3 ms·
>> viruses [...] are alive. Until reading the above quote, I had never considered the idea there was any question about this. > in the scientific communities
by mncharity 7y ago
>> viruses [...] are alive. Until reading the above quote, I had never considered the idea there was any question about this.
> in the scientific communities
"Is it alive? <long property checklist> Yes/No" is an example of K-12 science education content diverging from science community practice. Both by emphasizing a little used concept, and by being inconsistent with community use.
With bonus points for it being... widely taught; taught as if it were science; an unnecessary hook for learning a set of properties; and an incoherently unfruitful predicate.
I don't know if there's a real name for such? I call them science-education-isms.
- slavik81 7y agoThe categorization of life and non-life is the first step in taxonomy, which was historically based on long property checklists. I think it may be more the case that advances in biology have changed the science. The emphasis moved from stamp collecting to modelling as we acquired better tools and a deeper understanding of biological processes. Education just got left behind.
- mncharity 7y agoInteresting idea. I wonder how one might easily explore it? Google trends has data to 2004. "living nonliving"[1], aside from being a school-year detector, seems to show a 3x increase in the 2010's? I'll also link [2], but I don't know what to make of it. [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=living%20nonliving https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=living%2... [2] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=living+and+nonliving+things%2Cliving+and+nonliving%2C+living+and+non-living&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cliving%20and%20nonliving%20things%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cliving%20and%20nonliving%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cliving%20and%20non%20-%20living%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Cliving%20and%20nonliving%20things%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cliving%20and%20nonliving%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cliving%20and%20non%20-%20living%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=living+and+non...