The Implications for Science Education of Heidegger’s Philosophy of Science

Bibliographic Data

ID8857593
AuthorsRobert Shaw (0000-0003-1570-138X, Open Polytechnic, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume45
Issue5
Pages546-570
Publication date2012-01-17
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEducational Philosophy and Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-1857 • E-ISSN: 1469-5812
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1469-5812.2011.00836.x
OpenAlexW2109968067, W4246152565
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited42

Science teaching always engages a philosophy of science. This article introduces a modern philosophy of science and indicates its implications for science education. The hermeneutic philosophy of science is the tradition of Kant, Heidegger, and Heelan. Essential to this tradition are two concepts of truth, truth as correspondence and truth as disclosure. It is these concepts that enable access to science in and of itself. Modern science forces aspects of reality to reveal themselves to human beings in events of disclosure. The achievement of each event of disclosure requires the precise manipulation of equipment, which is an activity that depends on truth as correspondence. The implications of the hermeneutic philosophy of science for science education are profound. The article refers to Newton’s early work on optics to explore what the theory implies for teaching. Modern science—as the event of truth—is a relationship between an individual student, equipment, and reality. Science teachers provide for their students’ access to truth and they may show how their discipline holds a special relationship to reality. If the aim of science teaching is to enable students to disclose reality, the science curriculum will challenge some of the current practices of schooling. If teachers base science teaching upon the hermeneutic philosophy of science, science will assert itself as the intellectual discipline that derives from nature, and not from the inclinations of human beings. Science teachers teach nature’s own science

Curriculum · Epistemology · Higher education · Nature of Science · Pedagogy · Philosophy education · Philosophy of computer science · Philosophy of education · Philosophy of science · Political science · Science education · Science, technology, society and environment education · Social science · Sociology · Law · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Philosophy, Science, and History · Psychological and Educational Research Studies

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