George Greenstein - Understanding the Universe: An Inquiry Approach to Astronomy and the Nature of Scientific Research

George Greenstein is the Sidney Dillon Professor of Astronomy, Emeritus at Amherst College, Massachusetts. He is an accomplished writer, having written one textbook, three books on science for the general public and numerous magazine articles. One of his books won both the American Institute of Physics/US Steel science-writing award and the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science. Professor Greenstein is a recognized leader in the American Astronomical Society's effort to reform astronomy education in the United States. Some time ago he co-organized a series of workshops for department chairs of the most prestigious universities in the country, which led to a set of proposed goals for reform of introductory astronomy courses nationwide. Professor Greenstein's field of research interest is theoretical astrophysics.

... a compelling and powerful introduction to astronomy, laying bare the fundamentals of scientific arguments and the scientific process.

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When I was in college studying science, I found the experience fundamentally unsatisfying. I was continually oppressed by the feeling that my only role was to shut up and learn. I felt there was nothing I could say to my instructors that they would find interesting. Nor did I feel that there was anything I could tell my fellow-students that they would find interesting. As I sat in the science lecture hall, I was utterly silent. That's not a good state to be in when you are 19 years old.

Doubly galling was the fact that at the same time my roommate was taking a history course. One day he came back to our dorm room filled with excitement over a class discussion. (The question was whether President Truman was right to have dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima.) Another friend at the time was taking a literature course, and he mentioned to me that, during a class discussion, he had made a point the instructor himself had found striking.

Meanwhile, I was busy with Ampre's law. We never had any fascinating class discussions about this law. No one, teacher or student, ever asked me what I thought about it.

We professors have a tendency to think that independent, creative thinking cannot be done by non-science students, and that only advanced science majors have learned enough of the material to think critically about it. I believe this attitude is false. This book is designed to move beyond a shut up and learn format, and to challenge students to think for themselves even at the beginning level. It asks students to use their native intelligence to actually confront subtle scientific issues.

As the title suggests, this book emphasizes student-active learning . Rather than emphasizing the facts of astronomy, it emphasizes how we know them, and it regularly involves the student in the chain of arguments that lead to them. Although the book's mathematical level is appropriate for non-scientists, it asks a good deal of the reader, and it wrestles with conflicting theories, incomplete evidence and hypothesis testing. We hope that, ten years from now, our students will remember what we taught them about the Universe but it is also important that they remember the habits of mind that have allowed us to discover these facts, and that they followed with comprehension and interest the development of our understanding.

The book covers a smaller number of topics than most texts, strictly confining attention to those most essential to the field. Recognizing that this may be the only science course the student ever takes, it devotes greater than usual attention to how we know what we know . Recognizing that few students are taking this course in order to prepare for another, it makes no attempt to cover every astronomical subject. Rather, it spends as much time as needed to develop a full understanding of each topic.