Michael Matthews (University of New South Wales) - This paper acknowledges the long life (born September 1919) and extraordinary contributions to physics, philosophy, social science and much else of Mario Bunge. The paper focuses on the importance of theoretical debates in science education that hinge upon support for or rejection of the Enlightenment project; it distinguishes the historic eighteenth-century Enlightenment from its articulation and working out in the Enlightenment project; it details Mario Bunge’s and others’ summation of the core principles of the Enlightenment; it fleshes out the educational project of the Enlightenment by reference to the works of John Locke, Joseph Priestley, Ernst Mach, Philipp Frank and Herbert Feigl; it indicates communalities between the Enlightenment education project and that of the liberal education movement; it points to the necessity of the appreciation of history and philosophy of science for both projects.
