Introduction
Considering, the previous publication entitled: The purpose of the emergence of history and philosophy science as a discipline. Now it’s possible to discuss the real interest in history and philosophy of science andthe lessons to be learned from its history for doctorate student. Here, the significant of the studying history and philosophy of science course for doctorate student will be discussed, based on the question ‘why learners from different professional background (student, teacher, researcher, etc.,) are interested in learning history and philosophy of science courses? I am very aware, the point that will be discussed in this essay, is either from, historical and/or philosophical point of view.
History and Philosophy of Science Helps learners to Develop Reflective Practice in Doing Science.
Philosophy and history of science as the name given to that branch of philosophy that reflects on and critically analyzes science and tries to understand the aims and methods of science, along with its principles, practices, and achievements, helps learner to develop reflective practice in doing science. That mean, when academics are engaged in the practice of science, they make, more or less tacitly, judgments about “good” science and make reflection on “good” science systematically and critically. It enables one not only to understand scientific practices better but also to take a critical stance towards some activities in academia (criticize). HPS also helps researchers to know the philosophical background (paradigm) of their research.
“Without the explicit formulation of the philosophical background—with implications for verification, explanation, knowledge of reality—researchers may remain innocently unaware of the deeper meaning and commitments of what they say or of how they conduct their research.” (Pring, 2000). As Science is a systematic and self-reflexive enterprise, thus Researcher is–or at least should be – interested in relevant insights about itself. Hence, Good researcher makes his/her paradigm explicit in his/her research report.
Moreover, learners develops flexibility in doing science by learning how HPS played an enormous influence that such histories have had on the legitimacy and self-image of the disciplines and also the adaptability that they have shown when faced with the conceptual and methodological changes that they have undergone. In short, it makes us think about what we are doing and why. It scrutinizes the goals and purposes of human activities (doing research or other), then questions the methods and procedures by which those goals and purposes are attained. In doing so, it attempts to justify the goals and improve the procedures.
History and Philosophy of Science Allows Learner to Learn from Previous Errors and strengths & excitement in Development of Science
Errors are an inescapable part of science. All science builds on past successes and failures and is both constrained and enabled by progress in the past. Science involves a process of continual inquiry, but the methods of inquiry and the questions asked are no more static than the world we study. Thus, truly to integrate research and teaching to foster learning in science we must accept science as it is really done. The HPS can help to show how investigators may be led astray and how the process of discovery can be improved. The historian James Atkinson has observed that scientists pay little attention to “the experiments that failed the approaches that did not work out, the speculations without sound empirical support, and the metaphysical underpinnings of the work that did not appear in print”. However, such failures are the purview of historians, and scientists can learn a great deal from their insights. Historians of science study the great episodes of scientific advance which led to exciting discoveries and to new and important knowledge. However, they also study the research programmes which failed to produce any advances, and the obstacles and difficulties which have sometimes stood in the way of scientific progress.
HPS also show the previous strengths and excitement in science, because historical perspective can help to illuminate why some science works better than other science. Just as the best of those concerned with biodiversity have realized the essentially historical evolutionary character of ecosystems, and just as geneticists and developmental biologists realize the essentially historical process of individual development through time, so all good scientists should acknowledge the essentially historical nature of science. Science is not a static method, unchanging over time. Rather science incorporates innovations and responds to changing environments in ways that produce an important historical record. Some science is better than other science in answering questions about the natural world and in moving us forward. All science builds on past successes and failures and is both constrained and enabled by progress in the past. Science involves a process of continual inquiry, but the methods of inquiry and the questions asked are no more static than the world we study.
Pedagogical Advantageous of Learning History and Philosophy of Science
As author presented, the purpose of history and philosophy of science courses for trainee teachers is twofold. First, they contribute to the higher-order understanding and valuation of science which can be passed on to students. Second, they give teachers additional and enriching material to teach. These together helps educator to gives them some clarity about themselves as educators (reflective), and the intellectual and moral requirements of being an educator; and something that gives them an idea about the personal and social aims of education. HPS trained teacher should ask students to reflect upon their activities when engaging in science, or studying science, is a way to enable them to understand themselves and their motivations more clearly. Having them ask – at whatever level - many of the questions that philosophers of science ask, actively engages them in the process of inquiry and challenges them to increase understanding of what they are doing. The aim is to give all students the opportunity to encompass the scientific and cultural background that allows them to become responsible citizens, capable of understanding and taking action in a world where science and technology occupy a predominant role. In short, HPS helps teachers to have an enthusiasm for and knowledge of science, and its role in the progress of society and culture, in order to inspire and motivate children to learn it; this type of ‘higher-level’ knowledge does not come from tactical-level courses on teaching method and classroom control techniques.
pedagogy that train a teacher, but the liberal arts Further, a teacher should have a cultivated mind, generally cultivated regardless of his field of special interest, for he must be a visible and moving representative of the cultural tradition to his students.
History and Philosophy of Science Provides A Greater Appreciation of How Discoveries Occur and Also Can be Used for Entertainment
Kuhn’s seminal work on scientific revolutionsused history to understand how discoveries occur andcome to be accepted. In fact, history is essential for understandinghow science advances, but the scientific literature does apoor job of documenting critical events in the process of discovery.For example, scientific papers seldom mention the critical roleof chance in discovery. As a case in point, we consider the associationof Helicobacter pylori with peptic ulcer disease, a discoverythat changed the treatment of this common disease and was recognizedby the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 2005. In their landmark paper, Marshall and Warren paid tribute to the role of serendipity in a single sentence: “At first plates were discarded after 2 days, but when the first positive plate was noted after it had beenleft in the incubator for 6 days during the Easter holiday, cultureswere done for 4 days”. Other than this casual reference to thereligious calendar, the role of chance is not mentioned elsewherein the paper. Marshall later acknowledged that prolonged incubationdue to the holiday was a critical event leading to their landmarkdiscovery. Decades of observations had suggested the presenceof bacteria in stomach lesions, but these observations couldnot be validated experimentally because the slow-growing organismhad not been successfully cultivated. The ability to grow H.pylori from stomach tissue allowed Marshall to establish causalityin his now-famous self-experimentation that fulfilled Koch’s postulates.A greater appreciation of the role of chance and serendipityin discovery could eventually result in reforms to promotetransformative curiosity-driven research as opposed to an exclusiveemphasis on hypothesis-driven and translational forms ofresearch.
HPS can be used for Entertainments. We can get some insight into such a perspective by reminding ourselves what aspects of the history of science do get mentioned in science textbooks, or in the popular media. They tend to be ‘human interest’ stories, appearing as mere garnishes to presentations of scientific content—stories of heroic scientists who overcame adversity, tragic scientists hampered by human limitations and circumstances, fortunate scientists who made great discoveries by exploiting chance happenings, strange scientists who engaged in bizarre experiments or devised fantastical theories, and so on. Such stories dominate the popular imagination concerning the history of science, whether they be about August Kekule´ discovering the structure of the benzene ring by dreaming of a snake biting its own tail, Alexander Fleming being led to penicillin through his mouldy petri dish, Benjamin Franklin confirming the nature of lightning by flying a kite in a thunderstorm or Galileo Galilei dropping balls from the leaning tower of Pisa to refute Aristotelian physics. Many of these stories are myths, even if they are not as crude as the iconic tale of how Isaac Newton discovered the universal law of gravitation thanks to an apple that fell on his head.The heroic tales or the bizarre anecdotes found in popular historical accounts do have positive functions in the rightcircumstances: they can give inspiration to students aspiring to enter science, or excite people’s curiosity about the process of science.
History and Philosophy of Science Helps The Student To Know The Nature Of Science
History and Philosophy of Science helps learner to identify nature science and the difference between fact and abstract concept. Studying history might undercut the reassuring myth about how science is done. Scientists do not really neatly observe nature in an absolutely “pure,” “detached,” and “objective” way. They do not begin only then to formulate alternative hypotheses to explain the observations and then to test those hypotheses in an unbiased and open process of experimentation. Instead, sensible scientists quite seriously develop hypotheses as they study the world, so that theory and experience are intertwined. And they quite reasonably design experimental tests that are at least as likely to support as to refute their hypotheses. If the tests suggest that their favorite hypotheses are inadequate, they also quite sensibly work at ways to fix the hypothesis and try again. No point in throwing out a perfectly good hypothesis that has and subsequently he and other historians have argued that a study of the rich examples of history tells us a great deal about how science works – and even about how we might make it work better. So, should we study history of science for similar reasons? Newton employed a fudge factor, Richard Westfall demonstrated in a 1973 article in Science (Westfall 1973, p. 751). Kepler was inspired by number mysticism (Koestler 1959; Holton 1973). Darwin was sickly and probably hypochondriacal and neurotic in a way that kept him at a particular project (whether coral reefs or barnacles) long after most would have declared a victory and moved on to other things (Desmond and Moore 1991). James Watson’s story about the double helix work with Crick, reconstructed as it undoubtedly is, probably reveals more about the realities of the human scientist and his contributions than Watson realized or might wish (Watson 1968). History, then, can show the weaknesses and humanity of scientists. This can have a reassuring effect for prospective young scientists who see that scientists are, after all, only human and that they themselves have a chance to join the ranks.
History and Philosophy of Show learner How Science is Influenced by Historical and Social Factors
The great pathologist Rudolf Virchow rejected the germ theory of disease because his passionate concern for social justice led him to attribute infectious diseases to poverty rather than to microbes. He actually had a point, but this example shows how science is not a purely objective endeavor that stands apart from society but rather that science and culture profoundly influence each other. This is most readily appreciated from a historical perspective. A scientist is a member of the human society and must operate in the context of this society. In conducting his scientific inquiries, the scientist must be guided by his sense of history otherwise he loses track of his observations, experiments, measurements and records of past scientific triumphs. Scientists must keep accurate records of the processes of their past achievements and failures as vital springboards for future researches. History is the collective memory of society, ―the repository of a people‘s consciousness‖ (Zeleza, 1990:1). No person can satisfactorily explain human conduct and human affairs without reference to the past. This gives rise to a third consideration, namely the way in which the very notion of science changes as its methods evolve. What precisely is the sort of knowledge at which scientists are aiming? Studying the history of science makes us see a dimension of intellectual work which is sometimes neglected, namely the cultural and spiritual context in which work is done. What appears to be insignificant at one moment can be of great importance later on. Thus Darwin would certainly have known about the work done by Mendel, but he didn’t take it into account. Mendel’s work didn’t answer the questions which Darwin was actually asking, as their approaches to their subject were so different.
Summary
History and Philosophy of Science helps learner to identify nature science and the difference between fact and abstract concept. Studying history might undercut the reassuring myth about how science is done. In addition, HPS can help learner to see how investigators may be led astray and how the process of discovery can be improved. The historian James Atkinson has observed that scientists pay little attention to “the experiments that failed the approaches that did not work out, the speculations without sound empirical support, and the metaphysical underpinnings of the work that did not appear in print. HPS also show the previous strengths and excitement in science, because historical perspective can help to illuminate why some science works better than other science. HPS helps learner to learner history and philosophy of science courses for trainee teachers is twofold. First, they contribute to the higher-order understanding and valuation of science which can be passed on to students. Second, they give teachers additional and enriching material to teach. Finally, History and Philosophy of Show learner How Science is Influenced by Historical and Social Factors
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