Scientific instrument training makes students trust their own senses less

Evidence

But I also see that when we put scientific instruments in their hands they trust their own senses less. And when they put more energy into memorizing Latin names, they spend less time looking at the beings themselves. The students come already knowing a lot about ecosystems and can identify an impressive list of plants. But when I ask how these plants take care of them, they cannot say. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 808

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Soundscape course thread that listening/observation-as-method is eroded by technique — same pattern as ch10’s severing of observer from observed, and echoes One Square Inch of Silence’s theme that instruments mediate perception. — connects to: Formal education can erode rather than sharpen perception of the natural world — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 83; The experienced object is more certain than the scientific information about it — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 141
• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the trees article thread on knowledge types — but stronger fit is the polyad’s listening/observation-as-method thesis, so XREF better captures it.

Broader Connections

• Formal education can erode rather than sharpen perception of the natural world #corroborates (0.81) — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 83
• The experienced object is more certain than the scientific information about it #expands (0.72) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 141