HPS&ST Note, July
Dear Colleagues,
The following HPS&ST announcements might be of
interest.
# Science & Education
Current Issue (Vol. 24 Nos.4-5, July 2015)
Thematic Issue: The Interplay of Physics and Mathematics:
Historical, Philosophical
and Pedagogical Considerations
and Pedagogical Considerations
Guest editor: Ricardo Karam
# Science & Education
Open Access Articles
Springer have placed 14 articles, published between
2009 and the current issue, on its open access list. By going to the link
below, pdf files of all 14 articles can be downloaded gratis.
The downloadable articles include:
Language
of Physics, Language of Math: Disciplinary Culture and Dynamic Epistemology
(Edward Redish & Eric Kuo, 2015)
(Edward Redish & Eric Kuo, 2015)
Values
and Objectivity in Science: Value-Ladenness, Pluralism and the Epistemic
Attitude
(Martin Carrier, 2013)
(Martin Carrier, 2013)
Science,
Worldviews, and Education
(Hugh Gauch, 2009)
(Hugh Gauch, 2009)
# 13th Biennial
International IHPST Conference
The preliminary program (concurrent oral session and poster
session) of the Conference at the can be viewed at: http://www.abq.org.br/ihpst2015/schedule.html.
# Review
of Science, Mathematics and ICT Education Vol.9 No.1 (HPS&ST special
issue)
The six articles can be downloaded gratis at:
# Vale Michael Martin (1932-2015)
Michael Martin, a philosopher of science whose work
was known to many in the HPS&ST community, died two months ago in Lexington
Massachusetts at age 83 years. After his first teaching appointment at
the University of Colorado (1962-1965), the remainder of his university career
was spent in the Philosophy Department at Boston University (1965-1996).
There he was a contributor to the university’s stellar Centre for History and
Philosophy of Science which was overseen by Robert S. Cohen and Marx W.
Wartofsky.
In the 1950s Michael served in the US Marine Corps
where, among other things, he developed a lifelong commitment to fitness and
healthy living. He spent time in gyms, including his own basic home gym,
some decades before most philosophers had even formulated the concept of
fitness let alone embodied it. In his early adult years he took up boxing
and competed in the prestigious Golden Gloves national competition. After
military service he completed his bachelor’s degree in science (1956) at
Arizona State University and master’s degree in philosophy (1958) at the
University of Arizona, then moved on to do his PhD in philosophy at Harvard
University (1962).
On retirement Michael battled for almost two decades
with the progressive debilitation of Parkinson’s disease. Nevertheless he
kept occupied with a wide range of scholarly and other engagements. He
published books, edited anthologies and wrote papers on philosophy of social
science and philosophy of religion; he indulged his thespian interests with a
Boston amateur theatre company; he did charcoal drawings; he wrote an
academy-based detective story.
Perhaps most surprising to those who knew only of
Michael’s philosophical life, he took up voice lessons in order to sing the
demanding Schubert lieder. Jay Hullett, a
former Boston philosophy colleague and now publisher, commented that ‘Mike's
singing Schubert was a dimension of his mind and spirit that I'd not known in
all of those years in which we'd been colleagues, and it made me aware of a
spiritual/artistic/poetic depth of his that, alongside his intellectual and
physical power, his deep decency and generosity of spirit, made me see him as
somehow an almost uniquely "complete" man’.
Michael enjoyed a long, happy and fruitful marriage to
the philosopher Jane Roland Martin with whom he raised two sons, Timothy and
Thomas, and with whom he enjoyed the company of five grandchildren. Doubtless
he would say that his marriage to Jane was the best thing he ever did.
It was my pleasure and good fortune to meet Michael
and Jane during my first sabbatical leave at Boston University’s HPS Centre in
1978. They were generous and gracious hosts to an unknown, young
Australian departmental visitor. Their hospitality included being
welcomed to dinners at their delightful family home in Newton where listening
to Jane play the family’s grand piano was a special treat. I have had the
good pleasure of being able to maintain fairly regular contact with them both
in the intervening almost 40 years.
Michael was noteworthy for being a philosopher of
science who took time to seriously engage with issues in science education at a
time when only a handful of philosophers did so. His 1972 book, Concepts
of Science Education: A Philosophical Analysis was the first English
language book to address philosophical issues in science education. The
book's five chapters, dealing with Inquiry, Explanation, Definition,
Observation and Goals of Science Education, provide ample evidence of the
usefulness of philosophical training for the improvement of instruction, texts
and statements of aims and objectives in science courses. The book was
republished in 1985.
Michael’s 1971 paper on Objectivity, in the British
Journal for Philosophy of Science, correctly stated that some philosophers
of science ‑ most notably Thomas Kuhn ‑ have argued that the objective testing
of scientific theories under certain circumstances is impossible. A theory in
one paradigm tradition cannot contradict a theory in a different paradigm
tradition since no term in the one theory means exactly the same as any term in
the other theory. For the same reason no consequence of the one theory can be
the same as any consequence of the other theory. Thus, according to Kuhn,
theories in different paradigm traditions are incommensurable. If this is so,
the standard view of scientific theory testing is incorrect, and the door is
then opened to other views of theory testing and decision making, including as
some would have it, politics, ideology, business interests, or in Kuhn’s
infamous words ‘mob psychology’.
There are obvious and immediate implications of this
argument for what is taught about ‘the nature of science’ in school science
programmes. There are also implications for the orthodox justifications
of making science a compulsory school subject. These implications are
very close to the surface in all situations where the teaching of science needs
to be defended.
Kuhn’s argument had enormous influence across the
academy, including in science education where it was used to launch numerous
‘counter hegemonic’ and supposedly ‘progressive’ research programmes.
Michael provided a nice, careful, technical, step-by-step demolition of Kuhn’s
argument, showing that his premises are false and his incommensurable
conclusion does not follow. A great pity that science education was at
the time so distant from philosophy of science; a state of affairs neatly
captured in the title of a 1985 article by Richard Duschl ‑ ‘Science Education
and Philosophy of Science Twenty-five, Years of Mutually Exclusive
Development’. Michael’s arguments could have been profitably attended to
by the many educators who were so mesmerised by Kuhn that the discipline became
a ‘Kuhnian cheer squad’, in the words of Cathleen Loving and William Cobern
(2000).
The arguments well displayed the central point of
Michael’s book: seemingly technical issues in philosophy (in this case,
meaning, sense, reference and theory appraisal) have consequences for practical
matters in education. Get the former wrong and precious resources are
wasted in the latter by travelling down blind alleys or along mistaken routes.
In a 1994 contribution to Science & Education
on pseudoscience and the paranormal, Michael argued for his expansive,
Enlightenment understanding of science education, saying:
I will maintain that learning about pseudoscience and the paranormal
should be part of the goal of science education. The goal should not be
to instil such beliefs in students but to get them to think critically about
such beliefs. Science education, I will maintain, should not be narrowly
conceived. The goal of science education should not just be to get
students to understand science but to be scientific; that is, to tend to
think and act in a scientific manner in their daily lives. Learning to
think critically about pseudoscientific and paranormal beliefs is part of being
scientific.
With the mushrooming of pseudoscientific and
paranormal industries and ideologies that prey on the gullibility of so many,
and for which routine education seems such an inadequate antidote – such
deliberate, fostered and practised expansion of the scientific outlook or
‘habit of mind’ or ‘scientific temper’ is not an idle pedagogical
indulgence. (The thematic issue on ‘Pseudoscience in Society and Schools’
of Science & Education (vol.20 nos.5-6, 2011) examines this topic.)
Michael was an avowed defender of atheism, writing
several articles, books and editing anthologies on the subject. In his Atheism:
A Philosophical Justification (1990) he provided a brief statement of the
modest purpose of his defence of atheism:
The aim of
this book is not to make atheism a popular belief or even to overcome its
invisibility. My object is not utopian. It is merely to provide good reasons
for being an atheist. Atheism is defended and justified. … My object is
to show that atheism is a rational position and that belief in God is not. I am
quite aware that theistic beliefs are not always based on reason. My claim is
that they should be. (p.24)
Michael was careful, informed and considered in all he
wrote; the very model of an analytic philosopher. After the foregoing
modest statement, he wrote:
This book has limitations not only from an atheistic point of view, but
from a general philosophical one as well. …no extended theory of rationality or
justification is given. … Indeed, it seems to me that any attempt to justify
them by subsuming them under a larger theory would be premature, given the
controversial state of general epistemological theories. (p.25)
But this was not an advance excuse for shallowness or
cavalier treatment. The book has 476 pages followed by 53 pages of notes
and references. Scholarship, detail, logical argument and modesty
typified of all of Michael’s work.
Abner Shimony, a Boston University physicist and
philosopher colleague said that ‘Michael did not muddy the academic
waters’. At a time when obfuscatory writing and ill-informed commentary
is rife in education (and elsewhere in the academy), Michael Martin’s patient
and clear analyses are a wonderful legacy for the discipline. So also was
the never dispirited or defeatist manner in which he dealt with the cruel
constrictions of the illness that progressively immobilised him and finally
finished his life. He remained patient and good humoured to the
end. Sadly Michael died just two weeks short of being able to celebrate
with Jane the 53rd anniversary of their marriage.
All in the HPS&ST community and beyond who knew
Michael and his work extend their condolences and warm wishes to Jane, his
sons, and the Martin family.
Michael R. Matthews, School of Education, UNSW.
Some References
Duschl,
R.A.: 1985, ‘Science Education and Philosophy of Science Twenty-five, Years of
Mutually Exclusive Development’, School Science and Mathematics 87(7),
541-555.
Loving,
C.C. & Cobern, W.A.: 2000, ‘Invoking Thomas Kuhn: What Citation Analysis
Reveals for Science Education’, Science & Education 9(1-2), 187-206.
Martin,
M.: 1971, ‘Referential Variance and Scientific Objectivity’, British Journal
for Philosophy of Science 22(1), pp.17-26.
Martin,
M.: 1971, ‘The Use of Pseudo-Science in Science Education’, Science
Education 55, 53-56.
Martin,
M.: 1972, Concepts of Science Education: A Philosophical Analysis,
Scott, Foresman & Co., New York (reprint, University Press of America,
1985) 17-26.
Martin,
M.: 1974, ‘The Relevance of Philosophy of Science for Science Education’, Boston
Studies in Philosophy of Science 32, 293-300
Martin,
M.: 1979, `Connections between Philosophy of Science and Science Education', Studies
in Philosophy & Education 9, 329-332.
Martin,
M.: 1984, ‘Does the Evidence Confirm Theism more than Naturalism?’ International
Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 16, pp.257-262.
Martin,
M.: 1986/1991, ‘Science Education and Moral Education’, Journal of Moral
Education 15(2), 99-108. Reprinted in M.R. Matthews (ed.) History,
Philosophy and Science Teaching: Selected Readings, OISE Press, Toronto,
1991, pp.102-114.
Martin,
M.: 1987, The Legal Philosophy of H.L.A. Hart: A Critical Appraisal,
Temple University Press, Philadelphia.
Martin,
M.: 1994, ‘Pseudoscience, the Paranormal, and Science Education’, Science
& Education 3(4), 357-372.
Martin,
M.: 1990, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, Temple University
Press, Philadelphia.
Martin,
M.: 1993, The Case Against Christianity, Temple University Press,
Philadelphia.
Martin,
M.: 2000, Verstehen: A Critical Appraisal,
Transaction Books, New Brunswick, NJ.
Martin,
M. (ed.): 2007, The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge.
Martin,
M. & McIntyre, L.C. (eds): 1994, Readings in the Philosophy of Social
Science, MIT Press, Cambridge MA.
Martin,
M. & Augustine, K. (eds): 2015 The Myth of an Afterlife, Roman &
Littlefield, Lantham, MD.
Full curriculum vitae at: http://infidels.org/library/modern/michael_martin/martin-bio.html
# Lessons from the
Enlightenment: A Research Project
Springer will publish an anthology on Current
Research in History, Philosophy and Science Teaching. It will contain
a section on Lessons from the Enlightenment. Science educators,
philosophers, historians who are working in the field are kindly invited to
contribute manuscripts for consideration and review.
The intention is for chapters in the section to
identify ‘what is living, and what is dead’, in the European Enlightenment
tradition, and show the tradition’s connection to multifarious current issues
and debates in science education.
More details can be had from the anthology editor:
Michael R. Matthews (m.matthews@unsw.edu.au)
# HPS&ST Handbook
Details at:
# Science Teaching: The Contribution of History
and Philosophy of Science Routledge book
Details at:
www.routledge.com/9780415519342
A review of the book by Gürol Irzik, a Turkish
philosopher of science, is available on the Springer Science & Education
journal site, where the first few pages of the review can also be read:
# Coming Conferences
July 22-25, 2015, 13th IHPST International Conference, Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil
Details
at: http://www.abq.org.br/ihpst2015/
August 3-8, 2015, 15th Congress of Logic, Methodology, and
Philosophy of Science, Helsinki, Finland
Details
at: http://www.helsinki.fi/clmps
August
31 – September 4, 2015, European Science Education Research Association
(ESERA), Helsinki, Finland
Details
at: http://www.esera.org/announcements/esera-announcements/esera-bi-annual-conference-to-be-held-in/
March 17-21, 2016, Philosophy of Education Society
(PES) annual conference, Toronto, Canada
April 8-12, 2016, AERA annual conference, Washington
DC.
Details
at: http://www.aera.net/
April 14-17, 2016, NARST annual conference, Baltimore,
USA
Details
at: http://www.narst.org/
A/Professor Michael R.
Matthews
School of Education,
University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia
Phone: 61-2-9418 3665
Email: m.matthews@unsw.edu.au
Foundation Editor Science
& Education
President,
Inter-Divisional Teaching Commission of DHST/DLMPS of IUHPS
Routledge author: www.routledge.com/9780415519342