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Wright Center for Science Education

The Wright Center for Innovative Science Education is housed at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, as part of its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Created in 1992 to honor the entrepreneur H. Dudley Wright, the Center is baseline funded by the Fondation Wright de Geneve, Switzerland, and currently directed by Eric J. Chaisson since its founding. It stresses innovation and dissemination in science education, articulated in the following mission statement:

The Wright Center is dedicated to the creation and sharing of novel instructional techniques and interdisciplinary resources for pre-college teachers. Through its fellowships, workshops, seminars, and a variety of public-outreach activities, the Center provides leadership in the training and retraining of science teachers to use innovative methods to stimulate young minds.

To this end, the Center’s goals are fivefold:  to improve the teaching of science at the pre-college level to encourage young people to pursue science as a career to explore innovative methods to communicate natural science to test and disseminate novel educational products and activities to share the excitement and wonders of science with the general public. 

The Wright Center, including its Teacher Resource Room and Science Visualization Lab, are headquartered within Tufts’ Science & Technology Center. Here, among more than a hundred scientists and engineers, a group of about a dozen dedicated professional educators implement a variety of programs and activities of value to pre-college teachers of science and mathematics. Interdisciplinary science and multi-media visualization are hallmarks of its many programs.

[Figure – A gathering of Wright Center faculty, fellows, students, and teachers at XXXXXXX.]

The heart of the Wright Center is its fellowship program. Each year, some of the best and brightest teachers of natural science are chosen, internationally and through open competition, to spend sabbatical time (up to a full year) at Tufts. These are "master teachers" who have demonstrated outstanding expertise and commitment to science teaching at the elementary, middle, or secondary-school level. The fellows work individually and collectively to create novel educational products, curriculum modules, hands-on activities, and summer workshops, thereby enriching not only their own careers but also sharing their innovations with other teachers.

Several full-time and part-time Wright Fellows reside annually at the Wright Center, forming a critical mass of teacher talent that makes the whole center much greater than the sum of its parts. Fellows have come from most states of the U.S., as well from school systems in Europe, Africa and Asia. Each fellow benefits from time in residence within a fast-paced university community, and each gives much back to other pre-college teachers who attend workshops and seminars on such diverse topics as biology and ethics, satellite imaging, practical chemistry, earth and environmental studies, marine biology, relativity physics, space science and aerospace engineering, art and science, as well as use of the internet and world wide web in the classroom.

The Wright Center seeks not to develop a whole new science curriculum—the elusive perfect curriculum that is probably unfeasible. Rather, it honors the diverse interests and objectives of each year's faculty and fellows, thereby creating a wide spectrum of educational programs, products, and activities, among numerous teaching aids and technological tools designed to help improve the science literacy of the next generation.

External links  Wright Center web site Wright Center fellowships 

Eric Chaisson

Eric J. Chaisson is an American astrophysicist and science educator best known for his research, teaching and writing on the interdisciplinary science of cosmic evolution. (Closely related subjects include epic of evolution, big history, and astrobiology). He is also noted for his original research on the interstellar clouds and emission nebulae of the Milky Way Galaxy, and for his leadership in improving science education nationally and internationally.

Chaisson earned his PhD at Harvard University in 1972 and has since held appointments at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Johns Hopkins University, and the Space Telescope Science Institute. He is currently director of the Wright Center for Science Education at Tufts University, where he holds research professorships in the department of physics and in the school of education. As an Associate of the Harvard College Observatory, he also serves with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, where he teaches an annual undergraduate course on the subject of cosmic evolution (cf., web site below).

[Figure — Eric Chaisson at his home near Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts]

Chaisson has published more than a hundred papers in the refereed journals and written a dozen books, several of which have won awards, such as the B.J.Bok Prize (Harvard) for astronomical discoveries, the Smith-Weld Prize (Harvard) for literary merit, and the Kistler Award (Foundation for the Future) for increasing understanding of subjects shaping the future of humanity. He has also won scholarly prizes from Phi Beta Kappa and the American Institute of Physics, a Certificate of Merit from NASA for work on the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as fellowships from the Sloan Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences.

Chaisson's major research interests are twofold: His scientific agenda addresses an interdisciplinary, thermodynamic study of physical and biological systems, thereby seeking to understand the origin, evolution, and unification of galaxies, stars, planets, and life in the universe.[1-4] His educational work engages master teachers and computer animators to create better methods, technological aids, and novel curricula to enthuse teachers, instruct students, and enhance scientific literacy of everyone from grade school to grad school.[5-8]

Recent References  "A Unifying Concept for Astrobiology," International Journal of Astrobiology, v 2, p 91, 2003. "Complexity: An Energetics Agenda," Complexity, Journal of Santa Fe Inst., v 9, p 14, 2004. "Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics in an Energy-rich Universe," In Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics and Production of Entropy, Kleidon, A. and Lorenz, R., Springer-Verlag, 2005. "The Great Unifier," New Scientist, v 189, p 36, 2006. <li>"Rhythm of the Cosmos: Finding Unity among the Natural Sciences," Tufts Magazine, p 16, Spring, 2001. <li>Cosmic Evolution: Rise of Complexity in Nature, Harvard Univ. Press, 2001. ISBN 0-674-00342-X <li>Epic of Evolution: Seven Ages of the Cosmos, Columbia Univ. Press, 2006. ISBN 0-231-13560-2 <li>Astronomy Today (co-authored with S. McMillan), Pearson, 6 editions, 1993-2008. ISBN 0-13-091542-4 </ol>

External links <ul> <li>Eric Chaisson’s web site <li>Wright Center web site <li>Cosmic evolution web site </ul>

Cosmic Evolution

Cosmic evolution is the scientific study of universal change. It is an intellectual framework that offers a grand synthesis of the many varied changes in the assembly and composition of radiation, matter, and life throughout the history of the universe. While engaging the time-honored queries of who we are and whence we came, this interdisciplinary subject attempts to unify the sciences within the entirety of natural history—a single broad scientific narrative of the origin and evolution of all material things, from big bang to humankind. (Closely related subjects include epic of evolution, big history, and astrobiology).

The roots of cosmic evolution extend back millennia. Early Greek philosophers of the fifth century BCE, most notably Heraclitus, are celebrated for their reasoned claims that all things change. Its modern history began more than a century ago, including the wide insights of Robert Chambers, Herbert Spencer, and Lawrence Henderson. Only in the mid-20th century was the cosmic-evolutionary scenario articulated as a research paradigm to include empirical studies of galaxies, stars, planets, and life—in short, an expansive agenda that combines physical, biological, and cultural evolution. Harlow Shapley articulated the idea to the public at mid-century, and NASA embraced it in the late 20th century as part of its more limited astrobiology program. Carl Sagan, Eric Chaisson, Hubert Reeves, and Steven Dick, among others, became dedicated proponents of cosmic evolution in its current form writ large, and it now continues to be more intricately formulated as both a technical research program and a scientific worldview for the 21st century.

The arrow of time provides a convenient archetypical symbol for cosmic evolution. Seven major epochs are arrayed across 14 billion years of time—a compact collection of salient features of cosmic history from its fiery origins to the here and now. The arrow captures the sequence of events based on a large body of post-Renaissance observational and experimental data—a continuous thread of change from simplicity to complexity, from inorganic to organic, from chaos in the early universe to order more recently. Evolution, broadly considered, has become a powerful unifying factor in all of science, bridging numerous academic disciplines—including physics, astronomy, geology, chemistry, biology, and anthropology, among others—thus forging an interdisciplinary scientific story of epic proportions that includes every known class of structured object in our richly endowed universe.

[Figure caption: The arrow of time symbolically chronicles increasingly ordered, complex systems that arose in turn throughout the history of the universe: particles, galaxies, stars, planets, chemicals, life, and culture. This is the opening page of a huge, interactive, multimedia cosmic evolution web site.]

Notable among quantitative efforts to describe cosmic evolution is the concept of energy flow through open, thermodynamic systems, including galaxies, stars, planets, and life forms. Information content is another potential metric to model the subject, though informational bits and bytes might be akin to energy acquired, stored, and expressed within ordered systems. The observed increase of energy rate density (energy/time/mass) among a whole host of ordered systems is one useful way to address the rise of complexity in an expanding universe that still obeys the cherished 2nd law of thermodynamics and thus continues to accumulate net entropy. As such, material systems—from buzzing bees and redwood trees to shining stars and thinking beings—are viewed as temporary, local islands of order in a vast, global sea of disorder.

Accordingly, biological evolution (or neo-Darwinism via natural selection) is a small, albeit important, subset of a more extensive evolutionary scheme stretching across all of space and all of time. Nothing entirely random pertains, as systems are “non-randomly eliminated” as unfit for their environments by dynamically mixing chance with necessity, or randomness with determinism, thereby deciding the winners and losers throughout Nature regardless of whether those systems are quarks or quasars, microbes or minds. Most contemporary researchers consider the term cosmic evolution as all-encompassing, thereby incorporating different types of evolutionary change within and among many temporal epochs: <ul> <li>Cosmic Evolution <li>Eras: physical evolution-->biological evolution-->cultural evolution <li>Epochs: particulate-->galactic-->stellar-->planetary-->chemical-->biological-->cultural. </ul> By contrast, some researchers (notably astrophysicists) restrict their view of cosmic evolution to change within stars and galaxies, confining the adjective “cosmic” to only astronomical objects during mostly the first several billion years of the universe. Others (astrobiologists) also limit their study of this subject, working among more specialized venues such as planets and moons suitable for life during the most recent few billion years. But those who study the entire subject of cosmic evolution in its most general scope over 14 billion years (including both astrophysics and astrobiology) address all changes ubiquitously and indefinitely, as diagramed above.

Although by no means the culmination or pinnacle of the evolutionary process, technologically intelligent humans, as a quintessential expression of cultural evolution, now reflect back upon the profound series of changes that brought us forth. Considering culture’s possible logical outcome, we may already exist in a postbiological universe—one that has evolved beyond flesh and blood intelligence to artificial intelligence. Such proposals help to inform the search for extraterrestrial life, asserting the importance of biological and cultural evolution as key elements of cosmic evolution and not separate from it. Whether humankind is alone in the universe or among many other sentient beings, cosmic evolution remains a viable explanation of our material origins.

This subject can elicit controversy, for several reasons: Evolution of any kind inherently attracts detractors, especially among religious fundamentalists; cosmic evolution addresses universal and human origins, which often cause emotion; it challenges age-old ideas about life’s sense of place in the cosmos; it champions change, which many people dislike or distrust; it welcomes a broad interpretation of the concept of evolution, which some biologists prefer as their exclusive purview pertinent only to life; it proposes a grand, sweeping, interdisciplinary worldview based on rationality and empiricism, which, despite its experimental tests, some find intellectually arrogant.

Some mystics subjectively embrace cosmic evolution for religious purposes (both western and eastern), given its highly inclusive big-bang-to-humankind narrative and its spiritual overtones. However, this is not the intent of main-stream scientific researchers who ply the trade; rather, the effort described herein is a decidedly objective, empirical, and quantitative science driven by naturalists who adhere, liberally and broadly, to the modern scientific method. Ultimately, if people of all cultures and persuasions find cosmic evolution religiously or philosophically attractive, then all the more intellectually powerful is this transdisciplinary scenario of rich natural history for the new millennium.

Modern References <ul> <li>Chaisson, E., Cosmic Evolution, Harvard Univ. Press, 2001. ISBN 0-674-00987-8 <li>Chaisson, E., Epic of Evolution, Columbia Univ. Press, 2006. ISBN 0-231-13560-2 <li>Christian, D., Maps of Time, Univ. of California Press, 2004. ISBN 0-520-23500-2 <li>Dick, S. The Biological Universe, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996. 0-521-66361-X <li>Dick, S. and Strick, J., The Living Universe, Rutgers Univ. Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8135-3733-9 <li>Reeves, H, Patience dans l’azur: L’evolution cosmique, Editions du Seuil, 1981. <li>Sagan, C., Cosmos, Random House, 1980. ISBN 0-394-50294-9 </ul>

External links <ul> <li>Cosmic evolution web site <li>Voyages through time web site </ul>