Quipus and Cloth: Inca Symbolic Communications Media

Critical Thinking: Focus on Science and Technology Proceedings of the 1990 Conference

Volume I

Edited by

Wendy Oxman-Michelli Mark Weinstein

Institute for Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking: Focus on Science and Technology

Proceedings from the 1990 Conference

Volume I

edited by

Wendy Oxman-Michelli1 If}~

Mark Weinstein

Institute for Critical Thinkin~ of)

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Published and distributed by: The Institute for Critical Thinking 224 Life Hall Montclair State Upper Montclair, NJ 07043

© 1992 by the Institute for Critical Thinking All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The contents of this publication may, however, be reproduced if they are intended solely for nonprofit, educational use.

We would li volume fort Franzel, wh Lesley Coia, editorial as~ Chirdo and as secretaI)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

OVERVIEW

THE PLENARY PAPERS

Introduction

The Goals of Science Education Gerald Nosich

VOLUME I

Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking Audrey B. Champagne

Critical Thinking and the Goals of Science Education Mark Weinstein

THE NATURE OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEOCE

Introduction

The Role of Intellectual Rights in the Advancement of Science and Technology Bertram Bandman

Who's Arguing? Thinking About Critical Thinkers and Critical Thoughts Lenore Langsdorf

On the Objectivity of Critical Thinking Mark S. Halfon

Scientific Reasoning and the Fallacy of Affirming the Consequent: A Challenge for Critical Thinking Bernard Davis

Feminist Science Criticism and Critical Thinking Lynn H. Nelson

v

1

5

7

16

27

43

49

60

68

73

80

Feminism and the Environment: Beyond the Technological Paradigm Gloria Pierce

Universal Science, Technology and Critical Thinking: An Exploration of Its Possibility in Modern Africa Lasana Keita

Creation and Evolution: What is the Argument About? David Clowney

New Perspective on the Science vs. Religion Controversy Orestes P. Coccia, SJ

The Biochemical Theory of Heredity: Chance or Design? Gordon Whitney

Risk: How Much is Too Much? Grace S. Gagliardi

Why Problem Solving and Critical Thinking? An Historical Critique of Artificial Intelligence Paradigms in Current Educational Thought Douglas D. Noble

Groping for the Right Image in the Engineering Sciences: John Waddell and "The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness" James Baker Ross

Quipu and Cloth: Inca Symbolic Communication Media Monica Barnes

TheTropics, Technology and Tradition: The Case of the Yucatec Maya Ellen R. Kintz

The Dresden Codex: Religion and Science in Mesoamerica Wilma Feliciano

Self Concept and World Vision Ira Finkel

The Nature of Choice as a Moral Act John P. O'Malley

vi

90

98

107

120

131

141

152

165

173

179

188

196

205

VOLUME II

11 OVERVIEW 215

SCIENCE AND TEACHING FOR CRITICAL TIIlNKING

Ill Introduction 219

Toward a Model for Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum: Science as a Pedagogical Tool 224

I Barbara M. Kinach and Carole A. Moore

The Printing Press and the Computer: Technology and the Historical Imagination 235

11 Les Lloyd and Chris Hughes

Out of Class Assignments for Teaching Critical Thinking Skills 245

II Anita D. Rau

Dialectic: The Role of Discussion in Education 251

I John A. White

The Best Way to Teach Students How to Think is to Have Technology Education in Our Schools 263 Alice Van Deursen, Howard Herbert,

I Andrea Notare, Vincent Walencik

Techniques of Thinking about Technology 279 Alexander Hooke, Christopher Engel, Laura Talbott, Annette Preat

II A Paradigm for Teaching the Beleaguered Student: Thinking Critically in the Sciences, Social Sciences

:II and Humanities 291 Mary E. Hoppe, Deane M. Perkins, Johnnie L. Stones

Society, Ethics, and Technology: An Interdisciplinary ~II Core General Education Course 298

Morton E. Winston

Introducing Critical Thinking Skills to Case Studies II in Bioethics Classes 305

Robert B. Mellert

II Controversial Issues in Bioethics 312 Janevive Mechanic

I vii

<

Biomedical Technology and the Indetenninate Conditions of Decision Making David V. Ward

Encouraging Critical Thought About Contemporary Moral Problems Sr. Patricia A. Talone

The Role of Slogan Claims in Biomedical Ethics: Focus on Abortion David Mall

Science and Religion in the Classroom: Practical Considerations of Content and Pedagogy Robert Schaible, Gale Rhodes

Developing Critical Thinking Skills Through the Use of Environmental Moral Dilemma Activities Marlene Rosenbaum

321

329

337

351

362

CRITICAL THINKING AND THE TEACHING OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOCY

Introduction

Learn to Recognize Patterns: Human Handedness Robert C. Barkman

Enriching Concept Acquisition Through Model, Metaphor , Simile and Analogy Robert F. Dorner

Collaborative Concept Mapping in the Science Curriculum Raymond A. Allan

Critical Thinking and Problem Solving: Using Tay Electric Trains as Instructional and Motivational Devices in Technology Education Robert Browning, Martin Greenwald, Ron Hollander

Using Writing to Encourage Students to Think Critically About Mathematics and Science Kathleen M. Shannon

Critical Thinking Through Writing: An Evolution in Teaching and Learning from the Technology Department Across the Disciplines Ruth M. Loring, Tom Sutherlin

viii

367

374

382

386

391

395

408

Incorporating Critical Thinking in Distance Education B. J. Gleason

Reaching All Students with Mathematics: A Case for the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Standards William F. Tate

Adapting the Thinking Processes to Enhance Science Skills in Females and Minorities Henry D. Dobson, John Hranitz

Critical Thinking and Mathematics: Cementing the Bond Gail Kaplan

A Model for Discovering Critical Thinking Skills in Mathematics Susan S. Gray, Paulette A. St. Ours

Constructivism and Science Education: Building Critical Thinking into the Elementary Science Curriculum Deborah R. First

"Understanding Scientific Ideas": an Honors Course Joan Capps, Paul Schueler

Critical Thinking in Introductory College Science Courses: What Direction Should We Pursue? Walter Rothaug

Promoting Concept Mastery in the Natural Sciences: An Integrated Freshman Biology/Chemistry Curriculum Fred Garafalo, Vin LoPresti

Survival Chemistry: A Course for Non-Majors That Really is Different William D. Totherow

Sophomore Organic Chemistry - A Closed System for Teaching and Assessing the Ability to Be A Critical Thinker Aline M. Harison

Programmatic Development of Critical Thinking in the Chemical Engineering Curriculum Norbert Elliot, Gordon Lewandowski, Reginald Tomkins, Robert Barat, John Opie

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414

421

428

434

440

449

456

464

472

480

487

496

Systems Approach Methodology for Improving the Standards of Graduating Engineers Yaw A.Owusu

A Simple Calculation for Teaching Critical Thinking in Thermodynamics David J. O'Keefe

Does CAD Technology Allow Students to Think and Visualize More Critically than Traditional Methods? Ali E. Kashef

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511

522

530

CRmCAL TfilNKING: FOCUS ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

CONFERENCE 1990 PROCEEDINGS

OVERVIEW

The Institute for Critical Thinking at Montclair State has sponsored a conference, Critical Thinking: Focus on Science and Technology, in the hope that the field of critical thinking will be enriched through the perspectives of scholars and practitioners within a variety of academic disciplines and working from many perspectives. The papers included in the proceedings of this conference stand as an index of the usefulness of such a point of view. These proceedings, presented in two volumes, reflect the thoughts of more than 50 authors representing some 20 academic fields. Volume I includes the plenary papers and a section entitled The Nature of Scientific Knowledge. Volume II includes two sections, Science and Teaching for Critical Thinking, and Critical Thinking and the Teaching of Science and Technology. The papers address central issues in critical thinking and focus on a crucial aspects of educational theory and practice, reflecting the many perspectives that relate critical thinking to scientific inquiry and technological applications. The various perspectives represented here, along with the papers from our first two conferences, already published as Critical Thinking: Language and Inquiry Across the Disciplines, and Critical Thinking: Focus on Social and Cultural Inquiry add significant new ideas to the field of critical thinking. In these Proceedings, the positions presented tend away from the mainstream of critical thinking, as primarily represented by the work of philosophers, and present many new and potentially useful points of view. What we take to be of central importance are the offerings of many disciplines involved with critical thinking but generally underrepresented in its literature. These variousapproachesfurnish standpoints that we believe deserve careful consideration. Critical thinking, as reflected here, includes diversity of expression, but yet points to continuities in methods and goals across the various disciplines.

At Montclair State, we have developed a notion of critical thinking that has at its center a concern with judgment. We maintain that students should see the content of the courses within a nexus of justification and application. This requires that students learn course content in relation to the methodological and substantive principles that support that content as justifiable-that is, permit the judgment that the information and procedures presented in the course have been appropriatelyjustified. Further, we maintain that students should be helped to link information taught to some domain of meaningful application, a domain which frequently extends beyond the boundaries of the discipline itself. Knowledge taught to undergraduates should address the theoretic reason of the student by having the underlying theoretic and/ or empirical bases of that knowledge made explicit. It

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Cooper, Theodore. American Railroad Bridges. New York: Engineering News Publ. Co., 1890.

Harrington, John Lyle, ed. The Principle Professional Papers of Dr. J. A. L. Waddell, Civil Engineer. New York: Virgil H. Hewes, 1905.

Merriman,MansfieldandHenryS.Jacoby.ATextbookonRoofsandBridges, Part I: Stresses in Simple Trusses (sixth edition). New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1924.

O'Conner, Colin and Tommy Hung Tin Chan. "Dynamic Wheel Loads From Bridge Strains," Journal of Structural Engineering, Vol. 114,No. 8 (August 1988): 1703-23.

O'Conner and Chan. ''Wheel Loads from Bridge Strains: Laboratory Studies," Journal of Structural Engineering, Vol. 114, No. 8 (August 1988): 1724-40.

Steinman, D. B. ''Locomotive Loadings for Railway Bridges," Transactions, ASCE, Vol. 86 (1923): 606-36.

Waddell, J. A. L. "Some Disputed Points in Railway Bridge Designing," Trans., ASCE, Vol. XXVI (1891): 77.

Waddell, J. A. L. Bridge Engineering. 2 Vols. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1916.

Waddell, J. A. L. The Ecorwmics of Bridgework. New York: John Wiley & Son~J921.

Whitehead, Alfred North. Science and the Modern World, Lcrwell Lectures 1925. New York: Mentor, (1925) 1953.

Dr. Ross is assistant professor of economic history at North Dakota State University. He has taught U.S. history and the history of technology and science at the University of Minnesota and at Clarkson University. His publications examine the roles of art, science and economics in engineering design theory.

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QUIPU AND CLOTH: INCA SYMBOLIC COMMUNICATION MEDIA

Monica Barnes

In our culture, literacy is an essential key to understanding and power. This has been true ever since the early development of writing. The elites of the ancient empires of Asia, North Africa, and Europe considered written records to be an indispensable tool to political, religious, and social control. Although our modem electronic media could give access to the production, reproduction, and manipulation of information without the direct mediation of the written word, the necessary social organization, diffusion of skills, and confidence have not yet developed, although adequate technology may be available. For instance, an official of Time-Life Videos said that he is not worried that the market for tapes of his company's major new series on the American Civil War would be diminished by off-air taping as the series is broadcast. "Most people just don't know how to use their VCR's," he said (Carter 1990:012).

Nevertheless, large and sophisticated polities can be expanded and managed in a context entirely devoid of literacy in any conventional sense and without sophisticated modem technology. The best known example of such a state is that of the Inca empire. In the century before the Spanish conquest of the Andes in the 1530's, a group of tribesmen, technologically in the Bronze Age, forged an empire which extended more than two thousand kilometers from its capital at Cusco, south to the present location of Santiago de Chile, and north to Quito (Morris 1988:238, Figure8.2). This polity included the dry coastal desert of Peru, the mountainous heartland of the Andes, and the fringes of the Amaz.on jungle. Its population may have been as large as six to ten million people (Rowe 1946:185;Cook 1981). The Incashadacentrallyplanned economy in which the corvee labor of the populace combined with that of special classes of state servants, the yanas and the acclas, the chosen women, to produce surpluses of food, clothing, tools, weapons, raw materials, and cult objects which were stored in state warehouses for redistribution.

Clearly, the complexities of Inca economics, to say nothing of their astronomy, warfare, history, and religion, required computational and recording facilities beyond those of human memory, even the sort of highly trained memory that is often found in non-literate people. Lacking both alphabet and hieroglyphic scripts, the Incas depended upon the quipu, their famous system of records in knotted strings. The functioning of the quipu is relatively well understood. The quipu is essentially a cord, to which other cords are fastened. These cords are color-coded. A very great number of design possibilities are made available by twisting (plying) two or more colors together in a clockwise (Z-twist) or counterclockwise (5-twist) manner. The majority of quipu strings hang from the main string and are called "pendants" in English. These in tum can have one or more subsidiary strings attached to them.

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European costume as worn by Spaniards and acculturated Indians in Guaman Poma's Peru. the third style is traditional Inca garb used in depictions of prehispanic and traditional Indians. Embedded in Guaman Poma' s account is a series of portraits of the Inca rulers and their queens and generals. Although rendered in black and white lines, these may have been inspired by multi-colored paintings like those sent to King Philip II. Indeed, Guaman Poma describes in words the colors of the clothing his figures would be wearing.

For ideological reasons, Guaman Poma wished to equate the Inca state in the New World with the Christian era in the Old World, both in terms of temporal duration, and in terms of moral validity. In reality the Inca empire had lasted less than one hundred years, from the middle of the fifteenth century to the 1530' s. Native tradition had established a list of twelve to fourteen kings beginning with Manco Capac, the legendary founder of the Inca dynasty, and ending with Huscar and Atahualpa,. the half brothers who were battling for the throne at the time the Spanish conquest began. In order to extend this king list back to the beginning of the Christian era, Guaman Poma had to assign the Inca kings preternaturally long lifetimes, a device which also gave them some of the superhuman grandeur of the biblical patriarches. For example, Manco Capac is said by Guaman Poma to have lived for one hundred and sixty years. Sinchi Roca, Manco Capac' s son, allegedly lived 155 years. Mayta Capac, the fourth Inca was alive for 120 years. Capac Yupanqui Inca, the fifth ruler, lived 150 years while Inca Roca, the sixth Inca was 154 when he died. Only one of the other major chroniclers, Fray Martin de Morua, assigns the Incas heroic ages (Morua 1962-64 [1611], but these are not as exaggerated as those given by Guaman Poma. Guaman Poma places the birth of Jesus in the reign of the second Inca ruler, Sinchi Roca.

Although Guaman Poma finished his manuscript in 1615 and apparently sent it off to the kind of Spain, Philip III, no evidence has ever been found of its arrival at the Spanish court. Through an unreconstructed series of events it was brought to the Danish Royal Library where it was discovered in 1908 (Guaman Poma de Ayala 1987:xi). Its whereabouts in the nearly three centuries from completion to discovery is unknown.

Recently I have identified another source which contains some of the same fabulous information otherwise only known from the account of Guaman Poma. This is a series of twelve Inca portraits with commentary in Spanish, now part of the collection of The Thomas Gilcrease Institute in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Upon stylistic grounds it is apparent that the Gilcrease pictures were executed, probably by two artists, in the mid-eighteenth century, more than two hundred years after Guaman Poma completed his chronicle. The Gilcrease portraits were brought to the United States around 1830 from an unknown location (personal communication, Sarah Erwin, Curator, Archival collections, Thomas Gilcrease Institute, January 30, 1990).

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This new, albeit late, source presents some exciting implications. It offers important details of the legendary lives of the Inca rulers which are otherwise found only in the account of Guaman Poma. For example, all but one of the Incas are given the same fabulous but exact ages by both Guaman Poma and the Gilcrease portraits, and these are found in no other chronicles. There is better agreement between Guaman Poma and the Gilcrease texts on the names and family histories of the coyas or Inca queens than between Guaman Poma and any other Peruvian historian. Both Guaman Poma's manuscript and that housed in the Gilcrease Institute place the birth of Jesus in the reign of the second emperor. Other accounts present a much shorter Inca chronology which would make this impossible.

Guaman Poma is usually viewed as an eccentric individualist whose unique imagination set him apart from others of his time and place. Unlike most of the chroniclers of the conquest of Peru and their native informants, Guaman Poma was from Lucanas, a province of Ayacucho, not from Cusco, and as such he was not a member of the former Inca court. When viewed together with the Gilcrease Inca genealogy, Guaman Poma' sreconstruction of history seems to represent not just his own unique viewpoint, but that of a school or tradition of Indian historians whose reconstructions of the past were at variance with both those of the Spanish and perhaps those of their Inca informants. There is a hint in one of the two Gilcrease Inca portraits without text, thatits artist may have also been familiar with the Ayacucho region. In the background is an Inca site which more closely resembles Vilcashuaman, an important settlement in what is now the Department of Ayacucho, than any other known Inca site. The alternate, quasi­indigenous school of colonial Peruvian historians represented by Guaman Poma and the Gilcrease portraits had its roots firmly in the historical conventions of Peru's prehispanic past. It remained viable from the end of the sixteenth century to the middle of the eighteenth. The Gilcrease and Guaman Poma Inca portraits serve as a partial basis for the reconstruction of the lost genre of prehispanic historical painting and remind us that the search for previously unknown sources remains fruitful.

Bibliography:

Animato, Carlo and Oara Micinelli. Quipu: Il nodo parlante dei misteriori incas. Ecig, Geneva.

Ascher, Marcia and Robert Ascher. Code of the Quipu: A Study in Media, Mathematics, and Culture. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. (1981).

Carter, Bill. Success Looms for Maker of Civil War Film Series. The New York Times. (Monday, September 24, 1990), page D-1. 1990.

Cook, Noble David. Demographic Collapse: Indian Peru 1520-1620. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (England). (1981).

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Gisbert, Teresa Iconografia y Mitos Indfgenas en el Arte. Gisbert y Cia., S.A., La Paz. (1980).

Guaman Poma de Ayala, Felipe. Nueva cr6nica y buen gobierno. Edited by John V. Murra, Rolena Adorno and Jorge L. Urioste. historia

16, Madrid. (1987 (1615)). Herrera y Tordesillas, Antonio de. Historia General de los Hechos de los

Castellanos en las Islas y Tierra firme del mar Oceano . .. Decada quinta. Juan de Cuesta, Madrid. (1615).

Jimenez de la Espada, Marcos, editor. Tres Relaciones de Antiquedades Peruanas. Ministerio de fomento, Madrid. ( 1879 [c . 1600)) .

-----Relaciones geograficas de Indias, Peru. 3 Vols. Biblioteca de Autores espafioles, Atlas, Madrid, nos. 183185. (1965 [1580's]).

Morris, Craig. Progress and prospect in the archaeology of the Inca. Peruvian Prehistory: Anoveruiewofpre-Incaand Inca society. Edited by

Richard W. Keatinge. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (England). (1988), 233-256.

Morua, Fray Martin de. Historia general del Peru, origen y descendencia de los Incas. Edited by ManuelBallesterosGaibrois.ConsejoSuperior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Madrid. (1962-64 [1611)).

Murra, John Victor. The Economic Organization of thelnka State. JAi Press, Inc., Greenwich, Connecticut. (1980).

------"Early European Awareness of Andean Technological Achievement". Lecture presented June 18 at the National Institute for the Humanities Summer Institute "The Andean World: A Millennium of Achievements and Transformations." Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. (1990).

Perez Bocanegra, Juan. Ritual formulario, e institucion de curas, rxira administrar a los naturales de este revno, los santos sacramentos .... Geronymo de Contreras, Lima. (1631).

Rowe, John Howland. Inca Culture at the Time of the Spanish Conquest. Handbook of South American Indians. Edited by J[ ulian] H. Steward. Vol. 11:183-330. Washington, D.C., Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 143. (1946).

Monica Barnes is a doctoral candidate at Cornell University, an Associate Editor of the journal Andean Fail, and a Guest Editor of Latin American IwWm Literatures loumal. She has done fieldwork in Ecuador, Peru, and Chile and frequently publishes articles on Andean

. history and archaeology.

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THE TROPICS, TECHNOLOGY AND TRADmON: THE CASE OF THE YUCATEC MAYA

E. R. Kintz

Tropical rainforests, found in areas of low latitudes and high humidity, represent one of the oldest systems on the planet where more than one-half of the world's plant and animal species are found. These forests, contributing so many benefits to the global community and being destroyed at a rate of 40 million acres per year (an area larger than the size of New York plus Vermont), have become an international issue.

Medicinal products like the Madagascar pink periwinkle with a 99% success rate against lymphocytic leukemia and curare which is derived from South American vines and deployed against Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis, can not be produced synthetically. Less than 2% of the total number of tropical plants have been thoroughly examined for possible medical benefits and the numberless array of medicinal plants yet undiscovered or analyzed give cause for global concern over the destruction of the genetic banks surviving under the tropical canopy (Prance, Balee, Boom and Carneiro, 1987; Horwich 1990; Peters, Gentry and Mendelsohn, 1989; Mueller and Dombois, 1988).

Although great international interest and concern have focused on the giant Amazonian basin and the rainforests in central Africa, southern Mexico, the homeland of the Maya, also has tracts of tropical rainforest. The Maya of the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico, traverse the land to farm, hunt, gather, practice arboriculture and apiculture, and herd their cattle. Their knowledge concerning the tropical rainforest is great, including information on the medicinal plants that thrive in a variety of microenvironments (Kintz, 1990). Traditions run back into the precolumbian period, were modified in part by the invasion of the Spaniards, and have been maintained, providing guidelines for successful existence beneath the tropical canopy.

The Tropics The Yucatan Peninsula juts out from Central America like a giant

thumb, dividing the Caribbean Sea from the Gulf of Mexico (Wilson, 1980, p. 1). A vast limestone plain almost lacking topsoil in the north, covered with dense, thorny, scrub vegetation, the area is a hostile environment to the uninitiated. Although the Lowland Maya landscape has been characterized by some as an homogeneous plain, other scholars have been more sensitive to the microenvironmental zones that characterize the land. Tropical vegetation covered the land in an array of plant species incomparable to any other class of environments in the world. The societies that exploited this floral richness related to the species in a variety of ways. The articulation between humans and their environment was not restricted to economic exploitation alone, but

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