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It is suggested that the contribution of history and philosophy of science (HPS) to science education can be enhanced through a consideration of scientific models which are relevant to major sectors of the curriculum. The possibilities for so doing are considered through the discussion of six assertions. A way of characterizing such models, based on the work of Lakatos (1970, 1978), is outlined and applied to a typically important sector, that of the nature of the atom. An analysis of the way that the curriculum for 14-16 year olds and typical textbooks in Brazil and the UK treat historical models of the atom is given. The use of 'hybrid' models was identified in those treatments. Hybrid models, by their very nature as composites drawn from several distinct historical models, do not allow the history and philosophy of science to make a full contribution to science education. They do this by denying the role of distinct models in the history of science and of the role of progression between these models in the philosophy of science. The consequences for the teaching of science of an appropriate treatment of historical models are outlined.

This article focuses on two of the principal issues for science curriculum developers who wish to introduce the history and philosophy of science into the teaching of science—the justification for, and the placement of, historical materials within teachers' schemes of work. First, it is argued that the history and philosophy of science must have a rationale that is integral to, and consistent with, teachers' main aims to have any chance of being considered for inclusion in a program of study. Second, the justification must point to places in schemes of work where the inclusion of history of science will directly contribute to students learning of science concepts and satisfy that principal objective. A new model for the inclusion of such material is proposed that directly addresses both children's alternative frameworks and the historical and sociocultural context of the discovery. It is argued that this model offers potential for improved learning of the concepts of science and for learning about science. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed 81:405-424, 1997.

Science Teaching argues that science teaching and science teacher education can be improved if teachers know something of the history and philosophy of science and if these topics are included in the science curriculum. The history and philosophy of science have important roles in many of the theoretical issues that science educators need to address: what constitutes an appropriate science curriculum for all students; how science should be taught in traditional cultures; how scientific literacy can be promoted; and the conflict which can occur between science curriculum and deep-seated religious or cultural values and knowledge. Outlining the history of liberal approaches to the teaching of science, Michael Matthews elaborates contemporary curriculum developments that explicitly address questions about the nature and the history of science. He provides examples of classroom teaching and develops useful arguments on constructivism, multicultural science education and teacher education.

One: Medicine and the Life Sciences.- 1. Development of Medical Education among the Arabic-speaking Peoples.- 2. Gentile da Foligno and the Via Medicorum.- 3. Some Assumptions behind Medicine for the Poor during the Reign of Louis XIV.- 4. Buffon's Histoire naturelle as a Work of the Enlightenment.- 5. Adam Gottlob Schirach's Experiments on Bees.- 6. William Swainson: Types, Circles, and Affinities.- 7. A Retrospoct on the Historiography of the Life Sciences.- Two: Astronomy and Natural Philosophy.- 8. Two Astronomical Tractates of Abbo of Fleury.- 9. Pseudo-Euclid on the Position of the Image in Reflection: Interpretations by an Anonymous Commentator, by Pena, and by Kepler.- 10. Thomas Harriot's Papers on the Calendar.- 11. Thomas Harriot's Observations of Halley's Comet in 1607.- 12. Animadversions on the Origins of the Microscope.- 13. Hemsterhuis on Mathematics and Optics.- Three: The Social Framework.- 14. Galileians in Sicily: a Hitherto Unpublished Correspondence of Daniele Spinola with Domenico Catalano in Messina (1650-1652).- 15. A Friend of Hobbes and an Early Translator of Galileo: Robert Payne of Oxford.- 16. Descartes and the English.- 17. From Corfu to Caledonia: the Early Travels of Charles Dupin, 1808-1820.- 18. A Scotswoman Abroad: Mary Somervillc's 1817 Visit to France.- Four: Styles in the History of Ideas.- 19. Rationality and the Generalization of Scientific Style.- 20. The Idea of the Decay of the World in the Old Testament, the Apocrypha, and the Pseudepigrapha.- 21. Science in Antiquity: the Indian Perspective.- 22. System-building in the Eighteenth Century.- 23. Elements in the Structure of Victorian Science, or Cannon Revisited.- A Bibliography of the Writings of Alistair C. Crombie.- General Index.

Methodological questions in economics have often been discussed in terms that are too abstract and too exclusively normative. Slim volumes or essays about the ‘scope and method’ or the ‘nature and significance’ of the subject, seem often to have been concerned mainly with ideal epistemological models which are almost as remote from the actuality of what economists do, as economic models of smoothly and ideally selfequilibrating processes are remote from the processes of the real economic world. Intellectual norms are prescribed, and, it seems to be implied, are actually upheld, which are certainly not in fact followed, and perhaps could not practicably be followed, by economists. Moreover, generalisations, normative or positive, are inevitably highly abstract, or stylised, when they relate to ‘science’ and ‘scientific method’ in general, or to ‘the social sciences’ generally, or even to economics as a whole, which comprises theories and arguments of very varying epistemological types and calibres. It could, therefore, constitute a most welcome and significant example, as far as economics is concerned, that in their different ways, in the work of both Kuhn and Lakatos, the history of science, and its analysis or philosophy, have been brought together for mutual illumination. Certainly there is the danger here of normative–positive confusion, insofar as the philosopher of science may be seeking to prescribe what scientists ought to have done or decided (or be doing or deciding) while the historian is attempting rather to set out what they actually did do or decide.

This special issue presents selected contributions to the conference “Integrated History and Philosophy of Science” (&HPS3) held at Indiana University in September 2010. The introduction revisits a previous special issue on History and Philosophy of Science, published in Perspectives on Science (2002), and reflects on the recent development of HPS as a field. Ten years ago, scholars expressed concern about the growing distance between mainstream history of science and mainstream philosophy of science. Today, we have good reason to be optimistic. The papers assembled in this special issue demonstrate that we now have a whole spectrum of combinations of historical, philosophical, and other perspectives to study science, ranging from augmenting historical studies by philosophical perspectives and vice versa to historicist reflection on methodological, epistemological, or scientific concepts and practices. This plurality of approaches to combining the historical and the philosophical perspectives on science is a hopeful sign that integrated HPS is here to stay.

intends his book Worldviews for beginners in history and philosophy of science.His ambitious aim is to provide an accessible and enjoyable introduction to fundamental issues in history, philosophy, and science, as well as to draw out the connections between these fields.The time frame is broad, the three parts of the book spanning the period from around 300 BC until today.The focus is on physics and, more specifically, astronomy.Part 1 introduces in a non-technical way some key philosophical concepts and problems, which include: the notions of worldview, truth, and underdetermination; facts and evidence; the problem of induction; and the attitudes of instrumentalism and realism.Part 2 offers a survey of the main views on the physical structure of the universe.It begins with the Aristotelian conception and outlines the transition from the Ptolemaic to the Newtonian system (via Copernicus, Tycho, Kepler, and Galileo).Part 3 covers important recent developments in the sciences, namely, relativity theory, quantum theory, and evolutionary theory.The book ends with useful bibliographical notes and suggestions for further readings on each chapter.

Professor Howard Stein has made contributions on a wide range of topics in the history and philosophy of science, with an emphasis on physics. Stein has published papers on early physicists and philosophers such as Isaac Newton as well as papers on later science, especially relativity theory, quantum mechanics and the foundations of mathematics. This volume contains 13 essays exploring the work of Howard Stein, and topics include: Plato's conception of exact science; the structure of argumentation in Newton's Principia; imagery in the work of Descartes and Newton; patterns of reasoning in Maxwell; Mach's conception of space, time and motion; Einstein's conception of geometry; conceptual and technical issues in the foundations of relativity theory; general issues in epistemology; and the structralist conception of mathematics. It also includes a comprehensive bibliography of Howard Stein's writings.

History of science, it has been argued, has benefited philosophers of science primarily by forcing them into greater contact with “real science.” In this paper I argue that additional major benefits arise from the importance of specifically historical considerations within philosophy of science. Loci for specifically historical investigations include: (1) making and evaluating rational reconstructions of particular theories and explanations, (2) estimating the degree of support earned by particular theories and theoretical claims, and (3) evaluating proposed philosophical norms for the evaluation of the degree of support for theories and the worth of explanations. More generally, I argue that theories develop and change structure with time, that (like biological species) they are historical entities. Accordingly, both the identification and the evaluation of theories are essentially historical in character.

Philosophers of science turned to historical case studies in part in response to Thomas Kuhn's insistence that such studies can transform the philosophy of science. In this issue Joseph Pitt argues that the power of case studies to instruct us about scientific methodology and epistemology depends on prior philosophical commitments, without which case studies are not philosophically useful. Here I reply to Pitt, demonstrating that case studies, properly deployed, illustrate styles of scientific work and modes of argumentation that are not well handled by currently standard philosophical analyses. I illustrate these claims with exemplary findings from case studies dealing with exploratory experimentation and with interdisciplinary cooperation across sciences to yield multiple independent means of access to theoretical entities. The latter cases provide examples of ways that scientists support claims about theoretical entities that are not available in work performed within a single discipline. They also illustrate means of correcting systematic biases that stem from the commitments of each discipline taken separately. These findings illustrate the transformative power of case study methods, allow us to escape from the horns of Pitt's “dilemma of case studies”, and vindicate some of the post-Kuhn uses to which case studies have been put.

1. Sociality and Social Science 2. The Rise of the Age of Science 3. Social Laws 4. Political Theory and Political Philosophy 5. Physiocracy: The First Economic Model 6. The Methodology of Modelling 7. The Scottish Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century 8. Progress and Perfection 9. Classical Political Economy 10. The Idea of Harmonious Order 11. Utilitarianism 12. French Positivism and the Beginnings of Sociology 13. The Marxian Theory of Society 14. The Methodology of History 15. The Development of Sociological Theory 16. Biology, Social Science, and Social Policy 17. The Development of Economic Theory 18. The Foundations of Science

Addressing a wide range of topics, from Newton to Post-Kuhnian philosophy of science, these essays critically examine themes that have been central to the influential work of philosopher Michael Friedman. Special focus is given to Friedman's revealing study of both history of science and philosophy in his work on Kant, Newton, Einstein, and other major figures. This interaction of history and philosophy is the subject of the editors' manifesto and serves to both explain and promote the essential ties between two disciplines usually regarded as unrelated.

The increasing attention on experiment in the last two decades has led to important insights into its material, cultural and social dimensions. However, the role of experiment as a tool for generating knowledge has been comparatively poorly studied. What questions are asked in experimental research? How are they treated and eventually resolved? And how do questions, epistemic situations, and experimental activity cohere and shape each other? In my paper, I treat these problems on the basis of detailed studies of research practice. After presenting several cases from the history of electricity—Dufay, Ampère, and Faraday—I discuss a specific type of experiment—the "exploratory experiment"—and analyze how it works in concept formation. I argue that a fuller understanding of experiment can only be achieved by intertwining historical and philosophical perspectives in such a way that the very separation of the two become questioable.

In surveying the field of history and philosophy of science (HPS), it may be more useful just now to pose some key questions than it would be to lay out the sundry competing attempts to unify H and P. The ten problems this essay presents are grounded in a range of work of enormous interest—historical and philosophical work that has made use of productive categories of analysis: context, historicism, purity, and microhistory, to name but a few. What kind of account are we after—historically and philosophically—when we attempt to address science not as a vacuous generality but in its specific, local formation?

We report the results of a study that investigated the views of researchers working in seven scientific disciplines and in history and philosophy of science in regard to four hypothesized dimensions of scientific realism. Among other things, we found (i) that natural scientists tended to express more strongly realist views than social scientists, (ii) that history and philosophy of science scholars tended to express more antirealist views than natural scientists, (iii) that van Fraassen’s characterization of scientific realism failed to cluster with more standard characterizations, and (iv) that those who endorsed the pessimistic induction were no more or less likely to endorse antirealism.