grade will come from your earned points in the following way: 90 and above = A, 80 - 89 = B, 70 - 79 = C, 58 - 69 = D, 57 and below = F.