Science Integration Institute: Sample Topics

This course is the introduction to our program and is required for those completing the certificate of awareness. It explores strategies and tools to help you apply the process and discoveries of science to the perspective from which you live your life. Participants will discuss the significance of their daily and professional activities in the context of the cosmos. We'll work from the individual experiences of participants to suggest ways to live with increased consciousness of your connection to the rest of the universe and its processes and evolution. (The single session is intended as an introduction and overview. Follow-up sessions may be scheduled if there is enough interest in further discussions). A more in-depth look at the perspective behind this course may be found in the book An Ordinary World: The Role of Science in Your Search for Personal Meaning.

Slides and speaker notes from class.

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MC2: Introduction to Cosmology (4 sessions, 2 hours each)

Instructors: Kim Coble, Todd Duncan, Aparna Venkatessan

This series of workshops will guide you to an understanding of the tools and methods by which we have gained our modern scientific view of the universe on the largest scales.

1) Distance measurement by parallax- the foundation of the astronomical distance ladder

2) Extending the ladder- other properties of stars and galaxies used for distance measurement

3) Measuring the Hubble expansion - a lab using spectra and images of galaxies to estimate the Hubble constant for yourself (or at least understand how it's done in detail)

4) Interpreting the data and addressing some of the conceptual difficulties in understanding and visualizing an expanding universe.

The 4 sessions are closely connected and build on each other, but each is self-contained, so you can attend just one (or 2 or 3) if you wish.

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MC3: Comparative Cosmology (3 sessions, 2 hours)

Instructor: Claudine Kavanagh

The ideas of cosmology have been with us for a long time. Human cultures have created varied and rich metaphorical and allegorical understandings of how the cosmos and human concerns are connected. We will investigate various historical cosmologies, providing Western and Eastern sources. We will focus on understanding the organizing principle(s) for these systems. Finally, this workshop will present some of the evidence for our modern and scientific cosmology. Participants will be provided with an opportunity to elucidate their own worldview as a part of this process.

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MC4: Mysteries of Quantum Physics (3 sessions, 2 hours each)

Instructor: Todd Duncan

Quantum theory appears frequently in popular literature because it raises some of the deepest questions about the nature of our universe and ourselves. But it is also one of the most misrepresented and misinterpreted areas of modern science. This workshop will investigate what quantum theory has to say about the fundamental nature of reality, but in a way that is solidly grounded in the science (which, by the way, is already plenty bizarre!). We'll discuss such topics as the basic elements of quantum theory, quantum measurement, Bell's theorem and the Einstein Podolsky Rosen paradox, and recent developments in applying quantum effects to computing. Be prepared to stretch your mind, but the focus is on conceptual understanding. No formal background in physics is assumed or required.

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MC5: Understanding Science as Constraints and Limits (1 session, 2 hrs.)

Instructor: Todd Duncan

At its most fundamental, our study of science could be seen as arising from the desire to understand the constraints and limitations we experience on what we can do and how we can do things. We can visit the moon, for example, but only by following specific rules and limitations that are imposed on us by an external world. We can't simply wish ourselves there. This workshop will help you develop an understanding of science from this point of view, which sees science as a necessary recognition of the fact that nature imposes limits and constraints on us. To illustrate this idea and the new perspective it can offer on your daily life, we'll focus on energy as the central concept. We'll trace through many of the concrete constraints you experience in life to and understand how the scientific concept of energy is a central thread running through these constraints.

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MC6: Key Concepts of Relativity (3 sessions, 2 hrs. each)

Instructors: Todd Duncan, Daniel Holz, Kim Coble

An introduction to the basic ideas of Einstein's theory of relativity, emphasizing the implications for our understanding of the framework of space and time in which we live our daily lives. The first session will provide a background on electromagnetic fields and pre-1905 ideas about space and time, to set the context for the new ideas of relativity. The second session will focus on the special theory of relativity (applicable to observers moving in straight lines at constant speed). The third session will discuss ideas from general relativity (which extends special relativity to include acceleration and gravity), leading to the notion of curved space-time.

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MC7: Gaining a Deeper View of Technology (1 session, 2 hours)

Instructor: Amanda Duncan

Most of the time the conveniences of modern technology fade into the background of our daily lives. But by becoming more aware of them and focusing our attention on how they operate, we can gain a deeper awareness of the core properties of the universe that we are a part of. A radio or a lamp can be a window to the deepest mysteries of existence, as surely as a night under a dark starry sky can be. This workshop will guide participants through this way of thinking, using several common technological products as examples.

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MC8: Keeping a Journal as a Scientific Tool: A Workshop for Educators (1 session, 2 hours)

Instructor: Claudine Kavanagh

Educators can encourage students to become more aware of the world around them and all of the processes of science in their everyday world through guided science writing assignments in a journal. This workshop explains the benefits of using science journals with grade 5 - 12 students, provides a list of inquiry projects for natural science exploration and explains how to avoid some of the pitfalls and hazards students may encounter. Portland Public School teachers may earn Teacher's Individual Credit (TIC) for attending this workshop.

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MC9: The Science of Complexity (Under construction)

Instructor: Jack Semura

How do complex structures form in nature? Are there rules for their behavior that we can understand? How do these processes relate to the everyday structures such as life, social institutions, etc.?

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MC10: Articulating Your Personal Philosophy

Instructor: Geoffrey Hamilton

Everyone's personal philosophy (belief system) runs their life. Have you looked at yours lately? Other people do, all the time. What they learn, and you don't know, can definitely hurt you. People can manipulate you if they know your beliefs and you don't. This course deals with truth and reality: your truth. Your beliefs express the truths of your reality. Discover how, when and why you developed your unique truths and the sequence of belief acquisition. Understand how your beliefs can determine all your actions, choices, psychological stress and most of your emotions, yet remain unknown. Learn how to identify your beliefs, possibly for the first time, and how to replace the ones that could hurt you or make you unhappy. Appreciate the most dangerous and most common beliefs in everybody's systems, and the risks of choosing not to choose. Discover the mechanisms by which we constantly broadcast our beliefs to others. Understand the difference between fantasy-based beliefs and reality-based beliefs and why we need them both. Explore a didactic model for developing a rational and objective belief system based on reality instead of fantasy, free of magic, mysticism, leaps of faith or blind acceptance.

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MC11: The Influence of Worldviews in Business Management

Instructor: Tom Johnson

In the management of companies, the worldview or mental map in terms of which one plans and manages operations has a dramatic impact on the success of the company, its sustainability, and its effect on society and the ecosystem of the Earth. These worldviews, in turn, are influenced by one's understanding of ideas from science about how the world works. This course will provide examples of the very different outcomes produced by companies with different worldviews, and explore ways of implementing these ideas in your own work. [Connect to book Profit Beyond Measure, etc.]

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MC12: Thermodynamics and the Arrow of Time (Under construction)

Instructors: Todd Duncan, Daniel Sheehan

Our everyday experience is dominated by a perception that the future is fundamentally different from the past. We remember the past, but not the future, and we have the ability to change the future, but not the past. Yet, outside of the second law of thermodynamics, this obvious and essential feature of irrreversibility in our experience finds no objective basis in the macroscopic laws of physics. In this course, possible sources of time asymmetery are discussed along with the connections between the second law of thermodynamics and daily life.

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Food for thought:

"Regardless of different personal views about science, no credible understanding of the natural world or our human existence…can ignore the basic insights of theories as key as evolution, relativity, and quantum mechanics." - The Dalai Lama

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	info@scienceintegration.org	Last Modified: March 31, 2005