Science: Philosophy, History and Education Mansoor Niaz Chemistry Education and Contributions from History and Philosophy of Science Science: Philosophy, History and Education Series editor Kostas Kampourakis , University of Geneva , Switzerland Editorial Board Fouad Abd-El-Khalick , University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , USA María Pilar Jiménez Aleixandre , University of Santiago de Compostela , Spain Theodore Arabatzis , University of Athens , Greece Sibel Erduran , University of Limerick , Ireland Martin Kusch , University of Vienna , Austria Alan C. Love , University of Minnesota - Twin Cities , USA Michael Matthews , University of New South Wales , Australia Andreas Müller , University of Geneva , Switzerland Ross Nehm , Stony Brook University (SUNY) , USA Stathis Psillos , Western University , Canada Michael Reiss , UCL Institute of Education , UK Thomas Reydon , Leibniz Universität Hannover , Germany Bruno J. Strasser , University of Geneva , Switzerland Marcel Weber , University of Geneva , Switzerland Alice Siu Ling Wong , The University of Hong Kong , China Scope of the Series This book series serves as a venue for the exchange of the complementary perspectives of science educators and HPS scholars. History and philosophy of science (HPS) contributes a lot to science education and there is currently an increased interest for exploring this relationship further. Science educators have started delving into the details of HPS scholarship, often in collaboration with HPS scholars. In addition, and perhaps most importantly, HPS scholars have come to realize that they have a lot to contribute to science education, predominantly in two domains: a) understanding concepts and b) understanding the nature of science. In order to teach about central science concepts such as “force”, “adaptation”, “electron” etc, the contribution of HPS scholars is fundamental in answering questions such as: a) When was the concept created or coined? What was its initial meaning and how different is it today? Accordingly, in order to teach about the nature of science the contribution of HPS scholar is crucial in clarifying the characteristics of scientifi c knowledge and in presenting exemplar cases from the history of science that provide an authentic image of how science has been done. The series aims to publish authoritative and comprehensive books and to establish that HPS-informed science education should be the norm and not some special case. This series complements the journal Science & Education http://www.springer. com/journal/11191Book Proposals should be sent to the Publishing Editor at [email protected]. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13387 Mansoor Niaz Chemistry Education and Contributions from History and Philosophy of Science Mansoor Niaz Epistemology of Science Group Department of Chemistry Universidad de Oriente Cumaná, Estado Sucre , Venezuela Science: Philosophy, History and Education ISBN 978-3-319-26246-8 ISBN 978-3-319-26248-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-26248-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015958770 Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) For Magda and Sabuhi Foreword The idea of relying on the history and philosophy of science in order to facilitate the teaching and learning of science is not new. Nevertheless, as this book by Mansoor Niaz shows, we are still far from making a good use of what history and philosophy of science can contribute to chemistry education (I can confi rm that this is the case for biology education, too). As several scholars have repeatedly noted, history and philosophy of science provide solid foundations and frameworks for developing teaching materials that would facilitate understanding of science concepts and nature of science. However, teachers have diffi culties in mastering this kind of material, and textbook authors usually do not include much historical information besides biographical details and historical vignettes. As a result the teaching of sci- ence is quite often ahistorical, in the sense that it does not provide students with an authentic view of how scientifi c concepts were created, how empirical evidence was acquired in order to support or reject hypotheses, or how scientifi c theories evolved or were replaced by others over time. These are topics very clearly and diligently discussed by Mansoor Niaz in the present book. Niaz certainly makes a good case for the inclusion of history and philosophy of science in the teaching of science, in this case chemistry. However, the most striking conclusion of the present book is not just that it is useful to take history and philosophy of science to enhance science teaching; it is that history and philosophy of science are already included in curricula and textbooks, but we often fail to make a good use of them. In the case of chemistry, when students are taught about laws, theories, and models, there are often implicit historical and philosophi- cal elements in the respective textbook accounts. Yet, exactly because these are implicit—and they are also quite often presented in an inconsistent manner—teach- ers and students overlook them. Therefore, scientifi c concepts appear as more abstract than they should appear and often seem to come from nowhere—or in the best cases to emerge in the minds of individuals. History and philosophy of science, in contrast, can provide a more humane por- trayal of how science is done and can meaningfully connect concepts, laws, theo- ries, and models that are often presented as disconnected. At the same time, they can also help debunk popular myths about science, for instance, by portraying scientifi c vii viii Foreword achievements as the products of social processes within scientifi c communities rather than products of “eureka” moments of solitary geniuses. Thus, the explicit reference to history and philosophy of science can help students understand why and how particular concepts were developed and later rejected, why and how scien- tifi c theories are constantly modifi ed in the light of new empirical evidence, why and how controversy among scientists is normal and not a problem for science, and more. Paraphrasing Dobzhansky’s famous dictum about the importance of the the- ory of evolution for biology, I could argue roughly the same about the importance of history and philosophy of science: without history and philosophy of science, science content (concepts, models, theories, laws) seems like a pile of sundry facts that make no picture as a meaningful whole. It is for all these reasons that books like the present one by Mansoor Niaz are not only useful but should be adopted in undergraduate courses and teacher preparation programs. It is not conceivable how students may graduate from a science depart- ment without being able to describe what a scientifi c model is, although they have spent years studying several of them in detail. It is not conceivable that students graduate from science departments knowing Avogadro’s law or the Heitler-London- Slater-Pauling valence bond theory but are unable to explain where these names come from. As Niaz shows, history of chemistry is already inside chemistry, so let’s make a good use of it. Kostas Kampourakis Series Editor Pref ace Almost 40 years ago, when I started teaching chemistry, I had no idea of the under- lying substratum of scientifi c knowledge in general and chemistry in particular. Chemistry was considered to be a science and hence was practiced by scientists who in turn used the “scientifi c method” to churn out theories and laws. The chemistry classroom was, strictly speaking, a place to tell students about the accomplishments of the great chemists who could understand and discover what was elusive to the majority of their peers. This landscape started to change for me when I saw the picture of Jean Piaget on the cover of Journal of Chemical Education in 1978. The obvious question that came to mind was: What was a psychologist doing in a chem- istry education journal? I am still exploring the implications of the relationship between chemistry and psychology and of the necessity of history and philosophy of science. One of the most striking features of this exploration is the changing nature of chemistry