Week 2 Day 5 Historiography

This essay by Allchin concludes Week 2, as well as a series of articles concerned with how-and even whether or not-history of science should be presented in the classroom, including how science and the nature of science is defined philosophically. I think a comparison of the viewpoints of Brush and Allchin basically comes down to this. Neither seems to feel history of science should be included in the classroom, but for different reasons. Brush believes if we are going to drill the scientific method into our students' heads, it is irresponsible to present the historical works of scientists who apparently did not utilize this type of framework in their experiments. Allchin advocates that it is wrong to "shoe-horn" history of science into the mode of hypothetico-deductive reasoning, and exposure to current philosophical attempts to like-wise "shoe-horn" all science would result in confused and misguided science teachers and consequently, confused and misguided science students.

My feelings after reading and thinking about this series of essays are as follows. All history is too important to disregard, including the history of science. I believe a responsible science teacher will continue to promote what we generally call the scientific method because it provides a logical set of steps to follow in problem-solving and a common format that facilitates communication and understanding of ideas between scientists around the globe. At the same time, it would be irresponsible to present any kind of falsification, distortion, or "shoe-horning" of history without clarifying under special circumstances, as I discuss below. I have always believed our goal in education is to say to the students, this is what we know or believe to be true, this is why, and this is how we got there. From there students need to learn to use their own capacities for creative thought and formulate opinions and ideas with the guidance of the teacher and whatever sources the students choose to explore on their own. This can apply to what happened in the past, the current state of thinking, and what may come about in the future. To me it is acceptable to present the works, life, successes, and tribulations of Galileo, Harvey, and others as we know them to have occurred. Scientific processes and outcomes happen in a variety of ways, and it's likewise okay to hypothetically go back and see if Galileo's discovery of the moons of Jupiter roughly fits the scientific method or not, for illustrative purposes. This is as long as students and teachers understand what they are doing and are not knowingly or unknowingly rewriting history. After all, creativity and imagination, coupled with drive, natural curiosity, and hopefully a desire to better all of our lives is what science should be about.

Finally, I feel both Brush and Allchin are maybe a bit rigid, even if their points are valid. I feel Lawson was criticized a bit harshly by Allchin, and the last paper in particular sometimes had a biting and personal tone to it. Judging by some of his responses, Lawson seems to have felt the same way, and I think both are guilty of being somewhat blinded to the concessions made by the other. I did appreciate Allchin's tabulation of the various methods by which science functions, and as always he makes good use of references and strongly supports all of his main points. This series of readings has greatly broadened my perspectives on how I can and should incorporate history of science into my courses in the future.

Bibliographic Note:

Douglas Allchin, "Why Respect for History-and Historical Error-Matters.", Science & Education 15 (2006): 91-111

also see previously cited articles by Allchin, Brush, and Lawson