[Textbook-l] Textbooks (response to Jimbo's WikiEN-l post)

[Daniel Mayer]

Jimbo wrote:
>At one point, a textbook teaching about 
>the Earth and the Sun might say "The 
>Sun revolves around the Earth".  Bad 
>move to say that. 

<off-topic>Hm. Given the Church's view on this subject at that time it would 
have been a bad move for your own well-being to disagree... </off-topic>

>Better to say "Current scientific consensus 
>off-topic>is that the evidence outlined in this 
>chapter suggests that the Sun revolves around 
>the Earth."

Assuming there wasn't a Church that would burn you at the steak then, in 
retrospect at least, I would have to agree. However, the corollary of that is 
not true because we know, as a fact, that the Earth does revolve around the 
Sun because a couple deep space craft took several pictures of our whole 
solar system (not to mention all the hoards of other empirical evidence there 
is). So there is no significant controversy on this topic (even the Catholic 
Church eventaully accepted this fact). 

When there is no real controversy on a topic (in a global sense) then facts 
can be presented as facts.  

>Respect for the reader entails simply laying 
>out all the facts uncontroversially, and allowing 
>the reader to draw the appropriate conclusions.

But we don't have room in every article to present every idea on a subject - 
we have to pick and choose. If done right then the major arguments are 
presented in some detail, with more detailed text on daughter articles and 
the minor/crackpot ones get maybe a sentence or two or just a "see also" 
link.

>What I'm saying is that it's a big misconception 
>to think that an NPOV textbook treatment of 
>biology has to include, as if equally valid, the
>views of scientists and creationists.  It doesn't.  
>It is not _bias_to restrict our focus to a particular 
>topic.

<Devil's advocate>Ever hear of a "bias of selection?"</Devil's advocate>

Perhaps the problem is that [[NPOV]] needs to be re-factored? It sure has been 
misinterpreted enough.... It was also made for an encyclopedia and so was 
framed with the needs of an encyclopedia in mind (sic comprehensiveness 
instead of a focus on neutrally presenting the current views of a topic based 
on how professionals in that discipline view it - I think that wording is 
needed in the textbook version of "NPOV").

>Remember, NPOV is about getting consensus 
>between potentially warring factions.  If your 
>biology text is written properly, then an honest
>creationist will accept it. 

Good thing you put the qualifier "honest" in there. Otherwise I would have 
listed a few states where creationism is either presented as a valid 
competing theory to evolution or as superior to evolution in those state's 
public school biology textbooks. It makes me sick to think about that (also 
very glad that I didn't grow up in those backward states -- no offense 
intended Jimbo :-).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

PS I'm leaving for a Yosemite field study in about 4 hours and won't be back 
to respond to posts until late Sunday/early Monday UTC.

Also, I would prefer us to use the terminology of "module" instead of article 
when talking about textbook pages (both are one wiki page but "article" isn't 
a good word for our use here - neither is "page" realy).