The ReasonRx Podcast Michael Gold

In this episode, Scott Harris joins us to discuss:
-what philosophy is
-why you need it
-why students need it
-why it should be taught
-his background in all that
-how he teaches it
-his scope and sequence
-what students get out of it
-some of his teacing experiences
-how philosophy has helped his students
-and more


About Scott:
Scott K. Harris (https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-k-harris-b037966) has a Bachelor of Arts in History/Psychology from Texas State University and a Master’s in Education from Lamar University. He received the Mirabeau B. Lamar Award for Teaching Excellence, and was the first teacher in Texas to receive the Quality School Teacher Award.

In his 29th year of teaching, Harris has taught U.S. History, World History, Psychology, A.P. Psychology, A.P. Macroeconomics, Philosophy, and International Baccalaureate’s capstone course Theory of Knowledge. He also coached swimming and water polo for 17 years.

Harris has guest-lectured at Texas State in Philosophy, and at the University of Texas San Antonio’s graduate school in Education. For nearly two decades he was a member of the Mind Science Foundation and the National Association of Scholars.

Harris piloted curriculum for what is now John Stossel-in-the-Classroom, serves as a consultant to Free- to-Choose Media, and is an associate producer for Izzit.org, all of which produce videos advocating liberty and economic education.

Contact Scott: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-k-harris-b037966

Contact Michael:
1. reasonrxpodcast@aol.com
2. https://www.goldams.com
3. https://www.facebook.com/EpistemeRx/
4. https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-gold-2883921/


To support the show and help us grow our audience -- so we have more of an impact on education and the culture -- please help us with a donation:
1. https://www.patreon.com/reasonrxpodcast
2. https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=SP6QPQKJU4XSS&source=url

Also, please consider liking us on your podcast app, and leaving a rational review.

And if you find an episode valuable, please share it with parents, teachers, school personnel, friends, and family. Help spread the word, help spread rational ideas for better livinng.

Notes.
1. "What is Philosophy?" (22 min 55 sec)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXKHJLxM7lM

2. "Certainty" (10 min 37 sec)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph9ttUjI-y0

3. "What is Science?" (6 min 14 sec)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBYArLiumEc

4. "Logic: Basics of Induction vs Deduction" (10 min 2 sec)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBYArLiumEc

5. "Deep Thinking: Finding the Empirical and Causal in the Traditional" (27 min 23 sec)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeBxMkfhSnc

6. "Bruce Lee incorporated philosophical ideas into his martial arts fighting style, jeet kune do.

"Chinese martial arts styles are grounded in traditional philosophy, and Hong Kong martial arts superstar Bruce Lee worked hard to endow jeet kune do, a fighting style he created, with philosophical underpinnings.

"Lee owned a library of around 2,000 books on martial arts, and he would often refer to these for inspiration. While a student at the University of Washington in the United States, Lee studied two courses in philosophy – Introduction to Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy – and he applied what he had learned there to martial arts."

Excerpt from "Bruce Lee as philosopher: 10 of the ideas animating his martial art style ‘jeet kune do’, such as letting nature take its course" ( South China Morning Post, 8 Dec 2019)
See:...

In this episode I read Dr. Michael Fowler's "Teaching Heat: the Rise and Fall of the Caloric Theory" and discuss its significance. It recommends teaching physics historically, which also helps students learn science, logic, and reasoning, which they need for using thought in the world and they need for adult life.

Note: sorry for some of the reading in the episode. I was tired, so my contacts were blurry, so I could not read too well sometimes. I should have put my glasses on before I started!

It's a great article with lots of lessons.

How does science develop? Do scientists always accept truth and reject falsity?

What does history say? Scientists are nothing more and nothing less than human — and what do humans do? How do groups, cliques, bullies, cults, etc., work?

Galileo was put under house arrest and was harassed for his scientific views. Someone at his time, Bruno, was burned at the stake for saying the earth went around the sun.

Ignaz Semmelweiss was ridiculed for advocating doctors wash their hands before surgery, even though he had inductive evidence and proof.

James Joule was ridiculed for claiming that heat was a form of motion, because ‘all he had was hundredths of a degree to prove his point.’

Scientists of his day were committed to the “caloric” theory of heat. They rejected the idea that heat was a form of motion.

We see failures on the part of some "scientists" throughout human history:
-rejecting Aristarchus, Copernicus, Kepler, Bruno, Galileo on heliocentrism
-rejecting Kolreuter that bees pollinate plants
-rejecting Berger that the EEG was a useful tool
-rejecting Mayer on energy conservation
-rejecting some scientists who discovered that Killer Whales live in pods
-rejecting some scientists who discovered that Wolves are social pack animals, not "lone killers"
-Etc. Ad Infinitum.

And the social group of scientists sometimes have errant, unfounded beliefs. Jane Goodall was the one who went and actually studied Chimpanzees to find out about them, instead of merely assuming things about them. She discovered that Chimpanzees eat meat, and are not merely fruit-eaters — a discovery anyone could have made if they’d have had the independence of thought to go look. Thank goodness for Jane Goodall!

This kind of thing happens some all through human history. It is with us today.

Why?

Humans are social animals. We are not committed only to truth, but also to the group. Of course, the group needs to be committed to reality, else it suffers, fails, and dies, to the extent it departs from truth. But we need some group commitment to survive and thrive.

There is a difference between science (a method of thought), the products of science, and the scientific community. An important difference students should learn deeply.



Contact Michael:
1. Email: reasonrx@aol.com
2. Gold Academy: https://www.goldams.com
3. Total Human Fitness: https://total-human-fitness.com
4. Cypress Creek Ecological Restoration Project: https://ccerp.org
5. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-gold-2883921/
6. Twitter/Instagram: EpistemeRx



Notes.
1. "Teaching Heat: the Rise and Fall of the Caloric Theory" by Michael Fowler, University of Virginia
http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/more_stuff/TeachingHeat.htm

2. More good lecture, courses, and articles by Dr. Fowler: https://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/~mf1i/home.html

3. In "Scurvy: An Example of Science vs. the Scientific Community" I give an example of a failure of the scientific community to get things right.
https://goldams.com/scurvy-and-science-vs-the-scientific-community/

4. Introductory physics; an historical approach by Herbert Priestleybr...

In this episode I discuss the great, classic article "The Median Isn't the Message" by Stephen Jay Gould. We delve into the article, its meaning, and lots of the depth and breadth we can get out of it. It should be read and studied by every statistics teacher and statistics student -- and everyone else, it is so full of lessons.

Contact Michael:
1. Email: reasonrx@aol.com
2. Gold Academy: https://www.goldams.com
3. Total Human Fitness: https://total-human-fitness.com
4. Cypress Creek Ecological Restoration Project: https://ccerp.org
5. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-gold-2883921/
6. Twitter/Instagram: EpistemeRx



Notes.
1. "The Median Isn't the Message" by Stephen Jay Gould
https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0003ms

2. Left skewed vs. right skewed
i. https://www.statology.org/left-skewed-vs-right-skewed/
ii. https://www.cuemath.com/data/right-skewed-histogram/

3. An article on Aristotle and science (high school- or college-level reading): https://galileoandeinstein.phys.virginia.edu/lectures/aristot2.html

“To summarize: Aristotle’s philosophy laid out an approach to the investigation of all natural phenomena, to determine form by detailed, systematic work, and thus arrive at final causes. His logical method of argument gave a framework for putting knowledge together, and deducing new results. He created what amounted to a fully-fledged professional scientific enterprise, on a scale comparable to a modern university science department. It must be admitted that some of his work - unfortunately, some of the physics - was not up to his usual high standards. He evidently found falling stones a lot less interesting than living creatures. Yet the sheer scale of his enterprise, unmatched in antiquity and for centuries to come, gave an authority to all his writings.

“It is perhaps worth reiterating the difference between Plato and Aristotle, who agreed with each other that the world is the product of rational design, that the philosopher investigates the form and the universal, and that the only true knowledge is that which is irrefutable. The essential difference between them was that Plato felt mathematical reasoning could arrive at the truth with little outside help, but Aristotle believed detailed empirical investigations of nature were essential if progress was to be made in understanding the natural world.”

4. The BBC provides a great, honest tribute to Aristotle for his work in science and biology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN8ortM4M3o

The BBC program is also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e12pbSHrzAs&list=PL2VcIjTwDHoLScpo2c26t-x3EdTP6WepL&index=1

5. From: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/02/the-lagoon-armand-marie-leroi-aristotle-review

Excerpt 1. "The Greeks are famous, perhaps notorious, for casting their science whole, from first principles, without troubling to examine the natural world it sought to explain. But Aristotle changed everything, providing lengthy accounts of fish and fowl, their lives, courtships, kinds, anatomies, functions, distribution and habits. They were often erroneous, but what sets Aristotle apart is his workmanlike attitude. One gets the impression of a practical man, given to neither the remote and crystalline idealism of his predecessors, nor the flights of fancy of later natural historians such as Pliny the Elder."

Excerpt 2. "Darwin knew almost nothing of Aristotle until 1882, when William Ogle, physician and classicist, sent him a copy of The Parts of Animals he'd just translated. In his note of thanks, Darwin wrote: 'From quotations which I had seen I had a high notion of Aristotle's merits, but I had not the most remote notion of what a wonderful man he was. Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they...

In this episode I discuss what grammar is and why we need it. It ain't about blindly following rules or being rude to each other. Rather, grammar is how we put thoughts together so we can think better, so we can be better understood, so we can better understand others, so we can write and speak better at work, so we can teach and learn better, etc.

Contact Michael:
1. Email: reasonrx@aol.com
2. Gold Academy: https://www.goldams.com
3. Total Human Fitness: https://total-human-fitness.com
4. Cypress Creek Ecological Restoration Project: https://ccerp.org
5. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-gold-2883921/
6. Twitter/Instagram: EpistemeRx


Notes.
I. A definition of grammar: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/grammar

II. Haptic: https://www.etymonline.com/word/haptic?ref=etymonline_crossreference

" 'pertaining to the sense of touch,' 1890 from Greek haptikos 'able to come into contact with,' from haptein 'to fasten' (see apse)."

III. Readings from Writing and thinking. A Handbook of Composition and Revision by Norman Foerster and J.M. Steadman.
1. Thought and Expression: https://archive.org/details/writingthinkingh0000norm/page/2/mode/2up

2. Grammar: https://archive.org/details/writingthinkingh0000norm/page/126/mode/2up

3. Economy: https://archive.org/details/writingthinkingh0000norm/page/48/mode/2up

4. Parallelism: https://archive.org/details/writingthinkingh0000norm/page/22/mode/2up

5. General Obscurity — Loose Thinking: https://archive.org/details/writingthinkingh0000norm/page/414/mode/2up

IV. Ayn Rand on grammar and logic: https://goldams.com/the-importance-of-grammar/

V. Walden drafts
1. The Walden Woods Project
https://www.walden.org/what-we-do/library/thoreau/the-writings-of-henry-david-thoreau-the-digital-collection/

2. The Walden Manuscript Project
https://digitalthoreau.org/the-walden-manuscript-project/

VI. Parallelism
i. What parallelism is and some examples in literature: https://literarydevices.net/parallelism/
ii. Some benefits of parallelism and more examples: http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/parallelism/

VII. Sentence Diagramming
To learn grammar, you can study sentence diagramming. I recommend it. Good stuff. Here are some resources.

1. Free online sentence diagramming books.
i. GLENCOE LANGUAGE ARTS, Sentence Diagramming (answers at end)
a...

Nick Burroughs (PT, MSPT) and Dr. Phil Lombardo (PT, DPT, SCS), each a Physical Therapist and a MovNat Certified Fitness Trainer, join us to discuss
-fitness
-physical therapy
-successes they have had working with physical therapy clients
-ideas and techniques for working with physical therapy clients
-theory and practice of physical therapy (and fitness)
-philosophy of physical therapy (and fitness)
-MovNat
-MovNat Medical


Upcoming events!
1. MovNat Medical: Clinical Applications of Natural Movement – Albuquerque, NM,
17-18 September 2022
Sign up here: https://www.movnat.com/event/movnat-medical-clinical-applications-of-natural-movement-albuquerque-nm/

2. MovNat Medical: Clinical Applications of Natural Movement – Richmond, VA
10-11 December 2022
Sign up here: https://www.movnat.com/event/movnat-medical-clinical-applications-of-natural-movement-richmond-va/


About Nick Burroughs, PT, MSPT, MCT: "Nick received his Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from James Madison University in 1998 and then his Master of Science in Physical Therapy from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2001. After graduation, Nick served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Madagascar in the Public Health Sector from 2001-2002. Nick has accumulated vast experience in physical therapy, working with a plethora of medical conditions in multiple settings over his 20 year career. His speciality within physical therapy is in the area of functional movement and is certified with Functional Movement Systems, both in Level I and II. He also holds a Level II MovNat Certification in Natural Movement and is very passionate about restoring movement can bring about healing, restore function and mobility, and decrease pain."

Follow him on Instagram at @ironspinemovment.

About Dr. Phil Lombardo, PT, DPT, SCS, CSCS, PES, CES, NFHS, USATF, MCT, EMRT:
"Dr. Phil Lombardo, a superior physical therapist, has extensive experience in the care of both sports injuries and general musculoskeletal injuries for patients of all ages. In 2007, Phil joined the top one percent of the Doctor of Physical Therapy in the country by becoming an APTA Board Certified Specialist in Sports (SCS). Dr. Lombardo has distinguished himself as a provider of choice in Sports Medicine and is recognized by the National Federation of State High School Association as a Certified Coach specializing in Track and Field (NFHS). His expert knowledge as a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS), a Sports Performance Enhancement Specialist (PES), and a Certified Corrective Exercise Specialist (CES) guarantee his patients the highest quality of care. Phil earned both his undergraduate degree and Doctoral degree in Physical Therapy from New York University. It was also there that he received the department’s Service Award for Excellence in giving to others.

"It brings Phil great joy as he shares MovNat, a physical education system for developing real-world capability through natural movement with his patients and now to the public. His journey led him to becoming a MovNat certified instructor, hosting the first-ever MovNat Elements Workshop in NJ and then becoming the first-ever licensed MovNat facility in NJ.

"As a devoted fitness enthusiast, Phil loves to constantly learn about and train in all areas, including strength training, running, hiking, and kayaking. He grew up in Leonia and now resides in Butler with his wife and sons. Around the clinic, in addition to his passion for physical therapy, Phil is also known for his love of and expertise in chocolate, especially dark — 86% cacao, to be precise!"

Contact Phil at phil@movnat.com or www.paramuspt.com


Contact Michael:
1. Email: reasonrx@aol.com
2. Gold Academy: https://www.goldams.com
3. Total Human Fitness: https://total-human-fitness.combr...

Dr. Jon Morey is back to talk about modern physical education, its pros and cons, and what we can do to do it better.

Jon's bio and info in a previous episode: https://www.spreaker.com/user/11043023/59-dr-jon-morey-on-fitness-thriving-and-

Contact Jon:
1. Uncivilized Vitality: https://greatlakesmovement.com/uncivilized-vitality/
2. Great Lakes Chiropractic & Movement Center: https://greatlakesmovement.com

Contact Michael:
1. Email: reasonrx@aol.com
2. Gold Academy: https://www.goldams.com
3. Total Human Fitness: https://total-human-fitness.com
4. Cypress Creek Ecological Restoration Project: https://ccerp.org
5. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-gold-2883921/
6. Twitter/Instagram: EpistemeRx

To support the show and help us grow our audience -- so we have more of an impact on education and the culture -- please help us with a donation:
1. https://www.patreon.com/reasonrxpodcast
2. https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=SP6QPQKJU4XSS&source=url

Also, please consider liking us on your podcast app, and leaving a rational review.

And if you find an episode valuable, please share it with parents, teachers, school personnel, friends, and family. Help spread the word, help spread rational ideas for better living.


Show notes.
1. Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John J. Ratey MD
https://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-Brain/dp/B08RZD6D4Z/

Book description: "A groundbreaking and fascinating investigation into the transformative effects of exercise on the brain, from the best-selling author and renowned psychiatrist John J. Ratey, MD.
...
"In Spark, John J. Ratey, MD, embarks upon a fascinating and entertaining journey through the mind-body connection, presenting startling research to prove that exercise is truly our best defense against everything from depression to ADD to addiction to aggression to menopause to Alzheimer's.

"Filled with amazing case studies (such as the revolutionary fitness program in Naperville, Illinois, which has put this school district of 19,000 kids first in the world of science test scores), Spark is the first book to explore comprehensively the connection between exercise and the brain. It will change forever the way you think about your morning run - or, for that matter, simply the way you think."

2. "MovNat in Schools: Educator Certification"
Albuquerque, New Mexico, 13-14 Aug 2022
Learn more: https://www.movnat.com/event/2022-educator-certification-usa/

They say: "This course is best suited for educators across subject areas and disciplines who work with children in preK – 12th grade. This includes physical education, classroom education, special education, homeschool education, after school programs, summer camps, and anyone else who works with children for fitness, educational, or physical education purposes.

"Our Educator Certification Program is an innovative and fundamental movement certification for those who work with children in school-based settings.

"We offer a one day certification for all educators (MCE) and a more in-depth, two-day certification for physical educators (MCE-PE). Educators who take the one day certification will walk away with the knowledge and skills to strategically use essential natural movements to help students do their best learning, including self-regulation and community-building strategies, in any classroom setting.

"Along with learning the fundamentals in Day 1, Physical Educators will extend their knowledge on Day 2 by learning more movement skills as well as techniques for structuring and implementing natural movements into their physical education classes so that all students can better learn how to move their...