Course Objectives
Our primary goal for BIOL100 is to give you an appreciation for, and understanding of, Science. Yes, that's "Science" with a capital "S" because everything we will be discussing is (to some extent) true of all branches of science. And for most of you, this is the last formal exposure to scientific subjects that you'll ever have, so it is (as we hope you'll see over the course of the semester) very important to us that you finish this course equipped to cope with all the "scientific" puffery that you'll come up against for the rest of your lives.
Of course, the fact that we're studying biology specifically is great, because biology is the bestest, most interesting of the sciences. And you can believe that, because we're Scientists, and therefore completely objective and rational, all of the time.
Pffffft. Right.
Okay, more seriously, here is a more detailed list of what we want you to learn in this course:
- why a basic understanding of science is important for every educated person today: science is one of the pillars of a liberal arts education
- the strengths (and weaknesses) of the scientific method
- the meaning of terms such as "hypothesis" and "theory" in a scientific context
- an appreciation of how science changes, and will continue to change in the years ahead
- the ability to approach a problem scientifically
- to design and carry out a good experiment to test your hypotheses
- to be able to judge the validity of scientific claims made by others
- how to communicate about current controversies in science
In short, by the end of this semester we hope that you will feel (and be!) fairly self-sufficient in navigating the ins and outs of basic science. More importantly, you'll feel confident in being able to learn what you need on your own — no one course, or even four years of them, can prepare you with everything you're going to need to know. And you'll need it — people are going to try and snow you with "evidence" and "proof" for the rest of your lives, and you need to be able to distinguish the good from the bad.
For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, Moravian College considers this to be a personal page. Therefore it is incumbent on me to point out that "The views expressed on this page are the responsibility of the author, Christopher Jones (cjones-at-moravian-dot-edu) and do not necessarily reflect Moravian College or Moravian Theological Seminary policies or official positions."