PHILOSOPHY IN THE CURRICULUM

Rationality in Science and in Science Classroom Ernst Mach: Philosopher, Scientist and Educator Thought Experiment

Rationality in Science and in Science Classroom

Science represents, a sphere of rational inquiry and rational appraisal of competing beliefs; and that there are departures from rational thinking in science, such departures are criticized as regrettable aberrations.

Science teaching introduces children into a sphere of rational thought and debate that has laudable carryover effects in the rest of their studies and life.

If the adjudication of scientific dispute is truly a matter of mob psychology, and if scientific advances are just whatever a community decrees them to be, independently of its epistemic worth, then the rationale for the inclusion of science in the curriculum is greatly diminished .

Thomas Kuhns 1962 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, was interpreted as saying that scientific transformations often depend us much on mob psychology and the mortality of the aged as they do upon rational persuasion, and that progress in science need not be construed as advancement towards a fixed goal of the truth about nature.

Edinburgh school of Sociologists of ScienceDavid Bloor, Barry Barnes, Steven Shapin, Michael Mulkay and others- further criticized rationalism in their externalist account of scientific change, the so called strong program in the sociology of knowledge.

French postmodernist philosophy, particularly the work of Michel Foucault, asserts that all systems of ideas were the consequences of the distribution of power in society, and that changes in ideas were not to be accounted for by epistemological factors, but by sociological ones.

Knowledge is power to. Power is knowledge

The role of elites in a scientific community, their control over publication, the function of rhetoric in scientific argument, the influence that economic power and interest have in the funding of research, and the determination of which problems to investigate and which to avoid.

Francis BaconThe Idols of the Mind

These were the various ways in

which the effort to understand the world can be thwarted:

By the inadequate language available to think and write in By the corrosive effects of self-interest whereby people more readily believe what they want to believe By the direct exercise of social power wielded by dominant groups.

Are such mechanisms, procedures or influences desirable in science?

If power is knowledge, then the white ruling class and the Communist Party certainly had power, and consequently the operation of this power must, by definition, result in knowledge.

Siegel defends rationality and the giving of reasons as the hallmark of science education. Eger, addresses the question of how such a conception can allow for the role of commitment, or faith, that has been so important to the development of science.

Ernst Mach: Philosopher, Scientist and

Educator

Ernst Mach

Ernst Mach: Philosopher, Scientist and

Educator

Ernst Mach the first person to deal systematically with the contribution that philosophy can make to science education. His contribution to science education has been almost entirely ignored in the English-speaking world The current trends in the practice and theory of science education are in many respects repeating Machs century old arguments.

It is Mach, the educationalist whom we must bring to the attention of our readers, particularly the younger ones, and not as someone who has passed on, but as a man who seed is destined to put down ever further roots in physics. Teaching, and, with that, in all teaching about real things, and to fructify the whole spirit of this teaching.

Mach was one of the great philosophersscientists of the turn of the century. He was fluent in most European languages, an enthusiast of Greek and Latin classics, a physicist who made significant contribution to such diverse fields as electricity, gas dynamics, thermodynamics, etc

Machs contribution to philosophy was also enormous, both through his influence on philosophical scientists, and on professional philosophers.

Machs Educational Contributions

Machs understanding of science and philosophy bore upon his educational ideas. He was influenced by the ideas of the German philosopher-psychologist-educationalist Johann Herbart.

Physics for Medical Students

Psychology was a long-standing interest of Machs. At 15 years of age Mach had read Kants Prologomena . His teaching was the occasion to unite pedagogical, psychological and scientific concerns. The first of his many science textbooks for school students, published in 1886, was widely used and went through several editions.

These texts provided a logical and historical introduction to science, they sought to present students with the most nave, simple, and classical observations and thoughts from which great scientists have built physics.

Mach did not write any systematic work on educational theory or practices: his ideas are scattered throughout his texts and journal articles.

On Instruction in the Classics and the MathematicoPhysical Sciences. On Instrucion in Heat theory On the Psychological and Logical Moment in Scientific Instruction

Mach had notable political involvement in educational reform. He addressed teacher organizations, spoke in the Austrian Parliament on the need for school curricular change, and was an active in the struggles to transform the entrenched German gymnasium pattern of separating language and classics studies into separate schools from those for science and mathematics.

Well-founded curricular and pedagogical proposals in school science are based upon two foundations: views about nature and scope of science and views about the nature and practice of education. Other matters to be considered in drawing up curricula political, social and psychological.

But what one thinks, explicitly and implicitly about the philosophy of science and about the philosophy of education will largely determine the form of the science curriculum.

His view of the nature of science are the following:

Scientific theory is an intellectual construction for economizing thought and thereby conjoining experiences. Science is fallible; it does not provide absolute truths. Science is a historically conditioned intellectual activity. Scientific theory can only be understood if its historical development is understood.

Machs educational ideas are fairly simple, and relatively uncontroversial:

Begin instruction with concrete materials and thoroughly familiarizes students with the phenomena discussed. Aim for understanding and comprehension of the subject matter. Teach a little, but teach it well. Follow the historical order of development of a subject. Tailor teaching to the intellectual level and capacity of students.

Address the philosophical questions that science entails and which gave rise to science. Show that just as individual ideas can be improved, so also scientific ideas have constantly been, and will continue to be, overhauled and improved. Engage the mind of the learner.

Mach firmly believed that abstractions in the science classrooms should, as Hegel said of philosophy, take flight only at dusk. For him the principal aims of education were to develop understanding, strengthen reason and promote imagination.
I know nothing more terrible than the poor creatures who have learned too much. What they have acquired is a spiders web of thoughts too weak to furnish sure support, but complicated enough to produce confusion.

Mach believed in presenting science historically, or as he put it, teaching should follow the genetic approach.

Thought Experiment

A special feature of Machs view of science education was his advocacy of thought experimentation. Experimenting in thought is important not only for the professional inquirer, but also for mental development as such; not only the student but the teacher gains immeasurably by this method.

Each edition oh his Zeitscrift carried thought experiments for his readers to perform.

What is expected to happen to a beaker of water in equilibrium on a balance when a suspended mass is lowered into it? What happens when a stoppered bottle with a fly on its base is in equilibrium on a balance and then the fly takes off?

* Theses are thought experiment of an anticipatory type.

Newtons bucket experiment Galileos well through the center of the earth. * These are some thought experiment of nonanticipatory type.

Mach encouraged such exercises, believing that the exercises of imagination and creativity was another way of bridging the gap between humanities and science.