How much history should there be in science education?

This semester I am teaching philosophy of science to science educators. The class consists mostly of people who have studied chemistry, physics and biology and who now teach science courses at secondary schools. Discussing the sciences philosophically is quite a new experience for most of them. A worry that I often have is how to convince them that these discussions are relevant to their work as educators.

In this respect, Thomas Kuhn’s work is particularly handy. His book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, published in 1962, has had a major impact on how we understand progress in science and how scientists go about in their practice. It also highlighted the cultural, ideological and other non-empirical considerations that affect how we face anomalies in our accepted scientific theories. While I’m not particularly convinced that his account is correct, some of the things that he illuminated are very relevant to science education.

Problems with paradigms

One thing he shows is the role of history (or rather, lack of it) in science education. He noted that in general, there is a tendency to teach scientific progress from the perspective of the winners. This is not a particularly novel insight. But with respect to science education, Kuhn’s analysis implies that we teach science and how it progresses from the perspective of the accepted paradigm in which we operate – the framework within which scientists of a particular field work at a particular period of time.

A paradigm consists of the entities, properties and processes which are posited to describe a specific domain of phenomena (like electrons, spin, molecules or bonds) and specific values, as well as experimental techniques, problem sets and instruments that are used to investigate said phenomena. All past theories are judged from the perspective of the current paradigm. This explains why in modern chemistry there is little (if any) talk of phlogiston when students are taught about combustion. Whenever the phlogiston theory is mentioned, it is mostly judged from the lens of what it got wrong – or perhaps even of how absurd it was.

This account of scientific practice affects how we teach science. According to Kuhn, major shifts in our theoretical understanding of nature become invisible in retrospect. This is because scientists tend to form their understanding of scientific activity primarily from three sources: textbooks, popular science writings and the philosophy of science. (Kuhn thinks research papers are rarely used and only at advanced levels of science education). Each of these sources reflects the stable outcomes of past revolutions, distorting our view of change by emphasising continuity over disruption.

Textbooks, in particular, sustain what is known as normal science. Rewritten after each scientific revolution, they often obscure these transformative shifts, portraying scientific progress as a smooth and cumulative process through the lens of the currently accepted paradigm. In doing so, textbooks offer a simplified and somewhat misleading image of scientific development, while limiting scientists’ appreciation of the deeper, more complex history of their own disciplines.

Lessons in learning

I believe that Kuhn’s overall account of scientific change and progress is not well supported and to an extent exaggerated. I think he distorts how science is done and undermines the role empirical evidence has historically played in evaluating competing theories. Nonetheless, when it comes to science education, his account provides a useful lesson: we need to learn more about the history of science to understand how our best current theories came about.

We should not be condescending towards past theories or traditions. While modern scientists can more accurately describe how things actually work in nature, this doesn’t mean that phlogistians, or even alchemists, did not make useful observations and sensible inferences in their studies of chemical phenomena. By discussing the past, we get to appreciate not only the success of our best current science but also the effort that is required to study nature and its workings.

 It is never a bad thing to learn something new

Contemporary scholars have tried to promote the more active incorporation of history into science education.^1,2 Interestingly, this is another instance where we see the gradual appreciation of the value of interdisciplinarity. I previously discussed how important science is to philosophical analyses; arguing in favour of a very close study of science when doing philosophy. Incorporating historical considerations into science education follows a similar spirit.

However, a word of caution. In the age of extreme compartmentalisation and division of labour, where scientific disciplines involve immense amounts of complexity, we should be mindful of our demands. As a philosopher, it is already quite a challenge to stay up to date with the best current science. I can only imagine how difficult it would be for educators to provide historically well-informed analyses of the natural sciences. A lot of training is required, but also active interactions between people from different disciplines. In any case, it is never a bad thing to learn something new, let alone explore how humanity – through constant trial and error – has managed to get where it is today.