Good enough

Science aims to give us theories which are empirically adequate; and acceptance of a theory involves as belief only that it is empirically adequate. – Bas Van Fraassen, 1980

I think of this as the 'good enough' criterion for scientific knowledge, and I think every teacher could usefully commit it to memory.

I won’t prescribe its use in the classroom, but I think that the notion of 'empirical adequacy' is particularly relevant to chemistry and valuable in education. 

Someone once told me that teaching chemistry is the act of telling a series of lies of increasing complexity. With each new level the student is cheerfully told to forget everything they thought they knew. This isn't unique to chemistry – many educators have a habit of treating the year from which their students have just emerged as horribly retrograde: 'now you'll learn something'.

But is this year zero approach really helpful? And if not, can we use the idea of empirical adequacy to support new learning without disparaging previously held ideas?