David Weinberger Quotes

Scientific research involves going beyond the well-trodden and well-tested ideas and theories that form the core of scientific knowledge. During the time scientists are working things out, some results will be right, and others will be wrong. Over time, the right results will emerge.

In an undergraduate business environment, the best learning experience is the interaction students have with each other. They need to learn from each other as much as from professors and lectures and other teaching tools.

The center line of science literacy - which not many people tell you, but I feel this strongly, and I will go to my grave making this point - is how you think.

Participation, I think, or one of the best methods of educating.

Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

Knowledge in the Internet Age - networked knowledge - is becoming more like what knowledge has been in the past few hundreds years for scientists: it's provisional; it's a hypothesis that is waiting to be disproved.

… to develop a plan to promote better science education

Science is a way of getting knowledge. It's a method. It's a method that really relies on making mistakes. We propose ideas, they are usually wrong, and we test them against the data. Scientists do this in a formal way. It's a way that everyone can go through life; that's how we should be teaching science from a very young age.

We need less memorization - I never memorized the periodic table of the elements - I've never used it, and I'm a physicist! I can look it up.

The mere imparting of information is not education.

Teaching can be learning, especially if student curiosity with the question 'What's going on here?' can be elicited.

We have not given science too big a place in our education, but we have made a perilous mistake in giving it too great a preponderance in method in every other branch of study.

Science thrives on self-correction …. refutation almost always contains positive lessons that overwhelm disappointment.

Science is bound, by the everlasting vow of honor, to face fearlessly every problem which can be fairly presented to it.

As a matter of principle, science teachers are professionally bound to limit their teaching to science and should resist pressure [from religious fundamentalists] to do otherwise.

Science has liberated the ideas of those that read and reflect ... Science is progressive.

Science is a series of judgments, revised without ceasing.

The human being acquires a habit of learning. He learns to learn.

Education is the development of power and ideal.

Kids need time for problem solving, critical thinking, applying knowledge through project-based instruction, working in teams, falling down and getting right back up to figure out what they didn't understand and why.

What we can do is provide the tools, through our educational system, for people to be able to tell sense from nonsense. These tools include the scientific method, skeptical questioning, empirical evidence, verifying sources, etc.

Unlearning is gaining importance as workplaces are moving towards agile, collaborative working models. While conventional education adds to our knowledge, unlearning will become the new learning in the coming decade, as concepts and ideas keep evolving.

It is my idea that the public needs to be better educated about the nature of scientific inquiry and how the scientific process works. I firmly believe that this is the only effective way forward to combat the widespread distrust in facts and science.

Skills acquisition is really at the heart of what it means to learn.