In a word, yes, since often students at the beginning of their higher studies are eager to see the wonders of creation or technology. But the question is not whether one should include some natural or scientific questions or amazing discoveries; the question is rather about what should be the first and foundational detail and systematic treatment for the ordinary student.
The desire and inclination to begin from science and data is at root correct because it orients us toward the world primarily. The world is there to be measured, experiments can teach us, and a table of observations can reveal the error in something we thought was true. The classical tradition would never wish to deny that we begin from things in an ultimate sense; and things do not become true or false or real or unreal because of how we speak about them. In some ways, this was the first great error that Socrates and Plato desired to refute.
But it is also true that many modern disciplines have grown precise by insisting on being careful in how we define and use words. Particular sciences do not advance primarily by eloquence, and data not recorded in an accurate and controlled way are not usable. The arts of language (more properly, the arts of speech), as developed in the classical tradition, are in no sense a way of being loose or accommodating or imprecise. The arts of language would insist on precision in fact, but, and this is key, only where it is due and only to the degree that is fitting for the subject matter. Not every discipline admits of the same degree of precision and certainty about its claims and subject matter.
Perhaps the student who wants to bypass the arts of language and go directly to science is reacting to classrooms in which language was treated as decoration while the “real” work was supposed to take place in engineering and science. The modern student of science may well be concerned not to allow language or the arts of language to introduce laxity and vagueness into his work.
It is clear that the evidence of our senses and experiments can correct the words and concepts we use and bring us closer to reality. But can this possibly happen without speech or writing, without careful attention to the meanings of words, or without diligent care for the rhetoric of explanation and teaching? We have only to state this to see that it is impossible, since we need words as much for teaching science as for anything else.
It is worth noting that teachers of the sciences do often attend to words and precise language; but, since that is not their primary focus, they do not necessarily do so in a consistent and self-aware way. The physicist has certain habits of speaking; but he has not studied or evaluated them, since that is not his task either; it is the task of the arts and sciences of speech. A central goal of the arts of language is to help us fix our meanings and understand better how our words relate to the things in the world that we use them to describe. To be clear, though, this means that it is not the concern of the physicist in so far as he studies nature to determine most precisely what his words mean; but it is also not the task of the language arts to determine that meaning in some way without the physicist, since the grammarian as such does not have anything to say about physics. But the grammarian and the physicist work together to make sure the relevant language is clear and precise; and it is certainly possible for a physicist trained in the arts of language to be able to do the tasks of both.