Principles of Science for the Practice of Life

By: Janet Batzli & Richard Lindroth

Janet McCray Batzli, Ph.D., is a plant scientist, science education researcher, and a Distinguished Teaching Professor (emeritus) in the Biology Core Curriculum honors biology program at University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she taught for 21 years. She writes and speaks about science communication, curriculum development, and mentoring the process of science for faculty professional development.

Richard L. Lindroth, Ph.D., is a Distinguished Fellow of the Lumen Center (Madison, WI) and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor (emeritus) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he conducted research and teaching in ecology for 38 years, and served as Associate Dean for Research for six years. He writes and speaks about environmental stewardship and science communication.

As career scientists, teaching colleagues, and friends (one of us Christian, one of us not) at a major research university, we were intrigued by the invitation to consider “what do all university and college students need to learn about science?” We had, of course, developed our own, independent ideas over decades of experience. But would our ideas align with each other and with what we believe to be essential at this time in history? Several coffee chats and long walks proved that they would. After discussing the obvious — scientific concepts, technical skills, experimentation, data interpretation, and evidence-based reasoning — we arrived at a set of principles, really mindsets, that we feel are essential for all students, independent of career path, to learn about science and to practice for life. With a combined 60+ years of teaching experience and mentoring thousands of students over those years, we have endeavored to describe five principles important to student learning about science.

1. Curiosity and Questions

Those of us who are parents or are attentive to kids have all experienced the non-stop flow of questions that emerge from the minds of children. At those (admittedly, sometimes annoying) times the question we should be asking ourselves is not, “why do kids ask so many questions?” but rather “why do they ever stop?” Questions are how we explore, make sense of, and find meaning in our world.

Walking into a prairie, hiking through a forest, or diving into the ocean should prompt us to ask: what do we see, hear, feel, smell, or taste? Careful observation and use of all of our senses fuels curiosity. And curiosity is at the very heart of science, followed by the desire to understand how and why things exist and work the way they do. Curiosity elicits an existential wondering about the world and our place in it.

Stemming from our curiosity, some questions have straightforward answers, such as “what do we call that tree?” Other questions have flexible, variable, or negotiable answers like “how are you feeling today?” And some questions have few if any answers or are unanswerable given our current limits of detection. They might lie outside the realm of science as a way of knowing such as “what is the meaning of life, what is the nature of consciousness, and does God exist?” That does not mean that those questions are trivial or unworthy of exploration. It simply means that they need to be pursued via alternative ways of understanding our world. In contrast, scientific questions are those that are quantifiable given our five senses (aided by technology), are based on natural phenomena (as opposed to the supernatural), and are built upon a legacy of previous scientific investigations.

Learning to ask questions driven by curiosity in the context of collaboration and feedback is one of the most valuable skills students can develop, within and beyond science.

2. Comfort with Uncertainty and Mystery

Uncertainty is hard and uncomfortable. As humans we seek certainty in all realms of life, ranging from health diagnoses and weather forecasts to the safety and security of our children. Yet life rarely affords such certainty. Since science is the process of inquiry into the unknown, uncertainty is a central component.

Science is a repeating process of discovery, testing hypotheses, analyzing results, discerning patterns, a rigorous peer review process, communicating conclusions in the scientific literature, and circling back to revise knowledge based on new evidence. It is not a confirmatory practice, contrary to what cookbook laboratory exercises might have us believe. It is not about finding absolute facts or unchanging truths. Rather, science is an incremental and iterative process of uncertainty reduction. It is a process of holding ideas in a state of liminality until evidence emerges to help us chart our course toward conclusions. As teachers, we ask students to start getting comfortable with the tension of uncertainty, to set appropriate boundaries for their expectations, and to hold their convictions loosely. The best science teaching engages students in the beauty and mystery of natural phenomena; the vast unknown that science has not yet, and may never, explain.

As scientists, we bump up against the limits of what we know, of what anybody knows, every day. Yes, that is a source of frustration, especially when our efforts are directed toward answering a critical problem. Yet engaging in the mystery also elicits awe, wonder, reverence and the joy of discovery. Helping our students transcend frustration and to be comfortable with the unknown both delights and furthers curiosity.

Francis Bacon’s Advancement of Learning (1674 edition) is one of the cornerstone texts outlining what is now commonly referred to as the scientific method. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

3. Appreciation for Variation

One of the magnificent and beautiful things about the natural world is the variation and biodiversity around us. Uniformity and similarity are neat and tidy, while variation gives us chemical gradients, polar vortexes, flaming sunsets, red pandas, titan arums, giant sequoias, and blue morpho butterflies. Variation, in essence, provides the spiciness of life. We seek it in the types of food we eat, seasonal environments we inhabit, and the dogs, cats, and other pets we care for.

However, we can also get confused, frustrated, and mired down in variation. In beginning science lab classes, students sometimes treat variation as error: “something must be broken,” “what did we do wrong?” As citizens, we are increasingly perplexed, if not dumbstruck, by variations in climate patterns, the newest variants of COVID viruses, and the various agents that cause cancer. Why isn’t there one simple answer? Furthermore, given variation, repeated experiments may not always produce identical results, which can be exceedingly frustrating for both students and professional scientists.

Since natural phenomena, whether they are biological, physical, or chemical, exhibit inherent variation, we can invite students to learn to pay close attention to variation when planning experiments and analyzing data. When students gather and analyze their own data, with good mentoring, they may begin to appreciate the nuanced nature of variation and the level of certainty (or uncertainty) of their conclusions. Practicing science as it is actually done gives students a front row seat to both the beauty and messiness posed by variation in the natural world.

4. Intellectual Humility

When students come to appreciate the wonder of science — that certainty is rare and that conclusions are often tentative or provisional — they have begun to cultivate intellectual humility. Different from personal humility or modesty, intellectual humility involves acknowledging the limitations of our own knowledge, beliefs, and understanding, and being open to others’ ideas and perspectives. When we, as students, instructors, and scientists work in collaboration and remain open to others’ questions and hypotheses, methodologies, and ways to interpret data, we are practicing intellectual humility. This, in turn, yields more innovative approaches and better conclusions.

The practice of intellectual humility is easier said than done. Initially, students tend to cling to their ideas, questions, and conclusions even when the data indicate otherwise. Their grip may even intensify when the stakes are high, such as a final graded paper or when their existing ideology or beliefs are challenged. Remaining open and humble while analyzing and interpreting data and receiving feedback from others are some of the more challenging yet essential learning experiences that students can encounter.

As students become aware of how ego and bias, especially confirmation bias (the tendency to accept new information as true when it conforms to our pre-existing beliefs), play a role in their scientific thinking, they are flexing their intellectual humility muscles. When they learn to recognize the hallmarks of intellectual humility, they are likely to see that the most successful and innovative scientists are those who identify their own errors, revise their thinking when new evidence arises, acknowledge alternative perspectives, and credit and collaborate with others.

5. Ethical and Social Responsibility

Ethical and social responsibility is more than a statement on a course syllabus that instructs students: “don’t cheat.” Students can and should be involved in learning ethical decision-making alongside practicing their science. They should consider the range of consequences and impacts of their decisions, recognize the wrongful decisions made in the past (e.g., eugenics, Tuskegee experiment, etc.), and acknowledge the direct impact that science has on their daily lives — whether it is good, bad, or value-neutral. Science is, fundamentally, a human endeavor — a brilliant process for discovery that has limitations, is often messy, and sometimes flawed. Such work requires rules and continual consideration for its ethical and social implications. The decisions students could practice span the range from individual choices (e.g., whether to throw out outliers, fabricate data, or manipulate results) to complex assessments (e.g., whether to use insecticides to combat malaria).

In the science classroom, students should learn the process of complex, complicated decision-making, informed by ethics and an understanding of the impacts on social and environmental well-being.

Conclusion

The opinions we express here emerged from a series of conversations between two scientists with non-convergent religious views but great respect for science and one another. We identified a set of five principles that we believe all university and college students should learn, and can learn, through science. Indeed, these principles can contribute to a flourishing and meaningful life no matter what major or career students pursue.In retrospect, our process in writing this essay was a microcosm of the very principles we describe: curiosity about new ideas, comfort with the uncertainty of our own convictions, appreciation for both the beauty and challenge of diverse perspectives, humility to embrace notions better than our own, all in the context of collaborative, negotiated understanding toward a product we hope will be of societal benefit.

*The authors would like to thank Lucinda McCray and Hollis Webster for assistance on earlier drafts of this essay.

The Raised Hand is a project of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers and serves its mission to catalyze and empower thoughtful Christian presence and practice at colleges and universities around the world, in service of the common good. To learn more visit cscmovement.org.