Science, Blindness, and Evolution

Science, Blindness, and Evolution

The Braille Monitor

March,

2004

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Science, Blindness,

and Evolution:

The Common Theme Is Opportunity

by

Geerat J. Vermeij

Geerat

J. Vermeij

From the Editor: Geerat

Vermeij is the renowned blind marine biologist who teaches at the University

of California at Davis. His fascinating autobiography, Privileged Hands,

is available from the National Library Service. Recently Dr. Vermeij called

to offer the Braille Monitor an article that was first published in the

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities, 10 (1):

1-3. The article was based on a talk delivered on March 29, 2002, at the National

Science Teachers Association convention in San Diego, California. Considering

the NFB's new initiative on teaching science to blind students, I accepted the

article with delighted thanks. Here it is:

It was late in the afternoon

on a day in the early 1970's when I sat down with a blind woman to talk about

her interest in studying biology. Her state agency for the blind was balking

at paying for her studies in this field, in the fear—quite probably justified

in her case—that she would be unable to find suitable employment. At that

time I had become fascinated with leaf shape, and so our conversation turned

briefly to the prickly leaves of hollies. The prickles, it turns out, are not

distributed evenly around the leaf margin. In cultivated varieties the left

edge typically has a different number of prickles from the right. Moreover,

the numbers and positions of prickles vary in peculiar ways among leaves even

on the same tree. I wondered aloud why this should be so, and why holly leaves

are spiny at all. These are the kinds of questions that start me thinking about

the larger puzzles of science. They are tiny unknowns, things that make no sense,

things that might or might not be key to larger questions.

The

woman interrupted my ramblings with a simple question. "What do holly leaves

look like?" she asked.

Was I taken aback? Yes

and no. Momentarily I thought to myself how astonishing it was that this woman

didn't know what a holly leaf looked like. But then I realized that her ignorance,

however trivial, is symptomatic of a vast problem that affects everyone, but

most especially those who lack one or another of the major sensations: there

is a pervasive lack of observational experience. Perhaps some well-meaning soul

thought it best to spare a blind woman the experience of handling a holly leaf;

after all, she could hurt herself. More likely the well-meaning soul—parent,

sibling, teacher, or fellow student—would not have stopped to think that

a blind person does not encounter things unless the latter can be heard, felt,

tasted, or smelled. The blind person cannot see the everyday things if they

must be seen at a distance or as pictures. Like everyone else a blind person

needs a stream of data, the raw material for making sense of the world, for

asking questions and seeking answers about how the world works, how it develops,

how it evolves.

Here, then, is one of the

great impediments to the forging of a scientific frame of mind. In school people

learn that doing science comprises observation, hypothesis, experiment, and

theory; but we tend to emphasize the latter three steps at the expense of observation.

Yet observation is critical to all the rest. Observation—taking in the

world through our senses with our minds turned on—leads to asking questions,

which in turn leads us to propose explanations that we can then evaluate with

additional evidence gathered by experiment or by comparisons, all eventually

organized into coherent explanatory theory.

The skill of observing—and

it is a skill, to be honed and perfected—must be taught and encouraged.

It is something that every science student must possess, but perhaps this aspect

of science education is particularly important when the student is blind or

otherwise deprived of one of the sensations. A conscious effort must be made,

all the time and everywhere and by everyone, to acquaint a blind person with

those aspects of the environment that cannot be heard, smelled, or easily grasped

by hands and fingers. And even those things that can be observed must be pointed

out. Most people can hear birds sing, but for most blind people I know, birdsong

and all the interesting questions it raises are part of the background noise

until attention is drawn to them.

I

want to make two more points about the holly leaf. First, the leaf is--or should

be--something familiar. It may in fact be so familiar that it is taken for granted.

We don't wonder about it because it does not appear to require an explanation.

Yet there is much about such an everyday thing as a leaf that we don't understand.

How and why did the network pattern of venation in the leaf evolve? After all,

geologically ancient plants have an open system of venation, not the interconnected

system that is so characteristic of hollies and many other flowering plants.

Who among insects, mammals, and other potential consumers eats these leaves,

and how and when are the leaves attacked?

I could go on and on. My

point is that, by beginning with the objects and phenomena of everyday experience,

we can lead people down an inviting path into more unfamiliar territory, all

the while remembering that we are trying to stimulate a state of curiosity as

well as to instill a style of thought that allows us to understand the world

around us. Most people—indeed, many teachers—perceive science as complex,

abstract, foreign, unapproachable, and difficult. Science demands systematic,

rigorous, usually quantitative thinking, objectivity, and a willingness to analyze.

Students are quick to pick up on these fears and to assimilate them in their

own perceptions.

And

that brings me to the second point. Implicitly or otherwise, the educational

system has diminished expectations of the blind. If science is hard for me,

a sighted adult might reason, it must be doubly hard for a blind person; therefore

let's go easy on that person so as not to hurt self-confidence or to enhance

a sense of inferiority. But with that relaxed attitude we are withholding the

most powerful method yet devised to comprehend the world, to explain and make

sense of our surroundings. Not least we are depriving the student of a profound

source of intense pleasure and accomplishment.

Science and the scientific

way of thinking are activities that mirror precisely the process and mechanisms

of evolution. In evolution forms of life are adapted to, and in important ways

create, their surroundings. They are hypotheses about their environment, hypotheses

that are daily tested. The best hypotheses—those that, given the limitations

of technology and information of the living things in question, are met with

success in survival and reproduction—persist in a competitive environment

replete with opportunities, challenges, and uncertainties.

The

evolutionary search for better hypotheses requires an organizational infrastructure

that efficiently sifts the wheat from the chaff, a system that does not have

to evaluate every single possibility, and that can quickly identify potentially

useful adaptive improvements. But none of this will yield improvement unless

the environment nurtures opportunity and experimentation and tolerates initial

imperfection. New traits start out as very imperfect approximations to the well-adapted

state. Only when novelties are tested in a richly competitive environment in

the presence of opportunity will real improvement occur. Orchid flowers did

not begin their evolution as perfect mimics of female bees that are attractive

to male pollinators; they began by being just good enough to attract at least

some insects long enough to be pollinated.

The

key to evolution, to teaching science, and to teaching the blind about science

or anything else is opportunity. In the case of education, opportunity means

lots of hands-on experience and can-do attitude on everyone's part, a flexibility

of mind that looks for alternative methods when standard procedures and protocols

don't work.

Blind

students benefit from physical models and from specimens. They may be unable

to carry out the physical tasks of laboratory experiments or to observe behaviors

and reactions directly, but they can perfectly well be shown the equipment and

be required to do the necessary calculations, to make inferences, and to write

reports. Yes, there is much visual material in science, but low-tech methods

exist to make many of them easily accessible. Take a standard sheet of paper,

place it on a soft, yielding surface, and then with a sharp pen trace an illustration

by pressing firmly while drawing. On the back side of the sheet a mirror image

of what you have drawn will emerge in a raised format.

What does a blind person

need to succeed in science or simply to gain acceptable familiarity with the

most powerful mechanism of learning known to humanity? Opportunity, curiosity,

intelligence, and a willingness to work hard come to mind as the four requirements.

These requirements are, of course, precisely the same as they are for anyone.

It is in the implementation of these requirements that the recommendations become

specific. And here, as I pointed out, active show-and-tell together with a flexible

attitude complement the more generic elements of education. We teach science

by putting the theory and methods of science into practice and by letting opportunity,

observation, hypothesis, adaptation, and the power and beauty of scientific

explanation do their work.

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