Table Of ContentThe Invention of Science
CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES IN SCIENCE EDUCATION:
RESEARCH DIALOGS
Volume 4
Series editor
Kenneth Tobin, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA
Catherine Milne, Steinhardt School o Culture, Education, and Human
Development, New York University
Scope
Research dialogs consists of books written for undergraduate and graduate students
of science education, teachers, parents, policy makers, and the public at large.
Research dialogs bridge theory, research, and the practice of science education.
Books in the series focus on what we know about key topics in science education –
including, teaching, connecting the learning of science to the culture of students,
emotions and the learning of science, labs, field trips, involving parents, science
and everyday life, scientific literacy, including the latest technologies to facilitate
science learning, expanding the roles of students, after school programs, museums
and science, doing dissections, etc.
The Invention of Science
Why History of Science Matters for the Classroom
Catherine Milne
New York University
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface .................................................................................................................... vii
1. What is Science? .................................................................................................. 1
2. Making Arguments ............................................................................................ 21
3. Warring Cosmologies and the Emergence of Eurocentric Science.................... 45
4. Valuing Patterns and the Continuing Emergence of Eurocentric
Science ............................................................................................................... 67
5. Just the Facts, Please: Inductivism has its Day .................................................. 95
6. Understanding and Explanation: A Role for Connected and
Separate Knowing ............................................................................................ 129
7. Understanding Discourses in Science and Science Education ......................... 153
8. Final Comments ............................................................................................... 179
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PREFACE
In this book I seek to introduce people to a history of Eurocentric science: the
discipline that today is typically called science. Like all authors, in this book I am
making an argument, and/or writing a narrative, about how or why something
happened. In some cases, I will try to make connections to contemporary issues. The
argument about why things happen is open to a multitude of explanations but the
question of how things happened is also open to interpretation as authors use history
to try to understand our present. So my version is just that, my take on a history
of Eurocentric science. I have reconstructed and recorded events to that make up a
particular historical phenomenon, the emergence of Eurocentric science, using
specific historical examples to discuss some aspects of knowing that I think are in
some way relevant to practice and thought associated with Eurocentric science. For me,
an idea attributed to the ancient Greek historian, Thucydides (about 460–395 BCE)
is one that has framed this book “that history is philosophy learned from examples”.
HISTORIOGRAPHY
Of course, I acknowledge that other authors would most likely produce a different
narrative based on their different methods, beliefs, and goals. The study of the ways
different historians apply different methods, values, and goals to make different
histories is called historiography.
Theoretical Lens
Different methods that an author uses to tell her history constitute the theoretical
lens or warrant that the author uses to support the claim she is making. Some of these
warrants include:
Great men change history. For example, an author might make the claim that
William Gilbert’s study of magnetism, which he presented in his book On Magnetism,
led people to understand how models could be used to understand phenomenon and
changed the course of history.
Historical forces. Other authors might claim that ideas or movements become
irresistible forces that always win out, usually because they are ethically or cogni-
tively superior. Examples could include authors who argue that although the Catholic
Church persecuted Galileo Galilei for his support of the theory that the sun was the
center of the universe rather than the earth, this theory was ultimately shown to be
correct and Galileo was recognized as a hero of science while the Church was seen
as out of step with ‘true’ knowledge. These authors argue that this example shows
the march of science over theology or the limitations of the worldview of medieval
scholasticism and the strength of the scientific revolution and the mechanistic
worldview.
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PREFACE
How societies/civilizations respond to a crisis of ideas or technology determines
whether they will survive. In this case, an author might make the claim that Euro-
centric science stopped developing and growing in Italy because Italian science
remained in the thrall of absolute rulers rather than in a community of practitioners.
On the other hand, in a country like England where experimental philosophy was
organized and controlled by a community of practitioners, Eurocentric science
continued to develop.
Dialectical argument. We will look at this form of reasoning in a little more
detail in Chapter 2 where you will have the chance to explore a range of different
forms of reasoning associated with Eurocentric science. Dialectical argument is also a
strategy authors use to present their history. Since people began to ask questions about
what is real and how we come to know, this form of argument has been central and
remains central to contemporary philosophies and religions. The goal of dialectical
argument is achieving truth through rational discussion. Generally a dialectical argu-
ment is a dialogue in which one participant makes a statement or claim. The other
participant seeks internal contradictions and consistencies in the claim and associated
justification, which through dialogue initiate modifications to the initial statement,
so that a new claim is made. In this way, new knowledge is constructed. One example
of this in Eurocentric science is the historic conflict between the biological theories of
natural economy and natural selection with natural selection winning out but perhaps
including some elements of natural economy.
Geography determines the character of people and gives them advantages and
disadvantages. An example of this is historian Fredrick Jackson Turner’s theory that
the Frontier shaped the American mind to be open to new ideas and new possibilities.
An example from Eurocentric science could be the argument that the names scientists
give to their discoveries, such as the whimsical names like quark and charm developed
by US physicists to name fundamental particles and forces, is an outcome of their
national character.
The outcome of ideas and practices coming together and their effect cannot be
predicted. Daniel Boorstin1 sought to differentiate between people who actually
did stuff and those who were famous for being famous. He said, “time makes heroes
but dissolves celebrities”. Boorstin argued that great creators and discoverers put
together ideas and practices in new innovative ways. For example, a thesis based
on this method might be that a nameless Dutch optician invented the telescope (see
Chapter 5 for more), but when it found its way to Italy Galileo Galilei, the famous
Italian natural philosopher, refined it and looked up into the Heavens. The rest, they
say, is history.
The relationship between history and the writing of history is ambiguous. This thesis
could be called a critical theory approach to history. It encourages researchers and
readers to ask what events were available for the telling, which events did an author
include or leave out, and what that suggests about the author’s values and beliefs. It is
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PREFACE
in the selection of events for the telling that we can have a sense of the values an
author holds with respect to the context about which she is writing.
Of course, my introduction to historical methods, which can be used to understand
the emergence of aspects of Eurocentric science, is by no means exhaustive. There
are a number of important approaches that I have not mentioned, such as a Marxist
approach (although that does share some similarities with the critical approach). Since
this book is about science, another theme that I could have mentioned is a rationalist
thesis about the role of theory and experimentation in the progress of science, which
gives precedence to theory or an inductivist thesis that in turn gives precedence to
experiment. These are themes we will explore a little more in the following chapters.
Another method is one that sees the history of Eurocentric science as a direct march of
progress with no side streets or diversions. This method is characteristic of scientism
(see Chapter 5), a simplistic representation of scientific endeavor. A current method
or thesis is based around neoliberalism; the idea that through hard work you and
everyone else can be successful and if you are not successful, you must not have tried
hard enough.
THE NEED FOR A HISTORY OF SCIENCE
Eurocentric science is a cultural-historical phenomenon that emerged over time
beginning with practices and theorizing associated with diverse cultures from China,
India, Africa, Middle East and Europe. As a form of systematic knowledge it has
become a global behemoth, isolated from the sites of local knowledge from which
it emerged. As the field of natural philosophy emerged in Europe, some practices or
activities became specialized and reified to the extent that by the late seventeenth
century natural philosopher Isaac Newton could dismiss critics of his research on
optics2 for not following his methods correctly. In the present, science has emerged
as a bounded field that is supported by hundreds of different publications across many
sub-fields. Today the boundaries of science are reinforced by the existence of accepted
strategies for discovery, validation, and evaluation in science. However, we are left
with the question of what constitutes the practices of science and how knowing these
practices can make one more knowledgeable about science and a better educator
of science. Much of the science students complete in schools is associated with
understanding the validation practices of science so there is less attention given to
understanding discovery and evaluation practices and the learning of practices such
as understanding the development and use of models for investigating questions and
peer review of knowledge claims; practices associated with discovery and evaluation,
respectively.
I believe that if a goal for science education is that students develop a richer
understanding of science, all educators need to have a more robust understanding
of the nature of science and, in particular, scientific inquiry. By nature of science I do
not mean a single prescription for what science is and how it should be conducted.
I do mean developing students’ capacities to experience phenomena more deeply,
to assist them to understand whether a question in its current form can be examined
using scientific practices, what constitutes an explanation or an argument, and how
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