SCIENCE & KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD HUMANISM - KS3 The aims of this presentation are: to explain the nature and limits of the scientific method and to examine some of the ways in which Humanists and other atheists and agnostics look at questions of meaning, purpose and truth.

How do we know what is true? The Big Question How do we know what is true? Show students this slide and ask for their immediate thoughts about the big question. Do their ideas match the pictures, or are there other sources of ‘truth’? Point out that the question of ‘truth’ is related to the question of what is ‘real’ and that there are many different ideas about what is real and how we can know. Modern science shows that there is more to life than meets the eye! Quantum physics, for example, shows that there are many mysteries about truth and reality still to be uncovered. Perhaps the ‘ultimate truth’ can never be known? Gather some of the students’ ideas about whether ‘ultimate truth’ can ever be known, and whether it matters.

What is science? Ask the students to write a definition of science. Explain that the word comes from the Latin ‘scientia’ meaning ‘knowledge’. Provide them with a dictionary definition, e.g., from Wikipedia: Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Ask the students to work with a partner and come up with at least ten things that have been discovered through scientific investigation. Share a few of these in the class.

Scientific Method Explain that Humanists generally believe that science is the best way to find the truth about anything, but there are many different versions of the best way to do this! Explain that the basic scientific method is to follow a process of investigation involving questioning, background research, hypothesis construction, experimentation, observation, analysis of data and drawing of conclusions in relation to the original hypothesis. Ask the students to comment on whether they think there are limits to what science can do? After gathering some reflections point out that science uses observations from the past or the here and now to make predictions about the future. Sometimes these predications turn out to be wrong: what should scientists do then? Point out also that there are still plenty of mysteries that science has not yet ‘solved’ and that there may be aspects of the universe that science will never penetrate. Can students think of any examples?

The limits of science? Are scientific discoveries 100% true? Does it matter that science has limits? Some religious people, like the literalist Christian Kent Hovind, argue that some teachings of science, like the theory of evolution, are actually ‘dangerous religions’. However, most scientists utterly reject this claim by stating that one of the best aspects of science is that its teachings are constantly changing to suit the facts as we find them out. What do you think about this debate? Ask students to consider Q1 on this slide. Point out that science itself draws conclusions that are tentative. Make sure they can say what this means, i.e. that conclusions are open to falsification: no theory can ever be considered final. Point out that there are some things that appear to be beyond current scientific investigative methods, e.g., things considered to lie beyond the testable universe. Some believe that questions about God or life after death are in this zone. Encourage the students to work in pairs through the rest of the questions on this slide and then gather some reflections in the whole class.

A Humanist view Humanism is an atheistic or agnostic belief system that states that it is almost certain that God doesn’t exist and that this is almost certainly the only life we will have. Here’s a Humanist take on science: ‘Science has provided a consistently reliable way of finding answers, albeit provisional, to questions about the nature and behaviour of things. It is rational, universal, enquiry- and evidence-based, and one of humanity’s greatest achievements’ and… ‘Science is the best source of knowledge about the world around us.’ Ask the students such questions as: Why would a Humanist support the last statement on this slide? Do you agree with the Humanist viewpoint on this issue? Why do some people disagree with this viewpoint?

To follow up ideas about the sense of morality, students could take a look at Stephen Fry’s sketch pad commentary on ‘How do we know what is true?’ at: https://humanism.org.uk/thatshumanism/ Reading: “The Magic of Reality” by Richard Dawkins. Picture sources: Microscope wisegeek.org Telescope science.howstuffworks.com Einstein hippoquotes.com Rocket en.wikipedia.org