We are trying to find ways

• to demonstrate something of what science really is.
• to show how those who are discovering or using science "see" that science.
• to subdue pseudoscience.
• to render science and math useful when needed.

We have constructed an experimental Web site to probe the problems, to test the waters.  It is:
 

<— Click here to go there.

Please look over our Web site with these points in mind:

• Science: missed.  We want to demonstrate that, today, most learning of science is learned with essential elements missing, and that results in a lot of  learning without useable understanding.  This is, in fact, very widely felt as a kind of "lost" sense about science: "Science is a hard subject."  We want to examine that common feeling more closely.
• Simple but subtle.  The missed elements are usually very simple, but are, nevertheless somewhat subtle; they are at "the edges of human comprehension."  They lie in unsuspected directions.  The feeling of being lost comes from not having a real clue of which way to go.
• Obvious  yet unobserved.  To a working scientist, those "missing points" (usually) seem obvious, so obvious that nobody could possibly miss seeing them when pointed to.  The real difficulties in any area of expertise are on a much higher plane of understanding—things like finding a closed solution to a second-order vector differential equation, or in charting the maze of feedback control loops that lead from DNA to cell structures.  But the missing points of understanding actually turn out to be more like recognizing we must multiply two numbers rather than add them, which is about as "obvious" as recognizing that green is different from orange.  Science is an art of seeing the "obvious" that no one saw before.  Those more complex, "professional," things are learned, but often without a lot of "seeing."  (Those who do "see" a lot—Feynman, for example—seem to be "working magic.")
• Seek Eurekas.  Although science education has been around for centuries, misunderstanding has pervasively and persistently overwhelmed understanding.  However, recent research suggests that understanding can be achieved, but that it requires concentrated thought working toward resolution of perceived discrepancies...and it will often be through a "Eureka!" experience.  

  "The process of science cannot be learned by reading, listening, memorizing, or problem-solving.   Effective learning requires active mental engagement."   (From note to students in "Physics by Inquiry."  Follow recent research link, above.)

  When "lost," we need to discover a new way of looking.    Here we are approaching the questions that Jean Piaget began to ask many decades ago: "Where has evolution been taking us in our journey toward knowledge and how does it do its work?"
• but Avoid seeking "The Answer."  Today's sophisticated knowledge resembles jigsaw puzzles, each with many pieces.  Fitting the pieces together can be extremely difficult because our perception frequently is blind to the abstract mathematical patterns in the pieces.  It has the feel of a picture of flower petals and insect wings as seen by insects with ultraviolet vision, while the pattern is invisible to us.  "The Answer" that many puzzle solvers hold up in triumph is often only a single piece of the puzzle on which someone has seen something they recognize...and even that may be like the image of The Madonna seen in the lacquer on the back of a Washington state highway sign.  Simplistic directions make the lost only more lost; that light down the tunnel is then only an approaching train.
• Web difficulties.  Developing the insight that sees the patterns requires deep involvement; "spoon feeding" information doesn't work.  That makes Web site design extremely difficult.  If answers to puzzles are readily available, learning occurs but understanding is rare.  Understanding starts with interest, which then grows into deep and difficult thinking.  These are antagonistic elements to what is usually expected in a college classroom, but even more clashing in what we've come to expect on the Web.  When lost, "don't shirk hard work."  Teaching has not been noticeably successful in promoting "seeing."
• Ideas? In wielding the Web, we too feel lost.  So we are considering radically different approaches from what we present here.  Chat rooms?  Mutual help list servers working on potential applications of science principles?  Peer reviewed Web publication of points such as those below?  Work within existing Web rings while adjusting to their norms?  Translate these presentations into computer games?  What?  Can you think of useful changes to our answer-hiding techniques, some of which are described via our Answers to Puzzles pages?
• Peer review.  We are especially seeking peer review of several of the possibly controversial points we know we are making.  (How about our assertion that the conjugate pairs of parameters in the Uncertainty Principle are simply inseverable elements of a multicomponent measure that give us nutty results when incomplete?)  And we need user review of the effectiveness of what we try.  [The fine,fine print]  Please join this fascinating exploration.

Higher education has traditionally been far more concerned with new disciplinary subject matter than with the use of knowledge by non specialists outside those disciplines.
 

This sentiment was suggested by a professor who, in my opinion, was an excellent chemistry instructor.  It's still a sad dereliction of social duty.  Although most faculty would not express it quite so cynically, something like it does guide a lot of the teaching in higher education.  We envision more collaboration between learners and teachers that aims at actual use of higher learning long after the student leaves the college.  In fact, except for education of future disciplinary specialists, we suggest that such a goal should be paramount, rather than:
 

We also see a possibility of using these Web pages to inject into discussions certain essential points that we see as being widely ignored.  This could well be an effective way to arouse interest in "the edges of human comprehension."

For example:                                 Click on a graphic and see where it leads...

Everybody wants peace.  But peace lies at the edges of human comprehension.  Peace is is a property of more than one person or more than one country, and egocentrism, or ethnocentrism, blinds us to the path to peace and instead points us to paths to war.  This happens because each person feels free to select the one component of "value," from the millions of components, that puts him or her "at the top."  And every person or nation that commits atrocities easily finds a way to see those atrocities as "bettering humanity."
"Addiction" to gambling implies "blindness" to certain principles of elementary statistics.
The use of hypnosis to find deeply "hidden" truth in a person's memory ignores the fact that hypnosis is a state of heightened suggestibility.  Implantation of false memories is then very, very difficult to avoid.
Ranking of anything or any group of people almost always involves the reduction of a multicomponented measure to a scalar measure, which introduces great oversimplification.  Personal biases are then very, very difficult to avoid.
Silt storage is an unavoidable byproduct of constructing reservoirs.  Silt is a "waste" byproduct of the erosion caused by rain and water flowing downhill, which is, in turn, the process which the builder of the dam is "tapping" to obtain the free energy (a thermodynamics term) that does work for mankind.  Thermodynamics is knowledge from the mid-nineteenth century; however it's "simple but subtle" and remains missed by most at the beginning of the twenty-first century.  Just what is "energy"?
Some "truths" are not really arguable because they are merely points of simple, but perhaps subtle, logic (information processing), which sometimes are, and sometimes are not, "seen" by a person doing the arguing.  The "subtleties" lie in "unsuspected dimensions," and the argument needs to proceed into those dimensions.  (Exemplar: Color vision, where the "logic" is discrimination of wavelengths.  Protanopic color vision sees grass and oranges as "the same color."  The unarguable "subtle truth" is only that orange and green are different.)	......
"Proofs" and "justifications" that rest on oversimplification are rendered invalid to the extent of the oversimplification.  Completely ignoring disconfirming evidence completely invalidates an argument—unless the issue is trivially simple.  When the "subtleties" of elementary logic (Boolean) are "unseen," confirming evidence alone often is seen as adequate proof.  (When we "see" some logic point for the first time, we may get a "Eureka!" feeling.)

Where might we go from here?

We believe that a "Web ring" of many Web sites is a good way to go from here.
And then...?