Issue 41

Mindboggling: Preliminaries to a science of the mind   by Roy Harris.  Do you have a mind?  Answers to this question have divided Western thinkers for centuries, and still do.  Mindboggling sets out to identify a nucleus of basic issues about the mind, and present the main arguments for and against in each case.  Targeted to a lay readership, each chapter discusses a different theory, myth or idea about the mind.  Anticipate wails from theorists whose theories have been given short shrift.  Mindboggling is available on Amazon, from Bookshops or direct from Publishers.

 

Science on Television by Bienvenido León.

The book is a clear and systematic guide to the narrative and rhetorical techniques used by science documentary filmmakers. The book is priced at £18.50, but for direct orders we are offering a 20% discount.

 

Motivating Science is a collection of articles from the first five years of The Pantaneto Forum.  We are offering a 20% discount for direct orders.

 

Editorial

 

In “The Pitfalls and perils of Communicating Science”, Hank Campbell gives advice on false assumptions to be avoided, when publicizing science, in what he describes as our new “second age of the Citizen Scientist”.

 

Data sharing is an issue which permeates all of science.  In recent years the area of genome sequencing has focused attention on how much (or how little) scientific data should be made available either to the public or other researchers.  In their article Athanasios Theologis and Ronald Davis consider this issue under the title: “To Give or Not to Give?  That Is the Question”.  They review this issue and comment on how they think present positions should be updated.

 

However much medicine advances, there will always be a place for the “art of medicine”.  In Sadhu Panda’s article: “Medicine: Science or Art?” the author sets out the complementary nature of Science and Art in the practice of medicine.

 

In the education of scientists and science teachers one issue which The Pantaneto Forum has promoted is the importance of philosophy of science.  For science teachers it seems beyond belief that some idea of the nature of science itself should not be part of the educational curriculum.  In “A proposal to teach the nature of science (NOS) to science teachers” Agustín Adúriz-Bravo details a schema for teaching the nature of science to science teachers.

 

The proceedings of the Science Matters conference, which we reported in Issue 28, October 2007, have been published and are available from the publishers – World Scientific.

 

Nigel Sanitt Editor

ISSN 1741-1572

Contents

Articles

The Pitfalls and Perils of Communicating Science, Hank Campbell

To Give or Not to Give? That Is the Question, Athanasios Theologis and Ronald W. Davis

Medicine: Science or Art?, S. C. Panda

A proposal to teach the nature of science (NOS) to science teachers: The ‘structuring theoretical fields’ of NOS, Agustín Adúriz-Bravo