JOHN ABBOTT COLLEGE

Knowledge: Science and Pseudoscience

Instructions and Rubric for Script Assignment

The purpose of this assignment is for you to integrate more fully your knowledge
of the philosophy of science. You will do this by writing, together with some
of your classmates, a script for a short fictional dialogue between characters of
your choosing. Although you are encouraged to be creative, you will be marked
mostly on how well your script conveys the concepts and arguments that relate
to the topic you choose. You can either choose to focus your script on the topic
of your first or second tutorial, not both.

Instructions
1. Choose group members, classmates you would like to work with on this
project. I suggest you work with the discussion group you have worked
with over the semester. Although you may work alone if you wish, I suggest
you choose to work with at least one other person. Your group can be no
more than 5 people.
2. Decide what tutorial topic you will write your script on. You can either
do the first topic your group worked on, or the last topic.
3. Begin your script by opening up a document on a collaborative platform
(e.g. Google Docs). Make sure it is available to all your group members.
4. Begin your script by listing all the student ID numbers for the people in
your group. I don’t want your names. This is an attempt on my part to
be as objective as possible in my marking.
5. Begin thinking about your topic by reviewing your position papers and
the tutorial discussion for the topic you have chosen.
6. Choose a fictional character for each position. Of course, these characters
can be named after real people, but I am not expecting any historical
veracity in this assignment. There will be as many characters as people
in your group. List your characters at the beginning of your script with a
brief description of their position.
7. Below your character list, give a brief description of the setting for your

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 script. This should be no more than a few sentences. If you need to change
the setting during the course of the script, you can insert further setting
(or scene) details at the appropriate moments in your dialogue.
8. Jump directly into the topic. Avoid the temptation to begin your dialogue
with greetings, banter, or other conversation between your characters that
does not deal with the topic. Remember, your script is very short. Aim for
high quality dialogue that demonstrates deep knowledge about the topic.
9. Aim for an informed and informative tone. I don’t mind informal language,
but try to avoid the informality of the dialogue itself taking away from the
presentation of the topic. Think more knowledge and less theatre.
10. Your script should be single-spaced. You should use no special colours
or formatting (avoid bold and all capital letters). Each paragraph should
begin with the name of the character who is “speaking”, followed by a
colon, followed by what they “say”. Each paragraph will be separated from
the one before it and the one after it by a blank line.
11. If you have used any additional sources (I am not recommending that you
do), make sure to list them in a “works consulted” section at the end of
your dialogue.
12. At the very end of your document, put the word count of the dialogue itself,
excluding the list of characters, setting comments, and “works consulted”
section if used.
13. Your script should be about 500 words. This is a short writing assignment.
No marks, though, will be given or taken away because of the word count.
14. Make sure one you submit your script via the course website on Moodle
by midnight the last day of classes.

Rubric
2pts Creativity. I am not looking for fanciful scenarios, but for each of your
characters adequately responding to each other, and that requires creativity.
5pts How well do you convey the the knowledge and the arguments in our
materials? You should use all your own words. Do not quote any sources.
Scripts that get the highest marks in this category will be ones that give
evidence of understanding the relevant materials, evidence, and arguments.
3pts Write using clear and grammatically correct sentences. Follow the instruc-
tions above.

Topics
Choose either the first or second topic for the tutorials in this class as the topic
for your script.

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1. What is science? The different positions were those of: Aristotle, Descartes,
Hume, Popper, and Quine-Duhem.
2. What is the appropriate astronomical model for the earth, and is the
universe teleological? The different positions were those of: Aristotle,
Ptolemy, Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo.
3. Is determinism and realism true? The different positions were those of:
relativity and various understandings of quantum mechanics–Copenhagen,
many worlds, objective collapse, pilot wave, and superdeterminism.