The unrecognized mechanism: History of science education in the 19th century (original) (raw)
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Despite the many assumptions that usually surround the historical role of science education in scientific practice, scholarship on the subject has been scattered, disjointed and usually undertaken en route to other pursuits. It is the purpose of this paper to show that science education is very often implied in much of the recent scholarship in the history of science and to bring to the fore science education as an unrecognized integrating mechanism within 19th century science. It proposes to do so, firstly, by highlighting some ways that established historiographical narratives centered in the 19th century are enriched by taking into consideration the role of science education and, secondly, by underlining how science education facilitated and contributed to the circulation and appropriation of scientific practices within 19th century European space. To achieve these goals, specific case studies will be presented from the German lands, post-Napoleonic France, England and early Modern Greece, each one focusing on different aspects of the interplay between science and education, across different national and institutional spaces.
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2008
In the past the gap between humanistic and scientific culture was much more evident than it is nowadays. After centuries of prejudice about scientific learning and discoveries, when science was underestimated as a kind of pseudo-culture; after generations of scientists considered extravagant people, or worst, outsiders, as regards such rules imposed by religious and moral beliefs and code, the primary function performed by scientific education has now become unquestionable. In this paper we shall try to deal with the issue of scientific education from a historical-foundational perspective. We shall try to show the importance of introducing the history of science as an integrant part of the culture of scientific education to the extent of considering history of science either an indissoluble pedagogical element of culture or the basis of inter-discipline. This project-research is not finished, so we only present the outline of the problem, some hypothesis and applications. Beyond, it...
In this paper, I describe the strong and reciprocal relations between the emergence of the specialized expert in the natural sciences and the establishment of science education, in early Modern Greece. Accordingly, I show how science and public education interacted within the Greek state from its inception in the early 1830, to the first decade of the twentieth century, when the University of Athens established an autonomous Mathematics and Physics School. Several factors are taken into account, such as the negotiations of Western educational theories and practices within a local context, the discourses of the science savants of the University of Athens, the role of the influential Greek pedagogues of the era, the state as an agent which imposed restrictions or facilitated certain developments and finally the intellectual and cultural aspirations of the nation itself. Science education is shown to be of fundamental importance for Greek scientists. The inclusion of science within the school system preceded and promoted the appearance of a scientific community and the institution of science courses was instrumental for the emergence of the first trained Greek scientists. Thus, the conventional narrative that would have science appearing in the classrooms as an aftermath of the emergence of a scientific community is problematized.
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Online Submission, 2007
The aim of this paper is to consider some issues in the historical international development of science education making comparisons between the educational systems of Britain and the United States of America. The author's particular interest relates to the role of the textbook in science education, so this is area on which this study will concentrate. Some issues for discussion are: i. The transmission of scientific knowledge through textbooks both within and between Britain and America. ii. Chemistry laboratory manuals, heurism and the practical teaching of chemistry in Britain and America. iii. Gender issues in science textbook writing in Britain and America. iv. Curricula in science education; the case of physiography. v. Administrative issues and committee processes. vi. Adult education and the public understanding of science. These and other factors have had economic and other consequences far outside those that might have been anticipated.
Introduction to special issue of Histories: (New) Histories of Science, in and beyond Modern Europe
Special issue of "Histories" (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/histories/special\_issues/histories\_of\_science)), 2024
In this Special Issue, (New) Histories of Science, in and beyond Modern Europe, we do not attempt to provide an all-encompassing overview of all research areas, methodological and theoretical approaches, and narratives that constitute the histories of the various sciences. Instead, we present contributions on a broad spectrum of current research topics and (new) approaches, highlighting their ramifications and illustrating their ties to neighboring disciplines and (interdisciplinary) areas of research, e.g., philosophy of science, science and technology studies, gender studies, or intellectual history. Moreover, the contributions exemplify how histories of science can be written in ways that not only move across but also challenge temporal and spatial categories and categorizations, including hegemonic understandings of “modernity”, Eurocentric views of the development of science and the humanities, or certain notions of center-periphery. They deal with histories of specific disciplines, specific research objects and phenomena, and with specific practices, while they also explore the historicity of certain ideals of scientificity (in the sense of the German Wissenschaftlichkeit). Furthermore, some papers are dedicated to selected methods and perspectives of current approaches in the histories of science. Among them is a focus on practices, including the everyday actions involved in engaging in science, but also on the specific spaces and places of knowledge production, as well as on the media of knowledge transfer and communication.
Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 2012
Zusammenfassung: Wissenschaft und die Geschichte der Wissenschaften. Begriffliche Innovationen im Zuge der Historisierung der Wissenschaften im 18. Jahrhundert. Die historische Rekonstruktion der Wissenschaften ist auf vielfältige Weise mit philosophischen Diskussionen des 18. Jahrhunderts verknüpft. Insbesondere teilen die Philosophiegeschichtsschreibung und die Historiographie der Wissenschaften das konzeptuelle Problem, eine Vielzahl wissenschaftlicher bzw. philosophischer Praktiken unter einem gemeinsamen Oberbegriff zu versammeln. Die historische Analyse der Entwicklung der Wissenschaften bietet hierzu einen Zugang, in dem die Definition von "Wissenschaft" bzw. "Wissenschaften" ebenso zur Diskussion steht wie die Systematisierung der Wissenschaften. In einer Analyse dieses begrifflichen Problems und einer Typologisierung wissenschaftshistorischer Ansätze des 18. Jahrhunderts wird die enge Interaktion philosophischer und wissenschaftshistorischer bzw.-allgemeiner-wissenschaftsreflexiver Diskurse im 18. Jahrhundert aufgezeigt. Summary: Science and the History of the Sciences. Conceptual Innovations Through Historicizing Science in the Eighteenth Century. The historical reconstruction of science is linked to philosophical discussions of the eighteenth century in many ways. The historiography of philosophy and the historiography of science share the conceptual problem to assemble the multitude of scientific and philosophical practices under general concepts. The historical analysis of scientific progress offers a clue by problematizing definitions of "science" and "sciences" as well as the system of sciences as a whole. By analyzing these conceptual problems and the typology of historical enterprises of the eighteenth century, this paper will discuss the close interrelations which existed between philosophical and historical discourses of eighteenth-century reflection on science.
Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, 2010
Introduction: The many faces of scientific textbooks Textbooks have a dubious role in the historiography of science. At first glance, the number of treatises and papers on Newton's Principia or on Mendeleev's Principles of Chemistry testify to the existence of a well established subject of study. Once, however, we move away from research on such monumental works, a curious silence prevails. Very few historical studies have been devoted to science education textbooks or to the role they played in the formation of modern science (Kohlstedt 2005, Bensaude-Vincent 2006). The intention of this paper is to show how the examination of science textbooks can lead to some interesting and original conclusions, especially when social, economical and scientific formations in the 'periphery' of scientific production are considered 1. By describing the typology of creation and publication of textbooks used in science education in the early Greek State, we aim to show that textbooks can act as both valuable mediators between the historiography of science and the historiography of education, as well as signifiers of the complex interplay between the social, political and ideological framework of each case and the scientific practice taking place within it. The very concept of the scientific textbook is a somewhat recent arrival. It acquired its present status as "a book used in the study of a subject as one containing a presentation of the principles of a subject or as a literary work relevant to the study of a subject" 2 only during the last decades of the 18 th century (Brock 1975, Patiniotis 2006). As far as philosophy of science is concerned, a textbook is the 'last existential act' of the scientific community and thus the least interesting of its practices (Brooke 2000) 3. Going back to the writings of Auguste Comte, for example, the scientific textbook shifts from representing the historical to describing the dogmatic order of science, as science mature (Comte 1830). On the other side of the positivistic fence, Gaston Bachelard describes the creation of the textbook as an effect of the 'epistemological rupture' between the pro-and meta-scientific era of a discipline (Bachelard 1938). Even T. S Kuhn's locus classicus, The Structure of Scientific 1 The concept of the 'center' versus the 'periphery' has come under some well deserved scrutiny in recent historiography of science (Gavroglou 2003, Patiniotis 2006). Here, it is used to denote cultural and scientific spaces which did not have a noticeable effect in the formation of the canonical scientific theories of the 18 th and 19 th century. The Greek speaking, mostly Orthodox communities in the Ottoman Empire or abroad were, in this strict sense, in the periphery. Considerations on a methodology of historiographical textbook research Research on the role of science textbooks seems, thus, to call for a more detailed examination of methodological assumptions usually taken at face value. The first such assumption is the dichotomy between 'science in action' and 'textbook science', a differentiation stemming from the traditional view of textbooks. In scientific spaces similar to the early Greek State, where a scientific community, with all its accompanying practices, did not exist in the classical sense, but where science textbooks were nevertheless published, these two images of science become blurred. Science education comes to the forefront as a candidate for the defining action of the scientific community. As a result, it must be considered an open question whether the unnamed, everyday scientific textbook helps formulate the practice of the scientific community and not the other way around. Secondly, the two overlapping definitions of a science textbook, that of a 'book used in teaching science ' in contrast to a 'book intended for use in teaching science'
The History of Science as European Self-Portraiture
European Review, 2006
Since the Enlightenment, the history of science has been enlisted to show the unity and distinctiveness of Europe. This paper, written on the occasion of the award of the 2005 Erasmus Prize to historians of science Simon Schaffer and Steven Shapin, traces the intertwined narratives of the history of science and European modernity from the 18th century to the present. Whether understood as triumph or tragedy (and there have been eloquent proponents of both views), the Scientific Revolution has been portrayed as Europe's decisive break with tradition – the first such break in world history and the model for all subsequent epics of modernization in other cultures. The paper concludes with reflections on how a new history of science, exemplified in the work of Shapin and Schaffer, may transform the self-image of Europe and conceptions of truth itself.