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Intro: Welcome and intro to course: In this class, we will define science integration and discuss tips for applying it to our lives. The course is designed to set the context for and to motivate our other courses.

SLIDE 1 (pdf file of slides - 36K)

Working Definitions

A worldview answers questions about what the world contains, what's important, how you relate to the world, what you can control, etc. It's your personal philosophy.

Activity:

1. Without thinking about it too much, write down 3 things you did last week.

2. Why did you do these things?

3. What were you thinking about while you did them?

For example: brush teeth to preserve teeth, thinking about the day ahead/behind while you do this. Read paper to stay aware of the world, thinking about when the recycling truck is coming.

Some Observations About Worldviews

We all have a worldview, even if it's not very well thought out or has been borrowed from our parents, our society, or some other influence.

SLIDE 2

Types of Worldviews

Abstract worldview is intellectual, detached. We think that the world works or is arranged a certain way, but we don't see how that relates to us. It's a map of the world without a "you-are-here" marker.

A personal worldview describes how you and your actions relate to the world. It includes your choices, your experiences, your day-to-day concerns. A reflective worldview captures what you think about yourself and your role during your more reflective moments. An instantaneous worldview is what you're thinking at a particular moment. It can change dramatically from one moment to the next and depends heavily on external conditions. (For example, being hungry or stubbing your toe can completely change your instantaneous worldview.)

Example: technology is good vs. it matters to the universe that I design SRAMs at Intel vs. what gets me out of bed in the morning

Worldviews can be inconsistent, and we can hold multiple worldviews at the same time.

(For a given person, these 3 types of worldviews may or may not reflect each other. Many of our greatest regrets come from inconsistencies among the 3 types of worldviews. If our abstract worldview is correct but we don't correctly translate that into our personal worldview, we may discover that we've taken actions that actually oppose what we were trying to do. In our more reflective moments, we may be sad to realize that we're not living our day-to-day life according to our personal, reflective worldview. That observation indicates that our instantaneous worldview isn't consistent with our reflective one. We do everything for a reason, but we may not agree with that reason in hindsight.)

Today we're here to talk about integrating an abstract worldview, revealed by science, into our personal and instantaneous worldviews.

"Why integrate science into our worldviews?"

Science has uncovered all sorts of information about ourselves, our origins, and our relationships to other things in the universe. It describes the stage on which we live out our lives.

Is it absolutely necessary to have this context? No...most people live their lives with very little awareness of this context. However, the more context you have, the more likely it is that you will end up doing what you really want to do and the more meaningful your actions will feel (provided that you map the big context to something in your daily life).

Example:

judge goals of company with society in mind

judge goals of society with global community in mind

etc.

Science arose from the need to distinguish what works from what doesn't. Early man created a context by making up stories and traditions. Science was too poorly developed to help with that. However, they also needed to stay warm, have enough to eat, protect themselves, etc. Stories not necessarily aligned with nature. Once you have a goal, how you can achieve it depends on properties of the universe that science describes.

don't do a rain dance--develop an irrigation system.

don't cure a disease by bleeding someone--cure them by giving a certain kind of medicine.

recycling example:

How many of you recycle?

Why do you do it? (discuss how science has made us aware of Earth as an ecosystem, finiteness of resources, time scale for things to be recycled by natural processes)

Is recycling always a good thing to do? (discuss how science can help us predict the consequences of curbside pickup, building recycling plants, processing needed to recycle)

Integrating Science into Your Reflective Worldview

Won't have time to go into the following activities as deeply as you might like, but the goal is to demonstrate how they work, get over the activation energy of trying them, and get some feedback on your initial ideas.

There are 2 general ways to integrate science into your reflective worldview. One is to look at what science has to say about the world and to think about what that might mean. Can also build up scenarios based on what we've already observed. Many of our SII courses focus on areas and topics in science that we think have the greatest potential to affect your personal philosophy. For example,we think everyone should be interested in cosmology because it describes the overall "stage" on which we live out our lives. Knowledge of quantum physics and relativity can change your ideas about reality, space, and time.

But the scientific description of the world is probably not complete and you want to make sure that your reflective worldview is personal to you, so another approach is to start with what you already believe about what the universe contains, what's important, etc. and to think about what science might have to say about those beliefs.

Do you have any beliefs that are inconsistent with information revealed by science? Where do you think those beliefs come from? What is the essence behind the belief that you're reluctant to give up? Is the essence of the belief really inconsistent with science or just the details? For instance, at one point, many people believed that it was essential that the sun revolve around the Earth for us to feel important or significant. Now, most people fully accept and aren't bothered by the fact that the Earth revolves around the sun.

What (if any) scientific grounding is there for your beliefs? What scenarios about what's going on in the universe would be consistent with your beliefs? What other properties might you expect to see if your beliefs were true?

What evidence (if any) would cause you to change your beliefs? If you're truly open-minded, you should be willing to change almost all of your beliefs, given sufficient evidence (even though finding that evidence may be highly unlikely). You may have a few core beliefs that you are unwilling to give up. (For example, for me, the belief that our lives can be meaningful is a core belief.) To help distinguish core beliefs from other deeply held beliefs, think about what you'd do if you knew for sure that the universe was the opposite from what you now believe. Would you reformulate your thinking and behavior; would you kill yourself because life was no longer worth living; would you act in opposition, fight back? Core beliefs act as a strong guide, for better or for worse.

Example: human life is sacred...implies that doing animal research to prolong or improve human life is probably OK. But what if we encountered another life form that was significantly more developed than us. Imagine that they were to us what we are to monkeys. Would it be OK for them to do research on us to prolong or improve their lives? What is the core belief here?

SLIDE 3

Integrating Science into Your Reflective Worldview

Brainstorm alternative scenarios. Don't be too timid--some scenario is right.

The Importance of Our Everyday, Instantaneous Worldview

Our instantaneous worldview is ultimately what drives are lives. The most heroic accomplishment we can imagine is achieved by making individual choices, day by day.

SLIDE 4

Our instantaneous worldview is influenced by conditions (hunger, being hot or cold) and distractions and pressures from others.

SLIDE 5

Force consistency between your instantaneous worldview and actions. Decide and commit.

Just being aware of the world around you can help you feel more connected to the big picture. The world is more than a set of props around which we live out the drama of our lives. Other people are more than actors in our life story. Science is available to everyone. You can make your own observations about how the world works and think about what that means to you. Pick something and ask yourself why it's there, how it got there, etc.

Use reminders: Each morning, ask yourself what you're planning to do with the day. Try to answer the question with as broad a context as possible. Do the same thing throughout the day, stop yourself to ask what you're doing right then, connecting it to the bigger picture. Set an alarm if you need to.

When you are stopped at a red light, use the opportunity to observe the world around you. Use technology to remind yourself of the scientific principles behind it.

Guiding principle: Probably impossible for us to keep the big picture in mind all the time. What we need at our fingertips is something to help us make choices that are consistent with our reflective worldview. That way we'll do the "right" things, and even though we may not see exactly how what we're doing matters, we can still be motivated and confident with the knowledge that it does matter. We can try to live in a way that is consistent with any purpose we'd imagine.

Example guiding principles. Note that it doesn't have to summarize our worldview, just be consistent with it. It's best if the guiding principle has some feedback mechanism.

SLIDE 6

The web is your personal worldview. Your sense of meaning depends on what you are connected to. Most of the time, our worldview is pretty small, but with a conscious effort and some practice, we can spend more of our lives with a larger web, connected to the cosmos.

Additional Topics & Activities