"The state of knowing"? "A department of systematized knowledge"?
Precisely, when teaching a specific subject is like selling goods. You begin by telling them what you are going to tell them (premise), then you tell them what and how it works (function), then you tell them what you have just told them (summation).
The language you use is the language of known scientific facts, even if you need to scribble it in the sand with a stick.
No, it doesn't deliberately exclude or contradict anything important. But at the same time it doesn't really say much of anything important either.
True, but in context of that particular exchange it was sufficient. I assume that every one here is familiar with the term Science and what it entails, unlike a Brazilian bushman.
Would you use either of those definitions as a starting point in explaining science to a child? To a member of an Brazilian tribe with no written language? To a caveman who's been in suspended animation under the permafrost for 15,000 years?
Where would you begin? GR? QM?
I would begin exactly with the generic definition of Science as a practice of systematically collecting data.
Don't underestimate the ability of any human to be able to think logically, based on fundamental local knowledge.
But they have mastered the skill in use of arrows and Newton used the flight of arrows to demonstrate gravity.
I am confident that any native warrior is familiar with trajectories, even as they don't understand the dynamics. It should not be hard to teach gravity, as a start.
Comes to mind the movie "the gods must be crazy", where some one had dropped an empty coca cola bottle, which was found by a person who had never seen glass. The finder considered it a gift from the gods. But for lack of explanation of its use, the bottle passed around and no one had a clue, what this object was supposed to be good for. A woman tried to use it as a dough roller, which of course failed miserably. In the end the chief threw the bottle back to the gods up in the sky, and of course it fell back to earth, injuring a small child who happened to be watching. Anger and consternation ensued.
If only one person had explained that a bottle is a vessel to store liquids, and showed how to fashion a stopper, this entire tragic episode could have been averted.
As a substitute teacher, I taught photography a for a while. I started with the question "what is photography" and then explained the various parts of a camera and their function in the system, all the while demonstrating each function, such as focal point, shutter speed, aperture control, composition.
I must have done something right, after the second session I tasked the students with taking a picture of their favorite subject and "show and tell" how this picture was taken and what the main subject was. The improvement in all respects was noticeable and I had several compliments from the students, because they were proud of their work.
It seems that this gradual introduction of fundamentals of photography had an immediate positive effect. Understanding the fundamental principles of anything seems to help in "analyzing" the subject and make "knowledgeable decisions" of how to approach the problem.
