See Jane Evolve: Picture Books Explain Darwin
April 18, 2014 6:50 p.m. ET
Peter Oumanski
Evolution by natural selection is one of the best ideas in all of science. It predicts and explains an incredibly wide range of biological facts. But only 60% of Americans believe evolution is true. This may partly be due to religious ideology, of course, but studies show that many secular people who say they believe in evolution still don't really understand it. Why is natural selection so hard to understand and accept? What can we do to make it easier?
A new study in Psychological Science by Deborah Kelemen of Boston University and colleagues helps to explain why evolution is hard to grasp. It also suggests that we should teach children the theory of natural selection while they are still in kindergarten instead of waiting, as we do now, until they are teenagers.
Scientific ideas always challenge our common sense. But some ideas, such as the heliocentric solar system, require only small tweaks to our everyday knowledge. We can easily understand what it would mean for the Earth to go around the sun, even though it looks as if the sun is going around the Earth. Other ideas, such as relativity or quantum mechanics, are so wildly counterintuitive that we shrug our shoulders, accept that only the mathematicians will really get it and fall back on vague metaphors.
But evolution by natural selection occupies a not-so-sweet spot between the intuitive and the counterintuitive. The trouble is that it's almost, but not really, like intentional design, and that's confusing. Adaptation through natural selection, like intentional design, makes things work better. But the mechanism that leads to that result is very different.
Intentional design is an excellent everyday theory of human artifacts. If you wanted to explain most of the complicated objects in my living room, you would say that somebody intentionally designed them to provide light or warmth or a place to put your drink—and you'd be right. Even babies understand that human actions are "teleological"—designed to accomplish particular goals. In earlier work, Dr. Kelemen showed that preschoolers begin to apply this kind of design thinking more generally, an attitude she calls "promiscuous teleology."
...
Read more here/Leia mais aqui: The Wall Street Journal
+++++
NOTA DESTE BLOGGER:
O nome disso não é EDUCAÇÃO, o nome disso é LAVAGEM CEREBRAL. Além de ser DESONESTIDADE ACADÊMICA, pois a teoria da evolução de Darwin através da seleção e n mecanismos evolucionários (de A a Z, vai que um não dê conta!) é uma teoria científica morta desde 1859. Darwin está passando por um upgrade, onde uma nova teoria geral da evolução - a SÍNTESE EVOLUTIVA AMPLIADA ou ESTENDIDA, não será selecionista e deverá incorporar aspectos teóricos neo-lamarckistas. Todavia, esta nova teoria somente será anunciada em 2020...
