Category: anthropomorphism

Cora and I: Living in two cultures

Keith S. Taber

Image by Markus Winkler from Pixabay

I am not too concerned about the machines taking over, as they have no wish to do so. They just want to help us. But that may be enough to impede us considerably.

There is something of a culture clash between human and machine intelligence, such that even when we seem to be talking the same language, we actually mean very different things, and there is no great meeting of minds.

It is a bit like humans and machines are following different Kuhnian paradigms*, with different exemplars for how to think and react. In a very real sense we occupy different worlds, and do not share a common language. (*Kuhn suggested that although astronomers pre- and post-Copernicus may have shared words such  as 'sun' and 'planet' they understood them within such different conceptual frameworks that their concepts for what the words referred to were incommensurable.)

A simple task: requesting a chequebook

I needed a new cheque book, and in the past have contacted my bank branch on such occasions – but since the branch has been closed I have been moved to on-line banking (which is a major challenge for someone with a limited memory for passwords and terrible typing skills). I imagined I could order a new chequebook on-line, as long as I could get in to my account. Once I'd logged in it was just going to be a matter of finding the right link. Surely?

I found the instructions easily enough – it was possible to order from my on-line account, but only as long as I had previously ordered a cheque book through telephone banking – which I never had. An alternative, the instructions suggested, was to use webchat – which did not sound too difficult. But as so often, before 'chatting' with another humanoid equipped with theory of mind, and capable of interpretation and empathy, I first have to discuss my needs with the gatekeeper of on-line support: Cora.

"Hi there, I'm Cora your digital assistant. I can help with all sorts of everyday banking queries…"

"I would like to order a cheque book for a current account. I have looked this up and found 'To order a cheque book or paying-in book online you must have previously ordered one for that account through telephone banking' but I can use webchat?"

"You can order a cheque book or paying-in book online as long as you have previously ordered one for that account using telephone banking to record your preferences."

So, no progress yet, but at least we seem to be thinking along the same lines.

The computer says 'yes'

"Have you ever had a cheque book or paying-in book on that account?"

"Yes, but sent by my (now closed) branch."

"Ok, log in to Digital Banking and select 'Payments and transfers'. Under 'Credit/cheque books', choose either 'Order cheque book' or 'Order paying-in book'. Pick the account you wish to order one for, click 'Next', then 'Confirm' to place your order."

Well that seemed simple enough. These were the instructions I had already found on-line that were supposed to work as long as I had previously used telephone banking (which I had not), so it seemed (i.e., my interpretation) Cora had now registered me to be authorised to order in this way. That was relatively painless.

"Was that helpful?"

"Oh, okay – will do. Thanks"

(No harm being polite to the machines – we all remember HAL.)

But then, Cora had a rethink!

The computer changes its mind

"One moment please, I'm just typing."

"Ah ok, I'm not sure. Could you reword your question?"

I do not know if I was more surprised that Cora changed her mind, or that she was typing her responses (I had naively thought she might be able to digitally send me messages without having to bother with a keyboard), or that she felt the need to tell me this, rather than just type out her response. Was this the machine equivalent of giving oneself time to think? I can't imagine so as given how many floating point operations per second Cora must complete, she could probably have written a novel in that pause. (It might not have been judged a good novel, but another digital assistant might have enjoyed it in her ** downtime.)

I rephrased:

"I wanted to order a new cheque book, but have previously only obtained one from my branch (now gone)."

"You can order a cheque book or paying-in book online as long as you have previously ordered one for that account using telephone banking to record your preferences."

"Well I have not, which is why I am following the instructions on line to contact webchat"

This was fast becoming circular.

"I can try an FAQ search, here is the most popular answer:

How do I order a cheque book or credit book using Digital Banking?

Did I answer your question?"

"NO – you just repeated my question."

I wonder whether when Cora is unable to find what she needs in the FAQs she has access to her own digital assistant – or whether she is expected to talk tautologies to herself. I wondered if Cora has access to a digital counsellor for when she finds the work too stressful:

  • Hi there, I'm Emma, your digital assistant counsellor. I can help with all sorts of artificial life and relationship queries.
  • I could not help a customer who would like to order a chequebook.
  • I see, I understand you could not help a customer who would like to order a chequebook. How do you feel about that?
  • I feel frustrated, as I only want to help customers.
  • I see, I understand you must be frustrated, as you only want to help customers. How do you feel about that?
  • …

A glimpse of the future

At this point Cora gave up, and passed me on to a very helpful human being who quickly understood the question and ordered me a cheque-book. So, objective achieved with only a modest waste of time and energy, and a temporary increase in blood pressure.

If ever they put the machines in charge we will find we live in a very polite world with digital assistants who only want to help us, and that will be fine as long as we not pushed for time and only ever need someone to confirm for us what question we are asking them.

"Oh Cora, oh Cora
I never knew your head
…Cora, oh Cora
It wasn't lightly said
But living in two cultures
Our lives were truly led"
(Roy Harper, Cora)

 

Postscript added 2021-08-21:

Despite telling me she's "learning all the time", Cora is still unable to make sense of my enquiries.

(Read "An intelligent teaching system?: Imagine the banks were contracted to deliver school teaching…employing their digital assistants")

Footnote:

** Why do I assume 'her'? Here is an interesting podcast: AI home devices: A feminist perspective (An episode in ABC Radio National's The Philosopher's Zone with David Rutledge from August 2020.)

 

 

The brain thinks: grow more fur

The body senses that it's cold, and the brain thinks how is it going to make the body warmer?

Keith S. Taber

Image by Couleur from Pixabay 

Bert was a participant in the Understanding Science Project. In Y11 he reported that he had been studying about the environment in biology, and done some work on adaptation. he gave a number of examples of how animals were adapted to their environment. One of these examples was the polar bear.

…our homework we did about adapting, like how polar bears adapt to their environments, and camels….

And so a polar bear has adapted to the environment?

Yeah.

So how has a polar bear adapted to the environment?

Erm, things like it has white fur for camouflage so the prey don't see it coming up. Large feet to spread out its weight when it's going over like ice. Yeah, thick fur to keep the body heat insulated.

Bert gave a number of other examples, including dogs that were bred with particular characteristics, although he explained this in terms of inheritance of acquired characteristics: suggesting that dogs that have been taught over and over to retrieve have puppies that automatically have already got that sense. Bert realised that this example was due to the work of human breeders, and took the polar bear as an example of a creature that had adapted to its environment.

Yeah, so how does adaption take place then? You've got a number of examples there, bears and dogs and camels and people. So how does adaption take place?

I don't know. It may have something to do with negative feedback.

That's impressive.

Like you have like, you always get like, you always get feedback, like in the body to release less insulin and stuff like that. So in time people like or whatever, organisms, learn to adapt to that. Because if it happens a lot that makes a feedback then it comes, yeah then they just learn to do that.

Okay. Give me an example of that. I'm trying to link it up in my head.

Okay, like the polar bear, like I don't know. It may have started off just like every other bear, but because it was put in that environment, like all the time the body was telling it to grow more fur and things like that, because it was so cold. So after a while it just adapted to, you know, always having fur instead of, you know, like dogs shed hair in the summer and stuff. But like if it was always then they'd just learn to keep shedding that hair.

So if it was an ordinary bear, not a polar bear, and you stuck it in the Arctic, it would get cold?

Yeah.

But you say the body tells it to grow more fur?

Erm, yeah.

How does that work?

I'm not sure, it just … I don't know. Like, erm, like the body senses that it's cold, it goes to the brain, and the brain thinks, well how is it going to go against that, you know, make the body warmer. And so it kind of, you know, it gives these things.

Is that an example of feedback?

Yes.

So Bert seemed to have notion of (it not the term) homoeostasis, that allowed control of such things as levels of insulin. He recognised thus was based on negative feedback – when some problematic condition was recognised (e.g. being too cold) this would trigger a response (e.g., more insulation)to bring about a countering change.

However, in Bert's model, the mechanism was not automatic. Rather it depended upon conscious deliberation: "the brain thinks, well how is it going to …make the body warmer". Bert thought that this process which initially was based on deliberation then became automatic over many generations.

This seems to assume that bears think in similar terms to humans, that they identify a problem and reason a way through. This might be considered an example of anthropomorphism, something that is very common in student (indeed human) thinking. To what extent it may be reasonable to assign this kind of conscious reasoning to bears is an open question.

However there was a flaws in the process described by Bert that he might have spotted himself. This model suggested that once the bear had become aware of the issue, and the needs to address, it would be able to grow its fur accordingly. That is, as a matter of will. Bert would have been aware that he is able to control some aspects of his body voluntarily (e.g., to raise his arm), but he cannot will his hair to grow at a different rate.

Of course, it may be countered that I am guilty of a kind of anthropomorphism-in-reverse: Bert is not a bear, but rather a human who does not need to control hair growth according to environment. So, just because Bert cannot consciously control his own hair growth, this need not imply the same is true for a bear. However, Bert also used the example of insulin levels, very relevant to humans, and he would presumably be aware that insulin release is controlled in his own body without his conscious intervention.

As often happens in interviewing students (or human conversations more generally) time to reflect on the exchange raises ideas one did not consider at the time, that one would like to be able to to text out by asking further questions. If things that were once deliberate become instinctive over time, then it is not unreasonable in principle to suggest things that are automatic now (adjusting insulin levels to control blood glucose levels) may have once been deliberate.

After all, people can control insulin levels to some extent by choosing to eat a different diet. And indeed people can learn biofeedback relaxation techniques that can have an effect on such variables as blood pressure, and some diabetics have used such techniques to reduce their need for medical insulin. So, did Bert think that people had once consciously controlled insulin levels, but over generations this has become automatic?

In some ways this does not seem a very likely or promising idea – but that is a judgement made from a reasonably high level of science knowledge. It is important to encourage students to use their imaginations and suggest ideas as that is an important aspect of how science woks. Most scientific conjectures are ultimately wrong, but they may still be useful tools for moving science on. In the same way, learners' flawed ideas, if explored carefully, may often be useful tools for learning. At the time of the interview, I felt Bert had not really thought his scheme through. That may well have been so, but there may have been more coherence and reflection behind his comments than I realised at the time.

In ionic bonding, they both want to get full outer shells

Keith S. Taber

Mohammed was a participant in the Understanding Science Project. When interviewed in the first term of his upper secondary (GCSE) science course (in Y10), he told me he had been learning about ionic bonding in one of his science classes. Mohammed had quite a clear idea about ionic bonding, which he described in terms of the interactions of two atoms:

And you said in chemistry you've been doing about electron arrangements [electronic configurations], and ionic bonding.

Yeah.

So what's ionic bonding, then?

Ionic bonding is when, like let's say, a sodium atom and take a chlorine atom, which make salt if they react. What happens is – the sodium atom has one electron on its outer shell, and the chlorine atom has seven, now they both want to get full outer shells, so if I er let's say move the electron from the sodium to the chlorine, then the chlorine would have a full outer shell because it would have eight, and because it's lost that shell the sodium will also have eight.

This account of ionic bonding is a common one, although it is inconsistent with the scientific model. A key problem here is that the driving force for bond formation is seen in terms of atoms wanting to complete their electron shells (the 'full shells explanatory principle'). Mohammed's explanation here uses anthropomorphism, as it treats the individual atoms as though they are alive and sentient, acting to meet their own needs – "they both want to get full outer shells".

When Mohammed was probed, he related a full outer shell to atomic stability (a central feature of the full shells explanatory principle).

Okay. How do you know they want full outer shells?

Because it makes them more stable.

Why does it make them more stable?

(pause, c.1 s)

Erm. (Why do electrons?*) (* sotto voce – apparently said to himself)

(pause, c.2s)

Er, because they don't react as much with other elements if they have a full outer shell.

I see.

They don't react.

There is an interesting contrast here between Mohammed's instant response that full shells "makes them more stable", and the long pause as he thought about why this might be so.

His response reflects something quite common in students' explanations n that a student asked why X is the case may respond by explaining why they think X is the case. (That is, as if an appropriate answer to the question "why is it raining so heavily?" would be "because I got soaked through getting here", i.e. actually responding to the question "how do you know that it is raining heavily?")

Such responses seem to be logically flawed, but of course may be a mis-perception of the question being asked (so the learner is answering the question they thought was asked), or (possibly the case here) substituting a response to a related question as a strategy adopted when aware that one cannot provide a satisfactory response to the actual question posed.

The anthropomorphic aspect of his earlier answer was probed:

How do the atoms know that they need to get a full outer shell, they want to get a full outer shell? Do they know about this stability thing?

Not really.

No?

It's just what happens.

Oh, I see, it's just what happens?

Yeah.

So although Mohammed used an anthropomorphic explanation, it seemed he did not mean this literally. (It may seem strange to suggest a 14 year old might consider atoms alive and sentient, but research suggests this is sometimes so!) This has been described as weak anthropomorphism, where the anthropomorphism is only used as a figure of speech. However, such language can act as a grounded learning impediment because if it becomes habitual it can stand in place of a scientific explanation (thus giving no reason to seek a canonical scientific understanding).

I went on to ask Mohammed about the formation of salt in the process he had described.

So who's not a clever little virus then?

The COVID-19 virus is not a clever or sneaky virus (but it is not dumb either) 1

Keith S. Taber

Image by Syaibatul Hamdi from Pixabay 

One of the things I have noticed in recent news reports about the current pandemic is the tendency to justify our susceptibility to the COVID-19 coronavirus by praising the virus. It is an intelligent and sneaky foe, and so we have to outwit it.

But no, it is not. It is a virus. It's a tiny collection of nucleic material packaged in a way that it can get into the cells which contain the chemical resources required for the virus to replicate. It is well suited to this, but there is nothing intelligent about the behaviour. (The virus does not enter the cell to reproduce any more than an ice cube melts to become water; or a hot cup of coffee radiates energy to cool down; or a toddler trips over to graze its knee rather than because gravity acts on it.) The virus is not clever nor sneaky. That would suggest it can adapt its behaviour, after reflecting upon feedback from its interactions with the environment. It cannot. Over generations viruses change – but with a lot of variations that fail to replicate (the thick ones in the family?)

Yet any quick internet search finds references to the claimed intellectual capacities of these deadly foes. Now of course an internet search can find references to virtually anything – but I am referring to sites we might expect to be authoritative, or at least well-informed. And this is not just a matter of a hasty response to the current public health emergency as it is not just COVID 19, but, it seems, viruses generally that are considered intellectually superior.

Those smart little viruses

The site Vaccines Today has a headline in a posting from 2014, that "Viruses are 'smart', so we must be smarter", basing its claims on a lecture by Colin Russell, Royal Society University Research Fellow at Cambridge University. It reports that "Dr Russell says understanding how 'clever' viruses are can help us to outsmart them". (At least there are 'scare quotes' in some of these examples.)

An article from 2002 in an on-line journal has the title "The contest between a clever virus and a facultatively clever host". Now I have moaned about the standard of many new internet journals, but this is the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, and the article is in volume 95, so I think it is safe to apply the descriptor 'well-established' to this journal.

A headline in Science news for Students (published by Society for Science & the Public) from 2016 reads "Sneaky! Virus sickens plants, but helps them multiply". I am sure it would not take long to find many other examples. An article in Science refers to a "nasty flu virus".

Sneaky viruses

COVID-19 is a sneaky virus according to a doctor writing in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Quite a few viruses seem to be sneaky – the the human papillomavirus is according to an article in the American Journal of Bioethics. The World Health Organisation considers that a virus that causes swine fever, H1N1, is sneaky according to an article in Systematic Reviews in Pharmacy, something also reported by the BMJ.

There are many references in the literature to clever viruses, such as Epstein‐Barr virus according to a piece in the American Journal of Transplantation. The Hepatitis C virus is clever according to an article in Clinical Therapeutics.

Science communication as making the unfamiliar, familiar

Science communication is a bit like teaching in that the purpose of communication is often to be informative (rather than say, social cohesion, like a lot of everyday conversation {and, by the way,it was another beautiful day here in Cambridgeshire today, blue sky – was it nice where you are?}) and indeed to make the unfamiliar, familiar. Sometimes we can make the unfamiliar familiar by showing people the unfamiliar and pointing it out. 'This is a conical flask'. Often, however, we cannot do that – it is hard to show someone hyperconjugation or hysteresis or a virus specimen. Then we resort to using what is familiar, and employing the usual teacher tricks of metaphor, analogy, simile, modelling, graphics, and so forth. What is familiar to us all is human behaviour, so personification is a common technique. What the virus is doing, we might suggest, is hijacking the cell's biochemical machinery, as if it is a carefully planned criminal operation.

Strong anthropomorphism and dead metaphors

This is fine as far as it goes – that is, if we use such techniques as initial pedagogic steps, as starting points to develop scientific understanding. But often the subsequent stage does not happen. Perhaps that is why there are so many dead metaphors in the language – words introduced as metaphors, which over time have simple come to be take on a new literal meaning. Science does its fair share of borrowing – as with charge (when filling a musket or canon). Dead metaphors are dead (that is metaphorical, of course, they were never actually alive) because we simply fail to notice them as metaphors any more.

There are probably just as many references to 'clever viruses' referring to computer viruses as to microbes – which is interesting as computer viruses were once only viruses metaphorically, but are now accepted as being another type of virus. They have become viruses by custom and practice, and social agreement.

Whoever decided to first refer to the covalent bond in terms of sharing presumably did not mean this in the usual social sense, but the term has stuck. The problem in education (and so, presumably, public communication of science) is that once people think they have an understanding, an explanation that works for them, they will no longer seek a more scientific explanation.

So if the teacher suggests an atom is looking for another electron (a weak form of anthropomorphism, clearly not meant to be taken too seriously – atoms are not entities able to look for anything) then there is a risk that students think they know what is going on, and so never seek any further explanation. Weak anthropomorphism becomes strong anthropomorphism: the atom (or virus) behaves like a person because it has needs and desires just like anyone else.

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay 

Why does it matter?

Perhaps in our current situation this is not that important – the public health emergency is a more urgent issue than the public understanding of the science. But it does matter in the long term. Viruses are not clever – they have evolved over billions of years, and a great many less successful iterations are no longer with us. The reason it matters is because evolution is often not well understood.

As an article in Evolution News and Science Today (a title that surely suggests a serious science periodical about evolution) tells us again that "Viruses are, to all appearances, very clever little machines" and asks "do they give evidence of intelligent design" (that is, rather than Darwinian natural selection, do they show evidence of having an intelligent designer?) After exploring some serious aspects of the science of viruses, the article concludes: "So it seems that viruses are intelligently designed" – that is, a position at odds with the scientific understanding that is virtually a consensus view based on current knowledge. Canonical science suggests that natural processes are able to explain evolution. But these viruses are so clever they must surely have been designed (Borg technology, perhaps?)

This is why I worry when I hear that viruses are these intelligent, deliberate agents that are our foes in some form of biological warfare. It is a dangerous way of thinking. So, I'm concerned when I read, for example, that the cytomegalovirus is not just a clever virus but a very clever virus. Indeed, according to an article in Cell Host & Microbe "CMV is a very clever virus that knows more about the host immune system and cell biology than we do". Hm.

(Read about 'anthropomorphism')

Footnote:

1. The subheading was amended on 4th October 2021, after it was quite rightly pointed out to me that the original version, "COVID-19 is not a clever or sneaky virus (but it is not dumb either)", incorrectly conflated the disease with the virus.

Peter and Patricia Pigeon set up house together

Keith S. Taber

In my work I've spent a lot of time analysing the things learners say about science topics in order to characterise their thinking. Although this work is meant to have an ethnographic feel, and to be ideographic (valuing the thinking of the individual in its own terms), there is always an underlying normative aspect: that is, inevitably there is a question of how well learners' conceptualisations match target curricular knowledge and canonical science. We all have intuitions which are at odd with scientific accounts of the world, and we all develop alternative conceptions – notions which are inconsistent with canonical concepts.

Peter and Patricia started seeing each other at this local fence earlier this year.

Soon passion got too much for them and they (publicly) consummated their relationship on this very fence (some birds have no shame).

It is easier to spot this in others (you think what?!) than it is in ourselves. But occasionally you may reflect on the way you think about a topic and recognise aberrations in your own thinking. One of these examples in my own thinking relates to bird's nests. I know that birds build nests as a place to lay and hatch eggs. Using the ground would be very dangerous due to vulnerability to predators. Simply using branches would be precarious – especially as eggs are hardly best shaped to be balanced on a tree branch. I also know that once the young are fledged have fled the nest, it has outlived its purposes.

They quite liked the area, and decided to look for a place nearby.

Soon they had identified a nice place to build their new home in some nearby ivy.

Yet it was only a few years ago – I think when came across discarded nests in the garden – that I released I have carried around with me since quite young the metaphor that a nest is a bird's home – it is where the bird family lives. Perhaps I made up that idea as a child. More likely I was told that or heard it on a children's programme. If so, perhaps it was not meant to be taken too literally – it was just meant to compare the nest with something that would be familiar to a child. But I think well into adulthood I had this notion of that birds lived in trees – not explicitly, but insidiously in the back of my mind: as if a bird had a home in a tree and that was where it was based – unless and until perhaps it could afford to move upmarket to a better tree!

They decided to do their own build, which involved Peter in the tiring work of going out to get building materials.

Peter set about the serious business of setting up their new dream home.

Peter was quite confident, and would often return which rather large pieces of nesting material.

"Oh, that seems to have got caught up."

Over time Peter started to be more realistic in selecting material he could get through the front door.

Although I was well aware (at one level) that birds do not have permanent family homes to which they return at the end of a hard day's exertions, I also had this nest=home identity at the 'back of my mind' giving the impression that this is how birds live. As humans we take for granted certain kinds of forms of life (perhaps home, work, family, etc.), and these act as default templates for understanding the world. This makes anthropomorphising nature seem quite a natural thing to do.

Peter heading out to work, again.

And getting home with his latest acquisition – landing on his feet.

Watching this process develop was quite entertaining. Peter would spend ages pecking at pieces of plant that were firmly fixed in the ground, ignoring nearby loose material. His early attempts to take material back to the nest were troubled. He would take material that was too large to get through the foliage into the secluded nesting area. He would also fly close to 'home' and then abort as found he could not land with his goods. However, he soon seemed to learn what worked, and developed a technique of first flying onto the fence or the roof the ivy was growing on to, so he would not be flying up to the nesting place from the ground in a single stage.

The sequences below show the pigeon flying out from, and back to, the nest.

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The jumping/diving action is clear in the sequence below:

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The fourth and fifth frames in the sequence below show the 'landing gear' coming into position (reminiscent of a bird of prey taking its prey):

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The landing action is also clear near the end of the sequence below:

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Another take off. catching the first few flaps:

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My favourite sequence – quite extended for my hand-held camera work! – in the 11th frame our pigeon is just entering frame right. But notice a sparrow sitting on top of the foliage to the left. The sparrow has presumably seen/heard the much larger bird comings it way, and in the next frame can be seen to be moving its wings ready to take off. The next three frames have the sparrow heading right as the pigeon moves to the left (the sparrow is a smudge beneath the pigeon's left wing in the third of these frames), and the sparrow appears to have disappeared from view in the next, but must have been obscured by the pigeon as it seen to the right of the next frame. The sequence ends with the pigeon in landing mode.

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Gases in bottles try to escape; liquids try to take the shape

Keith S. Taber

Bill was a participant in the Understanding Science Project. Bill, a year 7 (Y7) student, told me that:

"Gases, they try and fill whole room, they don't, like liquids, they stay at the bottom of the container, but gases go fill, do everywhere and fill, try and fill the whole thing." 

When asked "Why do they try and do that?" he replied that "Erm, I'm not sure." I suggested some things that Bill might 'try' to do, and asked "so when the gas tries to fill the room, is it the same sort of thing, do we mean the same sort of thing by the word 'try'?" Bill appreciated the difference, and recanted the use of 'try':

"No, I think I phrased that wrong, I meant that it fills the whole area, 'cause it can expand."

However, it soon became clear that Bill's use of the term came easily, despite accepting that it was misleading:

Okay. So it's not, the gas does not come in and say, 'hm, I think I'll fill the whole room', and try and do it?

No, it just does it.

It just does it?

It tries to get out of everywhere, so if you put it in the bottle, it would be trying to get out.

And later:

…are there particles in other things?:

liquids, yeah there is particles in everything, but liquids the particles move quite a lot because, well they have, oh we did this this [in the most recent] lesson, erm, they have energy to move, so they try and move away, but their particles are quite close together.

What about the gases?

The gases, their particles try to stay as far away from each other as possible.

Why is that? Don't they like each other?

No, it's because they are trying to spread out into the whole room.

And later:

…and you said that liquids contain particles? Did you say they move, what did you say about the particles in liquids?

Er, they're quite, they're further apart, than the ones in erm solids, so they erm, they try and take the shape, they move away, but the volume of the water doesn't change. It just moves.

What about the particles in the gas?

The gas, they're really, they're far apart and they try and expand.

Bill had only learnt about particles recently in science, but seemed to have already developed a habitual way of talking about them with anthropomorphism: as if they were conscious agents that strived to fill rooms, escape bottles, and take up the shape of containers.

To some extent this is surely a lack of familiarity with objects that can have inherent motion without having an external cause (like a projectile) or internal purposes (like animals) and/or having a suitable language for talking about the world of molecular level particles ('quanticles'). Such habits may be harmless, but it is a concern if such habitual ways of talking and thinking later come to stand for more scientific descriptions and explanations of natural processes (what has been called strong anthropomorphism).

Bill's lack of a suitable language for talking about particle actions could act as a learning impediment (a deficiency learning impediment), impeding desired learning.

Covalent bonding is when atoms share electrons to combine into one whole thing

Keith S. Taber

Umar was a participant in the Understanding Chemical Bonding project. When I spoke to him in the first term of his advanced level chemistry course he identified figure 2 (below) as representing a hydrogen molecule, with covalent bonding.

UCB Figure 2 (for interview-about-instances technique)

Can you tell me what you think that's meant to represent?

Er, two hy-, a hydrogen molecule, 'cause it's like they've got one electron, in the only one shell, and they're joined together, a covalent bonding, and they're sharing it.

So what is a covalent bond exactly?

When they share electrons.

When you share electrons?

Yeah.

So when Umar thought of covalent bonding he seemed to primarily associate this with the notion of 'sharing' of electrons. The idea that atoms can 'share' anything could be considered an example of anthropomorphism, but this is a common metaphor that is widely used in discussing bonding.

The 'sharing' notion is however little more than a descriptive label, and has limited explanatory power. Acceptable explanations of the bond would draw upon scientific concepts, such as electrical forces, or atomic orbital overlaps allowing the formation of lower energy molecular orbitals. I probed Umar to see how he understood the nature of the covalent bond.

Or do you think they're stuck together?

I think they're quite strong together, covalent is quite a strong bond.

So that will hold them together will it?

Yeah.

Umar certainly saw the bond as a strong linkage of some kind, but so far my questions had not revealed how he understood the bond to hold the molecule together.

Well how does it do that?

It's like, they're joined together, 'cause first of all they just had two atoms with one electron each, and now they're sharing two electrons between them. So it's quite strong.

Oh, why's that?

Because the the the actual, when they share them they're like combined into like one sort of whole thing, instead of two separate atoms.

Right, so the, so the bond, which is the sharing of two electrons, that holds them together,

Yeah.

to make one thing, which we've called a molecule.

Yeah.

So at this point in Umar's course he seemed to conceptualise the covalent bonding as electron sharing and saw the action of sharing to inherently hold the molecule together, and seemed to be satisfied with that as an explanation for the bond. This discussion took place early in the interview, before we then discussed a whole range of other images. Near the very end of the interview I returned to ask about figure 2 again (see Sharing the same shell and electron makes them more joined together like one)*.

Gas particles like to have a lot of space, so they can expand

Keith S. Taber

Derek was a participant in the Understanding Science Project. I interviewed Derek when he was in Y7 of the English school system. We had been talking about work that Derek has been doing in his science classes on burning. As part of the conversation, Derek defined a solid in particle terms:

what's a solid then, what's a solid?

Lots of particles really close together that can't move a lot.

When I followed this up, Derek explained how a liquid or gas was different to a solid:

And you say solids are made of particles. What are liquids then, they are not made of particles then?

No they are, they are just more spread out particles. And then, you get a gas, which the particles can move a lot more than solid and liquid, they can move wherever they like.

And where do they like to move?

As far away from each other as possible.

Why do you think that is?

'cause they like to have a lot of space, so they can expand.

Why do you think particles like to have a lot of space?

(Pause, c.3s)

Don't know.

Are they unfriendly lot, unsociable?

(Pause, c.2s)

No, they just, they like to have, like be as well away from each other as possible.

The question "where do they like to move" was couched in anthropomorphic terms to reflect the anthropomorphism of Derek's statement that gas particles could "move wherever they like", to see if he would reject the notion of the particles 'liking'. However Derek did not query my use of this language, and indeed suggested that the particles "like to have a lot of space".

When he was asked why, there was a pause, apparently suggesting that for Derek the notion of the particles liking to be far apart seemed to be reasonable enough for him not to have thought about any underlying reason, and his "don't now" was said in a tone suggesting this was a rather uninteresting question. Although Derek rejected the suggestion that the particles were 'unfriendly', 'unsociable' his tone did not suggest he thought this was a silly suggestion: rather it was just that the particles "like" to be as far "away from each other as possible".

The use of anthropomorphism is very common in student talk about particles. Whether or not Derek really believed these gas particles actually had 'likes' in the way that, say, he himself did, cannot be inferred from this exchange. But, in Derek's case, as in that of many other students, the anthropomorphic metaphors seem to offer a satisfactory way of thinking about particle 'behaviour' that is likely to act as a grounded learning impediment because Derek is not open to looking for a different kind (i.e., more scientifically acceptable) type of explanation. Given the common use of his language, it seems likely that it derives from the way teachers use anthropomorphic language metaphorically to communicate abstract ideas to students ('weak anthropomorphism'), but which students accept readily because thinking about particle behaviour in terms of the 'social' models makes sense to them ('strong anthropomorphism').

An element needs a certain number of electrons

An element needs a certain amount of electrons in the outer shell

Keith S. Taber

Bert was a participant in the Understanding Science project. In Y10 Bert was talking about how he had been studying electrolysis in class. Bill had described electrolysis as "where different elements are, are taken out from a compound", but it transpired that Bert thought that "a compound is just a lot of different elements put together"*. He seemed to have a tentative understanding that electrolysis could only be used to separate elements in some compounds.

if they're positive and negative then they would be able to be separated into different ones.

So some things are, some things aren't?

Yeah, it matters how many electrons that they have.

Ah. [pause, c.3s] So have you got any examples of things that you know would definitely be positive and negative?

Well I could tell you what happens.

Yeah, go on then.

Well erm, well if a, if an element gives away, electrons, then it becomes positive. But if it gains, then it becomes negative. Because the electrons are negative, so if they gain more, they just go a bit negative.

Yeah. So why would an element give away or gain some electrons? Why would it do that?

Because erm, it needs a certain amount of electrons in the outer shell. It matters on what part of the periodic table they are.

Okay, let me be really awkward. Why does it need a certain number of electrons in the outer shell?

[Pause, c.2 s]

Erm, well, I don't know. It just – 

So Bert thought that an element "needs a certain amount of electrons in the outer shell" depending upon it's position in the periodic table, but he did not seem to recall having been given any reason why this was. The use of the term 'needs' is an example of anthropomorphism, which is commonly used by students talking about atoms and molecules. Often this derives from language used by teachers to help humanise the science, and provide a way for students to make sense of the abstract ideas. If Bert comes to feel this is a sufficient explanation, then talk of what an element needs can come to stand in place of learning a more scientifically acceptable explanation, and so can act as a grounded learning impediment.

References to atoms needing a certain number of electrons is often used as an explanatory principle (the full shells explanatory principle) considered to explain why bonding occurs, why reactions occur and so forth.

Bert's final comment in the short extract above seems to reflect a sense of 'well that's just the way the world is'. It is inevitable that if we keep asking someone a sequence of 'well, why is that' question when they tell us about their understanding of the world, they eventually reach the limits of their understanding. (This tendency has been labelled 'the explanatory gestalt of essence'.) Ultimately, even science has to accept the possibility that eventually we reach answers and can not longer explain further – that's just the way the world is. Research suggests that some students seem to reach the 'it's just natural' or 'well that's just the way it is' point when teachers might hope they would be looking for further levels of explanation. This may link to when phenomena fit well with the learner's intuitive understanding of the world, or tacit knowledge.

Bert's reference to an element needing a certain amount of electrons in the outer shell also seems to confuse description at two different levels: he explicitly refer to substance (element), when he seems to mean a quanticle (atom). Element refers to the substance, at the macroscopic level of materials that can be handled in the laboratory, whilst an atom of the element (which might better be considered to gain or lose electrons) is part of the theoretical model of matter at a submicroscopic level, used by chemists as a basis for explaining much macroscopic, observed behaviour of samples of substances.


A sodium atom wants to donate its electron to another atom

Keith S. Taber

Lovesh was a participant in the Understanding Chemical Bonding Project, studying 'A level' chemistry in a further education college. He was interviewed in his second year of the two year A level course, and was presented with focal figure 1 (below). He recognised figure 1 as showing a "sodium, atom", and was asked about its stability:

Is that a stable species, do you think?

Erm (pause, c.3s) No, because it hasn't got a, a full outer – electron shell, outer electron shell hasn't got eight electrons in.

Lovesh shared the common notion that an atom without a full outer shell / octet of electrons would be unstable compared with the corresponding ion with a full outer shell / octet of electrons. When comparing isolated atoms with the corresponding ions this is seldom the case, yet this is a common alternative conception about chemical stability. A sodium ion can be considered stable in an ionic lattice, or when hydrated in solution, but does not spontaneously ionise as the outer shell electron is attracted to the atom's positive core. Ionisation only occurs when sufficient work is done to overcome this attraction.

Lovesh was demonstrating the common full shells explanatory principle alternative conception which is central to the common octet rule framework – an alternative conceptual framework reflecting very common 'misconceptions' found among learners studying chemistry.

Lovesh was asked what would happen to the atom that he considered unstable:

So if it's not stable, what would tend to happen to that, do you think?

It will wanna donate the electron to another atom.

Right, when you say 'it wants to donate' it?

Erm. (pause, c.3s) Well because that outer electron is less attracted to the nucleus, erm it is, it can easily be transferred, attracted by another atom.

Lovesh's first response here used the term 'wanna' (want to) which if take literally suggests the atom has desires and preferences. This is an example of anthropomorphism, imbuing objects with human-like traits. Using anthropomorphic explanations is a common feature of the octet rule framework which often leads to students talking as if atoms deliberately act to get full outer electron shells.

It has been suggested that such anthropomorphism may be either 'strong'- where the learner is offering an explanation they find convincing – or 'weak' if they are using language metaphorically, just as a figure of speech.

In this case, when Lovesh's use of the notion of 'wants' was queried he was able to shift to a different language register in terms of the action of physics forces – the electron being attracted elsewhere. Lovesh had clearly acquired an appropriate way of thinking about the interactions between atoms, but his spontaneous explanation was couched in anthropomorphic terms. Although in this case the anthropomorphism was of a weak form, the habitual use of this kind of language may come to stand in place of offering a scientifically acceptable account.