Brute Facts About the Construction of a Framework for Socioscientific Issues

This chapter bring together many of the differing elements of the previous chapters, stitching together those serendipitous experiences of the past in the framing of the SSI framework. It advances the idea that being scientifically literate is bound up in a sense of civic virtue that connects practical wisdom (phronesis) to moral intelligence (arête). To understand the presuppositions of the SSI framework also requires facing “brute facts” about the fundamental nature of our brutish selves, out of which the formation of conscience may arise. In short, coming face-to-face with these brute facts leads to the necessary and underlying conditions that facilatating the development of epistemic insight in the quest to achieve functional scientific literacy.