Connected knowledge : science, philosophy, and education / Alan Cromer.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 203-211) and index.

1. Physics, Philosophy, and Education -- 2. Theory and Experience -- 3. Certainty and Uncertainty -- 4. Science in the Social Sciences -- 5. Loyalty and Rebellion -- 6. A Brief History of Education -- 7. Of Chalk and Chips -- 8. Of Mice and Men -- 9. Human Variation -- 10. Making Connections -- Appendix. Project SEED: Science Education through Experiments and Demonstrations.

The vast intellectual chasm separating the scientific community and its postmodern academic critics was dramatically exposed when physicist Alan Sokal revealed that his spoof of postmodernist gibberish had been published as genuine by the postmodernist journal Social Text. In Connected Knowledge, physicist Alan Cromer shows that this chasm also separates scientists from science educators, who often don't share a common understanding of scientific principles or philosophy.

Cromer offers a way to bridge this chasm, with a lively account of scientific thinking and a provocative new agenda for American education.

Science, Cromer argues, is anything but common sense: It requires a particular habit of mind that does not come naturally. Today's de-emphasis on teaching pupils necessary facts and principles, he argues, "far from empowering them, makes them slaves of their own subjective opinions." This movement in education, known as Constructivism, has close ties to postmodern critics (such as the editors of Social Text) who question the objectivity of science, and with it the existence of an objective reality.