Undergrad course in history and philosophy of science

Does anyone have experience as either a teacher or student of course in the history and philosophy of science? If so, can you provide a link to the course?

Do you know of any University that requires undergrads to take a course in this topic?

The reason I ask is that our Opinion author for the October issue of The Scientist has come up with some fairly damning stats on the lack of understanding of key scientific terminology among science graduates. In his survey of graduates:

• Seventy-six percent equated a fact with ‘truth’ and ‘proven’.
• Twenty-three percent defined a theory as ‘unproven ideas’ with less than half (47%) recognising a theory as a well evidenced exposition of a natural phenomenon.
• Thirty-four percent defined a law as a rule not to be broken, and forty-one percent defined it as an idea that science fully supports.
• Definitions of ‘hypothesis’ were the most consistent, with sixty-one percent recognising the predictive, testable nature of hypotheses.

Surely we have to teach these basics properly to all science students. Ideally every student would get a grounding as part of a basic education, but let's get science's house in order first.

So, can anyone identify best practice? Anyone disagree with the need to teach science history and philosophy?

Richard, Editor of The Scientist

For online history of science course, see:

http://www.hssonline.org/teach_res/resources/mf_resources.html

The MIT course, last offered in 2005, is here: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Science--Technology--and-Society/STS-310Fall-2005/CourseHome/

The Yale course is offered this year: http://www.yale.edu/yalecollege/publications/ycps/chapter_iv/history_of_science.html

I have no idea if these are required courses...

Hope this helps!

I've taken a couple of history & philosophy of science courses, but I'm not sure that these are necessarily the best places to address the particular issues you raised. History & philosophy of science courses should, in my opinion, be mandatory (although you'll find lots of practical resistance to this idea at a number of Universities out there), and they are excellent fora for learning about, for example, the fact that science did not begin when PubMed began, that the use of animals in science used to be a given (and quite brutal by today's standards) and reflected major concepts of human thought and the soul such as they were in the past (no, I am NOT speaking against animal research), and the fact that many important experiments have already been done (pre-internet) and you have to actually go read papers to determine whether critical info. may have been out there for a couple hundred years, etc. Not to mention that history frames the big picture of science and includes the development of major concepts and important findings that have to a large extent defined and limited the range of the entirety of current scientific endeavors. Add in the persistent influence that major (usually rich, spoiled, and very strongly opinionated) scientists of olde continue to wield over current thought, and the need to be on guard against the ways in which certain current senior scientists attempt to narrow the conversation in the same way, and the 'structure of scientific revolutions,' and you have critical subject material indeed. It's also extremely important for folks to see firsthand the differences in formulation, execution, and expression of scientific thoughts then and now--how "natural philosophy" became "publish or perish" and how descriptive, colorful (even romantic) accounts of experiments gave way to "instructions for authors" and "fill in the blank" technical exercises.

The points you raised certainly speak to philosophy and history, but moreso to philosophy. Even then, the courses I've taken have treated the 'philosophy' part of the equation by reference to what science used to be--"natural philosophy"--rather than by treatment of subjects such as the difference between theory, fact, and truth. I agree on the need for mandatory HiPS coursework for undergrads, but also on the need for addressing the specific deficiencies you mention in basic understanding of scientific terminology. I'm not sure how the two really mesh in the classroom, though, or if a call for "history and philosophy of science" education will necessarily address these kinds of deficiencies.

At the University where I teach the items you mentioned are taught in detail in the introductory course for biology majors, reviewed again in the lab section, and are referred to again in later science classes.

I don't think it is a bad idea to require a philosophy or other courses, but most science majors are burdened with a lot of required courses already...

U of King's College; Gordon McOuat; http://www.ukings.ca/kings_3635_3989.html

I respectfully suggest he might be a knowledgeable person to contact, and discuss this topic.

Gordon has just received a very significant grant to help develop a global network of centres and specialists in the study of the history, philosophy, sociology and, significantly, I feel, the current, on-going importance of knowing what science is about, where it came from, and where it might be heading.

You may refer to me as the person who pointed you to him, if that helps.

This topic is a very significant one, and has not received the attention it might.
I am glad you are addressing it!
Please contact Gordon via the link above.

Best of luck!
Robert Dambergs
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
robert.dambergs@gmail.com

At what was then called The Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, chemistry majors were required to take a course in History of Science. In 1956 I took this course taught by Herman Mark, the well-known polymer chemist. To my everlasting shame, I cut a good many of the classes as it was taught at 8 am and I had a long bus and subway ride to get there.
Harvey Herman
P.S. I have a son named Mark Herman.

The University of Oklahoma has a History of Science Department, offering a graduate program and upper division undergraduate courses, two of which I took to fulfill my history requirements as a Zoology major graduating in 1969. The instructors I had are the two resident emeritus professors listed on the website now. I certainly enjoyed these courses much more than I would have any other history courses I might have taken, and I received a good grounding in the history of chemistry, physics, and geology as well as biology.

I've actually been thinking about writing such a course for the high school classroom. I taught high school biology for several years, and understanding of the nature of science is utterly lacking. I tried to include as much NOS material as possible in my lessons, but I started thinking that a history and philosophy of science course might be an interesting elective option. It wouldn't be nearly as in-depth as a college-level course -- I'm picturing something chronological, maybe taking several fundamental questions that people have wondered about for millenia (What are things made of? What's out there beyond the Earth? Where did this red-haired daughter come from? Etc.) and trace how the answers have changed over time. It wouldn't be just a "memorize these important people and what they did" sort of course; more along the lines of "How did people explain X in the past, and why did it make sense to them at the time? If we explain it differently nowadays, what made us change our mind?" I also see it having a lab component, possibly recreating some of the famous experiments of yore -- grow some peas, play around with prisms like Newton did, make Boyle's manometer, try some of the alchemical procedures, and such. It would be a hell of an undertaking to do it right, but I think it could be a very fun class, and hopefully an effective way to teach the nature of science.

What do you all think? Do you know of anyone who has done this at a high school level?

PressTS732245 wrote:Does anyone have experience as either a teacher or student of course in the history and philosophy of science? If so, can you provide a link to the course?

Do you know of any University that requires undergrads to take a course in this topic?

The reason I ask is that our Opinion author for the October issue of The Scientist has come up with some fairly damning stats on the lack of understanding of key scientific terminology among science graduates. In his survey of graduates:

• Seventy-six percent equated a fact with ‘truth’ and ‘proven’.
• Twenty-three percent defined a theory as ‘unproven ideas’ with less than half (47%) recognising a theory as a well evidenced exposition of a natural phenomenon.
• Thirty-four percent defined a law as a rule not to be broken, and forty-one percent defined it as an idea that science fully supports.
• Definitions of ‘hypothesis’ were the most consistent, with sixty-one percent recognising the predictive, testable nature of hypotheses.

Surely we have to teach these basics properly to all science students. Ideally every student would get a grounding as part of a basic education, but let's get science's house in order first.

So, can anyone identify best practice? Anyone disagree with the need to teach science history and philosophy?

Richard, Editor of The Scientist

I think that something along JENNIFER182105's idea would be very worthwhile, even at the non-majors or community-college level. There seems to be a need for a citizen's user's-guide to science. To succeed, it must be engaging enough to lure in a general audience.

Another sort of valuable exercise might be to start with some current scientific claim (e.g. health benefits of a supplement, health hazards of a substance, endangered species designations, or the like) and navigate the maze of literature to track down the actual evidence supporting the claim. Ask how does the evidence support the claim? What alternative hypotheses are consistent with the evidence? If there are alternatives, how could they be resolved? I fear that most people are unable to go beyond a quick google search or wikipedia article.

Government agencies, from local planning commissions to state and federal agencies are daily instituting laws and regulations that are putatively based on science. Yet the members of these agencies have little or no background in science, and no ability to distinguish between competing claims. I've had occasion to delve into the record of government "science" and it is nearly always an appalling experience. Worse still, attempts to correct or add substance to the record are almost always met with hostility and suspicion. At the root of this, I suspect, is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of science and its methods.

Lyman Briggs College--a small residential college dedicated to science and math within Michigan State University--requires all of its graduates to take a series of courses in History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Science.

This consists of three levels: an Introduction to HPS course, taught by all faculty in the large HPS unit within LBC; two 300-level HPS courses of the student's choice (ranging from straight-up phil. of sci. to "Literature and Medicine" and "Technology and Culture"); a 492 Senior Seminar, a capstone course drawing on scientific or mathematical knowledge combined with an HPS approach, and taught by faculty from the HPS unit as well as the Math, Bio, Chem, and Physics units depending on who is available and has ideas for a 492.

I've taught Intro to HPS, a 300-level Technology and Culture course, and a 492. Being philosophically trained, I emphasize argumentation, critical reasoning, and basic concepts of science. I do a Nature of Science and Scientific Reasoning unit--including how basic rules of logic apply to assessing study design in science--in my Intro course and find it invaluable.

In fact, my Biology faculty colleague, Dr. Fata-Hartley, and I have developed a method for teaching scientific process and have submitted it to NSF as a grant proposal for implementation and empirical evaluation of efficacy. She had noticed that, even at the advanced undergraduate level, students set loose to generate their own "inquiry-based" experiments often fail as early as the hypothesis-generation stage, and even if they succeed in developing a testable hypothesis, then often fail at study design, ending with uninterpretable results. So-called "Process Skills" are really a combination of technical expertise and philosophy of science, including a good grasp of the scientific method and of scientific reasoning.

Now, teaching all this material CAN be integrated into biology, chemistry, and physics courses relatively painlessly. I occasionally get Briggs students in my upper-level courses who are in the small percentage of students who proficiency out of Intro to HPS (on the grounds that it fulfills writing requirements and they have high AP English scores), and who already know the basic concepts of science and of how science and society interact. This speaks well of my fellow faculty in the hard science units.

I do think this information is necessary. And particularly so at the undergrad level for folks for whom the B.S. is a terminal degree... such as science teachers.

For information on LBC at MSU, see lymanbriggs.msu.edu. For information on our HPS program and courses, see http://lymanbriggs.msu.edu/academics/hps.cfm. For information on our faculty, see http://lymanbriggs.msu.edu/people/photo.cfm?ID=5.

I have been teaching a course in history and philosophy of science to undergraduates for the past 5 years at UCLA. It is part of the honors collegium program and so enrollment comes from all disciplines represented on campus. It has been rather eye-opening to see that students from the humanities frequently perform better even they are not as familiar with science as science undergraduates. The reason for this is not so hard to discern. Humanities students know how to think better, read better and express themselves better. This point brings up one of the main reasons why science students benefit from courses on history and philosophy of science. As odd as it may sound it may be one of the few courses in which they are made to think rather than merely learning how to calculate or answer very narrowly conceived questions.

Now to make a quite different point. My background is in chemistry and I want to make a plea for the philosophy of chemistry a relatively new sub-discipline within the philosophy of science which until recently has tended to concentrate rather exclusively on physics and more recently on biology. And yet it is a fact that chemists far outnumber physicists and biologists.

Can I also make a shameless plug for my recent book which is all about the history and philosophy of chemistry and modern physics.

Eric Scerri, The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance, by Eric Scerri, Oxford University Press, 2007.
named as "Outstanding Academic Book for 2007" by Choice Library Magazine.

UCLA faculty web page: http://www.chem.ucla.edu/dept/Faculty/scerri/

Periodic Table Website:
http://www.allperiodictables.com/apt/ClientPages/Scerripages/Scerri.html

Editor of Foundations of Chemistry,
http://www.springer.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,11855,4-40399-70-35545882-detailsPage%253Djournal%257CmostViewedArticles%257CmostViewedArticles,00.html

International Society for the Philosophy of Chemistry,
http://ispc.sas.upenn.edu/

If students are encouraged to address research problems in a relentlessly critical and imaginative spirit they probably don't need to be lectured on the philosophy of science. They might even be confused by talk about inductive methods and inductive proof or probability. They do need to understand the background and context of their problems and that requires a literature review, which is something they are not likely to undertake in a serious manner until they start postgraduate work.

For that reason it would be good to expose undergrads (and even the brighter streams of school students) to good presentations on research work in progress. The textbook picture is generally unhelpful (too clean and neat) and students need to get an idea of the messy nature of research, the open problems at the growing point of knowledge and the amount of trial and error that is required to make progress. Some of Medawar's popular essays would be helpful for background reading.

I teach on a postgrad course in Science and Evironmental Journalism in the UK. One of the units I teach is Ethics in Science which draws heavily on history and philosophy of science. The students are encouraged to consider philosophy as central to scientific thinking. We have recently been studying the influence of the medieaval church on scientific thinking.

To many of course the church is seen as a force retarding scientific advancement but we have been examining how many theologians, Copernicus included contributed to modern science. As a teacher I have always been of the continuity school of the history of science rather than in the club that believes it all started with the enlightenment.

We also place a good deal of emphasis on classical philosophy and the issues that today influence bad science

If anyone is interested in further information on the course please feel free to contact me.

Barry Turner
bturner@lincoln.ac.uk

The HOPOS (history and philosphy of science) email list has a current thread on the pros and cons of teaching HPS to science students. Nothing of great interest has come up, although someone wondered whether it might not do more harm than good!

There is a web site in Australia dedicated to teaching critical thinking and philosophy to school students, this could be a good source. The webmaster recently won The Australian Skeptics Prize for contributions to critical thinking. www.pactiss.org

As a Biochemistry major at Saint Edwards University in Austin, TX I had to take a course in History & Philosophy of Science. It was required for several other B.S. degrees as well.

Syllabus: http://myweb.stedwards.edu/kopec/scie4345/syllabi/set_syllabi.htm