Education at its most fundemental is not about facts but about processes. More poetically:
"...the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting"
- (Plutarch
Essays)
Accordingly, the objective of this course isn't to increase your knowledge but rather to expand your ignorance. After all, the process of science occurs at the boundary of what is known, which, as it grows, generates a greater interface with what is not known. The prime objective of this course is to help you develop skills to play the game of science -- to greet confusion with joy, to withstand it, organize it, and chart a path through it.
The rest is a commentary on this primary goal.
Make progress towards independence
- Define problems rather than have them handed to you
- Gain comfort in reading research articles
- Take control over your own education
Practice building your own insights
- Go through the slow process of achieving an insight
- Use concepts in their natural contexts
Grasp the basics of molecular biology as useful tools
- Needed as a basis for biology as it is practiced today
- Needed as a basis for bioinformatics
Make progress towards independence
Arguably, the most important function of a college education isn't to get a degree, nor to get job next year, but to help prepare yourself for the rest of your life. Just as learning to read and do arithmetic many years ago made
you a more capable person in all aspects of your life, so can many higher order skills that few already possess upon entering college.
- Define problems rather than have them handed to you
If you ever find yourself working a job where all the decisions are made for you, then it's probably a short term job.
Prepare for automation to eventually push you to the unemployment line. Machines beat humans in well-defined
repetitive tasks, while humans beat machines in fuzzy problems, where insight is required to figure out what the
problem actually is. Like any other skill, finding sense in ill-defined problems takes practice. You will have it.
- Gain comfort in reading research articles
The primary literature, for example research articles, is where you can find out for yourself what is known and make your own judgement what is true. But research articles are difficult to read. It's much easier to have someone else read them and tell you what is true. Textbooks do this. So do most web pages. Then why do you need to read research articles?
I could write for hours on this... In fact,
I have.
In brief, whatever you end up doing, you will be called upon to make
independent judgments (you'll also have the option of ignoring the call).
Independent judgment requires separating observation from prior belief.
Reading research articles gives you practice in doing this, useful even
if you never again have contact with molecular biology research.
- Take control of your education
Leave school, and you'll find nary a syllabus, nary a multiple choice exam, nary even a grade except in the most basic
sense. Whatever you learn will be your choice (learning nothing is also a choice). Can you build your own syllabus? Compose your own exams? Grade yourself? If not, it's time to learn how.
Practice building your own insights
(Yes, this is pretty much the same objective as the first, but it's important enough to state a second time with different details)
- Go through the slow process of achieving an insight
All of you have already learned the essence of molecular biology... and forgotten it, never having really learned it in the first place. Those that learned it best did so by starting from confusion and slowly piecing together observations that led to enlightenment. We'll spend a full semester on material that you have previously learned in a couple of weeks. This time, however, you'll do it slowly, learning with your hands, brick by brick.
- Use concepts in their natural contexts
If you can't use what you know, then what you know is of little importance (or you don't really know it). As much as possible, you'll be given the opportunity to apply concepts of molecular biology in new contexts, sometimes experiments, sometimes hypothetical problems.
Grasp the basics of molecular biology as useful tools
- Needed as a basis for biology as it is practiced today
While some study molecular biology for its own sake, far more use it as a tool in the study of other subjects -- cardiac physiology, marine ecology. There is no field of biology unaffected by the concepts and tools of molecular biology.
- Needed as a basis for bioinformatics
Bioinformatics, like molecular biology, serves all biological disciplines. Most bioinformatic tools rest on concepts of molecular biology. It isn't possible to go deeply into bioinformatics without a prior foundation in molecular biology.
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