Science Teaching

The Contribution of History and Philosophy of Science, 20th Anniversary Revised and Expanded Edition

Michael R. Matthews

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136336751
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Science & Technology

Science Teaching explains how history and philosophy of science contributes to the resolution of persistent theoretical, curricular, and pedagogical issues in science education. It shows why it is essential for science teachers to know and appreciate the history and philosophy of the subject they teach and how this knowledge can enrich science instruction and enthuse students in the subject. Through its historical perspective, the book reveals to students, teachers, and researchers the foundations of scientific knowledge and its connection to philosophy, metaphysics, mathematics, and broader social influences including the European Enlightenment, and develops detailed arguments about constructivism, worldviews and science, multicultural science education, inquiry teaching, values, and teacher education. Fully updated and expanded, the 20th Anniversary Edition of this classic text, featuring four new chapters—The Enlightenment Tradition; Joseph Priestley and Photosynthesis; Science, Worldviews and Education; and Nature of Science Research—and 1, 300 references, provides a solid foundation for teaching and learning in the field.

Chapter 1

The Rapprochement Between History, Philosophy and Science Education

Science has been the foremost contributor to our understanding of the natural and social world, and, through its engagement with religion, worldviews, economies and technologies, it has been a major influence on culture. Food production, medicine, entertainment, war, industry, reproduction, transportation, accommodation, religion, space exploration, and people’s self-understanding and their worldviews – their sense of place in the universe and in nature – have all been profoundly affected by science – mostly for good; sometimes for bad. Understanding the ‘balance sheet’ is of utmost importance, and this understanding is only possible with knowledge of the history and philosophy of science (HPS). This chapter will mention some of the elements that constitute the current rapprochement between history, philosophy and science teaching, or components of the ‘HPS&ST programme’, as it might be called. These include:

• the significant engagement of historians and philosophers with theoretical, curricular and pedagogical issues in science teaching;

• the growth of liberal education and the recognition of the historical and philosophical components necessary for this education;

• the acknowledgement of the requirement of basic philosophy for good technical science education;

• the recognition that HPS can contribute to ameliorating some of the widespread and well-known problems of science education;

• the realisation that HPS is a necessary condition for achieving any ‘flowon’ effects from science learning for solving major issues in personal and social life;

• the realisation that HPS knowledge is required for meeting the explicit requirements of many new national and provincial science curricula.

Philosophers and Historians Engage with Science Education

Thirty-five years ago, Robert Ennis wrote a comprehensive review of the extant literature on philosophy of science and science teaching. His review listed six questions that science teachers constantly encounter in their classrooms and staffrooms, questions that the deliberations and researches of philosophers and historians of science could illuminate. These questions were:

• What characterises the scientific method?

• What constitutes critical thinking about empirical statements?

• What is the structure of scientific disciplines?

• What is a scientific explanation?

• What role do value judgements play in the work of scientists?

• What constitute good tests of scientific understanding?

These questions are of perennial concern to science teachers and science-teacher education programmes. However, Ennis made the melancholy observation that: ‘With some exceptions philosophers of science have not shown much explicit interest in the problems of science education’ (Ennis 1979, p. 138). Pleasingly, in recent decades, there has been a degree of rapprochement between these fields. Both the theory of science education and, importantly, science curricula and classroom pedagogy have become more informed by HPS. (These themes will collectively be referred to as history, philosophy and science teaching (HPS&ST).) This book contributes to HPS&ST by:

• outlining the arguments for the role of HPS in science education;

• reviewing the history of school science curricula in order to situate the claims of HPS-informed teaching against other approaches to science pedagogy;

• examining the successes and failures of previous efforts to bring HPS into closer connection with the science programme;

• elaborating some case studies where the contrast between HPS and ‘professional’ or ‘technical’ approaches to science teaching and curricula development can be evaluated;

• examining some instances of prominent educational debates in science education – constructivism, feminism, multiculturalism, worldviews and nature of science – that can be clarified and informed by HPS;

• outlining the contribution that HPS can make to science-teacher education.

It is hoped that the book will stimulate interest in educational matters among historians and philosophers of science, and encourage interest in historical and philosophical matters among science teachers and, particularly, the educators of science teachers.

When Ennis wrote, in the late 1970s, the exceptions among post-war historians and philosophers who had written on science education included Michael Martin, who published a series of articles (1971, 1974, 1986/1991) and wrote a popular book, Concepts of Science Education (1972), on philosophy and science education. Other philosophers and historians of science, who 40 years ago, had written on the subject include Stephen Brush (1969), Robert Cohen (1964), Yehuda Elkana (1970), Herbert Feigl (1955), Philipp Frank (1947/1949), Gerald Holton (1975, 1978), Noretta Koertge (1969), Ernst Nagel (1969, 1975) and Israel Scheffler (1973). Happily, this situation of relative philosophical and historical neglect has changed, and, in the past few decades, many philosophers of science¹ and historians of science² have addressed different of the myriad theoretical, curricular and pedagogical problems of science teaching.

The engagement of philosophers and historians with science education can be seen in contributions to thematic issues of the journal Science & Education³ and in contributions to anthologies such as History, Philosophy and Science Teaching (Matthews 1991), Science, Worldviews and Education (Matthews 2009), Epistemology and Science Education (Taylor & Ferrari 2011) and Philosophy of Biology: A Companion for Educators (Kampourakis 2013) and to the three-volume, 76-chapter International Handbook of Research in History, Philosophy and Science Teaching (Matthews 2014).

Ennis’s six questions are perennial, but they do not exhaust the field of HPS&ST concerns, as can be quickly seen by looking at the titles of the above-cited articles. Philosophers have usefully contributed to pedagogical problems, to curricular discussions and to debate about the following theoretical issues: feminist critiques of science, multiculturalism and science, evaluation of constructivist theory, environmental ethics, the nature of science, science and religion, and so on. One of the theses of this book is that these are not extracurricular or add-on questions for science teachers: philosophy of science is part of the fabric of science teaching, and students acquire or ‘pick up’ a philosophy of science from their teachers. The issue is just how clearly this is recognised, and how explicitly the philosophical questions are dealt with. It is clear that all of these discussions are improved by philosophical and historical input; indeed, it is impossible to have informed and intelligent discussion of any of the listed theoretical issues without HPS.

History and Philosophy of Science: A Partnership

The conviction of this book is that the philosophy of science needs to be cognisant of the history of science, and the reverse: ‘Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind’, as Imre Lakatos memorably expressed the matter (Lakatos 1978, p. 102.) This view was urged against those who saw philosophy occupying an autonomous position, such as Hans Reichenbach, who expressed this latter view in his classic distinction between the contexts of discovery and the contexts of justification in science. For Reichenbach, philosophy was concerned only with the context of justification, whereas history, sociology and psychology are concerned with the context of discovery (Reichenbach 1938).

The proper relation between the history and philosophy of science is much debated, with experts disagreeing on just how necessary the former is for the latter. Hilary Putnam at one point exclaimed that the history of science is ‘irrelevant’ to the philosophy of science (Suppe 1977, p. 437). The very influential positivist philosopher of science Rudolf Carnap has said of himself that he ‘was as unhistorically minded a person as one could imagine’ (Suppe 1977, p. 310). Carnap’s student, Willard van Orman Quine, has said the same thing; his influential epistemological corpus is devoid of any historical reference (Quine 1960).

On the other side, for those wishing to keep history of science separate from philosophy, questions arise such as: How do we identify the history of science, without some philosophical presuppositions? How do we separate useful history of science from useless history of science, without some prior conception of proper method? It seems that we need to know in advance of writing a history of science what will count as science; if we do not have such a view, then we could presumably set off researching astrology, numerology and stamp collecting, rather than chemistry or geology.

As with many either/or questions, the answer lies somewhere between. The relationship between history of science and philosophy of science has to be interactive. There is ample evidence of history of science being written in the service of philosophical, political and religious commitments. It is notorious that Galileo has become a ‘Man for all philosophical seasons’ (Crombie 1981), with every methodologist seeing their own favoured methodology being followed by Galileo. Here, history is at best cherry-picked, and the opportunity for history of science to refine or change philosophical commitments is lost. Thomas Kuhn’s story of his philosophical transformation, occasioned by having to teach a Harvard general education course on the history of science, is a well-known recent example where history transformed philosophy. Philosophy is required to begin writing history, but it should be capable of being transformed by historical study.⁴

This debate about the place of history is characteristic of many issues in philosophy of science – it would be a rash person who said that the contentious matters of realism, empiricism, causation, explanation, idealisation, truth, falsification and rationality have been settled. But some things regarding the interplay of philosophy and history are agreed upon. Clearly, the history of science should be used to illustrate positions arrived at in philosophy of science. An exposition of the nature of science, of theory evaluation or the ontological commitments of science that did not make mention of Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Lavoisier, Darwin, Mendel, Mach or Einstein, and the scientific controversies they engendered, would be very odd. Unfortunately, philosophy of science courses too often neglect the history of science. Commonly, students read of the debates over scientific methodology engaged in by Carnap, Nagel, Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, Laudan, van Fraassen and others, but have to take the contenders’ historical interpretations of Aristotle, Galileo, Huygens and Newton on faith; students become spectators to an academic game. What should be a course that enhances appreciation of the scientific tradition and deeper thinking about it can, in the absence of history, become more like a catechism class. This is particularly odd in educational settings where science teachers and science students have heard of the famous names and might expect to see their work figure in any discussion of the nature of science or other philosophical issues occasioned by science.⁵ This is Bildung in the European tradition.

Science and Liberal Education

The present rapprochement between HPS and science education represents, in part, a renaissance of the long-marginalised liberal, or contextual, tradition of science education, a tradition contributed to in the last 100 years by scientists and educators such as Ernst Mach, Pierre Duhem, Alfred North Whitehead, Frederick W. Westaway, E.J. Holmyard, Percy Nunn, James Conant, Joseph Schwab, Martin Wagenschein, Walter Jung and Gerald Holton. At its most general level, the liberal tradition in education embraces Aristotle’s delineation of truth, goodness and beauty as the ideals that people ought to cultivate in their appropriate spheres of endeavour. That is, in intellectual matters, truth should be sought, in moral matters goodness, and in artistic and creative matters beauty. Education is to contribute to these ends: it is to assist the development of a person’s knowledge, moral outlook and behaviour, and aesthetic sensibilities and capacities. For liberal educationalists, education is more than the preparation for work; education is valued because it contributes to the cognitive and moral development of both the individual and their culture.

The liberal tradition has a number of educational commitments.⁶ One is that education entails the introduction of children to the be...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface (2014)
• Preface (1994)
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The Rapprochement Between History, Philosophy and Science Education
• 2 The Enlightenment Tradition in Science Education
• 3 Historical and Current Developments in Science Curricula
• 4 History of Science in the Curriculum and in Classrooms
• 5 Philosophy in Science and in Science Classrooms
• 6 History and Philosophy in the Classroom: Pendulum Motion
• 7 History and Philosophy in the Classroom: Joseph Priestley and the Discovery of Photosynthesis
• 8 Constructivism and Science Education
• 9 A Central Issue in Philosophy of Science and Science Education: Realism and Anti-Realism
• 10 Science, Worldviews and Education
• 11 The Nature of Science and Science Teaching
• 12 Philosophy and Teacher Education
• Author Index
• Subject Index