Introduction


 * Introduction -- Critical Thinking about Biology and Society**

The Social Construction of Life. What does this title mean to you? Take a minute and jot down your thoughts. [insert non-distracting graphic]

What was your response to being asked this at the outset? What did you feel? Think? Do? Take another minute and explore your responses? Be honest. [insert another non-distracting graphic]

Probably most of you just turned over the pages to see what point I intended to make by starting with these questions. I could make you wait if this were a lecture you were listening to, and, if you were students, I could have used my authority as a teacher to get you to write down something. But this is a book, and I cannot enforce readers' compliance with my directions. So I will not bother with any more tricks to delay getting to the point, or, rather, points:
 * I value people not accepting anything without questioning.
 * I am also prepared for you, the readers, to feel disturbed or even anxious, unsure of what constitutes the expected response.
 * I want to open for your questioning many issues which you would previously have waited for someone else to provide complete and tidy answers or which you had taken to be well established.
 * Probing and disturbing are two attributes I associate with critical thinking. If I asked you to define that term you might pick up on "probing." You might describe a process in which you question, tease out arguments into their components, check the logic or evidence supporting them, and become prepared to argue or defend a position against another. If I asked to describe what you associate with the term, you might add critical connotes a negative evaluation, a position taken in oposition to the dominant one; thinking: intellectual, academic, difficult; critical thinking: abstract...

Associations are always more varied than definitions, and differ from one person to the next. A definition, or the "strict meaning" of a term sits in tension with the term's associations. Definitions firm up concepts, while associations liven them up, pushing at their margins and exposing contradictions. The theme of exploring associations or, more technically, treating concepts as metaphors, recurs through this book. As does the theme of holding ideas or approaches in tension, playing them off against one another. In fact, when I define critical thinking I point to inquiry that is informed by a strong sense of how things could be otherwise. I believe that people understand things better when they have placed established assumptions, themes, facts, theories, practices, and social relations in tension with alternatives. Obviously this definition evokes the associations of negative and oppositional, but critical thinking as I define it does not depend on my readers rejecting conventional accounts and adopting some alternative dogma. It does, however, require you to move through places of uncertainty. This book destabilizes established approaches, raises many propositions well in advance of demonstrating them, and invites you to use the propositions in your own thinking and writing -- to experiment, take risks, and through experience develop tools that work for you.

I have found that many of my students become anxious when they have to respond to new situations while knowing that I will not act as the final arbiter of their success. Yet, if my teaching is any guide, people become creative and find critical thinking pleasurable when they explore such anxieties and gain the confidence to embrace uncertainty and ambiguity. In fact, I see a strong association between critical thinking and creativity: The larger the toolkit of alternatives to consider the implications of, the more creative a student, scientist, or interpreter of science, and the clearer and stronger their identity and voice. In progressing through a sequence of case studies, this book aims to mimic and to engender in the readers the iterative process of exploring new tensions, which stimulates creativity and results in work ready for deeper development.

That is enough said at an abstract level about teaching and learning critical thinking. Better to have my expository and pedagogical philosophy explicated by us working with it. Notice, however, that, although I have placed critical thinking firmly on our agenda, I have not yet linked this to Biology and Society nor explained what I mean by The Social Construction of Life. A few words should set the scene for the chapters to follow.

This book aims to expand the boundaries of the influences readers consider when interpreting the practices and products of the life sciences ("biology") and their impact on society. In this spirit, "science" is not just a knowledge-generating dialogue between theory and reality, but At each level social action is occuring, which involves Given this diversity of social considerations, the relations between biology and society is constructed, in the sense of Moreover, this social construction of life connects not only the life sciences, but also
 * an outlet for curiousity
 * a body of accepted knowledge
 * a process of establishing knowledge
 * what scientists do
 * institutions (laboratories, professional associations, funding agencies, journals, etc.)
 * a source of social authority
 * a producer of social impacts.
 * the use of language
 * making one's life and work in a particular time and place, and from a (possibly changing) social position
 * economic relations
 * political conflict and negotiation.
 * a building which is made of many different materials, or of
 * an interpretation drawing upon precedents and established assumptions.
 * living processes
 * groups of people's lives and livelihood
 * the reader's own life.

If all these associations are woven into this book, there is one that is not. To some readers "social construction" suggests the claim that what counts as knowledge is not dictated by the nature of real world, and science, therefore, is "merely a social construction," to be accepted, rejected or modified according to a person's or group's purposes. I do not find the dichotomy implied here -- determined by nature or determined by society -- to be logically necessary, nor very helpful for critical thinking. Obvious compromise positions suggest themselves -- "Of course, scientific knowledge reflects in part nature and in part society," or "The original generation of a theory may be strongly driven by cultural biases, but it is the natural world that dictates what the eventual consensus reached by the scientific community turns out to be." This book, however, places these compromise views in tension with the idea that scientific activity is a process of particular agents building things by combining a diversity of components. The significance of an emphasis on process and diverse components will begin to emerge in the first chapter.


 * Summary of Propositions and Open Questions**

Although each chapter forms a self-contained case, my overall project involves a weaving and progressive development of several, which does not lend itself to a simple expository structure. To take stock where we are in the book's construction, summaries at the end of each chapter record the key propositions (abbreviated as P) introduced and the important questions left open (OQ). References within brackets indicate their relation to earlier and later propositions and questions. Most of my propositions take the form of heuristics -- try working with this theme, see what it does for your critical thinking and creativity, but do not forget the risk of applying a heuristic too widely. I also identify the general area of the life sciences to which these propositions and questions apply: evolution (ev), heredity (he) and development (d), biotechnology and reproductive interventions (bt), ecology and environmental studies (ec). Similarly, for the different angles of interpretation and analysis: language (l), social and historical location (hi), economics (ex), politics and social action (po), causality and responsibility (c). Some themes apply across the different areas of biology (bio); across the different angles of interpretation and analysis (int); or synthetically (syn) across both realms.

[insert Ps & OQs for introduction]