Experiments in Science and in Science Education: Some Historical and Philosophical Considerations

Michael R. Matthews,

School of Education, University of New South Wales [email protected]

Learning About Science (Harvard C’tee 1945)

# the comparison of scientific with other modes of thought, # the relations of science with its own past and with general human history, # and of science with problems of human society

.

Learning About Science (AAAS 1990)

“

The teaching of science must explore the interplay between science and the intellectual and cultural traditions in which it is firmly embedded. Science has a history that can demonstrate the relationship between science and the wider world of ideas issues

.”

and can illuminate contemporary

Learning About Science (NRC 1996)

# That scientific literacy

also includes understanding the nature of science, the scientific enterprise, and the role of science in society and personal life.

# What science is, what

science is not, what science can and cannot do, and how science

contributes to culture. (NRC 1996, p.2

from

Learning About Science

to

Nature of Science (NOS)

in many national curricula

Adding Experiment to NOS Lists

Khine (2012)

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“From Nature of Science (NOS) to Features of Science (FOS)” (Matthews 2012)

A Common NOS List (Norm Lederman & colleagues)

(1) Empirical basis (2) Difference between laws and theories

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Lederman 2002, 2004, 2007 (3) Creative (4) Observation is theory dependent (5) Cultural embededness (6) Scientific method (7) Tentativeness of scientific knowledge

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Thousands of citations Pros and cons of any NOS list

Adding Experiment to NOS Lists (Matthews 2012)

From NOS to Features of Science (FOS) Khine (2012) (8) Experimentation (9) Idealisation (10) Models (11) Values (12) Mathematisation (13) Technology (14) Explanation (15) Worldviews (16) Theory choice

Early (1980) recognition of experiment

“Science, or the search for Matthews (1980) truth, is itself practical. We identify problems, design experiments, conduct research, make choices, manipulate materials and instruments.

A scientific experiment is a highly constrained, and in many ways artificial, situation. Nature is invariably ‘tortured’ in order to expose its secrets .” (p.83)

Matthews (1980)

“The result of an experiment is not just another observation among many we might have got by walking around with our eyes open. It is the controlled attempt to isolate and manipulate in the real the objects and processes which we have utilised and defined in our theoretical discourse … “Our instruments and measuring devices are not just to enable better observation, they are, rather, to connect with and ‘plug into’ processes in the real and be causally acted upon by these processes. …..an ammeter ‘indicates’ current by being one physical system which is causally interacting with another, and ultimately a needle moves on a graduated scale. (p.112)

Galilean-Newtonian Experimental Tradition (1994)

Galileo was a technician and an experimentalist. He put great effort into devising, making, and popularizing novel technical instruments. He was responsible for creating the pulsilogium, the bilancetta, the compasso di proporzione, the thermoscopium, the telescope, and he drew workable plans for the pendulum clock … He also measured and made calculations of pendulum swings. ..

Matthews 1994

Galilean Idealisations

“But his measurements and experimentation were directed; they were measurements of behavior in circumstances dictated by his theoretical conceptualizations. Further, as we have seen in his debate with del Monte, the theoretical conceptualization enabled him to identify "accidental" departures from the ideal. Once this was done, allowances could be made, and the experiment refined.

Galileo’s Law of Chords

In 1602 Galileo made this assertion that “The time of descent along any chord of a vertical circle to its lowest point remains the same, regardless of the length and slope of the chord.” Basis for isochronic motion of pendulum claims

Galileo’s Law of Chords

Problem statement Galileo’s Proof

Experimental Proof Guadagni (1764) Pavia University (2010)

Galilean Experiment as Exemplar of the Scientific Revolution (2000) “I claim that the 17 th century’s analysis of pendulum motion is a particularly apt window Matthews 2000 through which to view the methodological heart of the scientific revolution. More particularly, the debate between the Aristotelian Guidobaldo del Monte and Galileo over the latter’s pendular claims, represents, in microcosm, the larger methodological struggle between Aristotelianism and the new science. “ (p.xxv)

Galilean Experiment as Exemplar of the Scientific Revolution

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I see this struggle as being over the legitimacy of idealisation in science, and the utilisation of mathematics in the construction and interpretation of experiments.

Guidabaldo del Monte

• • • •

Great 16 th century mathematician and engineer Translator of Archimedes work Director of the Venice arsenal Patron of Galileo ; securing Galileo’s first position as teacher of mathematics at Pisa University (1588-1592), and his second academic position as a lecturer in mathematics at Padua University (1592-1610)

Science & Metaphysics: First Aristotelian Obstacle to Experiment

I. Science, epistēmē, was to be of things that moved naturally; that had their principle of movement within themselves. There could be no science of accidental or violent motion, of things whose movement came from without.

‘There is no science which deals with the accidental’ Metaphysics Bk.VI, 2

Science & Metaphysics: Second Aristotelian Obstacle to Experiment

2. ‘Science came from observation: ‘Knowledge of nature is ….always and properly given by perception ’ (De Caelo 306a) ‘If we cannot trust the eye, what can we trust?’ Galileo and the New Science rejected both principles.

Continuing science education concern with observation, and debates about objective and subjective observation, betray a lingering Aristotelianism

Historical Recognition of Experiment

Historical Recognition of Experiment

Francis Bacon

(1620)

Francis Bacon

Our logic instructs the understanding and trains it, not (as common logic does) to grope and clutch at abstracts with feeble mental tendrils, but to dissect nature truly, and to discover the powers and actions of bodies and their laws limed in matter. Hence this science takes its origin not only from the nature of the mind but from the nature of things;

•

and therefore it is no wonder if it is strewn and illustrated throughout with observations and experiments of nature as samples of our art.

Historical Recognition of Experiment

Immanuel Kant

(1787)

Immanuel Kant

When Galileo caused balls, the weights of which he had himself previously determined, to roll down an inclined plane; when Torricelli made the air carry a weight which he had calculated beforehand to be equal to that of a definite volume of water … a light broke upon all students of nature. They learned that reason has insight only into that which it produces after a plan of its own, and that it must not allow itself to be kept, as it were, in nature’s leading-strings, but must itself show the way with principles of judgment based upon fixed laws, constraining nature to give answer to questions of reason’s own determining.

Immanuel Kant

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Accidental observations, made in obedience to no previously thought-out plan, can never be made to yield a necessary law, which alone reason is concerned to discover. … It is thus that the study of nature has entered on the secure path of a science, after having for so many centuries been nothing but a process of merely random groping. (Kant 1787/1933, p. 20)

Historical Recognition of Experiment

Antonio Gramsci

(1933)

Antonio Gramsci

(1933) There can be no doubt that the rise of the experimental method separates two historical worlds, two epochs, and initiates the process of dissolution of theology and metaphysics and the process of development of modern thought whose consummation is in the philosophy of praxis. Scientific experiment is the first cell of the new method of production, of the new form of active union of man and nature. The scientist-experimenter is also a worker, not a pure thinker, and his thought is continually controlled by practice and vice versa, until there is formed the perfect unity of theory and practice. (Gramsci 1971, p.446) Marxist tradition’s recognition of the material/practical side of experimentation

Historical Recognition of Experiment

Gaston Bachelard

(1934) Scientific observation is always polemical; it either confirms or denies a prior thesis, a preexisting model, an observational protocol. It shows as it demonstrates; it establishes a hierarchy of appearances; it transcends the immediate; it reconstructs first its own models and then reality. And once the step is taken from observation to experimentation, the polemical character of knowledge stands out even more sharply. (Bachelard 1934/1984, p. 13)

Bachelard

Now phenomena must be selected, filtered, purified, shaped by instruments; indeed, it may well be the instruments that produce the phenomenon in the first place. And instruments are nothing but theories materialized. The phenomena they produce bear the stamp of theory throughout. (Bachelard 1934/1984, p. 13) When one has fully comprehended … that experimentation is always dependent on some prior intellectual construct, then it is obvious why one should look to the abstract for proof of the coherence of the concrete. (Bachelard 1934/1984, p. 41)

Historical Recognition of Experiment

Alexandre Koyré

(1953)

Alexandre Koyré

•

… observation and experience – in the meaning of brute, common-sense observation and experience – had a very small part in the edification of modern science; one could even say that they constituted the chief obstacles that it encountered on its way. … the empiricism of modern science is not experiential; it is

experimental

. (Koyré 1968, p. 90)

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To what degree is this recognised in science education research?

Historical Recognition of Experiment

Richard S. Westfall

(1988)

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Beyond the ranks of historians of science, in my opinion, the scientific revolution is frequently misunderstood. A vulgarized conception of the scientific method, which one finds in elementary textbooks, a conception which places overwhelming emphasis on the collection of empirical information from which theories presumably emerge spontaneously, has contributed to the misunderstanding

Richard S. Westfall

In fact medieval philosophy asserted that observation is the foundation of all knowledge, and medieval science (which certainly did exist) was a sophisticated systematization of common sense and of the basic observations of the senses. Modern science was born in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the denial of both. (Westfall 1988, p. 5) To what degree has this been recognised in science education research?

Philosophers Neglect of Experiment [random anthologies]

Philosophers Neglect of Experiment

Brody (1970) 43 chapters zero on experiment

Philosophers Neglect of Experiment

Klemke et al (1988)

• 28 chapters zero on experiment

Philosophers Neglect of Experiment

Balashov et al (2002)

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27 chapters zero on experiment

Philosophers Neglect of Experiment

Lange (2007) 38 chapters zero on experiment

Philosophers Neglect of Experiment

Boyd et al (1991)

41 chapters 1 on experiment (Hacking)

Philosophers Neglect of Experiment

55 chapters 1 on experiment (T. Arabatzis) Psillos & Curd (2008) “The philosophy of experimentation reflects a promising shift from the exclusive philosophical preoccupation with the end products of scientific activity to a systematic investigation of that activity itself. This shift has led to a novel view of science … the implications of this more inclusive point of view are not fully worked out.

” (p.168)

Experiment and School Laboratory Work

Woolnough (1991)

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We need to be clear about worthwhile aims for practical work, and to ask hard questions about its efficacy

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Authors have accepted the importance of a holistic approach to practical work, moving away from the doing of standard practical exercises to verify some theory towards the tackling of investigational tasks to solve problems. (p.xiv)

Leach & Paulsen (1999) Wellington (1998)

Purposes of school lab work:

Derek Hodson review (1993)

• • • • • • • •

Motivation, by stimulating interest and enjoyment The acquisition of laboratory skills Promoting the learning of scientific knowledge Providing an insight into scientific method and developing expertise in using it.

Developing certain ‘scientific attitudes’, such as open mindedness, objectivity and a willingness to suspend judgement.

Modest success: ‘It seems that all that can be safely

concluded …is that some teachers are able to use practical work successfully, with some students, to achieve some of their goals’

Is understanding experiment itself a goal?

What is there to understand about experiment?

Hodson, D.: 1993 , ‘Re-Thinking Old Ways: Towards a More Critical Approach to Practical Work in Science’, Studies in Science Education 22, 85-142.

Hodson, D.: 1996 , ‘Laboratory Work as Scientific Method: Three Decades of Confusion and Distortion’, Journal of Curriculum Studies 28, 115-135.

Students failure to understand scientific

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experiment (Schecker 1992) Hans Schecker asked 254

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Eleven percent said it was high school students to useless, "Why should I comment upon the following consider something that does statement: not exist?"; a large group, up to fifty In physics lessons there are often assumptions or experiments of thought, which obviously cannot be percent said it was useful, but only for physics because physics did not deal with reality, "I don't need to refer everything to reality. I am realized in actual experiments, like completely excluding air resistance and simply interested in physics." Only about twenty-five percent had any other frictional effects or assuming an infinitely lasting linear motion .

comprehension of the method of idealization in science.

Schecker, H.: 1992 , ‘The Paradigmatic Change in Mechanics: Implications of Historical Processes on Physics Education’, Science & Education 1(1), 71-76.

Students failure to understand scientific experiment (Leach 1999) Leach et al. (1998) surveyed 721 European science students aged 16-20 with a view to finding out, amongst other things, the ways in which the students thought of scientific knowledge claims as being related to data. ….(p.141) … “The second major representation noted amongst older science students was not noted amongst younger students. It involved a radical relativist view where the process of drawing conclusions in experimental work is viewed as inherently problematic to the extent that, at the end of the experiment, it is up to every individual to believe what they want to as data cannot be used to judge any view as better or worse than any other …21% of upper-secondary students, 6% of university students.” (p.142)

Leach, J.: 1999 , ‘Learning Science in the Laboratory: The Importance of Epistemological Understanding’. In J. Leach & A.C. Paulsen (eds.) Practical

Work in Science Education: Recent Research

Studies, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp.134-147.

Students failure to understand scientific experiment

(Gyllenpalm & Wickman 2011) 32 students from six well-known Swedish universities. … “The term

experiment

was found to be conflated with

laboratory task

and referred to as primarily a pedagogical activity in contrast to a research methodology … The notion of

controlled experiment

was unfamiliar to most students and had not been explicitly discussed in terms of research methodology during their teacher education.

A prerequisite for students to learn about the characteristics of scientific inquiry is that their teachers provide them with the tools necessary to explicitly discuss and reflect upon instances of scientific inquiry.”

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Gyllenpalm, J. & Wickman, P.-O. (2011). “Experiments” and the inquiry emphasis conflation in science teacher education.

Science Education, 95(5), 908-926.

David Geelan

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“If Aristotle’s impetus theory of motion explains our everyday experiences better than Newton’s or Einstein’s schemes, then we ought to teach it…Aristotle would be taught, not as a historical curiosity for ridicule or background, but as a viable, useful model for understanding what happens around us.”

Recent HPS Studies of Experiment

Recent HPS Studies of Experiment

Hacking (1983) Cartwright (1983)

Recent HPS Studies of Experiment

Franklin (1986) Franklin (1999)

Recent HPS Studies of Experiment

Gooding et al. (1989) Galison (1987)

Recent HPS Studies of Experiment

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This book explores some truths behind the truism that experimentation is a hallmark of scientific activity. Scientists’ descriptions of nature result from two sorts of encounters: they interact with each other and with nature. Philosophy of science has, by and large, failed to give an account of either sort of interaction. (p.xi) Gooding (1990)

Gooding (1990)

To treat [science’s] most elegant theoretical achievements as if these epitomize the whole of science demeans the intellectual dimension as well as the others, because it fails to address the problem of how embodied intellects grapple with a real world. Besides its philosophical interest, that problem is important to science education as well. (p.xii) This book proposes an alternative view based on aspects of scientific work largely neglected by modern, especially analytical, philosophy. These are the agency of observers and the way their observation of nature is mediated by their interactions with each other, with their instrumentation and with the material world. Empirical access is a cognitive and social process. (xii)

Philosophizing about Experiment

“In experimentation we actively intervene in the material world. In one way or another, experimentation involves the material realization of an experimental process (the objects of study, the apparatus, and their interaction).” Radder (2003)

Radder (2003)

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“The question then is this: What are the implications of this action and production character of scientific experimentation for philosophical debates on ontological, epistemological, and methodological issues about science?” (p.4)

Radder (2003)

“The interventionist character of experimentation engenders epistemological questions as well. An important question is whether scientists, on the basis of artificial experimental interventions, can acquire knowledge of a human-independent nature. According to Harré, such back inferences, from the artificial laboratory systems to their natural counterparts, are possible in a number of cases, but their justification is different for different types of apparatus. (p.5)

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In other words, what can be learn about NOS from careful reflection on and analysis of experiment in science?

Priestley’s Experiments

Priestley’s Manufacture of Soda Water Priestley’s Pneumatic Experiments

Hadron Collider

Hadron Collider Nesati & data

Some NOS implications of experiment

Ontology: there is an external world whose existence does not depend on humans Causality : causal processes are natural, constant and are not influenced by agent’s desires or thoughts. Essentialist, or generative powers, account of causation is required.

Experiments can be repeated with same result.

Epistemology: knowledge comes from manipulation with instruments/artifacts Data, Phenomenon distinction: theories do not explain the data, they explain the phenomenon

From Nature to Science

Level 1

of Nature

Fundamental Laws and Mechanisms eg. Gravitational Attraction Simple Harmonic Motion Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5 Phenomena, Scientific Models, Idealisations, Data eg. Four Pendulum Laws; Kepler’s laws scattered points on a L/T graph Observation, Objects, Events and Processes in world Perceptual experience of swinging pendulum eg. Weight swinging on end of cord

From a falling autumn leaf to gravitational attraction

Level 5 is the real event of a falling autumn leaf; this might be called everyday phenomenon; Level 4 is someone’s observation of the falling leaf; Level 3 is the recorded data in the form of time/displacement graphs, trajectory plots, etc; this will be completely chaotic; Level 2 is the identification of the scientific phenomenon being displayed, namely free fall under various influences (gravity, resistance, turbulence, etc); Level 1 is the appropriate theory or mechanism, namely the law of gravitational attraction, to explain level 2, .

The Educational Value of Historical Experiments

The Contribution of History & Philosophy to Science Teaching

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