Sculpting the Image of Science for Education in its Historical and Philosophical Background

Lori Maramante (Delaware Technical Community College) - Multiple science education researchers have presented findings indicating that the “scientific method” typically presented in school science does not depict what real scientists do (Abd-El-Khalick et al., 2008, Niaz & Maza, 2011, and Wong & Hodson, 2008). Shifting focus from what the practitioners of science “do” to how the discipline of science builds knowledge through the collective action of its practitioners allows one to see an inherent logic framework, which is central to the discipline of science. The Science Logic Framework is a useful curriculum tool for science education. The framework illustrates the different roles deductive and inductive reasoning. Primary level investigations use either deductive (experimental) methods or inductive research study methods. The investigations that make up this first tier form the ever-expanding base of the logic framework. A second tier of scientific investigation, exemplified by reviews and meta-analyses, uses inductive reasoning to synthesize findings from multiple primary level investigations to come to higher ordered conceptual findings. Competing hypotheses can play out in this messy middle. A third tier of analysis involves synthesis of studies from the secondary level of analysis. Analysis at this tier can give rise to theories with broad explanatory power. This central science logic framework allows science to develop knowledge using the complementary strengths of deduction and induction. Many of the key characteristics of scientific knowledge flow directly from this logic model, such as the tentative yet durable nature of scientific knowledge, the important but limited role of reproducibility, the predictive and iterative nature of science and the value placed on skepticism and parsimonious explanations. In this session, I will present the Science Logic Framework and give empirical examples of scientific knowledge building in relation to this curricular tool (Does Zika Virus cause microcephaly? Is Red Wind Good for You? How did Amazonia become so diverse?).

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.

Pierre Boulos (University of Windsor) - It is said that on his deathbed Newton claimed that the one thing that made his head ache is the “lunar problem.” Newton’s successors inherited three major research projects: the shape of the earth, Halley’s Comet, and the perturbation of the lunar orbit, or the lunar problem. Of these the latter drew the attention of the foremost mathematicians and philosophers of the eighteenth century. Curiously it was through the meetings of learned societies, and consequently the publication in journals, that the debate over Newton’s theory was finally resolved. This paper charts this debate and illustrates its importance in understanding Newton’s scientific methodology. Specifically, in considering the effect of the sun on the moon in her orbit, Newton was able to account for only half of the observed lunar precession. The solution to this problem came in the late 1740s and early 1750s through the work of Clairaut, d'Alembert, and Euler. The zero precession left over after the effect of the sun on the lunar orbit had been correctly solved removed impediments to the acceptance of Newton's system.