With one group of new students, I also had a set of mottos. This was a group of students who did not have a science background, apart from what they may have endured at school. They were on a vocational course leading to one of the caring professions and were not wanting an academic science education per se. The mottos I used were meant to make the prospect of what they were about to embark upon feel much less daunting.
I flashed up four mottos in turn, each with the bits in brackets added after a few seconds of pondering:
Motto 1: Science is fun (once you've left school)
Motto 2: Anything goes (within the law)
Motto 3: Above all, if it's there, question it (Against this there is no law)
Motto: 4 Dogma is anathema
Each motto was expanded upon as they were revealed.
Motto 1 was meant to depict science in a new light, as something that was enjoyable and not necessarily like what was encountered at school. For those who found school science onerous for some reason, that could be put behind them; this could be a fresh start.
Motto 2 was meant to echo and introduce the philosophy of science espoused by Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994). This has variously been referred to as philosophical anarchy and ‘having imported Cole Porter into philosophy.’ This is a quip taken from Jim Hankinson’s Bluff Your Way in Philosophy (available at Internet Archive—see p. 41). Login required). The comment ‘within the law’ was meant to indicate that there are moral limits to science, in particular scientific research.
Motto 3 was meant to raise the prospect that everything could be open to questioning. The idea of an ‘it’ being ‘there’ makes the act of questioning include material objects. Those material objects included biological objects. The mention of there being no law against that was meant to introduce the idea that thought could stray beyond the practical moral bounds accepted by Motto 2.
Motto 4 was meant to sound complicated but proved to be quite simple. In a sense this motto extends the sentiments introduced in the first three. It extols free thinking by condemning rigid ways of thinking via language more commonly associated with an ecclesiastical curse.
