Week 2 Day 3 Historiography

This essay continues, refines, and extends the arguments of Brush and Allchin discussed below because pseudosciences such as parapsychology and creationism are known to be misleading and dangerous, but pseudohistory can be almost as damaging and certainly no remedy. Allchin says typical textbook science histories are flawed, inflate scientific drama, romanticize scientists and their work and lives, and oversimplify the process of science by "shoe-horning" all great scientific discoveries into the scientific method and/or hypothetico-deductive reasoning. All the essays I have read recently, including this one, give excellent examples to support these points.

As to how this article has instructed and informed me as a science teacher, Allchin suggests educators should understand and recognize pseudohistory, Whiggism, and hagiography when they encounter them, and take appropriate measures to protect their students and themselves. We can of course become more educated ourselves in the history of science, learn about analyzing texts rhetorically, appreciate how myths work culturally to shape views of science, and master at least one case-study in depth and gradually expand into others.

Allchin defends his conclusions as usual with well-researched and readable descriptions of examples, and sums it up with a cogent and thought-provoking conclusion. He goes to great lengths to explain what pseudoscience and pseudohistory are, and how sometimes the latter can actually be the former. He examines hagiography, or idolization of scientists, and comes back to the idea of Whiggism or Whig history, the rational reconstruction from previous articles.

I also have to wonder as I read these essays if maybe the authors aren't being a little overly dramatic and maybe being a bit too harsh on Lawson, for instance. It's possible to take almost any endeavor involving problem-solving and try to "shoe-horn" it into being representative of the steps of a general scientific method and/or hypothetico-deductive reasoning. This, in my opinion, is not necessarily an undesirable process. For instance, I have my students sometimes consider an everyday quandary such as losing one's key ring. I have them recall the steps they follow in trying to retrieve the keys, and we then discuss how they approximate the steps of the scientific method. My point is that there is a general and logical approach to problem solving an any level, and sometimes we are using this process without being consciously aware of it. This goes back to the author's points in that I agree students should not be spoon-fed pseudohistory just to make a point, because there are other ways to ground them in good scientific technique and philosophy without making grievous distortions of the past.

Bibliographic Note:

Douglas Allchin, "Pseudohistory and Pseudoscience", Science & Education 13 (2004): 179-195. This essay further reinforces how pseuduscience and pseudohistory should be rated "X" because it can mislead science students, teachers, and practicing scientists.