History, Philosophy and Science Teaching: A Personal Story: A personal story 9811605572, 9789811605574

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Michael R. Matthews

History, Philosophy and Science Teaching: A Personal Story

History, Philosophy and Science Teaching: A Personal Story “Michael Matthews has probably done more for the history and philosophy of science education than anyone else. This book is a riveting read. Beginning with his childhood Catholic education in Australia, it discusses the importance of his school and extensive university education, some of the latter undertaken part-time while school teaching, before focusing on Matthews’ academic career, which began in 1972. There are fascinating accounts about the journal Science & Education, the debates over constructivism, and fundamental conceptual issues that lie at the heart of science and science education. All in all, this is an essential read for anyone interested in science education, written by one of those who has played a central role in the discipline.” —Michael J. Reiss, Professor of Science Education, University College London “The work of Michael Matthews in emphasizing the role of history and philosophy of science in science education has been truly monumental. This has included his founding and editing of the journal Science & Education for 25 years and his leadership of the International History, Philosophy and Science Teaching Group (IHPST). Even more monumental is this much anticipated intellectual biography in which he recalls his early influences and subsequent intellectual encounters within diverse areas, including Catholicism, constructivism, the life and work of Joseph Priestley and the physics of the pendulum.” —Eric Scerri, Chemistry Department, University of California Los Angeles “Matthews records his intellectual maturation and career in a rich personal narrative, ranging from family roots, high school teaching, university lecturing and international conference debates, to research and publications spanning a wide range of disciplines. These include philosophy and history of science, philosophy of education, intellectual history and cross-cultural issues. It is a fascinating trajectory through the major science educational ideas, trends and upheavals of the last four decades. He remains a sombre voice of reason, of Enlightenment virtues, of liberal education and of sound teacher education and science teaching. His views, opinions and insights serve as a pedagogical guiding compass in a time when scientific knowledge and specialist communities are targeted by social media trolls, fundamentalists and mystics, and when the very cognitive and educational core values of modern science and science education are both increasingly attacked and disparaged by a variety of cultural, epistemological and pedagogical relativists.” —Roland M. Schulz, Centre for Imagination in Research, Culture and Education, Simon Fraser University

Michael R. Matthews

History, Philosophy and Science Teaching: A Personal Story

Michael R. Matthews UNSW Sydney Kensington, NSW, Australia

ISBN 978-981-16-0557-4 ISBN 978-981-16-0558-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0558-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms 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 specific 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, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

This book is dedicated to my mother Alice Ellen Catherine Fitzpatrick (1908–1985). She was a rural Irish-Catholic convent girl, one of a family of fourteen raised on a property on the Talbragar River outside of Dubbo in central New South Wales. She married late, and I was an only child. Despite my father leaving home when I was twelve years, and Alice being dependent upon precious little maintenance payments, her love, dedication and good management launched me on the educational journey recounted in this book.

Preface

This an academic autobiography, not a personal one. There are elements of the personal, but mainly as they bear upon my intellectual and career trajectory, which was a move from classroom science teaching, to lecturing in philosophy of education, to lecturing and researching in science education. More particularly: from completing a science degree and teacher training at Sydney University, high school science teaching at Dulwich High School in Sydney, completing a double-honours degree in psychology and philosophy, teaching philosophy of education at Sydney Teachers College then at the University of New South Wales, completing a Master’s Degree in history and philosophy of science, being Foundation Chair of Science Education at University of Auckland, and returning to science education teaching and research at UNSW until my retirement in May 2008. Thereupon I became, and have remained, an honorary Associate Professor in the School of Education. I have written and edited a substantial amount on HPS&ST, including founding and editing for 25 years the Springer journal Science & Education: Contributions from the History and Philosophy of Science (https://www.springer.com/journal/ 11191). I hope the charting of my own intellectual maturation and career, along with some elaboration of various scholarly arguments that arose along the journey, might be of use to other researchers, teachers, and students. In particular, I hope it might promote the inclusion of philosophy (both philosophy of science and philosophy of education) in science teacher-education programmes. The book is not meant to be an overview or summation of contemporary HPS&ST research; it is an account of my transition into and development in the field. My own authored and edited publications provide a summation of that research. Details of the disciplinary arguments, and my own positions on them, can be read at length in the books, articles, anthologies referenced in this work, and that are listed on the UNSW School of Education (https://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/our-people/michael-mat thews) website, and in the reference entries in this book. The 3-volume, 76-chapter Handbook of Research in History, Philosophy and Science Teaching (https://www. springer.com/gp/book/9789400776531) is the best place to start for an overview of the HPS&ST field. In this book, issues and topics are picked out in as much as I have made contributions to them. Inevitably, it is an opinionated treatment. The conviction, however, vii

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is that my own personal story of progress from youthful philosophically-interested Catholic adolescent and undergraduate science student, through a commitment to liberal education, and finally being a contributor to HPS&ST research—might have some value to others and perhaps illuminate some fundamental issues in the field. The main ‘take home’ lesson is that science education, at all levels from classroom teaching to university research, is enhanced if teachers and researchers have competence and interest in both HPS and philosophy of education. This is because both disciplines make unique and indispensable contributions to the numerous, and unavoidable, theoretical, curricular, and pedagogical issues that occupy students, teachers, curriculum writers, examiners, and government policymakers. The history and philosophy of science is on every page of every science curriculum and textbook, it does not have to be brought into a classroom, it is already there. The words ‘law’, ‘theory’, ‘model’, ‘explanation’, ‘evidence’, ‘confirmation’, ‘hypothesis’, ‘prediction’, ‘falsification’, ‘experiment’, ‘observation’, ‘measurement’, and a host of other philosophically rich and connected words are found everywhere. They just need to be recognised and elaborated upon as is suitable to the occasion. So too the names ‘Aristotle’, ‘Archimedes’, ‘Galileo’, ‘Newton’, ‘Darwin’, ‘Boyle’, ‘Hook’, ‘Lavoisier’, ‘Dalton’, ‘Darwin’, ‘Mendel’, ‘Faraday’, ‘Mach’, ‘Einstein’, ‘Bohr’, ‘Curie’, ‘Crick’, ‘Watson’, ‘Heisenberg’, ‘Mendeleev’ occur in all science programmes. The life, times, and achievements of the scientists can likewise be elaborated upon as the occasion allows. This might involve teacher commentary, student essays, debates, dramatic enactments, and other pedagogical procedures. Sometimes internal history about experiments and arguments might be emphasised, at other times, external history about commerce, religion and technology might be emphasised. The purpose of these elaborations is to have students better understand science; and become more interested in and appreciative of it. Likewise, the philosophy of education underpins nearly all decisions that teachers make in their dealings with students, in their own classrooms, in staffrooms, and collegially as a school staff. Awareness of both fields is a mark of professionalism; of being an educator, not merely a teacher or a coach. The latter have their own important standards to meet, but educators have additional ethical and cognitive ones. The challenge of the present time is that just as philosophical matters are increasingly written into science programmes (for instance, explicit attention to the nature and methodology of science), and into the responsibilities of teachers (for instance, to address different social and ethical dimensions of science)—the core disciplines of philosophy of education and HPS are disappearing from teacher education programmes. And, indeed, from many university programmes. Bad enough that the space is left empty, but worse when it is filled with imitation philosophy, faddism and ideology. Kensington, Australia

Michael R. Matthews

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Family and Schooling

1 Michael Robert Matthews

2 Alice Matthews (Fitzpatrick) (1950)

3 Science Graduation (1968)

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4 St. Charles Year 8, 1961 (MRM 3 rd row 2nd from right)

5 Family at Minnamurra: Margaret Clare Alice Julie Amelia (2020)

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Some Books

6 Scientific Background … (1989)

7 HPS&ST ‘Roadmap’ Routledge (1994)

8 Constructivism (1998)

9 The Pendulum (2005)

10 HPS&ST Handbook (2014)

11 Feng Shui (2019)

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International History, Philosophy and Science Teaching Group (IHPST)

12 Tallahassee Conference (1989)

13 Science & Education Vol.1 (1992)

14 Pavia Conference (1999)

15 Brazil Conference (2010)

16 Seoul Conference (2012)

17 Ankara Conference (2017)

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Some Teachers

18 Wallis A. Suchting (1931-1997)

19 Mario A. Bunge (1919-2020)

20 Robert S. Cohen (1923-2017)

21 Michael Martin (1932-2015)

22 Marx W. Wartofsky (1928-1987)

23 Aber Shimony (1923-2014)

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Sydney City Council (1980-85)

24 Michael Robert Matthews & Robert Alexander Matthews (1980)

25 Pyrmont & Ultimo: A History (1982)

26 Sydney Morning Herald (1982)

Recognition and Acknowledgements

I am pleased that my scholarly work has been publicly recognised. This is personally satisfying, but more importantly such recognition is testament to the importance of HPS&ST research in science education. Over the decades I have been invited to give lectures and short courses in departments of physics, philosophy, and education at 40+ universities in 30+ countries. Many lasting friendships and cooperative work came from these engagements. Along with invited lectures there have been numerous presentations at science education, philosophy of education, and HPS conferences. It is worth relating that the largest audience I have ever spoken to was in 2017 at Haimen Secondary College in Hangzhou, China. There were 1,035 heads of school science departments in attendance. The lecture, on ‘HPS&ST: An Overview’, was simultaneously translated, not through earphones but with Chinese characters scrolling down in lines on two huge screens on either side of the stage. They clearly wanted to learn about western HPS. So also, Tsinghua University took Bob Cohen’s library of 23,000 books and established the ‘Robert S. Cohen Philosophy Library’. There are ‘in-principle’ plans for Beijing University to do the same with Mario Bunge’s HPS library. The Chinese have serious problems but not a postmodernist aversion to science. In 2007 I was asked by Fabio Bevilacqua, Vice President of the Division of History of Science and Technology (http://dhstweb.org/) of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science (https://iuhpst.org/), to become President of the Division’s Teaching Commission. Despite the efforts and earlier achievements of Jaroslav Folta (Technical University of Prague), Alistair Duncan (Loughborough University), and Horst Remane (Martin Luther University) the TC was exhausted and had basically ceased to function. With diligent assistance from Peter Heering and others, during my two terms as president, it came back to life and achieved a certain amount, including supporting different conferences, being host of the HPS&ST Newsletter, and setting up a useful website. It put pedagogy on the agenda of both the DHST, and later the DLMPS, divisions. In 2010, two years after my retirement as a full-time staff member at UNSW I was awarded the ‘Joseph H. Hazen Education Prize for Excellence in Education’ of the US History of Science Society. The prize citation reads: xv

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Recognition and Acknowledgements More than any other single individual, Michael Matthews deserves credit for instilling the History (and Philosophy) of Science in Science Education (https://hssonline.org/about/hon ors/joseph-h-hazen-education-prize/).

A more vigilant editor might have struck out the opening clause. Prize recipients have included Gerald Holton, James Rutherford, Jane Maienschein, Stephen Brush, Robert Hatch, Paul Farber, Falk Riess, Graeme Gooday, Sally Kohlstedt, and Michael Osborne. To be placed in their company is an honour. In 2011, the Division of the Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science of the IUHPS was itself investigating the establishment of a Teaching Commission (https://dlmps.org/). I proposed to them that as students mostly experience the history and philosophy of science as conjoint disciplines, and as the pedagogical issues are common, there should be an Inter Divisional Teaching Commission (IDTC) rather two separate commissions. This was agreed to by DLMPS Council and I became the initial president. In 2015 the International History, Philosophy, and Science Teaching Group initiated a ‘Distinguished Achievement Award’ I was honoured to be its first recipient (https://ihpst.clubexpress.com/). Generously, the notation read: In 1989 Michael Matthews successfully brought together historians, educators, philosophers, and sociologists from around the world to engage in friendly, scholarly discourse at what became the first IHPST conference. Since then IHPST conferences have been held biennially. His early efforts to ensure the sharing of multiple, diverse perspectives set the tone for IHPST which can still be seen today with the friendly and collegial nature of the group. Michael ensured that the group met every other year at the Biennial Conference and that this conference rotated to various parts of the world. Under his direction IHPST’s journal, Science & Education, flourished during his 20+ years as editor. Michael Matthews’ impact on the IHPST group is immeasurable.

The subsequent recipients were Ian Winchester (2017) and Fabio Bevilacqua (2019). Closer to home, in 2019 I was honoured by election as a Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales (FRSN) for my contribution to HPS&ST research. Of lasting importance for the HPS&ST field is the continuation of the monthly HPS&ST Newsletter (https://www.hpsst.com/). This commenced as a printed and mailed ‘publication’ in the lead-up to the 1987 Tallahassee conference, and is now web-based with its Contents table and hyperlink being sent directly to an incrementally growing group of about 9,500 emails, and to various science education and HPS lists. This just ticks away, month-by-month keeping a wide international community of scholars informed about relevant books, journal articles, conferences, and other news. The assistance of Paulo Maurício in Lisbon in maintaining the website and in aggregating publications, and of Nathan Oseroff-Spicer in London with formatting the newsletter and seeking out Opinion Pieces, is beyond invaluable. I am grateful to Nick Melchior, the Springer Australasian editor who, after receiving positive external reviews of an extended essay-draft of this book, provided a contract for its completion. Along with founding and editing for 25 years the Springer journal Science & Education, this is my ninth Springer book. In my over 30 years

Recognition and Acknowledgements

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of dealings with them, they have been a remarkably professional, competent, and conscientious publisher. I, and more particularly readers, have a special debt to two friends who carefully page-by-page read drafts of the evolving manuscript, making most valuable suggestions about structuring the text; and making punctuation corrections down to the placement of commas, semicolons, and colons. Readability has been significantly enhanced by the keen eyes and literary craft-skills of Paul McColl, a retired physics teacher, and Michael Howard, a history graduate and retired lecturer in public policy. What is clear in this personal story is that I benefited enormously from wonderfully learned philosophy teachers, and then from gifted HPS&ST colleagues. This was my great good fortune. I have an obvious philosophical debt to philosophers and friends who are no longer among us: Wallis Suchting, Robert Cohen, Marx Wartofsky, Abner Shimony, Mario Bunge, Ernan McMullin, Israel Scheffler, and Michael Martin. And I have learnt a great deal from many other philosophers and educators who, pleasingly, are still with us and have been mentioned and cited in this work. This has been an intellectual, not a personal, autobiography. Thus, many important personal and family milestones have not been mentioned though details of the Fitzpatrick family, and of my Christian Brothers’ schooling, have been given in order to better situate my story. Just as I have had a fortunate academic and scholarly life, so too I have been blessed to have had a fortunate and happy family life. From the beginning of university, I had pleasing and happy, but chaste friendships with different women. Intimate relationships with women began in 1970 when I was 22 years of age. In 1982, aged 34 years, I was introduced to and was overjoyed to marry Margaret McHarg, a vivacious school counsellor and social worker. In 1983 our daughter Clare Alice, now a science teacher, was born. She did outstandingly well at school and could have entered any university programme but chose to be a science teacher. She had the same success through her science degree, additionally playing in the Australian Universities women’s basketball team. In 2006 she married Luke Musgrave (coincidently, from a Catholic Dubbo family who well knew the circumstances of the early Fitzpatrick family). They have four delightful children, my grandchildren: Joshua, Eleanor, Noah, and Hugo. My marriage to Margaret did not last but, pleasingly, our post-marriage life of parenting and grandparenting has been exceptionally happy and rewarding. In 1988 I had the great good fortune to marry Julie House and we have been happily and productively married for 33 years. Julie went to Sydney University five years after me. She studied English, Anthropology, and Philosophy; did teacher training at Sydney Teachers College; became an English teacher in Malaysia; a craft coordinator and business manager in a Hmong refugee camp in northern Thailand; an art and craft manager at Yirrkala aboriginal settlement in east Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory; and a finance-manager/accountant in her family’s 100+ year-old, mid-sized manufacturing-business. We had known each other since the early 1970s, enjoying a wide circle of common friends. Through the efforts of all of us—Margaret, Julie, Luke, my three daughters, and me—we have maintained close, warm, and caring relationships. This is greatly

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abetted by Clare, Luke, and children living in the delightful coastal village of Minnamurra. We have a holiday house in the same riverside street in which Margaret also lives. A great deal of social and grandparenting time is spent together. Needless to say, all of the writing, editing, organising, conferencing, and travel time that has gone into the HPS&ST work documented in this autobiographical story, has impinged on family life. Had the work not been done, assuredly there would have been more time for family matters. This is a common enough tension for everyone. I hope my own family is forgiving of this.

Contents

1

Catholic Family and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Irish Catholicism in Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Irish-Catholic Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Christian Brothers Schooling (1952–1964) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3.1 St. Charles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3.2 Waverley College . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3.3 Marian Devotion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3.4 Appreciation by Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Vatican II: A Destabilised Church (1965–1969) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4.1 Contraception and Natural Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Demise of the Christian Brothers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5.1 Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse . . . . . . . . . . 1.5.2 The College Chaplain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5.3 Last Rites for the Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.6 Thomism in Sydney and Beyond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.6.1 Thomism as ‘Official’ Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.6.2 Revelation and Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.6.3 Independent Thomism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 1 3 6 6 7 9 11 12 14 18 19 20 21 22 23 25 28 29

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Science Degree, Teacher Training, and Science Teaching . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Sydney University BSc Degree and Beginning Philosophy (1965–1967) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.1 Catholic Boy Goes to University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.2 John Anderson and Sydney University Philosophy . . . . . 2.1.3 David Stove’s Logic Courses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.4 Logical Empiricism: My Introduction to Philosophy of Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Sydney University Newman Society (1965–1969) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 John Henry Newman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2 Newman and Liberal Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.3 Catholic Philosophers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

33 33 34 35 39 41 44 45 46 48 xix

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Diploma of Education at Sydney Teachers College (1968) . . . . . . 2.3.1 Philosophy of Education Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.2 Liberal Education Commitments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.3 Analytic Philosophy and Science Education . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Science Teaching at Dulwich Hill (1969–1972) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.1 A Rocky Career Start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.2 Jerome Bruner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.3 NSW Wyndham Scheme and US National Science Foundation Curricula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.4 Teacher Expectancy Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.5 General Studies Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

4

51 51 53 55 57 57 58 59 60 61 62

Further Studies: Psychology, Philosophy, and Philosophy of Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Philosophy of Education MEd Degree (1969–1973) . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Psychology Honours BA Degree (1969–1973) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.1 Sydney Behaviourism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.2 Empirical Thesis: Avoidance Behaviour in Rats . . . . . . . 3.2.3 Theoretical Thesis: Intentions and the Explanation of Behaviour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.4 Academic Silos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Philosophy Honours BA Degree (1972–1975) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.1 Wallis Suchting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.2 Thomas Kuhn Seminar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.3 Honours Thesis: Action Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Sydney Theological Studies Society (1968–1975) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.1 A Theological Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

72 73 75 76 77 81 82 84 88

Sydney Teachers College and University of New South Wales . . . . . . 4.1 Sydney Teachers College (1972–1974) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1.1 Radical Education Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1.2 Assessment Battles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1.3 A Counter Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1.4 Employment Threat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1.5 Wither Foundation Subjects? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 University of New South Wales (1975–Present) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.1 Philosophers Aplenty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.2 IQ Writings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Philosophy of Education Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.1 Beginning of HPS&ST Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.2 Assessment Scandal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.3 The Rise and Fall of HPS at UNSW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Boston University Sabbatical (1978) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.1 Boston University Faculty and Courses . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

91 91 92 93 94 96 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 104 105 105

67 68 69 69 71

Contents

4.4.2 Reading Galileo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MA Thesis on Galileo’s Physics (1979–1985) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.1 The Natural and Violent Motion Distinction . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.2 Real Potentials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.3 Idealisation in Galileo and the Beginning of Modern Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4.5

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107 108 108 111 112 114

5

Political Interlude: Sydney City Council (1980–1985) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

6

History, Philosophy, and Science Teaching: The Beginning . . . . . . . . 6.1 Florida State University, Tallahassee Conference, and Founding of IHPST Group (1987–1989) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.1 Synthese Invitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.2 Tallahassee Conference (1989) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.3 Social Constructivism and the Science Wars . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.4 Division Over Constructivism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.5 IHPST International and Regional Conferences . . . . . . . 6.1.6 Formalisation of IHPST Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Editorship of Science & Education Journal (1992–2015) . . . . . . . 6.2.1 Thematic Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.2 Journal Contributors and Reviewers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.3 Editorial Pain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.4 HPS&ST Handbook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 The Enlightenment Tradition in Science Education . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.1 The European Enlightenment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.2 Enlightenment Commitments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.3 Education and the Enlightenment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.4 Spirit of the Enlightenment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 Ernst Mach: Philosopher and Educator (1989–2019) . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.1 Mach’s Life and Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.2 Mach’s Image Among Contemporary Educators . . . . . . . 6.4.3 Phenomenalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.4 Thought Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.5 Mach’s Educational Programme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 Hackett Anthology (1989) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5.1 Science and Philosophy in Dialogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5.2 Philosophy of Science and History of Science . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7

Constructivism in Science Education and a HPS&ST Roadmap . . . 7.1 First Engagement with Science Education Research and Constructivism (1989) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.1 Berkeley’s Shadow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.2 Constructivism as Ideology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

125 125 126 127 128 131 133 134 135 136 136 138 140 141 142 142 143 146 146 147 148 149 150 153 155 155 156 157 163 164 164 166

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Contents

7.1.3 Opposing Constructivism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.4 Failures of Constructivist Teaching Method . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 University of Auckland, Science Education Chair (1992– 1993) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.1 New Zealand’s Education Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.2 Philosophy of Education and Obscurantist Writing . . . . 7.2.3 Constructivist Dominance of Science Education . . . . . . . 7.2.4 A National Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.5 M¯aori Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.6 Reflections on the New Zealand Experience . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 A Roadmap for HPS&ST Research: Routledge Book (1994, 2015) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3.1 Realism and Anti-realism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 Pendulum Studies (1995–2005) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.1 Centrality of the Pendulum in the Founding of Modern Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.2 International Pendulum Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.3 The Seconds Pendulum as an International Length Standard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

168 169

HPS and Worldviews in Science Classrooms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1 Science Education and Worldviews (2008–2010) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1.1 The Scope of Worldviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1.2 Worldviews and Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1.3 The Scientific Worldview and Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1.4 The Reality of Spirits? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1.5 Worldviews in Science Programmes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1.6 Managing Conflicts Between Scientific and Cultural Worldviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2 Joseph Priestley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2.1 A Priestley Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2.2 Priestley’s Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2.3 Priestley and Soda Water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2.4 Priestley and the Enlightenment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2.5 Priestley and Photosynthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2.6 Priestley and General Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3 Feng Shui: Science or Pseudoscience? (2012–2020) . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3.1 Feng Shui in Asia and Beyond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3.2 Feng Shui and Naturalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3.3 Demarcation of Science and Pseudoscience . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3.4 Feng Shui in Science Programmes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

205 206 206 207 209 209 211

173 174 174 178 179 184 186 187 189 192 193 194 196 198

213 215 215 216 218 219 221 223 223 223 224 225 228 230

Contents

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235 236 236 238

Idealism of Cultural Studies and Realism of Mario Bunge . . . . . . . . . 9.1 Cultural Studies in Science Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1.1 The Beginning of Cultural Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1.2 Obscurantist Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1.3 Cultural Studies and Critical Theory: A Likely Marriage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1.4 Quantum Anti-realism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1.5 Quantum Realism Defended . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1.6 Old Wine in New Bottles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2 Mario Bunge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2.1 Bunge’s Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2.2 First Contact: Science Education and Religion . . . . . . . . 9.2.3 Bunge and the Enlightenment Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2.4 Physics and Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2.5 Bunge’s Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2.6 Scientism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

10 Philosophy and HPS in Teacher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.1 UNSW in-Service Courses for Science Teachers (1996– 2003) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.1.1 A New South Wales HPS-Informed Syllabus . . . . . . . . . . 10.1.2 Annual Teacher Workshops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2 Ideal Teacher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2.1 Israel Scheffler on Philosophy in Teacher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2.2 General and Disciplinary Philosophy of Education . . . . . 10.2.3 The Preparation of Science Education Faculty . . . . . . . . 10.2.4 Nature of Science (NOS) Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2.5 Indoctrination in Teacher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2.6 Ethics and Social Justice in Science Programmes . . . . . . 10.2.7 Philosophy and Foundation Subjects in Teacher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

239 242 243 244 247 248 249 251 252 254 256 257 261 262 262 264 268 268 270 273 276 277 279 281 284

Name Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

About the Author

Michael R. Matthews is an honorary Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of New South Wales. He has degrees in Geology, Psychology, Philosophy, History and Philosophy of Science, and Philosophy of Education. He has taught in high school, teachers college, and university. He was Foundation Professor of Science Education at the University of Auckland. His books include The Marxist Theory of Schooling: A Study of Epistemology and Education (Humanities Press, 1980); Science Teaching: The Role of History and Philosophy of Science (Routledge, 1994); Challenging New Zealand Science Education (Dunmore Press, 1995); Time for Science Education: How Teaching the History and Philosophy of Pendulum Motion can Improve Science Literacy (Plenum Publishers, 2000); Science Teaching: The Contribution of History and Philosophy of Science (Routledge, 2015); Feng Shui: Teaching About Science and Pseudoscience (Springer, 2019). His edited books include The Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy (Hackett, 1989); History, Philosophy and Science Teaching: Selected Readings (Teachers College Press, 1991); Constructivism in Science Education: A Philosophical Examination (Kluwer Academic Publishers 1998); Science Education and Culture (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001) with Fabio Bevilacqua and Enrico Giannetto; The Pendulum: Scientific, Historical, Philosophical and Educational Perspectives (Springer, 2005) with Colin Gauld and Art Stinner; International Handbook of Research in History, Philosophy and Science Teaching (Springer, 2014). He was Foundation Editor (1992) of the journal Science & Education; he has published scores of journal articles and book chapters in science education, philosophy of education and the history and philosophy of science; he has contributed to major Education encyclopaedias and handbooks. He was Foundation President of the International History, Philosophy, and Science Teaching Group; President of the Interdivisional Teaching Commission of the Division of History of Science and Technology and Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science; and received the Joseph H. Hazen Education Prize of the US History of Science Society. Outside of education, he was elected as the first Independent alderman of the Council of the City of Sydney since the end of the First War. xxv

Chapter 1

Catholic Family and Education

Abstract The chapter describes the powerful Irish-Catholic tradition in Australia whose origin is linked to the arrival of the 1788 First Convict Fleet from England. It gives an account of my mother’s rural situation as one of a family of 16 Fitzpatricks outside of Dubbo in the centre of NSW. My Christian Brothers education is outlined, first in a small parish school then as a ‘scholarship’ boy at the large Waverley College. The impact on the Sydney Church of the Second Vatican Council, which opened in 1965, the year I left school, is described. Of special mention is massive negative reaction to Humanae Vitae, the anti-contraception encyclical of Pope Pius VI. The precipitous demise of the Christian Brothers Order in Australia is detailed; the Order went, in a matter of just 20–30 years, from being everywhere to being, literally, nowhere, not even in name. The long tradition of Thomism as the formal and official philosophy of the Catholic Church is documented; its vitality in Sydney is recognised; its demise in seminaries is noted and an account is given of its independent life outside of the Church. Attention is drawn to its strength as an integrated philosophy wherein ontology, epistemology, ethics, politics, and anthropology all need to cohere.

1.1 Irish Catholicism in Australia For at least 150 years after the 1788 arrival of the British ‘First Fleet’ transporting its convict ‘overflow’ to Sydney, the Irish were the second largest ethnic group in Australia’s new, non-Aboriginal population. At the end of the nineteenth century they amounted to a third of the population, with 50,000 having arrived earlier as convicts (O’Farrell, 1986, Chap. 2). The First Fleet, with its Irish and other convicts, arrived in Sydney in 1788. For 30 years there were no priests to minister to the ‘flock’, provide the sacraments, or give instruction. The practice of Catholicism was essentially banned by the colonial authorities. The Reverend Samuel Marsden (1765– 1838), the Anglican chaplain of New South Wales and concurrently a magistrate deservedly known as ‘the flogging parson’, contended that if the Catholic religion were ever allowed by authority to be celebrated, the colony would be lost to the British Empire in less than a year (http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/marsden-samuel-2433). In 1807 he wrote: © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. R. Matthews, History, Philosophy and Science Teaching: A Personal Story, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0558-1_1

1

2

1 Catholic Family and Education The number of catholic convicts is very great in the settlement; and these in general composed of the lowest class of the Irish nation, who are the most wild, ignorant and savage race …. Men that have been familiar with robberies murders and every horrid crime from their infancy … governed entirely by the impulse of passion and always alive to rebellion and mischief they are very dangerous members of society … They are extremely superstitious artful and treacherous. (O’Farrell, 1986, p. 39)

Marsden’s wish to legally suppress Catholicism was thwarted by cooler and more reasonable heads, and the first priests—two Irish men, Fathers Therry and Connolly— arrived in the colony in 1820. For the next 200 years, the Irish Church dominated Australian Catholicism (O’Farrell, 1969). After a brief ‘engagement’ with Benedictines from England’s Downside-Abbey—Archbishops John Bede Polding (1794– 1877) and Roger Bede Vaughan (1834–1883)—Irish clerics filled the Australian episcopacy. The major figures in this lineage were Sydney’s Cardinal Patrick Moran (1830– 1911), Melbourne’s Archbishop Daniel Mannix (1864–1963) and Brisbane’s Archbishop James Duhig (1871–1965). They were all energetic, enthusiastic, and capable builders, literally, of churches, schools, and seminaries. As late as 1914, seventy per cent of all priests in Australia had been born in Ireland (Campion, 1987, p. 78). Every second or third country town, and Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane suburb, had a St. Patrick’s Church and probably a St. Patrick’s School as well. In 1889 the first Catholic seminary in Australia opened in Sydney. It was conceived and built by Cardinal Patrick Moran and, not unexpectedly, was named St. Patrick’s College (Walsh, 1998). The St. Patrick’s Day Sports Carnival was a holiday for most Catholic Schools right through to the 1960s. For 200 years Australian Catholicism had an Irish hue: It was ‘manly’, practical, more devotional than spiritual, suspicious of too much thinking or theorising, completely adverse to free-thinking of any kind, combative when faced with the Church’s foes such as Protestants, atheists, communists, and promoters and enablers of licentious behaviour, chauvinistic towards women, hierarchical and authoritarian in its internal life, fearful and renouncing of ‘the flesh’ and the inevitable sins associated therewith (but having no trouble with drinking, dancing or gambling), inordinately devoted to Mary ‘the Mother of God’. Not all traditions in the Roman Catholic Church had the same hue; they had other colours on their palettes and the common ones were mixed in different proportions. In France, having a sexual liaison was on the level of ‘sins of gossip’, as a Parisian confessor told a surprised, and relived friend, an Australian art student living there in the 1960s. Irish priests, brothers and nuns opened churches, schools, hospitals, and aged-care homes, and performed countless other social services.

1.2 Irish-Catholic Family

3

1.2 Irish-Catholic Family I was born in Sydney on 19 May 1948, the only child of Alice Fitzpatrick (1908–1985) who was the twelfth of fourteen children fathered by Patrick Fitzpatrick (1836–1918). In 1851, in the aftermath of the devasting Irish Famine during which a million starved to death and another million were forced to leave the country, my grandfather, aged 15, left his parents and the village of Coon (Cuan) near Kilkenny in the south of Ireland, to seek work in New Zealand (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_ (Ireland). His siblings went to the USA. In 1861, after eleven years working as a stonemason and other jobs, he joined with multiple thousands from around the world in the Australian Gold Rush, seeking gold in the Victorian fields of Ballarat and Bendigo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Victorian_gold_rush). By 1875 he was fortunate to find enough to enable him to buy 600 hectares of land on the Talbragar River near Dubbo in central New South Wales, 400 km from Sydney (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubbo). He cleared the land to create a sheep and wheat property which he named ‘Coon Hill’ after his Irish village. At age 42 he married Bridget Kilfoyle and they had 11 children. After her death in 1903 at age 43, Patrick in 1904 married my grandmother Catherine Reid, who had been born in Kilkenny. They had four children. The first born, Robert Joseph, lived just long enough to be baptised. Then my mother, Alice Ellen Kathleen was born on 3 March 1908. The Fitzpatrick family’s life, and that of a good many of their Dubbo neighbours, embodied all the strengths and weaknesses of the religious, moral, and social traits of Australian rural Irish-Catholicism that has been so well-captured in stories, poems, ballads, and histories (Franklin, 2019). In an obituary published 9 July 1918 the Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate newspaper wrote of him: As a man he was respected amongst his fellows for his honesty, integrity, and fair dealing. His hospitality gained for him a wide reputation, and no man ever visited the Fitzpatrick homestead without partaking of the open-hearted good cheer of this big-hearted, honest Irishman. The funeral cortege, which was one of the largest and most representative seen in Dubbo for a long time, was another striking testimony to the worth of the deceased and the great respect in which he was held by all classes of the community. (https://trove.nla.gov.au/new spaper/article/75563951)

Until her death in 1957, my grandmother lived some of her time with us in Waverley, and we spent time with her in Dubbo. While there I used to attend the small North Dubbo convent school that had a huge pepper willow-tree in its yard, something I am always reminded of whenever I see one and crush a fragrant seed. At the time, Dubbo had a population of perhaps 10,000, with two Catholic High Schools (boys and girls) and two primary schools. Three of Patrick’s sons volunteered to fight for the ‘Mother Country’ in the first Great War. This was despite the Irish owing nothing to the English, indeed the contrary; and despite Archbishop Daniel Mannix of Melbourne being a staunch critic

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of the war and the government’s conscription policy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Daniel_Mannix). Mannix was formerly Principal of Maynooth College in Ireland, the preeminent Catholic seminary that prepared priests for Ireland and for the Irish diaspora in the USA and British colonies; he denounced the war as a ‘Trade War between British and German industrialists’ (Franklin, 2015). My mother’s stepbrother, John Bede Fitzpatrick, was 33 years old and working on the Coon Hill property when he enlisted. His 3rd battalion was sent to France. He remained there, buried in the military cemetery at Villiers Bretonneux, having been killed on the Western Front in 1917 at age 34. Two other brothers who enlisted, Charles Edward and Edward Anthony, died shortly after their return to Dubbo. Charles served in Egypt and on the Western Front before being medically discharged. Edward was twice wounded before being medically discharged. Sadly, he took his own life in 1924. The suicide might well have been ‘war related’, but such happenings were shrugged off at the time, at best thought of as ‘shell-shock’; recognition of Post-Traumatic Stress was decades away. In 1921, after Patrick Fitzpatrick died, the family sold the property and moved to Darling Street in Dubbo township. Coon Hill was subsequently renamed Marrington, on account of the property’s Irish name also being a derogatory term for aborigines. My mother was a devout Irish-Catholic who married late at 38 years. She met my Newcastle-raised father, Robert Alexander Matthews, in Dubbo. After returning with the 2/2nd battalion from the Middle East campaigns in Libya, Syria, and Greece, he was sent in 1942, as an instructor, to an army training camp outside Dubbo (now the site of the Dubbo Zoo). He was doubly fortunate to be sent to Dubbo as, apart from meeting my mother, the rest of the battalion went on to the horrors of fighting in the jungles of New Guinea. To marry my mother, he converted to Catholicism. His first wife, with whom he had two daughters, June and Bonny, had died before he enlisted. Alice came down to Sydney to do war service as a clerical assistant in the navy’s Garden Island base and was entitled to a two-bedroom, rent-controlled flat in Henrietta Street Waverley. In 1946 my parents married at the local Mary Immaculate Church. I was born two years later. On account of my mother being born late in Patrick Fitzpatrick’s life, and me being born late in her life, I have the distinction of, in the third decade of the twenty-first century, having a grandfather born in the first half of the nineteenth century. As with most returned servicemen, my father said nothing about his war experience, zero. Even though, and perhaps because, it involved the chaotic and desperate retreat of the Australian and New Zealand forces back through Greece and evacuation from Crete. A constant refrain at home was: ‘It is the Mass that matters’. We lived with rosaries, Our Lady of Fatima statue, Sacred Heart picture, brown and green scapulars, wearing a St. Anthony medal and a Miraculous medal, and other Catholic devotional aids. I was an altar-boy, rising early and walking up the hill once a week to the imposing ‘Mary Immaculate’ Franciscan church, to serve at 7 a.m. mass, sometimes at the main altar, other times at one of the 3–4 side altars. There was an overflow of priests: the

1.2 Irish-Catholic Family

5

parish priest, a number of curates, and priests visiting the adjacent Franciscan headquarters, so finding altars for their required daily mass was oft a problem. Holiness, or at least its institutional embodiments, was ‘bountiful’: In addition to the Franciscan church and monastery, abutting the Church was a convent for Enclosed Poor Clare nuns; within 500 m was Waverley College; close by was St. Clare’s convent and college with its community of non-enclosed Poor Clare teaching nuns. My father left our home when I was 12 years of age. It was a reflection of the times that he just left. I did from time-to-time hear doors slamming and, very occasionally shouting; in the scale of things this was certainly not ‘way out there’, but it was enough for me to know it was an unhappy marriage and that my stay-at-home mother had the worse of it. My father’s only words to me on leaving were ‘when you grow up, you might understand’. This was before the era of counselling, express-your-feelings, talk-it-through, and shared custody routines. It was twenty years before I saw him again. I asked him what he had thought of me, his tearful answer was: ‘I tried to forget you’. My mother had a wide-circle of long-time friends and relatives; weekend visiting of sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews, and friends, by bus, tram, and train, was part of my growing-up. As were occasional steam train trips back to Dubbo to stay with old friends. Throughout my entire life at home we had no telephone but a nearby friend of my mother’s did have one and she would use that to organise our weekend visiting itinerary. When I was 18 years old, I bought a second-hand motor bike, a Zundapp, of which the dealer confidently asserted that ‘the Czechs have forgotten more about motorbikes than the Japanese will ever know’. My near 60-year-old mother comfortably rode pillion from the first day that I rode it home. Having a bike took the transport to bother out of the visiting and extended our visiting range into the Blue Mountains where a special old Dubbo friend lived at Kurrajong. Prior to the bike this was at least a two-hour bus-train-bus journey. Never in my life did I hear my mother swear, curse, even talk ill of anyone or ever lose her temper. She was sincerely loved by all who knew her. After struggling for some years with dementia, she died on 18 June 1985 at age 77 years. As with so many, it would have been fitting for her to have easier and calmer twilight years but alas they were denied. At my mother’s Requiem Mass, the most fitting tribute I could pay to her was the recitation of the classic Australian Catholic bush poem The Little Irish Mother by John O’Brien (the pseudonym of Father Patrick Joseph Hartigan (1878–1952). Its penultimate stanza: There’s a Little Irish Mother sleeping softly now at last Where the tangled grass is creeping all around; And the shades of unsung heroes troop about her from the past While the moonlight scatters diamonds on the mound. (http://www.middlemiss.org/lit/authors/obrienj/poetry/littleirishmother.html)

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1.3 Christian Brothers Schooling (1952–1964) At the end of our street, atop the hill, was the imposing Waverley College, a Christian Brothers’ school and a member of the Combined Associated Schools (CAS) group which was one step down from the socially elite Greater Public Schools (GPS) group. The college went through to the Leaving Certificate, while there were three smaller, eastern suburbs Christian Brothers ‘feeder’ schools (Bondi Beach, Rose Bay, Charing Cross) that went only to the Intermediate Certificate, or Year 9 in current parlance. I attended one of these—St. Charles, at Charing Cross.

1.3.1 St. Charles St. Charles was a working-class school of the kind envisaged by Edmund Ignatius Rice (1762–1844), the widowed Irish small-businessman who in 1820 founded the Congregation of Christian Brothers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Ign atius_Rice). With a May birthday, I was the equal youngest in the class. I was athletic enough, and the school was small enough—with about 300 students spread over seven grades—for me to be in the school running, swimming and under-age rugby league team each year I was there. In a small pond, it does not take much to be among the big fish. The corridor had framed photos of school classes and teams going back to the 1940s. The great rugby league player and captain of Australia, Dave Brown, looked down on the passing boys; as did numerous Sydney first grade league and union players including Bob Dwyer the Australian rugby union coach; likewise distinguished swimmers such as Murray Garrerty, a national swimming champion in the 1950s. At every athletic and swimming carnival these names appeared in the records list. School athletic and swimming records were religiously kept and noted. Brother Dixon was the respected and warmly regarded Principal. He was a local boy who 30 years earlier was a student at the school. He left school at the Intermediate Certificate and finished high school in the Christian Brothers novitiate. He taught Year 7. We were 12–13 year-olds, and in ‘Social Studies’ we read Sydney University Adult Education Department’s periodical Current Affairs Bulletin. This was an unremarkable matter of course. In retrospect, it is amazingly remarkable. Needless to say, Brother Dixon never had to repeat himself or tell the class twice to ‘be quiet’. This was just done. The school, in every sphere, fought well above its light weight. The brothers did not have to promote a sense of belonging; there was no artificial ‘rah rah-ing’ or class bonding: the sense of pride, belonging, and gratitude was simply there. When the school closed in 1968 hundreds of ex-students and parents packed the old but commodious hall to suitably mark the occasion. In the final year, the Intermediate Certificate, I did well enough to come third in the class of 40; a class taught by a solitary brother, Bro Hawley. Each school grade

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had just one class of 40–50 students. Pleasingly, through all the school years, teachers had no discipline problems: ‘be quiet’ meant be instantly quiet and pay attention; ‘sit down’ meant sit down. I have no memory of a teaching brother ever having to repeat themselves, even in the lower years when there were near 50 in the class. It was a very different educational experience from what now prevails in classrooms where discipline and class management consume so much of a teacher’s time and energy.

1.3.2 Waverley College At the Intermediate Certificate I ‘won’ a scholarship to complete my Leaving Certificate (Years 10–11) at the prestigious, imposing, and large Christian Brothers Waverley College which sat atop the nearby ‘Our Lady’s Mount’. The school’s elevated roof-top statue of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal was the highest point south of Sydney Harbour (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miraculous_Medal). ‘Winning a scholarship’ took the form of the Irish principal of the college, Brother Michael (Mick) Maximus O’Connor (1896–1978), telling my mother: ‘Michael should not be attending a State school. Buy a uniform and send him up here when the school year commences’. So, fees were waived, and my final two years of schooling were courtesy of the Irish Christian Brothers. Without this I probably would have, as so many did, left school at age fourteen and begun a trade. My mother did investigate a wool classing certificate at Sydney Technical College in Ultimo as one option for me. This was natural enough as she had been raised ‘on the land’ and her younger brother, Tom, worked as a shearers’ mechanic at the famed Haddon Rig merino stud out of Warren. The college principal, who we went to meet, was a friend of my mother from her Dubbo years. Going to Waverley involved no fuss, no bother, no applications, no committees— just a brief meeting between Brother O’Connor and my mother, with me in tow. His Christian Brothers obituary does obliquely refer to his non-consultative style; he did not like wasting his own, or brothers’ time, in meetings. For good or bad, as with so many things, such a simple, direct, and efficient procedure is no longer found in education; everywhere bureaucratisation and managerialism have triumphed. The adage ‘If you have nothing to do, call a committee meeting’ had no traction around Brother O’Connor. That my mother was one of 14 siblings and her father was named Patrick Fitzpatrick, certainly did not count against my getting a ‘scholarship’ from Brother O’Connor, of whom someone said: ‘you could still smell the peat on his habit’ and certainly hear the brogue in his voice. Michael O’Connor had been born in 1896 in Liscannor on County Clare’s west coast within a mile of the rolling Atlantic waves. In nearby Ennistymon he attended the very first Christian Brothers school established in Ireland; then he entered a Christian Brothers novitiate and training college; he took vows and was professed in the order. He began teaching at age 20; in 1920, at age 24, he sailed for New Zealand and Australia. His 1964 Principal’s address, reproduced in the Waverley College Yearbook, captured his educational vision:

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1 Catholic Family and Education Our task is stated simply enough: we must, by word and still more by example, manifest those principles on which a sense of responsibility is based, and then we must be ready to afford the children under our care a due measure of liberty to follow or not to follow these principles. This, you will agree, is a duty that demands a high degree of wisdom and human understanding and especially a bond of sympathy and co-operation between parents and teachers who share the task … we, as teachers, must admit that the degree of moral and social responsibility shown by our pupils when outside our immediate control is a fair measure of the efficacy of our teaching.

My two Waverley years were happy and full, with rugby, debating, swimming, and enough study to ensure success in final exams. Waverley was a big school; and like St. Charles, comfortable with itself and its sporting and academic traditions. A few years before my arrival, Michael Cleary had left the college to become, in order, an Australian sprint champion and bronze medallist at the 1962 Commonwealth Games, an Australian rugby union winger, an Australian rugby league winger, a Labor member of state parliament and Minister for Sport (https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Michael_Cleary_(rugby)). In 1960, another old boy, Tony Madigan, who had been college boxing champion, fought Cassius Clay (as Muhammad Ali then was) in the semi-final of the 1960 Rome Olympics, thus winning a bronze medal; two years later, in 1962, he won the silver medal in the Commonwealth Games (https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Madigan). Numerous other old boys were in national, state, and Sydney rugby, swimming and cricket teams, and were sitting on different judicial benches, government benches, and in university chairs. There were twenty Christian Brothers and a small number of lay teachers on staff. The most noteworthy of the latter were Thomas Keneally, the Australian novelist and former student at Christian Brothers Strathfield (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Thomas_Keneally), and Peter (Percy) Watson the energetic English and Economics teacher who subsequently took a doctoral degree in theology, became deputy principal at another major Sydney school and, for ten years, was Education Editor of The Australian newspaper (https://waverley.nsw.edu.au/information/the-percy-wat son-award/). The brothers, with few exceptions, were all fine men and conscientious teachers, as were the lay teachers. There were about 140 pupils in the final year, placed in six, graded classes. The Leaving Certificate results were commendable: Leaving Certificate Passes (135), University Matriculation (106), Leaving Certificate honours (42), Commonwealth University Scholarships (27), Teachers’ College (university) Scholarships (27). From Fifth Year One all the way through to Fifth Year Three, students gained university scholarships, and in still lower classes, university entrance (matriculation) was obtained. A good many of my classmates went on to be doctors, lawyers, bankers, politicians, businessmen, farmers, academics, pharmacists, engineers, accountants, teachers, or entered into sundry trades and other useful occupations. One classmate, Peter Cosgrove, became head of the Australian Army and Governor-General of Australia (Cosgrove, 2020; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Peter_Cosgrove). Another, Peter Collins, became the leader of the NSW Liberal Party and, but for an intra-party coup, had a serious chance of becoming Premier of NSW

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at the 1999 election (Collins, 2000; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Collins_ (New_South_Wales_politician)). Another classmate, Michael Matteson, became Australia’s most celebrated draft dodger and in-principle objector to conscription for the Vietnam War (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Matteson). Michael objected not on religious or pacifist grounds, but on political grounds. His political philosophy was anarchism and consequently maintained that the State did not have conscription powers over individuals. The school captain, Desmond Rankin, gained entry to medicine, but chose to enter the Diocesan seminary to begin training for the priesthood. After five years he left and did his medical degree.

1.3.3 Marian Devotion Development of religious knowledge (Christian Doctrine) was taken seriously with scheduled weekly classes and annual prizes. Cultivation of Catholic spirituality was also central to college life. Novenas, recitation of the rosary, ‘First Friday’ prayers, marching to Mary Immaculate Church for special Feast Day masses, membership of the college St. Vincent de Paul society and the Legion of Mary sodality, religious retreats, recitation of the Angelus, the huge May Day procession (Mary’s day, not the political day!), and so on were all part of the fabric of college life. Some decades earlier, the May Day procession had drawn upon most Sydney Christian Brothers schools. These assembled in Centennial Park and then marched, carrying aloft a large statue of the Virgin Mary, up through Bondi Junction to the college. By the 1960s this annual procession had scaled down to being just Waverley College: Old Boys, staff, students, and families, and the route was just a few kilometres of local streets. In procession, the rousing, faith-defining Marian hymns— ‘Hail Queen of Heaven, the Ocean Star’, and others—were sung, along with the iconic ‘Faith of Our Fathers’; decades of the rosary were prayed, and Marian litanies recited. The priest or brother would intone: ‘Holy Mary, Queen of Heaven’; ‘Holy Mary, Immaculate Virgin’; ‘Holy Mary, Mother of Christ’; ‘Holy Mary, Help of Christians’; ‘Holy Mary, Queen of all Saints’; ‘Holy Mary, Queen of the Rosary’; and down the long list of Mary’s terrestrial and theological virtues. After each invocation, the procession would in unison respond: ‘pray for us’. The Christian Brothers, perhaps more than any other order, emphasised the place of Mary in the Christian redemptive story. The Lourdes (1858) and Fatima (1917) apparitions were taught as straightforward, no-questions-asked historical events. This is hardly surprising, as both apparitions had been officially sanctioned by papal decrees; such things could only be questioned or problematised if papal authority itself were questioned—something that was not going to happen anytime soon in a Christian Brothers’ school. Likewise, the hundreds of thousands of miraculous cures resulting from on-site prayers to Our Lady of Lourdes and Our Lady of Fatima were simply accepted. Understanding the Fatima apparitions as part of the Church’s fight against Portuguese anti-clericalism and its more general campaign against atheistic Bolshevism was not

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part of any Waverley class; these queries came up much later in life. Statues of both of Our Lady’s abounded in churches and homes; Lourdes hospitals and nursing homes were everywhere. Mary Immaculate Church had a Lourdes Grotto in its forecourt. My own mother ended her days in Lourdes House, Waverley. The 1958 centenary of Our Lady’s appearance to Bernadette Soubirous, the 14year-old Lourdes peasant girl was richly celebrated throughout the Catholic world, including Christian Brothers’ schools. The second largest basilica in Christendom was built at Lourdes to suitably recognise the centenary; this took its place alongside two other substantial Churches. For the centenary, millions of gallons of Lourdes Holy Water were sold, ending up in Catholic homes throughout the world. The two relatively recent Marian dogmas—first, Mary’s Immaculate Conception, formalised by Pius IX in 1854 whereby it was decreed that Mary was conceived without bearing Original Sin; and second, her bodily Assumption direct into Heaven upon her death, proclaimed by Pius XII in 1950—were specially celebrated feast days at college. The Feast Day of the Assumption, August 15, was, throughout the Church, a Holy Day of Obligation with Mass being compulsory on pain of mortal sin. At college there was a combined schools Mass with St Clare’s College celebrated at Mary Immaculate Church. My own (formerly my father’s) 2,000 + page Daily Missal (Saint Andrew Daily Missal with Vespers for Sundays and Feasts (1937)) has among its collection of prayer and devotional cards, a ‘Prayer for the Marian Year’ issued by Pope Pius XII on the ‘Feast of the Presentation of Our Lady, November 21st, 1953’. The card well-encapsulates the Marian devotion of the Catholic Church in the mid-twentieth century, a devotion distilled at Waverley: Enraptured by the splendour of your heavenly beauty, and impelled by the anxieties of the world, we cast ourselves into your arms, O Immaculate Mother of Jesus and Our Mother, Mary, confident of finding in your most loving heart appeasement of our ardent desires, and a safe harbour from the tempests which beset us on every side. Though degraded by our faults and overwhelmed by infinite misery, we admire, and praise, the peerless richness of sublime gifts with which God has filled you, above every other mere creature, from the first moment of your Conception until the day on which, after your Assumption into Heaven, He crowned you Queen of the Universe. O Crystal Fountain of Faith, bathe our minds with the eternal truths! O Fragrant Lily of all Holiness, captivate our hearts with your heavenly perfume! O Conqueress of evil and death, inspire in us a deep horror of sin which makes the soul detestable to God and a slave of hell! O well-beloved of God, hear the ardent cry which rises up from every heart in this Year dedicated to you Bend tenderly over our aching wounds. Convert the wicked, dry the tears of the afflicted and oppressed, comfort the poor and humble, quench hatreds, sweeten harshness, safeguard the flower of purity in youth, protect the Holy Church, make all men feel the attraction of Christian goodness. In your Name, resounding harmoniously in Heaven, may they recognise that they are brothers, and that the nations are members of one family, upon which may there shine forth the sun of a universal and sincere peace. Receive, O Most Sweet Mother, our humble supplications, and above all obtain for us that, one day, happy with you, we may repeat before your throne that hymn which today is sung on earth around your Altars: You are all beautiful, O Mary! You are the Glory, you are the Joy, you are the Honour of our people! Amen

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On a more self-interested note, the card does list the coda of rewards on offer for such devotion: Five years’ indulgence each time recited; plenary, on the usual conditions on the feasts of the Immaculate Conception, 1953 and 1954, and each Saturday of the Marian Year.’

Understandably, sympathetic Protestant theologians warned in 1950 that: Creation of a dogma of the Assumption would be interpreted today in the midst of the efforts at closer relationships between the churches as a fundamental veto on the part of the Roman Church. (Pelikan, 1960, p .121)

The prayer card could be Exhibit A in their case for constraining Marian enthusiasm, and many other exhibits could easily be marshalled. Marian devotion was central to students’ experience at Waverley. The school was reflecting the wider Australian Catholic commitment to Mary, the mother of Jesus. At the pivotal Vatican Council in the early 1960s the Australian bishops sided with the minority who wanted the Church to issue a separate decree on Mary as an agent of redemption. This move failed by only a few votes (Campion, 1987, p. 213). No one has yet tabulated the psycho-sexual impact of Marian devotion on generations of pupils, caused by elevating women’s or female ‘purity’ and ‘holiness’ so far beyond earthly reality. A starting point might be Anne Summer’s classic 1975 Damned Whores and God’s Police (Summers, 1975), in which she identifies the stereotypical Australian bifurcation of women into virtuous mothers whose function was to civilise society or bad girls who led men astray and deserved vilification. Some inkling of this was manifest when, in second-year university at age 18, after six months of friendship and chaste ‘going out with’ a relatively sophisticated girl who was majoring in Italian at the university, she said: ‘Michael, you barely know me’. This was the first of a number of such experiences I had as a young Christian Gentleman, to use the title of the well-worn Christian Brothers text authored by Brother C. J. Davy.

1.3.4 Appreciation by Students Since the 1980s there have been well-attended regular class reunions. In 2019, fifty class of 1964 fellows attended the 55th year reunion. There is class-wide gratitude for the education and experience that the school and its drastically underresourced teachers provided. Brothers Farrell, Dixon, Taylor, Hall, Massingham, McKay, White, Dimittina, Mousley, and others were remembered with appreciation, with a number of fellows attributing their outstanding first-class honours results in Mathematics, Physics, English, History, and a few other subjects, to the dedication of particular teachers. When Brother O’Connor, who presided over the whole show died, his entire estate fitted into two suitcases and his clothes were too worn to be given to the St Vincent de Paul store. That the repute of the Christian Brothers, built on such foundations, has been mired in deserved sexual-abuse scandal as detailed below, has been a significant matter with which Old Boys have had to comprehend. Seemingly, Waverley was not stained.

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1.4 Vatican II: A Destabilised Church (1965–1969) My Christian Brothers schooling occurred entirely—but just—in the ‘Old Days’ of un-reconstituted, un-reformed, confident, infallibly led, assertive Catholicism. Known fondly by conservatives, and the aged devout, as the ‘Good Old Days’. But the times ‘were a-changing’. Pope John XXIII’s tumultuous Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) concluded one year after I left Waverley, in the pontificate of Pope Paul VI. Many Australian clerics and laity were enthusiastic about the Council and wanted quickly to move forward with its reform agenda ag (Aggriomanento) made cheaply available in redcovered paperback edition (Abbott, 1966). But equally, many lacked such enthusiasm, were bewildered, indifferent, and some outrightly opposed. Australia was slow off the conciliar mark. The Council had opened in October 1962 and Cardinal Gilroy told an audience of priests that ‘it would be all over by Christmas, the experts in the Vatican knew just what was needed for the church’ (Campion, 1987, p. 203). Bishops who had been in Rome came back saying that ‘there was a lot of useless talk and nothing had been finalised’ (Geraghty, 2003, p. 323). The Council’s theological and philosophical debates passed them by. Chris Geraghty observed: The bishops of the world had excited great expectations which had reverberated round the world. …But the Sydney diocese (and Australia in general) was still moored, like a rotting hulk, up-stream, in oily, muddy back-waters. At the Council, our bishops … had batted on the side of the reactionaries. (Geraghty, 2012, p. 139)

The Australian bishops probably recognised the names of some of the theological luminaries advising the different commissions—Yves Congar, Hans Küng, Edward Schillebeeckx, Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, Jean Dani˙elou and others—but these internationally renowned Catholic scholars had never featured in the bishops’ own education, their teaching, and certainly did not feature in the lecture rooms of the Australian seminaries they controlled. Most of the seminaries were stubbornly Tridentine in their organisation, culture, and education. Their lodestar was the mid-sixteenth century, counter-reformation Council of Trent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Trent). Lectures in Latin, on ancient texts, were still the staple at St. Patrick’s Manly seminary through to the 1960s, reading outside the course was not encouraged, genuine questioning was off the educational table (Geraghty, 2003). English seminaries of the time were also Tridentine. The Catholic historian and sometime seminarian, John Cornwell (Cornwell, 1999, 2001, 2003), wrote of his 1958–1960 seminary experience: The intellectual regimen was narrow and austere. Our studies, in philosophy, theology, Scripture and Church history, came packaged in published theses and aging manuals, mostly in Latin. We were not encouraged to read original texts. The tone of most of what we were taught was dogmatic. … These were the final days of an academic regimen that went back almost one hundred years to the reign of Leo XIII. (Cornwell, 2001, p. 72)

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The Australian bishops, with perhaps a few exceptions, did not bring back to the Australian Church the intellectual ferment of Rome. But eventually the Council decisions were enacted and the writings of the ‘new guard’ found their way into seminaries, adult education programmes, and university Catholic societies. The cheap 800-page English translation of The Documents of Vatican II (Abbott, 1966), with expositions and commentary, were widely enough read; they were a ‘must have on bookshelf’ for serious young Catholics. My own copy still has the plastic protective cover I put on it in 1967. However, to put it crudely, the Council’s decrees, and the disseminated new theology, compromised the successful long-time ‘business model’ of the Christian Brothers, along with that of most of the orders of priests, brothers, and nuns. For many conservatives, the Council compromised the ‘business model’ of the Church itself. For all orders, including the Christian Brothers, immature teenagers could no longer be accepted into novitiates; seminaries could no longer cut off, year-afteryear, their contact with family, society, and the world; seminarians could now read letters, newspapers, and periodicals; they could watch TV; they could take books out of public libraries; they could have personal friendships and conversations with other seminarians; they could venture out to the city or beach on their own or with a fellow seminarian, they did not have to move around in groups of three or more; they were encouraged to attend university courses; and, in a huge step forward, they were free to talk and engage with women. Not surprisingly, the latter led to mass exodus from seminaries; something so apparent when seminarians began attending Newman Society residential conferences. The clear Augustinian-Manichean cosmology that underwrote the mission of the Church, with its black and white dualities of good/evil, spirit/body, them/us, saved/unsaved, began to dissolve. Protestants rose in rank to ‘separated brethren’; the door was opened to salvation outside the Church; evil was not confined to personal sin, it was also manifest in social and institutional arrangements; socialism was not the forecourt of communism; numerous long-standing ‘divinely’ ordained practices and liturgies, were seen less as divinely ordained and more as culturally and historically ordained—e.g., no meat on Fridays—indeed gender ordained, where arguments about the ordination of women were now in play; and so on. The Green Catechism, so confidently and successfully expounded by the Christian Brothers, could no longer be taught and examined, at least in the same manner and with the same confidence. The catechism answers were on their way to becoming ‘discussion points’ in religion classes. For both outsiders and insiders, the sturdy Catholic edifice, the largest structure in the 2.5-billion person Christian world, was seen as having feet of clay. Near-fatal damage to the Church was caused in 1968 by a shot fired from, of all places, the Vatican. Pope Paul VI took it upon himself, and before awaiting the outcome of a bishops’ commission, to issue the encyclical Humane Vitae, reaffirming the Church’s historic opposition to contraception (Noonan, 1965), and stating that the practice contravened natural law, was sinful and could not be practised by Catholics, married or unmarried (http://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae.html).

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This act triggered not only a crisis in the pastoral authority of the Church but also in the reputation and application of ‘natural law’ as a theological foundation for Church teaching.

1.4.1 Contraception and Natural Law The release, and ready availability from the early 1960s, of the contraceptive pill had pushed Church teaching on contraception, and consequently of natural law theory, to the forefront of many Catholics’ thinking. The title and contents of a pre-encyclical 1964 anthology edited by Archbishop Thomas Roberts—Contraception and Holiness: The Catholic Predicament (Roberts, 1964)—captures the Catholic, and my own, preoccupation of the time. Contraception was regarded, and was always taught, as selfish and illicit. The ‘natural’ purpose of intercourse, and more generally of sexual activity, was procreation; the having of children. This had to be remembered by Catholics even when permitted ‘natural’ rhythm methods of contraception were encouraged by clergy and practised by the faithful. And supposedly by Catholics having intercourse after menopause or when a husband’s sperm count is deficient. The encyclical was clear that for all married couples: The Church, nevertheless, in urging men to the observance of the precepts of the natural law, which it interprets by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life. (#11)

And priests had a solemn duty to so instruct the faithful: And now, beloved sons, you who are priests, …. It is your principal duty—We are speaking especially to you who teach moral theology—to spell out clearly and completely the Church’s teaching on marriage. In the performance of your ministry you must be the first to give an example of that sincere obedience, inward as well as outward, which is due to the magisterium of the Church. (#28)

Underpinning the whole corpus of the Church’s teaching on contraception was the long-held doctrine of natural law: not scripture or revelation, not even historical teaching, but natural law that is ‘engraved’ in the nature of ‘man’. Without natural law, the Church’s teaching is adrift. Hans Urs von Baltazar, the Jesuit theologian and Council advisor, well-stated this dependence: There would seem to be small grounds in Scripture for a strictly theological position nor does tradition in its other forms make up for this lack. In point of fact, the papal documents which have specified the Catholic position seem to argue from revelation very little if at all; rather, the emphasis is upon the natural law and upon the role of unaided reason in the establishing of the norms of human conduct. The arguments adduced by [Catholic] moralists have followed along the same path. (Baltazar, 1964, p. 130)

The encyclical was explicit on this point:

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For man cannot attain that true happiness for which he yearns with all the strength of his spirit, unless he keeps the laws which the Most High God has engraved in his very nature. (#31)

Paul VI was continuing the explicit teaching of Pius XI who in his lengthy 1930 encyclical Casti Connubii maintained: 54. But no reason, however grave, may be put forward by which anything intrinsically against nature may become conformable to nature and morally good. Since, therefore, the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children, those who in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural power and purpose sin against nature and commit a deed which is shameful and intrinsically vicious. 55. Small wonder, therefore, if Holy Writ bears witness that the Divine Majesty regards with greatest detestation this horrible crime and at times has punished it with death. As St. Augustine notes, “Intercourse even with one’s legitimate wife is unlawful and wicked where the conception of the offspring is prevented. Onan, the son of Juda, did this and the Lord killed him for it.” (http://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19301231_ casti-connubii.html)

Aquinas, following Augustine, was explicit about the paramount status of natural law. In his treatment of ‘Human Law’ in Question 95 of the Second Part of Part One of Summa Theologica he wrote: … therefore the force of a law depends on the extent of its justice. Now in human affairs a thing is said to be just from being right according to the rule of reason. But the first rule of reason is the law of nature, as is clear from what has been stated above (Q.95 Art.2 Reply 2). Consequently, every human law has just so much of the character of law as it is derived from the law of nature. But if in any point it differs from the law of nature, it is no longer a law but a corruption of law. (Aquinas, 1270/1952, vol. 2, pp. 227–228)

Clearly, the positive side of commitment to Natural Law was that it allowed, indeed commanded, rejection of the laws and commands of dictatorial, unjust regimes; it provided a non-political, trans-historical, philosophical court of appeal. In Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Mao’s China, and so many other places, this emboldened and gave comfort to the brave. But the theory did depend on identification of, and agreement about, what was natural in the natural law and, counter-wise, what in natural law might be accounted for by culture and historic circumstance? Arthur Schopenhauer (1793–1860), the prominent nineteenth-century German philosopher, quite comfortably and authoritatively pronounced that: Nature has appointed that the propagation of the species shall be the business of men who are young, strong and handsome; so that the race may not degenerate. This is the firm will and purpose of Nature in regard to the species, and it finds its expression in the passions of women. There is no law that is older or more powerful than this. Woe, then, to the man who sets up claims and interests that will conflict with it. (Schopenhauerv, 1851/1962, p. 105)

One does not need to be a deconstructionist to see here that early nineteenth-century German culture is masquerading as ahistoric Nature in Schopenhauer’s supposed philosophy. To say that they can be confused is not to say that they are always

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confused. This is a constant challenge for natural law proponents: What is culture and what is nature? A historian of the natural law tradition observed: The modern Thomist will insist that the proper foundation of natural law is a metaphysical foundation. But the metaphysics which he has in mind is the Christian, or rather the Thomist. His starting point is that of St. Thomas: ‘suppose the world to be governed by divine Providence’. (d’Entrèves, 1951, p. 46)

For the Catholic Church, as will be detailed in the following section, its Natural Law doctrine was anchored in Thomism. This thought-to-be firm anchor allowed the Church, where it had temporal power and influence, to make contraception not only immoral and sinful, but also illegal. There have been, of course, other metaphysical anchors, outside of Thomism and Aristotelianism, for natural law theory (d’Entrèves, 1951, Evans, 1965, Pufendorf, 1991). Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), the Dutch philosopher and political theorist who is recognised as the founder of modern natural law legal theory, held that natural law would maintain its validity even if God did not exist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Hugo_Grotius). It did survive the demise of Thomism. The Nuremberg war trials proceeded on a supposed natural law foundation without explicit reference to St. Thomas. But what was such foundation? Pius XI in Casti Connubii had repeated the Church’s claims for the alignment of secular law with divine law, or at least with canon law. # 124. For the preservation of the moral order neither the laws and sanctions of the temporal power are sufficient, nor is the beauty of virtue and the expounding of its necessity. Religious authority must enter into enlighten the mind, to direct the will, and to strengthen human frailty by the assistance of divine grace. Such an authority is found nowhere save in the Church instituted by Christ the Lord. Hence We earnestly exhort in the Lord all those who hold the reins of power that they establish and maintain firmly harmony and friendship with this Church of Christ so that through the united activity and energy of both powers the tremendous evils, fruits of those wanton liberties which assail both marriage and the family and are a menace to both Church and State, may be effectively frustrated.

And: # 125. Governments can assist the Church greatly in the execution of its important office, if, in laying down their ordinances, they take account of what is prescribed by divine and ecclesiastical law, and if penalties are fixed for offenders. (http://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19301231_ casti-connubii.html)

Pius XI pointed to the 1929 Lateran Pact between the Holy See (Vatican) and the Kingdom of Italy (Mussolini) that he had signed as an exemplar of such enlightenment of secular law and culture. For many, this exemplar had the opposite effect of what was intended; it was an own goal. This alignment meant the secular prohibition of not only contraception, but divorce, abortion, and homosexuality. So, in Ireland the sale of contraceptives was illegal from 1937 to 1980. In the USA, the Comstock Law of 1873 made it illegal

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to advertise contraceptives and selling condoms was illegal in thirty States (Collier, 2007). Similarly, contraception and divorce was illegal in the Philippines, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, and numerous other Catholic countries. Divorce came to Argentina only in 1987. Where the Church influenced politics, its Thomistic reading of natural law had secular, legal consequences. And, of course, serious personal consequences for millions of citizens, perhaps the most damaging of which was unplanned and unwanted pregnancy for both married and unmarried Catholics. The wretched situation of Irish girls and their babies is well known. If this was not enough, there was also the civil punishment of homosexuality, and the wretched lives that so many gay men and women had to live as a consequence of it being deemed ‘unnatural’. When Pope Paul VI took it upon himself, and away from the Cardinals’ Commission, to issue the Humanae Vitae encyclical in 1968, the bulk of Catholics, worldwide, simply rejected the teaching. It did not accord with their own lived experience, or their own reasoning. For married Catholics, and more so for unmarried ones, the ease, simplicity, cheapness, and discreetness of the contraceptive pill, which became available in 1961 and which in Australia in 1975 was placed by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, meant that it was almost universally utilised. The complex and arcane natural law arguments against contraception simply did not wash; and without them, there was no other Christian basis for the prohibition. Something recognised by Protestants for centuries. Many rightly pointed out that rejection of Humanae Vitae would be the ‘thin edge of the wedge’. If papal teaching were rejected there, if the Church got something so important, for so many, so wrong, then why assent to its teaching elsewhere? The encyclical was just adding to a long tradition of decrees of the Church’s magisterium; it was not a one-off aberration of a distracted, lone pope. If the philosophical, natural law, basis of the Church arguments was deemed unsound, then what other social and moral imperatives advanced with the same natural law arguments could be rejected? Pretty much the entire edifice of the Catholic Church’s political, medical, legal, social, and personal teaching was informed by centuries of interpretations and elaboration of natural law theory. General Franco asked his Catholic moral advisers whether it was licit or illicit to attack the democratically elected Spanish Republican government. Their affirmative answer licensed the Spanish Civil War that had devastating consequences for Spain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Civil_War). Post-Vatican Council, Catholic beliefs and injunctions lacked the dogmatic certainty of yesteryear; its practices, including its sacramental practices, ceased being practised. Confession has all but disappeared; attendance at Sunday mass, which used be compulsory under pain of mortal sin, has had the same downhill trajectory; Catholics living together before marriage, without scruple or guilt, is almost as routine as it is for non-Catholics; almost no Catholic follows the Church’s injunctions against contraceptive use; and so on. Priests, brothers, and nuns left their ministries en masse. The Vatican Council destabilised a great deal of ‘Old’ Catholicism’s core beliefs and practices. For huge numbers, Humanae Vitae swept away what vestiges of Church authority remained. The encyclical was authoritative, it was a solemn pronouncement of the magisterium

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of the Church; a Church that had defined itself as the source and determiner of Tradition which, with Revelation, constituted the twin sources of Catholic faith (Latourelle, 1968). Cherry-picking, if a common term might be used, was formally a Protestant option; individualism and responsibility was part of the Protestant fabric. Individuals could pick their biblical teaching or interpretation, and pick the Church that best suited their interpretations, but it was never formally a Catholic option. For Catholics, there was just only one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. You had to take the bad with the good; the hard with the easy. This was restated in the Council’s document Dei Verbum promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1965 (Abbott, 1966, pp. 111–128). But the ground was moving under the conciliar feet. By the 1980s, if not earlier, the monolithic Church with centralised divinely ordained authority was believed in by a diminishing number of Catholics. Many simply gave up the Church, for others, their Faith took on a different, humble, and more mellowed hue.

1.5 Demise of the Christian Brothers My Waverley years were the highpoint of almost a century of the Christian Brothers apostolate in Australia. The first of Edmund Rice’s congregation came from Ireland in 1868 and spread throughout Australia establishing schools everywhere. In the 1960s there were about 1,600 men in the Order who were teaching in about 100 schools. The Strathfield Novitiate and Training College routinely had about 100 ‘men’ preparing to teach and to take the Order’s entry vows of Chastity, Obedience and Poverty. Disturbingly in retrospect, and for many even at the time, many who entered were mere boys of 14–15 who completed their final two years of high school in the Novitiate and then followed on with 2–3 years of pedagogical training and religious formation, before being launched into their teaching career, or more properly, their vocation. They were literally in short pants when they entered the novitiate, and in not much longer ones when they emerged. Obedience had the same rank as Chastity and Poverty. It meant obedience to superiors in the Order, and through ecclesiastical structures and lines of authority, obedience to the appropriate bishop, and ultimately the Vatican. It was natural that the brothers’ in-grained obedience to those above, would also flow down and be expected from their pupils. And it was given. As already mentioned, in my entire Christian Brothers education, I never heard a brother repeat themselves in class. There was simply no ‘Haven’t I told you’, ‘Again, please be quiet’, ‘How many times must I tell you’, and so on—the daily debilitating staple of most school teachers. The Order was destabilised by the modernisation decrees of the Second Vatican Council. During the 1970s there was not so much an ebbing of the Christian Brothers tide as the Order going over a cliff. Within a couple of decades of my leaving Waverley, the Order had shrunk dramatically leaving just some retired brothers in dedicated care homes.

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1.5.1 Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse To compound the collapse of the Order, it was nationally shamed and vilified by the Sexual Abuse scandals of the 1980s and 1990s, they were a local part of the same venality and criminality that brought opprobrium to so much of the Catholic Church throughout the world. In Australia this was thoroughly and depressingly documented in the 2015–2017 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_into_Instit utional_Responses_to_Child_Sexual_Abuse). The Royal Commission was prompted by a cascade of allegations and criminal convictions for sexual abuse of children by scores of members of trusted and reputable sporting, cultural, and educational institutions, including the Christian Brothers. To the shock and dismay of Waverley Old Boys, the Brothers had the highest number of complaints, just over one thousand, of any Catholic authority. The Commission estimated that 22 per cent of brothers were paedophiles or at least had on occasion abused pupils. The Order has paid over $350 million in compensation. It paid $1.5 million in legal fees defending three, ultimately convicted, brothers. In the USA and Ireland comparable abuse compensation has been paid, and brothers, priests, and bishops jailed. In 2019, Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) produced an insightful programme ‘Celibacy, order, and obedience: Inside the Christian Brothers’ about two long-term Brothers who entered the order at 14 years, were professed, taught for 10 + years, then left the Order and the Church saying, as so many did, that they ‘could no longer themselves believe what they had to teach their students’ (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-04/life-inside-the-christianbrothers-religious-order/11500746?nw=0). In the lead-up to the 50th Waverley reunion in 2014, I contacted the very helpful Bro Dominic Obbens at the Christian Brothers Archives to get biographical details of our teachers which were then sent to 130 or so class fellows. These were rich, informative, and appreciated pen-pictures, most taken from the Christian Brothers authoritative central Necrology. A couple of years ago, I again contacted Bro Dominic for more information. I was unable to do so. This because he was in jail, convicted for abuse of three pupils at St Patrick’s Goulburn in the 1970s and another three pupils some decades later. To their discredit, the Order had bobbed, ducked, and weaved to protect him: he was taken out of the Goulburn school when accusations were first made and put in a head-quarter’s office in Sydney away from public sight. But, finally, his accusers had their day in court, and he has his years in jail (http://www.brokenrites.org.au/dru pal/node/157). To the best of my knowledge, and that of the admittedly self-selecting 50–60 fellows who fifty years later attend five-yearly reunions, Waverley College was in a ‘no abuse’ bubble. Despite their limited training, and their equally and limited living conditions and life experiences, the teaching brothers were all fine, decent, and fondly remembered men.

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1.5.2 The College Chaplain This was not the case for the long-time college chaplain, Fr Kieran O’Connell OFM, whose photo year-after-year from 1950 graced annual Yearbook pages—meeting with visiting dignitaries, bishops and cardinals; seated in the centre of the college Sodality of Our Lady group; leading prayers at the May Procession; and performing various other high-visibility, esteemed roles in college life. A significant personal event occurred in July 2020 when I read John Cornwells autobiography, Breaking Faith: The Pope, the People and the Fate of Catholicism (Cornwell, 2001; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cornwell_(writer)). Writing of his 1957 junior-seminary life, he recounts: A priest, now long since dead, asked me during confession in his room if he could look at my penis. His excuse was that I might have a deformed sexual organ which was causing ‘overstimulation’; to inspect my penis would satisfy us both as to whether I suffered from this condition. The word [‘sexual abuse’] was rarely used in that context in those days, but I had the sense to realize that his suggestion was inappropriate and I declined his offer, but I wonder to this day how many other boys fell for this tactic. (Cornwell, 2001, p. 163)

I had exactly the same experience with Fr Kieran O’Connell but seemingly with longer duplicitous ‘grooming’ and more prolonged after-effects. The humiliating details can be left unsaid. For a number of months, my meetings, and confessions, were in one of a number of rooms off the busy, main presbytery foyer. I told my mother that I was going to the presbytery to see Fr Kieran. She was clearly happy, though, of course, not knowing that these meetings were to assist me in struggles against impurity, sins of the flesh or, more plainly called, masturbation. I had no inkling of Fr Kieran’s ‘long game’. The final episode occurred on a Saturday morning in 1964, when I was 16 years old, not in the presbytery, but in a meeting room underneath Mary Immaculate Church. I could not tell my mother what happened, this was not an option. Her mind, her mental world of devout, simple Irish Catholicism could not comprehend or adjust to such behaviour. To tell her would be to shatter her world; the shock would overwhelm her. Christopher Geraghty, just ten years older than me, a former priest of 15 years and then a State Court judge, who was ordained in 1962, accurately captures the religious mind of my mother, and most Catholics of the time, including myself: In those distant days the priest was seen by himself and his flock, as a special messenger from God and the dispenser of divine mysteries. He was the representative of Christ on earth – God’s interpreter and ambassador. Since he was invested with divine powers (to forgive sins, to make Christ present and to lay down the law), he was entitled to the utmost deference and respect. It was incomprehensible that a priest could be avaricious and greedy, jealous, unreasonable, lazy, self-indulgent, a thief or a sexual predator. We believed, and the people believed, that we enjoyed a status above the angels, forever cloaked in a graced aura of supernatural powers. (Geraghty, 2012, p. 9)

Telling friends about the episode was not an option. That would be bringing scandal on the Church, something against the grain of all my mother’s upbringing. I took the common option: say nothing, remain silent. The usual mechanisms kicked in: It was

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the aberrant behaviour of a disturbed individual; Fr Kieran was an isolated outlier; he did not represent the Catholic priesthood; protect your own dignity; distinguish the Church’s message from the messenger, and so on. My serious and devout Catholicism moved forward: weekly mass, confession, prayer, continued consideration of a vocation to the priesthood, remaining a virgin until age 21. The episode was never mentioned. Just this year (2020) I told my wife, my first wife, and two Catholic friends from the time. Through 55 years of college reunions I never mentioned the episode. Reading Cornwell’s revelation of the same disturbed behaviour tipped the scales from remaining silent, to being public. Fr Kieran O’Connell died in 1985. It turns out that Fr Kieran was not the only disturbed man in the Waverley Franciscan community. On 4 September 2016, the Sydney Morning Herald revealed that molestation charges had been made by a number of middle-age men against Brother Paschal OFM who for 50 years supervised altar boys in different parishes, including Waverley (http://brokenrites.org.au/drupal/node/404). The Herald noted that some of the complainants (former altar boys) were pupils at Waverley College. The complainants had remained silent for decades until the hearings and findings of the Royal Commission into Sexual Abuse were released in 2016. In the same year, the men contacted the Franciscan Order who did not contest the charges. It organised an apology printed in the Waverley parish newsletter and the newsletters of the other parishes where Bro Paschal had served. He died in 1994.

1.5.3 Last Rites for the Order The Strathfield Novitiate closed in the 1980s, the pleasant, well-gardened, landscaped huge complex becoming a campus of the Australian Catholic University. Waverley College is not now advertised as a Christian Brothers school, it is not even advertised as ‘in the Christian Brothers tradition’; it is advertised as a school ‘in the Edmund Rice tradition’. A description which assuredly means nothing to anyone, which sadly is perhaps its point. The same fate has befallen the many esteemed Christian Brothers schools throughout Australia. They are no longer called ‘Christian Brothers’ schools; not even in the ‘Christian Brothers tradition’. A number of those who left the order do not publicly admit to ever having been in it; to do so is a damaging career and social move. Akin to a contemporary German admitting that they used to work for the Stasi organisation. A year ago, at a social gathering, I talked for some while with a high school teacher and mentioned that I had been to Waverley. Later in the evening I met his wife who remarked that her husband had been a Christian Brother. He gave no inkling of this in our conversation. How the esteemed have fallen. Yet for most of those in the Waverley ‘bubble’, myself included, and doubtless in most other Christian Brothers’ schools, our memories of the brothers were of fine, dedicated men who gave up so much of their own lives and achieved so much with their very limited means.

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1.6 Thomism in Sydney and Beyond At the final assembly in 1964, among other things, Brother O’Connor warned: ‘Now don’t any of you boys go studying philosophy at Sydney University, if you must then make sure you also attend the Aquinas Academy’. Brother O’Connor’s admonition about Sydney Philosophy was given in nigh on all Catholic schools, and perhaps many other religious schools. That a school principal would say anything about a university philosophy department seems odd; but given Catholicism, the times, and the Sydney department, it was not so odd. More than any other Christian denomination, Catholicism took philosophy seriously: faith and reason needed to be reconciled; faith had propositional content expressed in Creeds, dogmas, Papal, and Council decrees all of which had to be philosophically coherent and ‘sensible’—they could not offend reason; fideism (the content of faith comes from revelation alone) had long been opposed in the Catholic tradition, whereas it had been enshrined in much of the Protestant tradition; emotionalism, whereby Christianity is just a matter of feelings, attitudes, and raptures, was regarded with suspicion; and formal philosophy had always been a major component in the seminary programme for priests. Brand Blanshard (1892– 1987), a distinguished American philosopher and critic of Catholicism (https://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_Blanshard) wrote: The Catholic church is not anti-rational; it has a profound respect for reason. Any fair critic must admit that it has made a larger use of reason, that it has a creed more closely articulated intellectually, and that it has engaged in its service a more distinguished succession of philosophic minds, than any other religious body, Christian or pagan. (Blanshard, 1975, p. 24)

Jaroslav Pelikan (1923–2006), the distinguished Protestant historian and theologian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaroslav_Pelikan), observed that: Thomist theology recognizes what a large sector of conservative Protestant theology refuses to recognize – that the tradition of the church, the inner urgency of the faith, and the nature of the intellectual enterprise all compel the theologian to pay attention to philosophy … they cannot evade the claims of the most widely held philosophical theology in all Christendom. (Pelikan, 1960, p. 143)

Since colonial times, Australian Catholicism has been tied to a particular philosophy: Scholastic philosophy or Thomism. In seminaries, all priests studied 3–4 years of philosophy as part of their training. Select ones went on to Rome, Louvain, or Maynooth for higher degrees, where they were further immersed in the metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, natural philosophy, and anthropology of the ‘Perennial Philosophy’. Understandably, Thomism was also the ‘official’ philosophy for Catholic lay people who had need of philosophical education. In Sydney, this was provided by the Aquinas Academy. The Academy was founded in 1945. It was presided over by the charismatic Thomist priest Austin Mary Woodbury who had Roman doctoral degrees in both philosophy and theology (https://thomistica.net/news/2020/6/11/austin-woodburystudent-of-garrigou-lagrange-works-available-for-free). He was learned, lucid, and

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immensely popular. In 1962 when the University of Chicago Thomist philosopher, Mortimer Adler, came to Sydney, 1,500 past and present Academy students packed Sydney Town Hall to hear the US philosopher. Patrick Ryan, the crusading anticommunist Sacred Heart priest, was also prominent in Sydney Thomism and Catholic life (http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/ryan-patrick-joseph-11591). During the Cold War era when in Australia there was a national referendum (1951) to render the Communist Party illegal, there was a very public clash of philosophies between Marxist Materialism, intimately associated with Communism, on the one hand and various forms of religion-sympathetic philosophies on the other. Here Thomism was the best grounded and most popular option, even outside the Catholic Church. There is, for instance, a strong Anglican Thomist tradition. This is perhaps best seen in the writings of Eric Lionel Mascall (Mascall, 1943, 1956, 1971) whose Christian Theology and Natural Science (Mascall 1956) had an influence on my own early thinking about science and faith, after I first read, and heavily annotated it in 1972 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lionel_Mascall).

1.6.1 Thomism as ‘Official’ Philosophy In 1879 Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Aeterni Patris decreed Thomism to be the official philosophy of the Catholic Church; it was to be taught, elaborated and defended in all seminaries, and to inform religious teaching in all schools (https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Aeterni_Patris). In June 1914 Pius X issued his two-page Doctoris Angelici decree, restating the primacy of Aquinas’s metaphysic for Catholic teaching and requiring its placement at the core of all seminary philosophy (https://maritain.nd. edu/jmc/etext/doctoris.htm). The decree affirmed that: The chief doctrines of St. Thomas’ philosophy cannot be regarded as mere opinions—which anyone might discuss pro and con, but rather as a foundation on which all science of both natural and divine things rests. If they are taken away, or perverted in any way, then this necessarily follows: that the students of sacred studies will not perceive even the meaning of those words whereby the divinely revealed dogmas are uttered by the teaching of the Church. (https://maritain.nd.edu/jmc/etext/doctoris.htm)

Further: We desired that all teachers of philosophy and sacred theology should be warned that if they deviated so much as an iota from Aquinas, especially in metaphysics, they exposed themselves to grave risk. (ibid.)

And: it is our will and we hereby order and command that teachers of sacred theology in Universities, Academies, Colleges, Seminaries and Institutions enjoying by apostolic indult the privilege of granting academic degrees and doctorates in philosophy, use the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas as the text of their prelections and comment upon it in the Latin tongue, and let them take particular care to inspire their pupils with a devotion for it. (ibid.)

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A few years later the Code of Canon Law, promulgated by Pope Benedict XV in 1917, reinforced the position by requiring that all professors of philosophy hold and teach the method, doctrine, and principles of St Thomas. The papal endorsement of thirteenth-century philosophy continued through to 1950 when Pius XII in Humani generis maintained that, in the seminary, priests be instructed in philosophy ‘according to the method, doctrine and principles of the Angelic Doctor’ (Weisheipl, 1968, p. 183). The traditional, and then canonical commitment, to Thomism was such that even non-Thomistic philosophical works that purportedly established the existence of God were placed on the Index librorum prohibitorum. Thus Descartes, Malebranche, Rousseau, Kant—believers all—were on the Index (Gilson, 1968, p. 238). They were in good company, as many other believers, including Galileo, were also listed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_authors_and_works_on_the_ Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum). Thomist philosophy underpinned the Catholic Catechism that was learnt by rote by generations of pupils, including Waverley ones. Catholic teaching on the existence of God, the reach and limits of reason, the status and authority of conscience, the existence of the soul, the reality and functioning of grace, the reality of free will, mind/body relations, the Trinity, Eucharistic transubstantiation, the inherent wrongness of contraception, powers and limits of the State—were all explicated and made intelligible in Thomistic terms. For instance, Thomism was on hand to explicate the Nicene Creed, which was formulated by Church Fathers in 325, and has since remained a touchstone for orthodoxy in Catholicism, and for all Christian Churches. Consider: We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, and the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified. Making sense of the Nicene Trinitarian formulation was a struggle, but the option of ‘it makes no sense’ was not available. To say ‘I believe in something, but I do not know what’ is equally unsatisfactory. Thomist categories and philosophy helped in this task of making Christian mysteries understandable. Understandable at least to philosophers, so that the Church could say to the less philosophically acute clergy and laity: ‘The creed is sensible and coherent, just difficult for you to appreciate’. In this, the Church’s position is somewhat similar to contemporary belief in quantum entanglement: Almost the entirety of the world, including perhaps most scientists, cannot understand it, or even formulate it, but has ‘faith’ that some sophisticated physicists do understand it and can justify the belief. This is enough to go on with, and for a commitment to science. Of course, being sensible and coherent is not the same as being believable. The Church never held that the Creed could be ‘proved’ or demonstrated; only that it was ‘reasonable’, that it did not offend reason. Belief was ultimately a leap of faith.

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The Aquinas Academy introduced the Thomist tradition to Sydney Catholics. In the 1960s Academy evening courses were taught in Moral Philosophy, Metaphysics, Catholic Doctrine, Latin, History of Philosophy, Psychology, Political Economy and Social Theory. Thomist political and social theory informed Pope Leo XIII’s influential 1891 Rerum Novarum (‘On Rights and Duties of Capital and Labour’), and in developed forms was appealed to by Australian Catholics in the momentous 1930s–70s social, cultural, and political battles with Communism (http://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html). There was a spectrum of views concerning the papal endorsement of Thomism. Liberals saw it as requiring that Thomism be taught and elaborated, but not that it had to be entirely assented to; conservatives saw Humani generis as pronouncing the truth or correctness of Thomism and thus it had to be believed and defended in its entirety. Liberals thought that Thomism was a good model for philosophy, in that it was systematic, consistent, and acknowledged the connectivity between the different branches or spheres of philosophy. Jacques Maritain (1935/1951, 1948) and Etienne Gilson (Gilson, 1929, 1936, 1952, 1960, 1968) exemplified the best philosophical qualities of modern Thomism, yet liberal Catholics maintained that philosophy had to stand on its own feet; it could not deflect its own problems by appeal to any papal authority. Illtryd Trethowan (1907–1993), the Benedictine philosopher, in his book on the philosophical basis of Catholicism, wrote of Aquinas: He is the Church’s official theologian in the sense that his conclusions have been incorporated in many cases into the Church’s teaching, and his authority is paramount. But St Thomas is not infallible as a theologian or as a philosopher. The Church insists that her future priests shall be instructed in Thomism, and there are obvious advantages in such an arrangement. [But] There is no obligation to accept Thomism as a system. (Trethowan, 1961, p. 7)

1.6.2 Revelation and Philosophy The issue for all religions based on putative divine revelation embodied in scriptures (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, Mormonism, and others) has been the philosophical expression, and articulation, of that revelation. Frederick Copleston (1907–1994), the English Jesuit philosopher and historian of philosophy, well stated the matter: It is all very well to claim that faith is the response to God’s self-disclosure or self-revelation …. But unless a policy of complete silence is observed, the disclosure or revelation must be expressed. It cannot even be thought without internal expression. And once it is expressed, there is room for dialogue between the theologian and the philosopher. (Copleston, 1994, p.vii; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Copleston)

There have been differing voices in the dialogue.

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Jean Daniélou (1905–1974), the French theologian and cardinal, noted: Christian theology, from St. Thomas Aquinas to the Vatican Council, has always maintained the possibility of a rational knowledge of the existence and attributes of God; and this remains a principle of Catholic thinking. But even in the heart of Christianity another current has never ceased to pulsate – that which regards the God of reason as a stumbling-block to whom the God of faith is opposed. (Daniélou, 1957, p. 52; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_D ani%C3%A9lou)

Etienne Gilson (1884–1978) wrote: A philosophy open to the supernatural would certainly be compatible with Christianity, but it would not necessarily be a Christian philosophy. If it is to deserve that name, the supernatural must descend as constitutive element not, of course, into its texture, which would be a contradiction, but into the work of its construction. Thus I call Christian, every philosophy which, although keeping the two orders formally distinct, nevertheless considers the Christian revelation as an indispensable auxiliary to reason. (Gilson, 1936, p. 37; https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne_Gilson)

The additional requirement for Catholic philosophers is that the content of revelation is determined by the Church; there is an authoritative interpretation of scripture which resides in the tradition of Church teaching, pronouncements, encyclicals, and ultimately in papal authority. The Church long recognised that a revelation which is open to anyone to interpret, as they see fit and as suits them, is hardly a divine revelation. And along with the Church’s responsibility for interpretation came the requirement for making revelation understandable and intelligible. The language of the earliest Christian community was Hebrew and its culture Jewish, but within decades of the death of Jesus, under the influence of Paul and others, there grew a divergent community whose language and culture was Greek (Stanley, 1966). The Christian community, or Church as it was becoming identified, needed to express its beliefs, or ‘doctrines’, in Hellenistic culture using Greek language. The British historian Arnold Toynbee (1889–1975) well recognised this: … the exposition of Christianity in Greek language (and Christianity was expounded in the Greek language at a very early stage of its history) implicated Christianity in Greek philosophy, because, by the first century of the Christian Era, the Greek language was long since imbued with a Greek philosophical vocabulary, conveying Greek philosophical ideas. And I think that as soon as the Epistles and the Gospels were written, and written in Greek, Christianity was committed to expressing itself sooner or later in terms of Greek philosophy. (Toynbee, 1958, p. 6)

Thus, began the much-debated issue of the ‘Hellenization of Christian Dogma’ that has long occupied both Catholic (Dewart, 1966, 1969; Latourelle, 1968, Pt. 2; Lonergan, 1967) and Protestant philosophers and theologians (Bultmann, 1957/1964). Toynbee’s observation elides the important fact that Greek philosophy was not homogeneous; there were a number of Hellene philosophical systems, and just one or two non-materialist ones were taken up by the early Church and enthroned in the subsequent almost two millennia of religious, theological, philosophical, and scientific discussion and debate. Wallis Suchting described these struggles in the cradle of Western science and philosophy as:

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Despite all the differences between Plato and Aristotle the latter carried on the work of the former in essential ways, like that of offering a metaphysical ‘foundation’ for the sciences and a teleological view of the world. Christianity took up elements of Platonic thought …but, its philosophical high-point, in Thomism, mainly appropriated Aristotle. Atomism carried on a basically marginal existence, …till it was recuperated by Galileo. (Suchting, 1994, p. 45)

As will be later illustrated, in the mechanical worldview of the Scientific Revolution there was simply no place for the entities that Aristotelianism utilised to explain events in the world: hylomorphism, immaterial substances, unfolding natures and potentialities, substantial forms, teleological processes, and final causes were all banished from the philosophical firmament. Much can be said about atomism and the New Science, but for current purposes it suffices to repeat Craig Dilworth’s observation that: The metaphysics underlying the Scientific Revolution was that of early Greek atomism. … It is with atomism that one obtains the notion of a physical reality underlying the phenomena, a reality in which uniform causal relations obtain. … What made the Scientific Revolution truly distinct, and Galileo … its father, was that for the first time this empirical methodology [of Archimedes] was given an ontological underpinning. (Dilworth, 1996/2006, p. 201)

Returning to Toynbee’s observation, a basic divide has been between Christians who recognise that there needs to be philosophical interpretation of belief and those who reject all interpretation as deviation from revelation. The latter is the common fundamentalist option. For the former group, a basic issue has been what counts as authentic, or justified, interpretation? For Catholics, the second question is the same as: What is the ‘authorised’ interpretation? Claude Tresmontant (1925–1997), the French philosopher, Hellenist, and theologian, gave a very clear and unambiguous statement of the ‘interpretation’ side of the debate, maintaining that: … there is one Christian philosophy and one only. I maintain, in other words, that Christianity calls for a metaphysical structure which is not any structure, that Christianity is an original metaphysic. I maintain that Christian theology and Christian dogma contain in themselves a metaphysical substructure, a body of very precise and very well-defined theses which are properly metaphysical, though it is only progressively with time, in the course of its history, that Christian thought becomes conscious of it. (Tresmontant, 1965, pp. 19–20; https://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Tresmontant)

He does realistically acknowledge that ‘The idea itself of Christian metaphysics can give rise to dispute from many points of view’ (Tresmontant, 1965, p. 28). Cutting a very long story (which will be taken up later) short, Thomism was the philosophical system officially endorsed and utilised by the Catholic Church in its interpretation of revelation and as the philosophical substrate for its own teaching and formulation of dogma. The mid-twentieth century was at the high-water mark for Thomism in Australia and internationally in the Catholic Church. Ralph McInerny’s Thomism in an Age of Renewal (McInerny 1966) is an informed even-handed account of the contested position of Thomism in the Church. Subsequently there has been a steady decline of Thomism.

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Some years ago, I went to the Catholic University of Louvain in part because an uncle, Fr Harry Reid, did his Doctor of Divinity degree there before WWII. He was the son of my grandmother’s brother and a particular friend of my mother’s, a welcomed visitor to our flat at Waverley and, in 1949 on his return from Japan, he was the founding President of Chevalier College in Burradoo in the Southern Highlands of NSW. Louvain used to be a powerhouse of Thomism led by scholars such as Cardinal Mercier and then Joseph Maréchal, but to my astonishment no courses on Thomism were offered in the Philosophy Department. Phenomenology, Existentialism, Personalism, yes; but Thomism, no. A telling sign of the waning fortune of Thomism. In the final years of the twentieth century, Pope John Paul II, in his lengthy 1998 philosophically focused encyclical Faith and Reason, tried to re-energise the philosophical heritage of St Thomas (http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/ encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html), writing: In an age when Christian thinkers were rediscovering the treasures of ancient philosophy, and more particularly of Aristotle, Thomas had the great merit of giving pride of place to the harmony which exists between faith and reason. Both the light of reason and the light of faith come from God, he argued; hence there can be no contradiction between them. (ibid. #43)

And: It should be clear in the light of these reflections why the Magisterium has repeatedly acclaimed the merits of Saint Thomas’ thought and made him the guide and model for theological studies. This has not been in order to take a position on properly philosophical questions nor to demand adherence to particular theses. The Magisterium’s intention has always been to show how Saint Thomas is an authentic model for all who seek the truth. In his thinking, the demands of reason and the power of faith found the most elevated synthesis ever attained by human thought, for he could defend the radical newness introduced by Revelation without ever demeaning the venture proper to reason. (ibid. #78)

But by the second half of the twentieth century, it seemed that the Scholastic horse was near dead. This fate should not be taken as judgement on the intellectual and philosophical stature of Aquinas. In anyone’s reckoning, he is among the greatest intellects and philosophers of all time (Copleston, 1955; Kenny, 1969; Weisheipl, 1974).

1.6.3 Independent Thomism Scholasticism, nevertheless, had not died, as Aristotelianism was reviving in philosophy; and neo-Thomism, or at least Aquinas-influenced philosophy, was being advanced by philosophers such as Bernard Lonergan (1957, 1972); Elizabeth Anscombe (1981); Peter Geach (1969); Anthony Kenny (1980) and others. A programme of Analytic Thomism was launched (Haldane, 2004; https://en.wikipe dia.org/wiki/Analytical_Thomism). James Weisheipl (1923–1985), the Dominican

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historian and philosopher of science (https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/ encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/weisheipl-james-athanasius), wellobserved that: There developed in the period of Neo-Thomism an unfortunate dichotomy between careful historians of St. Thomas and speculative ‘Thomists’ that led to the decline of Thomism in our day. The only satisfactory way to understand the sublime doctrine of Thomas Aquinas is to see it in a historical and speculative perspective. This is neither to say that his ideas do not transcend time, as historicists would have it, nor is this to say that history should replace ideas. What is needed is a unification of historical method and philosophical acumen. Strange as this may seem, unless the teaching of Aquinas is seen in its true historical perspective, there is not only the danger of misunderstanding his teaching, but also the danger of rendering Thomas irrelevant to our age. (Weisheipl, 1974, p. 1)

This historical-philosophical method is displayed in Weisheipl’s own masterful biography of Aquinas (Weisheipl, 1974) and his studies on Nature and Motion in the Middle Ages (Weisheipl, 1985). The desirability, indeed, the necessity, of combining historical method and philosophical acumen applies equally to the study of all philosophers: Aristotle, Locke, Hume, Kant, Marx, Mach, Russell and anyone else of substance. I elaborated this point when putting together a collection of texts on the scientific background to early modern philosophy (Matthews, 1989). Early modern philosophers are too frequently read and taught as if they were talking to themselves, but they were talking to, and engaged by, early modern science. This is the missing context that the anthology tried to make visible. Encouragingly, the book has now sold 50,000+ copies, and Hackett Publishing has invited me to do a revised and expanded edition. Likewise, understanding and learning from educationalists such as Comenius, Rousseau, Dewey, Hutchins and others, benefits from the same combination of social-historical perspective and philosophical attention. But for teachers to have this dual perspective requires some exposure to, or training in, history and philosophy. Predictably enough, my own intellectual formation would be influenced by the Sydney Philosophy Department that Brother O’Connor warned against.

References Abbott, W. M. (Ed.). (1966). The documents of Vatican II. London: Chapman. Anscombe, G. E. M. (1981). Metaphysics and the philosophy of mind: Collected philosophical papers (Vol. III). Oxford: Blackwell. Aquinas, T. (1270/1952). Summa Theologica (English Dominican Province, Trans.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Baltazar, E. R. (1964). Contraception and the philosophy of process. In Thomas A. Roberts (Ed.), Contraception and holiness: The Catholic predicament (pp. 130–146). New York, NY: Fontana. Blanshard, B. (1975). Reason and belief . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Bultmann, R. (1957/1964). Is exegesis without presuppositions possible? In Shorter writings of Rudolf Bultmann (pp. 342–351). London: Fontana. Campion, E. (1987). Australian Catholics. Ringwood, VIC: Penguin. Collier, A. (2007). The humble little condom. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.

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Collins, P. (2000). The bear pit: A life in politics. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Copleston, F. C. (1955). Aquinas. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Copleston, F. C. (1994). Religion and philosophy. Dublin: MacMillan. Cornwell, J. (1999). Hitler’s pope: The secret history of Pius XII. New York, NY: Viking. Cornwell, J. (2001). Breaking faith: The pope, the people and the fate of Catholicism. London: Penguin Books. Cornwell, J. (2003). Hitler’s scientists: Science, war and the devil’s pact. London: Penguin. Cosgrove, P. (2020). You shouldn’t have joined. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin. d’Entrèves, A. P. (1951). Natural law: An historical survey. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Daniélou, J. (1957). God and the ways of knowing. New York, NY: Meridian Books. Dewart, L. (1966). The future of belief: Theism in a world come of age. London: Burns & Oates. Dewart, L. (1969). The foundations of belief . New York, NY: Herder & Herder. Dilworth, C. (1996/2006). The metaphysics of science: An account of modern science in terms of principles, laws and theories. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. (Second edition 2006). Evans, I. (Ed.). (1965). Light on the natural law. London: Burns & Oates. Franklin, J. (2015). The real Archbishop Mannix: From the sources. Ballarat: Connor Court. Franklin, J. (2019). Catholic rural virtue in Australia: Ideal and reality. Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society, 40, 39–61. Geach, P. T. (1969). God and the soul. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Geraghty, C. (2003). The priest factory. Richmond, VIC: Spectrum Publications. Geraghty, C. (2012). Dancing with the devil: A journey from the pulpit to the bench. Richmond, VIC: Spectrum Publications. Gilson, E. (1929). The philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (Second ed.). New York, NY: Dorset Press. Gilson, E. (1936). The spirit of medieval philosophy, (A. H. C. Downes, Trans.). London: Sheed & Ward. Gilson, E. (1952). Being and some philosophers. Toronto, ON: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies. Gilson, E. (1960). Elements of Christian philosophy. New York, NY: Doubleday & Co. Gilson, E. (1968). On behalf of the handmaid. In L. K. Shook (Ed.), Renewal of religious thought (pp. 236–249). New York, NY: Herder and Herder. Haldane, J. (2004). Faithful reason: Essays Catholic and philosophical. New York, NY: Routledge. Kenny, A. J. (Ed.). (1969). Aquinas: A collection of critical essays. London: MacMillan. Kenny, A. J. (1980). Aquinas. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Latourelle, E. (1968). Theology of revelation. Cork: Mercier Press. Lonergan, B. J. F. (1957). Insight: A study of human understanding. London: Longmans. Lonergan, B. J. F. (1967). The dehellenization of Dogma. In G. Baum (Ed.), The future of belief debate (pp. 69–91). New York, NY: Herder and Herder. Lonergan, B. J. F. (1972). Method in theology. London: Darton, Longman & Todd. Maritain, J. (1935/1951) The philosophy of nature. New York, NY. Maritain, J. (1948). Existence and the existent. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Mascall, E. L. (1943). He who is: A study in traditional Theism. London: Darton, Longman & Todd. Mascall, E. L. (1956). Christian theology and natural science: Some questions in their relations. London: Longmans, Green & Co. Mascall, E. L. (1971). The openness of being: Natural theology today. London: Darton, Longman & Todd. Matthews, M. R. (Ed.). (1989). The scientific background to modern philosophy. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company. McInerny, R. M. (1966). Thomism in an age of renewal. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Noonan, J. T. (1965). Contraception: A history of its treatment by Catholic Theologians and Canonists. New York, NY: Mentor-Omega Books. O’Farrell, P. (1969). The Catholic church in Australia. Melbourne, VIC: Geoffrey Chapman.

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O’Farrell, P. (1986). The Irish in Australia. Sydney, NSW: University of New South Wales Press. Pelikan, J. (1960). The riddle of Roman Catholicism: Its history, its beliefs, its future. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Pufendorf, S. (1991). On the duty of man and citizen according to natural law. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Roberts, T. D. (Ed.). (1964). Contraception and holiness: The Catholic predicament. New York, NY: Fontana Books. Schopenhauer, A. (1851/1962). The essential Schopenhauer. London: Unwin Books. Stanley, D. M. (1966). The apostolic church in the new testament. Westminister, MD: The Newman Press. Suchting, W. A. (1994). Notes on the cultural significance of the sciences. Science & Education, 3(1), 1–56. Summers, A. (1975). Damned Whores and God’s police: The colonization of women in Australia. Sydney, NSW: Penguin. Toynbee, A. J. (1958). Christianity among the religions of the world. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tresmontant, C. (1965). Christian metaphysics. New York, NY: Sheed and Ward. Trethowan, I. (1961). The basis of belief . London: Burns & Oates. Walsh, K. J. (1998). Yesterday’s seminary. Sydney, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Weisheipl, J. A. (1968). The revival of Thomism as a Christian philosophy. In R. M. McInerny (Ed.), New themes in Christian philosophy (pp. 164–185). Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, South Bend. Weisheipl, J. A. (1974). Friar Thomas D’Aquino: His life, thought and works. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Weisheipl, J. A. (1985). Nature and motion in the middle ages (Essays edited by W. E. Carroll). Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press.

Chapter 2

Science Degree, Teacher Training, and Science Teaching

Abstract The chapter describes the astonishingly rich and vital undergraduate years spent completing, on a Teachers Scholarship, the University of Sydney science degree. Of significance was completion of two years of philosophy that left a lasting impression. Participation in the socially and intellectually rich life of the University Newman Society is described, as is John Henry Newman’s commitment to Liberal Education with its embrace of cross-disciplinary teaching and learning. The careerdefining effect of the compulsory philosophy of education course undertaken while doing the Diploma of Education at Sydney Teachers College is detailed. In particular, the impact of Richard Peters’ book Ethics and Education is described. The first years of full-on science teaching and extra-curricular activities at Dulwich High School are outlined. This includes a first day disagreement with the head of department about the organisation of the science programme.

As with most, my late adolescent years were of enormous consequence for my subsequent life, career, and intellectual orientation in the world. For me, they were fully taken up by the University of Sydney: its rich science programme, its illustrious philosophy department, and its welcoming and stimulating Newman Society.

2.1 Sydney University BSc Degree and Beginning Philosophy (1965–1967) At the Leaving Certificate (1964) I won an Education Department scholarship to study science at the University of Sydney and thus in 1965, at age 16, became the first of the Fitzpatrick family to attend university. The scholarship enabled me to go to university; without it, I would have gone into the workforce in some capacity. I was in the ‘younger’ end of the fresher age-spectrum. Our mathematics teacher, Brother MacKay, had said that ‘being a teacher means you can help people grow up’. These words made an impression, so training to be a teacher was an easy career decision. I went to university with enthusiasm for completing my science degree and beginning a useful career as a science teacher. My working life started that way but, as this © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. R. Matthews, History, Philosophy and Science Teaching: A Personal Story, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0558-1_2

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book will detail, was side-tracked from classroom teaching, to teacher education, and finally science education research.

2.1.1 Catholic Boy Goes to University My mother’s dire financial situation meant I could receive a ‘living away from home allowance’, despite continuing to live with her in our two-bedroom flat in Henrietta Street Waverley, a short distance from Bronte beach. The lack of money did not impinge on my early life: not many had much money anyway, and our flat was ‘rent controlled’, and so ‘eviction proof’. This was the case for the 45 years that my mother lived there. It was an enlightened public policy for low-income families because they did not have to keep moving, having children change schools, and so on; low-income families could put down roots. Understandably, owners of rent-controlled properties did not think it was so enlightened. Despite the episode mentioned earlier with the Waverley College chaplain, the only career competitor I had during my early university years was becoming a Franciscan priest. Pleasingly, the vocations advisor said that I should first complete the science degree before considering the priesthood. He did not factor in the impact of philosophy and female students on my priestly aspirations. Relatives and close family friends were priests, and a number of them had studied philosophy in Rome, Louvain, and one, Julian Miller, studied history at Oxford after philosophy in Rome (https://www.smh.com.au/national/first-a-priest-always-an-edu cator-20121031-28k75.html). Philosophy was something that I had some inkling of when I started university. As mentioned above, the Catholic Church took philosophy seriously. I, along with thousands of others in Australia, and still more hundreds of thousands in the USA and UK, listened to the Sydney radio philosopher–priest, Dr. Leslie Rumble (1892–1975), where week-by-week, in responses to listeners questions, Materialists, Marxists, Methodists, Masons, Muslims, Mormons (these being just the ‘M’s), were all in a scholarly, quiet, and deliberate manner shown the strengths, but more particularly the errors, of their ways (http://adb.anu.edu.au/biogra phy/rumble-leslie-audoen-11584). No yelling, screaming, table-thumping, just calm argument and evidence to demonstrate that the Church was right and everyone else was wrong. For instance: Question: Reply:

Question: Reply:

Did not Luther give ninety reasons for leaving the Catholic Church? He gave many excuses but no real reasons. Before he left the Church, he was a member of a religious order, vowed for the love of Christ to poverty, chastity and obedience. He broke all three vows. Vices, whether intellectual or moral, are excuses, not reasons, for leaving the Church. Do you know of any good in Luther? Intellectually, not much. He declared that reason was of the devil, and that the Christian must regard it as his greatest enemy. (Campion, 1987, p. 136)

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Dr. Rumble’s subsequently published book Radio Replies: Classic Answers to Timeless Questions about the Catholic Faith sold hundreds of thousands of copies throughout the English-speaking world. I bought numerous Australian Catholic Truth Society pamphlets sold in the vestibule of Mary Immaculate Church at every Sunday mass. The ACTS was established in 1904 and published some 1200 titles in its first fifty years, with a total print run of 13 million. The author of its first pamphlet was Cardinal Moran, the title: Priests and People of Ireland: A Vindication (Campion, 1987, p. 129). Publications on philosophical questions were my particular interest. Early in my teenage years I acquired a regular little library of Catholic books featuring authors such as Fulton Sheen, Christopher Dawson, Martin D’Arcy, Barbara Ward, Hilaire Belloc, and G.K. Chesterton. To these would shortly be added books by Catholic philosophers such as Étienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, Bernard Lonergan, Stanley Jaki, John Courtney Murray, and Frederick Copleston. These books are still in my library.

2.1.2 John Anderson and Sydney University Philosophy After completing compulsory physics, chemistry, biology, and geology in first-year Science, the Teachers College advisor said I could do two years of philosophy as part of my science degree. Brother O’Connor’s warning notwithstanding, this is what I commenced in 1966 in second year at university. This was a life-changing enrolment. The Sydney University Philosophy Department thought itself the best in Australia and, even considering Melbourne University’s competing claim to the title, it probably was. Some staff thought it the best for a considerable distance beyond Australia. Unlike any other Australian philosophy department, Sydney’s was dominated by and formed in the image of its earlier and long-time Head, John Anderson (1893– 1962). Anderson was a Glasgow-trained philosopher who was appointed Head of Sydney Philosophy in 1927 and who held this powerful position for 30 years until his retirement in 1958 (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anderson-john/). He was a public intellectual of unequalled stature, probably generating more newspaper columninches than the totality of Australian philosophers, if not more than all Australian academics combined. He was the antithesis of an Ivory Tower philosopher: he had an appetite for controversy and polemic of all kinds, especially political and religious. Importantly, his appetite was for controversy rather than action. Giving a speech or writing a pamphlet constituted action. This stemmed from a deep-seated pessimism about the possibility of social change; a view that the system was stacked against progress and reform. Anderson was an atheist, a socialist, an ethical relativist, an early advisor to the Australian Communist Party, and much else that brought him social opprobrium (Baker, 1979; Kennedy, 1996). In the 1930s he supported the Australian Communist Party before turning against Russia and communism in the 1950s; he founded and

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was president of the Australian Freethought Society; he was resolute in his defence of academic freedom; he opposed censorship on any grounds—religious, political, moral, or aesthetic. Anderson campaigned against the influence of religion in all levels of education (Franklin, 2003; Weblin, 2014). He claimed that religion was antithetical to education: ultimately, pupils (children) had to believe on the basis of authority, and what they were believing required them to be credulous. Both things—deference to authority and credulity—were contrary to the fundamentals of liberal education. For publishing and stating such views he was censored by the NSW Parliament. Anderson identified himself as an exponent of ‘empirical philosophy’, but was not an empiricist in its common meaning; he was a philosophical realist, saying in one of his best-known essays, ‘The Knower and the Known’, that: The view that knowledge is a relation implies that knower and known are two different things or that, in knowledge, the knower is not the known. (Anderson, 1962, p. 27)

And: … there are reasons, which I think conclusive, for holding that a realist can only be an empiricist. (Anderson, 1962, p. 27)

This is very formal and abstract, but as he spelt out his philosophical system, he separated it from classic British empiricism as articulated by Locke, Hume, and Berkeley, and from that of his own British ‘positivist’ contemporaries such as the hugely influential Alfred J. Ayer (Baker, 1986). For Anderson, beliefs cannot be justified by sense data, sense impressions, or raw experience; beliefs can only be justified by other beliefs. There is no sensory foundation for knowledge, nor should one be sought, as it is not there to find. His epistemology was anti-foundationalist. As he contends: According to realism, I have argued, we never know ‘ideas’ but always independent things, or rather states of affairs. It seems to me to follow that such expressions as appearances or data, and as concepts, percepts or sensa have no place in realist theory. … I should maintain that there is no such thing as either sensing or sensa. (Anderson, 1962, p. 32)

In Anderson’s time, philosophy used to figure in public life. Philosophical debates were regular features on radio, in the press, at ‘Speakers’ Corner’ in public parks, and occasionally in parliament. Hundreds attended debates on whether the soul existed and, if so, whether only homo sapiens had one; on whether materialism is coherent; on whether the existence of God could be proved; and so on. Anderson contributed to and fuelled this public debate. Austin Woodbury opined that: The department of philosophy in the University of Sydney is a cancer at what ought to be the heart of the scholastic life of this city … I would warn students, and the parents of students, that a grave risk to their future intellectual and moral life is incurred by students who follow the course of philosophy at the University of Sydney without at the same time taking courses at this Academy. (Franklin, 2003, p. 81)

Hugh Gough, the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, publicly denounced, from the pulpit and in a widely distributed pamphlet, the Sydney department for its immoral

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teaching and its ‘corrupting of youth’. The department was the subject of an NSW Government Inquiry into the corruption of youth. It is not surprising that Bro O’Connor advised Waverley boys not to study philosophy at University of Sydney. Anderson was a founder, ‘theorist’, and, until the early 1950s, sustainer of the loose-knit, heavy-drinking, horse-dog-card gambling, poetry-reciting, bawdy-ballad singing, free-loving, argumentative, anarcho-bohemian, libertarian ‘Sydney Push’. Its ‘members’ included many actual and want-to-be writers, poets, philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, journalists, feminists, and the like. In the immediate post-war years, most of those linked to the Push were enrolled in or came from the University of Sydney Faculty of Arts. Editing, and writing for, the influential student paper Honi Soit constituted honourable Push activism. When Anderson’s anti-communism became so strident that he refused to campaign against Prime Minister Robert Menzies 1951 referendum to ban the Australian Communist Party, his 200 or so member ‘Freethought Society’ collapsed. It reformed as the Libertarian Society, and informally as The Push. Early members of one or both groups were David Stove, David Armstrong, Darcy Waters, John Maze, Lillian Roxon, Bill Bonney, Roelof Smilde, Jim Baker, George Molnar, Ian Bedford, Ross Poole, Frank Moorhouse, Sandra Grimes, Clive James, Liz Fell, Paddy McGuinness, David Ivison, and many others who became prominent legal, academic, literary, newspaper, and cultural figures. Andersonians and Push members were torn between, on the one hand, a fatalism about the utility of group action and campaigning—‘no matter who you vote for a politician is always elected’; ‘whatever is done is only scratching the surface’—and, on the other, trying to do good works, improve structures, ameliorate conditions. The first option was sometimes called ‘futileism’. A history of the Push was titled: Sex and Anarchy (Coombs, 1996). These two title words were the anthesis of everything for which Brother O’Connor and Waverley stood. By the time I went to the University of Sydney in 1965, the distinctive, confined, and scandalous ethos of the Push had begun seeping out into mainstream student and social life. The seepage was accelerated by the contraceptive pill’s arrival in Sydney in 1961. The very idea of ‘no sex before marriage’ had disappeared. Not the reality, but the concept; the concept, even the phrase, was just not there; even religious students rarely thought or spoke in those terms. Being against authority, whether State or Church, may not have been the norm—as it was for Andersonians, Freethought or Libertarian members, and the Push—but it certainly was not abnormal. Anti-war, anti-conscription, anti-apartheid, anti-South African rugby tour, anti-President Johnson’s visit, and other causes, including, to a shamefully far lesser extent, aboriginal land rights, sparked protests in the streets, and actions like the lone 1965 Freedom Ride bus (Curthoys, 2002). James Franklin’s Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia (Franklin, 2003) provides an excellent ‘big picture’ of Australian philosophy, including seminary philosophy, along with fine details of the history, personalities, and politics of the Sydney Philosophy Department.

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That the philosophy curriculum of a university could be the subject of such popular debate bespeaks a different era. There is no longer any public interest in philosophy, much less controversy about whether modernism, postmodernism, phenomenology, Lacan, Derrida, or anything else is being taught in philosophy departments. Though there is an occasional concern, if not outrage, expressed about the deleterious impact of postmodernism in university English and Social Science departments, and the flow-on to secondary schools. But even this whimper has died out as universities become ‘preparation for jobs’ factories; staff become more and more casualised; and full-time students become more and more part-time students on account of having to work to pay fees. In 2020 the Australian government launched a wholesale programme for ‘job-ready’ degrees, in which arts and social science degrees are prohibitively costed with the purpose of them having greatly diminished enrolments. The exception to ‘no interest’ in university philosophy is the current Australian debate about the private multimillion dollar Ramsay Foundation funding of courses on Western Civilization (https://www.ramsaycen tre.org/). Only three Australian universities have taken up the Ramsay offer (https://www.smh.com.au/education/ramsay-centre-signs-final-university-towestern-civilisation-course-20200224-p543mb.html). Astonishingly, the history of science is not included and funded in the Ramsay packages. It is a mystery how the proposal could be overseen by a learned committee and get so far through the cash-starved university system so as to be accepted by three universities, and yet the history of science is left out of the package. This is an indictment of the advisory committee and the public responsibility of the Australian HPS community. How can the history of Western Civilization be studied without attention to its most influential achievement? And of course, once born, modern science belongs to everyone; it is a human patrimony, not a Western one. Western Civilization without Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Mendel, Einstein? Impossible. Anderson, in his teaching, directly influenced a huge cohort of Australian philosophers including Alan Stout, John Passmore, John Mackie, Tom Rose, David Stove, and David Armstrong. Some of these had moved on by the time I arrived at the university in 1965, and pure ‘Andersonianism’ had ebbed, though its spirit survived. Nevertheless David Armstrong (appointed Head in 1964), Charlie Martin, David Stove, Graham Nerlich, Tom Rose, Wallis Suchting, Keith Campbell, John Burnheim, George Molnar, and Milo Roxon were on staff. These were later joined by Alan Chalmers, Stephen Gaukroger, Paul Crittenden, and others thus ensuring the Sydney’s department’s high place in the Australian philosophical firmament. Sydney staff were committed, broadly, to the Andersonian tradition of realism, rationality, science, and free inquiry. Neither Oxford analytic philosophy nor Cambridge Wittgensteinian philosophy had much traction in the department. Armstrong had been to Oxford in the 1950s and was distinctly under-impressed by Strawson and Grice and the ‘philosophical’ programme they were promoting. There were, of course, Oxford and Cambridge visiting philosophers and Sydney staff used to take sabbaticals at both venerable institutions but the university was not an Oxbridge outpost. One visitor was, from memory, Philippa Foot whose Ethics-course text was R.M. Hare’s The Language of Morals (Hare, 1952) in which he articulated a Prescriptivist

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theory of ethics that uneasily combined Kantian universality with Millian utilitarianism or consequentialism. I should have a better memory of the course because in the essay I obtained a ‘HD+’, a result never equalled in any subsequent university course. A worry to think that one peaked intellectually at age seventeen!

2.1.3 David Stove’s Logic Courses When beginning first-year philosophy in 1966, I borrowed a Waverley school friend’s philosophy lecture notes. He was the soon-to-be famous Australian anarchist and Vietnam War draft dodger Michael Matteson. The one class at Waverley College produced both the future Head of the Army (Peter Cosgrove) and the country’s ‘most wanted’ resister. On one page of his notes, Matteson had drawn a caricature of Wallis Suchting and had written underneath: ‘Avoid this man like the plague’. As Suchting was to become a close friend and philosophical mentor, I am pleased that I discarded this piece of collegial advice. Logic amounted to half of the compulsory first-year course, and it was wonderfully taught by David Stove (1927–1994; http://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/stove-david-cha rles-1547). He routinely set and went through ‘informal logic’ exercises (Walton, 1989). For any slab of philosophical or popular argument, he set the simple task of identifying and lettering premises (in propositional form), conclusions, intermediate premises; then drawing a structure diagram of the argument; and finally working out which claims (propositions) it is necessary, sufficient, or necessary and sufficient to affirm in order to accept the conclusion. Conversely, which ones it is necessary, sufficient, or necessary and sufficient to deny in order to reject the conclusion. Although informal, these were still logic exercises; they were about reasoning, about applying rigour and clear thinking to everyday argument. Of course, so much of everyday argument is not about reasoning nor is it reasonable, it is about convincing, converting, or expressing one’s self. For these encounters, logic, formal or informal, has minimal if any role. Raising your voice, ridicule, ad hominem claims, appeal to fantasy authorities, and much else is the currency. Donald Trump and Trumpism well-traded in this currency. The ‘informal’ part of Stove’s course was followed by working through the bulk of Irving Copi’s international best-selling Symbolic Logic text (Copi, 1965). The course, and its exercises, made an immediate and lasting impression on me, as I am sure it did on nearly all those enrolled. All of this in first-year philosophy for large classes of teenagers. Critical thinking is not the same as logical thinking; but you cannot have the first without the second. It was much later that the importance of critical thinking in education (Hager, 1991; McPeck, 1981; Norris, 1992; Siegel, 1989), and more specifically argument skills in science teaching and learning, were duly recognised (Adúriz-Bravo, 2014; Duschl & Osborne, 2002; Erduran & Jiménez-Aleixandre, 2008; Siegel, 1995). Too often critical thinking is promoted in education without attention to developing the basic skills of informal logic, and at least the rudiments of formal logic. In education, the word ‘critical’ has become verbal confetti, scattered everywhere

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in speech and text. Too commonly, published papers begin with ‘This will be a critical examination / exposition / appraisal / account of X’ as if a published paper would be an uncritical examination or appraisal of the subject. Using the word is frequently a substitute for doing the thinking. In mid-2008, at my last UNSW Arts Faculty meeting, a raft of new courses was approved, for nearly all of which, the rubric began: ‘This course will be a critical treatment of X, Y, Z’. For reasons just given, I did suggest to the meeting that ‘critical’ be struck out but, of course, to no avail. I was possibly seen as being uncritical. A logic course, especially informal logic, trains the mind and disciplines reasoning: It does something to the brain, especially a teenage brain. Stove followed first-year logic by an excellent second-year course on induction. This was oldfashioned enough to involve working through a good deal of Hume’s argument against induction, that Stove rejected in a just published paper (Stove, 1965), and portions of John Stuart Mill’s A System of Logic (Mill, 1843/1961). Twenty years later Oxford University Press published his against-the-philosophical-tide defence of induction, The Rationality of Induction (Stove, 1986). His basic claim was that there are circumstances and methods whereby people can reasonably argue from samples to populations, from some to all. This is not a leap of faith or irrational; there is no necessity to believe that only deductive logic is rational. Stove published a critique of the common argumentative thread found in such philosophical luminaries of the time as Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn, and Feyerabend— Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists (Stove, 1982). He claimed: These authors’ philosophy of science is in substance irrationalist. They doubt, or deny outright, that there can be any reason to believe any scientific theory; and a fortiori they doubt, or deny, for example, that there has been any accumulation of knowledge in recent centuries. (Stove, 1982, p. viii)

Later, to my complete surprise and dismay, I would learn that their view was a commonly lauded and rewarded view in the science education research community. The lead co-author of the following is, on his own reckoning, the most-cited researcher in science education, and has been awarded the prestigious National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST) ‘best researcher’ prize: Knowledge ‘survives’ when it is viable in the experiential world, but it is generally ‘abandoned’ when individuals recognize that it cannot describe their experience. Thus, in constructivism, the classical notion of truth is replaced by the notion of viability. This notion implies that there may exist alternative constructions, none of which can ever claim truth for itself. (Roth & Roychoudhury, 1994, pp. 6–7)

Stove addressed students by their family names. So as an 18-year-old I was ‘Mr. Matthews’. He was an atheist who had opined that ‘Catholicism was Stalinism mixed with holy water’, but nevertheless he went out of his way to arrange for me to meet in his office with Laurie Alexander, an Anglican visiting lecturer in philosophy of religion, who was fresh out of Cambridge: ‘Mister Alexander, I would like you to meet Mister Matthews. You have religious beliefs in common’. Subsequently, Alexander contributed to a number of joint Newman Society/Student Christian Movement conferences. Despite having taught history in England, Alexander

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was not certified to teach in the NSW government school system as he had not done a DipEd, so he taught at a major Sydney private school where a friend, who later got First-Class honours in History, said: ‘He taught me so much about historical thinking’. One of the many cases where regulations get in the way of good educational outcomes. In 1994, rather than continue a losing battle with oesophageal cancer, Stove at age 66 took his life among the trees he had long ago planted on his small rural holding outside of Sydney. Jumping ahead in this story, it is worth noting that at my last Faculty of Arts meeting, the School of Philosophy astonishingly proposed to henceforth make Logic merely an option for majors in philosophy. I pointed out that at Sydney University in 1965 one could not even progress to second-year philosophy without completing the first-year logic course; but in postmodern, student-seeking times, my argument fell on deaf ears. The Head of Philosophy countered that ‘if we made logic compulsory, we would lose students’. Allowing students who cannot think straight to graduate in philosophy (or indeed in any subject) is an indictment of contemporary university education. Unsurprisingly, even fourth-year honours theses in the Faculty show little understanding of a structured, let alone a valid, argument.

2.1.4 Logical Empiricism: My Introduction to Philosophy of Science The second-year philosophy of science course was straight Logical Empiricism with readings from Nagel, Hempel, and other classics (Nagel, 1961; Hempel, 1965). Tutorial exercises involved, in part, the writing of Ramsey or Carnap reduction sentences. The idea was to get from non-empirical, theoretical statements ‘There is a force of 5 dynes on the body’ to empirical, testable statements without too much loss of meaning. I do not remember whether the crucial idea of the necessity of idealisation in science was discussed, perhaps it was. But this would have rendered the very idea of exhaustive reduction sentences problematic, if not impossible. Idealisation means ‘abstracting from or disregarding impediments and counter-vailing factors’ (Appiah, 2017). Much later, I would appreciate that this was the methodological heart of the Galilean-Newtonian revolution in science (Matthews, 2000, chap. 10). Logical Empiricism’s programme of explicating and understanding key scientific concepts such as law, theory, observation, reduction, explanation, and so on, and its concern with clear and unambiguous writing, left a lasting impression. ‘Write clearly’ was the Sydney philosophy department’s mantra. The logical empiricists defended the following ten theses concerning the nature of science (NOS): 1.

Science seeks the truth; it endeavours to find out how the physical, social, and personal worlds work and are constituted.

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2.

Ultimately, though not immediately, empirical testing and evidence are determinate for scientific truth claims. Statements that, in principle, were non-empirical (theological and traditional metaphysical) were meaningful but were neither true nor false. Science is unified, although there are different methods employed across natural sciences and across social sciences, there is a unified family of methodology involved in all science. The methodology of science needs to be rational and reasonable, it cannot be subservient to politics, religion, commerce, or other external factors. Science depends upon adherence to both cognitive and personal values. Science is universal: there are no ‘local’ sciences; the truths of science are equally true across cultures. Science methodologically assumes a naturalistic (but not physicalist) world view. A naturalistic world view is the only correct one: supernatural, transcendental, idealist, and orthodox religious world views are mistaken; the world and its causal processes are not the way such views maintain. Science is part of the Enlightenment tradition; this tradition has had a positive benefit to the world; the social, political, and educational requirements of science need to be defended and extended.

3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

At the time I was convinced of all of these theses. Fifty-plus years later, with suitable refinements being made as my own studies in HPS progressed, I continue to be, with the exception of #3, so committed. For this third thesis, it is more defensible to simply allow different kinds of truths e.g. mathematical, moral, literary, scientific. It is important to state the obvious: namely, that the logical empiricists were attempting to describe the nature of ideal science; their NOS characterisation was not meant to capture immature, corrupt, venal, aberrant, or politicised science; it was not meant to capture the practice of every scientist or science laboratory. It was explicitly philosophy of science, not sociology of science. They were not neutral or indiscriminate in gathering together the pool of science that they analysed: Children’s Science, Christian Science, Stalinist Science, Mao’s Science, Tobacco Science, Big Pharma Science, Indigenous Science, fake science, and other such self-styled ‘sciences’ were not included in their science pool. Such normative selectivity, or idealisation, is standard philosophical, historical, and social science practice. Studies of the functioning of democracies do not include the former East German, Albanian, or Romanian ‘Peoples Democratic Republics’. Piaget’s theory of cognitive growth was not meant to apply to all children; it was a theory of idealised subjects, something made clear by Richard Kitchener in the second volume of Science & Education (Kitchener, 1993). Studies of religion need not include every huckster promoting themselves and appealing for money in latenight cable TV shows. Art histories deal with the best and representative contributors to movements in whatever periods. A history of Impressionism is not obligated to include everyone painting in their late nineteenth-century Parisian studio who broke with established conventions. And so on.

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If it turns out that employing the ‘ideal filter’ or ‘normative filter’ captures nothing; if no actual historical or contemporary scientific practice ‘makes the cut’, then the above characterisation is useless and is mere feel-good hand-waving, or worse, an ideology. But this is not the case. Soviet scientists appealed to just such an ideal to liberate themselves from Stalinist Science (Ings, 2016); Chinese scientists made the same appeal to bury insane Maoist Science (Fang, 1992); as did those who exposed Tobacco and Big Pharma Science (Oreskes & Conway, 2010). For such brave souls to be told that such appeals are akin to appealing to Santa Claus, is not advancing science, society, or human welfare. Now reading the postmodern avalanche of unintelligible sentences and excruciating verbiage in Education, the era of logical positivism seems positively luminous. I aired some of this ‘nostalgic’ respect for positivism by putting together a special issue of Science & Education (Vol. 13, Nos. 1–2, 2004) on this theme. I contributed an introductory essay on Philipp Frank and Herbert Feigl, two of the foremost and founding positivists (Matthews, 2004) and reproduced two of their significant educational articles (Frank, 1947/2004; Feigl, 1955/2004). A reading of a few random paragraphs from either paper suffices to show the standard educational ‘critiques’ of positivist education as unthinking and thoughtless are ill-informed and irresponsible, to state the matter gently. It is the common educational fault of promoting ideology and sloganising over scholarship. For instance, Philipp Frank (1884–1966) in discussing the Copernican Revolution, writes: By its failure to give an adequate presentation of this historic dispute our traditional physics teaching misses an opportunity to foster in the student an understanding of the relations between science, religion and government which is so helpful for his adjustment in our modern social life. With a good understanding of the Copernican and similar conflicts, the student of science would have even an inside track in the understanding of social and political problems. He would be put at least on an equal level with the student of the humanities. (Frank, 1947/2004, p. 234)

While Herbert Feigl (1902–1988) concludes an essay on ‘positivist philosophy of education’ by saying: As long as education promotes the formation of intelligence and character in a manner that allows for free learning, rational choices, and critical reflection, human beings so educated will have an excellent opportunity for being masters of their own activities and achievements. (Feigl, 1955/2004, p. 322)

The contrast between what the positivists say about education, and what the educationalists say about positivists, is dramatic. It is hard to imagine that the educators have even read the work of those they are sloganizing about. The second-year honours seminar (1966) was taken up by David Armstrong defending for fourteen weeks his anti-nominalist, realist account of universals. At issue was whether atemporal, non-spatial things existed in the world. His lectures were later published in his Universals and Scientific Realism (Armstrong, 1978). Philosophy of Religion was taught by Graeme de Graaf, a visitor trained in Oxford analytic philosophy. Sadly, the course made no impression at all. I was young enough to want to talk about God, not talk about ‘God talk’. From memory, Ian Ramsey’s Religious Language was the text (Ramsey, 1957).

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2.2 Sydney University Newman Society (1965–1969) I joined the Newman Society in ‘Orientation’ week 1965. It became a university ‘home’. In the final year of my science degree I became president. Many longtime friends were made in those four years. The much-admired, and later champion of Aborigines, Father Ted Kennedy was chaplain (https://www.smh.com.au/nat ional/a-father-to-the-poor-and-dispossessed-20050519-gdlcmf.html). Cardinal John Henry Newman’s (1801–1890) The Idea of a University (Newman, 1852/1959) was commonly read; worse authors could have been, and were, read. Through the 1950s and ’60s Melbourne University, with its Newman College, Jesuit chaplaincy, and array of Catholic lecturers and professors, was the brightest light of Australian lay Catholicism. The Proceedings of a 1957 national Newman Society conference held there became a much read and studied ‘handbook’ for Newman societies in all universities. Its editor was Vincent Buckley (1925–1988), the renowned Australian poet, literary critic, and scholar (https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Vincent_Buckley); its title: The Incarnation in the University: Studies in the University Apostolate (Buckley, 1963). The contributions were from philosophers, literary scholars, historians, and others. It was a lay, not clerical, work; the premise was that Catholic students and staff had an apostolate, or work to do, in the university itself; they did not have to look outside, or go to foreign lands, or identify social causes, or join political campaigns, to express Catholicism. All of this could be, and was done, but a Catholic (Christian) presence could be brought to university studies, research, and life. Edmund Campion, a Sydney priest, historian, and former lecturer at Manly seminary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Campion_(historian)), writes: I was there when these papers were given at Newman College – bliss it was in that dawn to be alive – and still recall the brimming hopes and expectancy of those days. Here was a Catholicism which did not turn away from its own time, its own culture or its own country; it was a humanism which took seriously the achievement and frustrations of humanity, not thinking that religion had all the answers, if only people would listen; but it also transcended mere humanism … it was Christian humanism. (Campion, 1994, p. 82)

Sydney did not have the size or dynamism of Melbourne, but the Newman Society did have a tangible university presence. Numerous groups of 5–10 met weekly for reading, reflection, prayer, and discussion of the university apostolate; annual conferences were held; a schedule of open lectures was maintained. One lecture, on ‘The Materialist Theory of Mind’, was given by Professor David Armstrong, the internationally known Australian materialist, and recently appointed Head of the Philosophy Department. It was attended by hundreds; there was standing room only in the university’s General Lecture Theatre. There were regular ecumenical engagements with the Student Christian Movement and Anglican Society, though not with the Evangelical Union whose members had a decidedly low opinion of Popery and anything associated with it.

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2.2.1 John Henry Newman Gustav Weigel (1906–1964), an American Jesuit priest, wrote: John Henry Newman is beyond doubt one of the genuinely noble figures produced in the nineteenth century. In him we find a winsome combination of learning, insight, sound judgement, and humility. … His lucid, harmonious English style will always make him a classic English author. (Weigel, 1960)

Newman’s core philosophical, or more accurately, epistemological commitment was that the growth of knowledge was a communitarian enterprise; the branches of knowledge, the disciplines, were interrelated; they had to attend to, learn from, and be reconciled with each other. He rejected the ‘Silo’ view of knowledge and academic life. As he wrote: I have said that all branches of knowledge are connected together, because the subject matter of knowledge is intimately united in itself, as being the acts and work of the Creator. Hence it is that the sciences, into which our knowledge may be said to be cast, have multiplied bearings one on another, and an internal sympathy, and admit, or rather demand, comparison and adjustment. They complete, correct, balance each other. (Newman, 1852/1959, p. 127)

Thus, Newman’s insistence as its Founding Rector from 1854, that the new Catholic University of Ireland, of which in 1854 be structured on Liberal Education principles. The disciplines were not isolated silos, nor should they be studied as such. Newman was the foremost nineteenth-century champion of Liberal or General Education (Tristram, 1952). He advocated cross-disciplinary research and for students to learn a range of disciplines. This extended to the then, for Catholics, near heretical claim that the sciences and theology had to respect and learn from each other. This position was articulated in his 1855 lectures on ‘Christianity and Physical Science’ and ‘Christianity and Scientific Investigation’ (both contained in Newman, 1852/1959). In the second lecture he insists: …. If we invite reason to take its place in our schools, we must let reason have fair and full play. If we reason, we must submit to the conditions of reason. We cannot use it by halves; we must use it as proceeding from Him who has also given us Revelation. (Newman, 1852/1959, p. 428)

Newman wrote of reason having a ‘fair and full play’ just twelve years before Pius IX’s 1864 Syllabus of Errors encyclical that in 80 anathemas denounced all ‘overreach’ of reason and liberalism, and concluded with condemning and anathematising all who hold the view that: #80 The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization. (https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius09/p9syll.htm)

Newman’s lecture was just five years before the famed Oxford University evolution debate between Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s ‘bulldog’, and Bishop Wilberforce. Newman was more relaxed about Darwinism than many around him. He was content to accept the fact of biological evolution over millions of years, if this is what reputable science established. Theologians needed to reconcile their faith and

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theology to this. As with so much else in Scripture, the book of Genesis did not have to be understood literally. Newman’s lengthy 1845 An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Newman, 1846/1960) prepared the intellectual ground for appreciating the inherent growth, amplification, and change of not only religious doctrine, but other ‘disciplines’ or spheres of knowledge as well. On this subject, the Devil, so as to speak, is in the detail. The orthodox Catholic view is that all certified, official dogmas were held explicitly or implicitly by the early Church. Newman did point out that the ante-Nicene Church Fathers did not speak with one voice; they held a plurality of positions. Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius had, from the post-Nicene view, heretical views. Determining what constituted ‘authentic’ development and separating it from ‘corrupt’ development, was a central religious and theological task. The schisms with the Orthodox and Anglican Churches were, ostensibly, over this very matter. The same issue of authentic versus inauthentic development is replayed in politics and in science. Newman was serious about doctrines and truths. In his Apologia he wrote: From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion: I know no other religion; I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery. As well can there be filial love without the fact of a father, as devotion without the fact of a Supreme Being. What I held in 1816, I held in 1833, and I hold in 1864. Please God, I shall hold it to the end. (Newman, 1864/1959, p. 132)

Yet he rejected all fundamentalist options which might have given him emotional comfort and intellectual ease. He had a profound historical sensibility. No serious body of intellectual understanding could be frozen in time; growth and deepening were essential to the development of understanding. As will be mentioned later, this is a feature that separates science from pseudosciences and fundamentalisms: the latter do not grow, they do not deepen, they are stalled or frozen in time. Newman was canonised in 2019 by Pope Francis.

2.2.2 Newman and Liberal Education In an address to English Roman Catholics, Newman wrote: I want an intelligent, well-instructed laity … I wish you to enlarge your knowledge, to cultivate your reason, to get an insight into the relation of truth to truth, to learn to view things as they are, to understand how faith and reason stand to each other, what are the bases and principles of Catholicism. (Newman, 1851/2000, p. 390)

Such a collegial view provided an intellectual network, or at least theoretically so, for the Newman Society where members were undergraduate and graduate students in diverse disciplines. There was however recognition that we had something in common; we should be able to learn from each other and benefit from different perspectives. This Newman model was reinforced as my own studies and teaching in

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history, philosophy, and science education developed. Everyone should learn from ‘what is going on next door’. To combine science with history and philosophy was natural. Not to do so became the unnatural position. Given the very non-Newman, utilitarian, and commercial goals driving contemporary universities, where universities are seen as businesses and students as customers, one might wish that Newman was read more widely by administrators and writers of government policy. Jaroslav Pelikan has explicitly taken on this task in his The Idea of a University: A Reexamination (Pelikan, 1992). Newman’s core liberal education conviction that education was an end in itself, and not just a means to some other commercial, vocational. or political goal, is in full retreat and has been depressingly documented (Hook et al., 1975; Zakaria, 2015; Nussbaum, 2017; Roth, 2015). A century after Newman, another Oxford scholar, R.G. Collingwood (1889–1943) in his 1945 The Idea of Nature, wrote on the history of mutual interdependence of science and philosophy. He commented that: The detailed study of natural fact is commonly called natural science, or for short simply science; the reflection on principles, whether those of natural science or of any other department of thought or action, is commonly called philosophy. … but the two things are so closely related that natural science cannot go on for long without philosophy beginning; and that philosophy reacts on the science out of which it has grown by giving it in future a new firmness and consistency arising out of the scientist’s new consciousness of the principles on which he has been working. (Collingwood, 1945, p. 2)

Through my first degree, the overwhelming sense was that you were at university for an education; to learn things beyond whatever degree you might be enrolled in. Students being employed 20–30 hours a week to earn money to pay fees and lodging, and doing semester essays in one or two days knowing that nearly all students had to be passed—all of this was in the sad future when education was struggling to find breathing or thinking room in universities. In 1997, less than three per cent of university entrants nominated ‘interesting courses or social benefits of university’ as a consideration in going to university (Macintyre & Marginson, 2000, p. 68). Doubtless, 25 years later, the percentage would be lower. Thomas Gilby (1902–1975), a noted English Thomist (Gilby, 1951) and expositor of Thomist social theory (Gilby, 1955), was a plenary speaker at one UCFA conference (https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcriptsand-maps/gilby-thomas). In the Vietnam War and Cold War period, with conscription for service in Vietnam having been introduced in Australia in 1964, a systematic philosophy of the State dealing with the limits of State power and also obligations to the State, was more than just topical. It facilitated clarification of agreement and disagreement on the tumultuous issues of the day. For Thomism, discussion of the State was important, but more important was its lead up, namely discussion of community and society and how they best flourish. Such lectures and conversations were a formative part of my university education, and that of so many others. The following lecture titles from a notebook I had at the 1967 National Newman Society Conference at Melbourne University give a sense of the preoccupations of at least some Catholic students of the time: Vincent Buckley ‘Contemporary Attitudes to the Sacred’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Buckley);

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Frank Knopfelmacher ‘Marx and Religion’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_ Knopfelmacher); Tony Coady ‘Christianity and the Moral Order’ (https://en.wik ipedia.org/wiki/C._A._J._Coady); Hugh Lacey ‘The Church and the University’ (https://www.swarthmore.edu/profile/hugh-lacey); Bill Ginnane ‘The Church and the Sacred’ (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00048400701574275? journalCode=rajp20&); and James McAuley ‘Faith and Authority in the Church’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_McAuley). The bulk of participants were, like me, teenagers. But we thought of ourselves as adults: ‘nineteen going on twenty nine’, at least. A paper given by one student, John Stephenson, who had been studying philosophy at the US Augustinian Villanova University was succinctly titled: ‘Sex and the Sacraments’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_McAuley). It drew attention and an audience. He was in the University of Sydney honours stream for both English and Philosophy. Eventually he gave up the latter, saying that the two modes of thought were too deeply irreconcilable and, literally, brought on headaches. In other philosophy departments, in other countries, there may not have been the problem.

2.2.3 Catholic Philosophers Catholicism, and certainly Catholic philosophers, have long had a place in Australian University philosophy. In my undergraduate years at university, the Catholic philosopher Hugh Lacey, after his undergraduate study at Melbourne University and graduate study at University of Indiana, was appointed in 1966 as the foundation lecturer in the university’s history and philosophy of science programme (a position later filled by Alan Chalmers); Catholic priests such as Eric D’Arcy, John Burnheim, Paul Crittenden, and Barry Miller were valued members of Australian philosophy departments, as were Catholic philosophers such as Tony Coady, Bill Ginnane, and Max Charlesworth. Many of these philosophers, along with poets such as James McAuley and Vincent Buckley, took part in local Newman Society meetings and National Catholic Students Conferences (UCFA). So did many high-calibre Anglican and Protestant philosophers. Two Presbyterian theologians made a particular impression: Crawford Miller, the Principal of St Andrews Theological College, and Angus Holland (1925–2007) a suburban minister and subsequently professor of Systematic Theology at Rhodes University in Grahamstown South Africa (https://www.smh.com.au/national/doc tor-and-minister-of-abiding-faith-and-infinite-knowledge-20071019-gdrdn1.html). Holland won the University of Sydney Medal in both medicine and in John Anderson’s philosophy department before obtaining his doctoral degree in divinity at Edinburgh University. His 1,350-page thesis was on the theology of Athanasius (AD 293–373), the bishop of Alexandria. He had a remarkable multilingual memory, entire passages of scripture, philosophy, or literature could be recalled; he had an agile mind. All of this was on display in university talks which were invariably

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given without notes. In an obituary, it was written that he could recall in detail the weather in Sydney—and elsewhere—years after the time in question. He could pluck historic cricket scores, individual batsman’s scores, and election results from the recesses of his brain. For a variety of reasons, the scores of Catholic Thomist philosophers in the seminaries had little interaction with university philosophy. There was suspicion on both sides. During my term as Newman Society president, naïvely I tried to arrange for the newly appointed Catholic Chaplain, Fr Frank Mecham (1915–2007), who had been teaching Thomism in the Springwood and Manly seminaries, to engage with the Sydney philosophers, but this came to naught. Neither side wanted the engagement. With good reason, university philosophers were suspicious of the philosophical education provided in, at least, the Sydney seminaries. Fundamentally, they correctly thought such philosophising was not open-minded, it was not a free inquiry—both being the sine qua non for philosophy. The circumstance is well-captured in the autobiography of Chris Geraghty, a former priest and Sydney District Court judge. He went into the Springwood junior seminary at age 12 where he completed high school then passed into four years of priestly education before moving in 1958 to the senior seminary, St Patrick’s at Manly, for another four years of philosophy and theology. To outsiders, and certainly to Catholic students and adults, this constituted a formidable education regime; good education was a proud mark of Catholic clergy. To many insiders, Geraghty being one, it was not so formidable, at least at Manly. He describes Frank Mecham’s seminary philosophy classes: The subject was cosmology. It was a branch of some pseudo-scholastic philosophical system which by Vatican decree Leo XIII had made compulsory in Roman seminaries. … What I was learning … was how to become subservient, how to suppress questions, how to respect and reverence my superiors. On reflection, there was little real learning, no illumination of minds, no mutual search for meaning, no path of discovery or sparkling insightful flashes. The accumulated scholastic wisdom of the Middle Ages, which had been re-interpreted and mangled in the nineteenth century, was processed, distilled, prepacked, reduced to soft baby-food, spooned down my throat and reproduced for examinations. (Geraghty, 2003, p. 41)

Depressingly, Geraghty proceeds: With unworldly seriousness I laboured to translate the Latin pages. In retrospect, our course was not even an accurate, scholarly, historical presentation of medieval thought. This pseudophilosophical system was being passed by the institution from textbook to notebook, without travelling through the brain. (ibid.)

This was an abomination; the neglect of enormous intellectual opportunity. The Manly experience may have been common, but it was not universal. Leo Foley’s Cosmology: Philosophical and Scientific (Foley, 1962) is one example of a Thomist treatment of the subject that is well-informed by science, and the history and philosophy of science. One writer on theological studies of the time says: ‘There seems no gainsaying that the decade 1954–1964 reveals itself to have been decisive for

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theology, particularly for Catholic theology’ (O’Brien, 1965, p. i). Seemingly, many on staff at Manly were inattentive or asleep through the decade. Geraghty then articulates a fundamental issue not just for Catholicism, but for Christianity, that rises well above the adequacy or otherwise of philosophy teaching at Manly: These categories and definitions would later be needed to provide a ‘rational’ system of thought to ‘explain’ the mysteries of the Incarnation, the Trinity, the Eucharist. A foundation was being laid on which to base my theological world. (ibid.)

The Catholic Church, through the seminaries, sought to make faith intelligible; there was content that had to be believed; faith was not just a feeling, emotion, or ‘outlook’; the creeds were not just a jumble of words. For the past seven hundred years, the Catholic Church has decreed that Scholastic philosophy and its categories provided the most adequate way of making the faith intelligible. This was Frank Mecham’s task. If Thomism is rejected, then either another system takes its place, or it is admitted that faith need not be made intelligible. Barry Miller (1923–2006), the well-regarded Marist priest who studied Thomism at the Angelicum University in Rome, and who published substantial books on logic and metaphysics (Miller, 1963, 1992), was removed from teaching at the Marist Fathers Toongabbie seminary because his open-minded style of teaching was, according to the Principal, ‘not suitable for forming the students into disciples of Aquinas’ (Kremer, 2014). The seminary’s loss was, in 1968, the University of New England’s philosophy department’s gain. The travesty of philosophy teaching in seminaries was not just a Sydney problem, it was an international one. Anthony Kenny, the distinguished English Thomist philosopher, president of the British Academy, knight of the realm, excommunicated Catholic priest, and now agnostic, describes, in his autobiography The Path from Rome (Kenny, 1985) the miserable philosophy training at the English College in Rome. Those in the doctoral programme had to have their supervisor’s signed permission to borrow David Hume’s On Religion (Hume, 1963) from the college library! At Sydney it was a first-year philosophy text bought and read freely by teenagers. I bought my copy in 1966 when 18 years old. That Anthony Kenny could not buy one, says something pretty shocking about education in the administrative hub of the Catholic world. The Sydney Philosophy Department’s embrace of realism, rationality and science sat comfortably with my experience of the Catholic Aristotelian-realist philosophical tradition. The ontological materialism and ethical utilitarianism of the bulk of the staff sat less easily, but there was no ‘party line’ that needed to be taken in order to succeed and be respected in the department. Two staff, Paul Crittenden and John Burnheim, were, at the time, Catholic priests. They no longer are. At the end of 1967, at age 19, I graduated in Science, having majored in Geology, with sub-majors in Mathematics and Philosophy, and completion of first-year Chemistry and Biology. It had been a rewarding and educative three years; I benefited enormously from a good, but increasingly threatened, university education.

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2.3 Diploma of Education at Sydney Teachers College (1968) I enrolled in the Diploma of Education (DipEd) at Sydney Teachers College (STC) in 1968. This was the beginning of my long involvement with the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA).

2.3.1 Philosophy of Education Course The Teachers College was located within the university grounds, a decent stone’s throw from the famed University Quadrangle. Along with science methods, physical education, and classroom practice, I did a course in Philosophy of Education taught by Anna Hogg (1910–2011), a Scottish Christian academic who in 1932 was the first woman to be awarded the University Medal in Philosophy at Sydney University. In 1968 she had recently returned from studies with Richard Peters at the London Institute of Education. She was one of many who spread the London Institute’s Analytic Philosophy of Education (APE) programme to the far corners of the globe. At the time, Jim Walker (1944–2021), later a senior education professor and university administrator (and friend), was on a one-year, junior lecturer (tutor) appointment in philosophy of education at the College. The standard philosophy class was compulsory for all DipEd students (numbering probably 150), but Anna invited those five or six who had previously studied at least two years of philosophy into an informal ‘honours’ class for whom the semester was spent reading Richard Stanley Peters’ just published Ethics and Education (Peters, 1966). Peters and the analytic philosophers were careful to distinguish ‘education’ from related, but importantly different, concepts and activities. As distinct from teaching, coaching, indoctrinating, instructing, or learning, education was distinguished by the breadth and depth of its cognitive aims or ends, and the ethical or moral constraints on its processes and outcomes. You can teach, instruct, or coach someone in a morally reprehensible manner to be a bad person; you cannot so educate that person. You can teach or instruct someone to know just one thing, but if you have done that, you have not educated them. To do so is a contradiction. Built into being educated is some breadth of knowledge; and built into an educational regime or programme, is the provision of such breadth. The Peters ‘package’ is comparable to the long-established German idea of Bildung (Biesta, 2002; Lövlie & Standish, 2002; Siljander et al., 2012). This refers to the socially established, institutionalised process of intellectual and character formation that is consciously governed by ethical considerations, among which autonomy and respect are vital. Human flourishing in coordination with social/cultural development is the goal of Bildung. Some teaching arrangements and processes warrant

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identification as Bildung, while others fall short. Other arrangements—systematic indoctrination or Sydney’s, at the time, seminary education, for instance—not just fall short, but thwart the realisation of Bildung. For me, the close reading of Peters’ book was a pivotal experience; without too much exaggeration it might be called a life-defining one. It certainly was a careerdefining one. The Peters liberal education ‘package’ provided a coherent sense of the educational enterprise: an enterprise that is marked by cognitive breadth and depth; is intimately linked to having good reasons for beliefs; explicitly promotes understanding and cultivates rationality; and has ethical norms built into both its processes and outcomes. He argued that each of these characteristics of education flowed from an analysis of the concept of education. Each characteristic was independently argued for and developed. He wrote: ‘It would be a logical contradiction to say that a man had been educated but that he had in no way changed for the better’ (Peters, 1966, p. 25). Reform, or moral betterment, was built into the concept of education. Peters was part of the Anglo-American ‘Revolution in Philosophy’ (Ryle, 1963). He led the application of post-war, Wittgenstein-influenced, British analytic philosophy to educational concerns. He set about, and his example energised others, to analyse core educational concepts (Curren et al., 2003). The expectation was that you could travel a decent educational distance just by clarifying the meaning of central educational terms that figured in educational debate and controversy. At the ‘object’ level there is, for example, dispute about the aims of education; for Peters and analytic philosophers, the first philosophical step is to clarify or analyse what ‘aims’ mean. Hence his paper: ‘Aims of Education – A Conceptual Inquiry’ (Peters, 1973). Parties to an educational dispute should first clarify what they mean by the terms they use. Minimally, this can separate real disagreement from verbal disagreement; maximally, it might well settle the argument itself. So analytic philosophers analysed ‘needs’ (Dearden, 1972), ‘indoctrination’ (Snook, 1972), ‘learning’ (Hamlyn, 1973), ‘autonomy’ (Telfer, 1975), ‘teaching’ (Hirst, 1971/1973), ‘creativity’ (White, 1972), and so on. An influential ‘handbook’ of the APE programme was the 3-volume anthology edited by Dearden, Hirst, and Peters (Dearden et al., 1972). The years of Newman Society activity, and reading Newman’s The Idea of a University, had primed me for Peters’ view of education, but the notions of respect, freedom, autonomy, understanding, curriculum breadth, and its need for justification, the moral dimension of education, the difference between just teaching and education—all of these took root during the semester’s weekly meetings. Charles Silberman, writing fifty years ago on the then crisis in American education, well stated the rationale of Anna Hogg’s course, and more generally, the foundational rationale of teacher-education programmes: The central task of teacher education, therefore, is to provide teachers with a sense of purpose, or, if you will, with a philosophy of education. This means developing teachers’ ability and desire to think seriously, deeply, and continuously about the purposes and consequences of what they do – about the ways in which their curriculum and teaching methods, classroom and school organization, testing and grading procedures, affect purpose and are affected by it. (Silberman, 1970, p. 472)

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I came away from the course convinced that there is nothing so practical and useful for beginning teachers as a good introduction to philosophy of education. I became a champion of liberal education and have remained such. It set my educational aims and classroom goals; it guided my school and university extra-curricular activities. Concerning science teaching, Peters maintained: … a teacher might teach a subject such as science with purely vocational or economic ends in view. He might regard himself just as equipping people for vocations or as serving a national need for trained manpower, without much thought about the development of the individuals concerned, as individuals. He might conceive of what he was doing just as contributing to economic growth. But teaching science with these limited ends in view should be distinguished from educating people. Teaching, as has already been pointed out, is not necessarily educative. On the other hand, though not unmindful of the nation’s needs, a teacher might also teach science because he regarded this form of understanding as central to his concept of an educated person. (Peters, 1973, p. 57)

The Peters conception, and more generally the analytic philosophy of education programme, did not lack critics in philosophy of education, of which I was one (Edel, 1973; Adelstein, 1972; Kleinig, 1982, Chap. 2). Twelve years after completing Anna Hogg’s course, my own UNSW Education PhD was awarded with the title: Epistemology and Education: A Critique of Analytic Philosophy of Education. What eventually became clear to most was that despite his, and other analytic philosophers’ best intentions, the educational concepts being analysed by Peters and colleagues were culturally local not universal. Though a lot of effort was expended, ultimately there could not be any transcendental, supra-cultural, argument whose conclusions were the listed cognitive and moral characteristics of education detailed in the APE programme. Contrary to analytic theory, conceptual analysis was not socially, politically, or culturally neutral. This had been the great hope and expectation of the programme. The analysed concepts were the educational concepts and understandings of the Liberal or General Education tradition. It was this that had to be elaborated and defended; simply assuming it was philosophically irresponsible. I proceeded then along that path of defence and elaboration of liberal education.

2.3.2 Liberal Education Commitments Liberal or General Education was sometimes given the first name, other times the second. It had classical Greek origins, existed through medieval and renaissance times, then through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the present. A paradigmatic twentieth-century exposition of the tradition’s theory and practice was the 1945 Report of the Harvard Committee, chaired by James Bryant Conant, General Education in a Free Society (Conant, 1945). Among analytic philosophers, Paul Hirst provided the most sustained exposition and defence of liberal education, writing:

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2 Science Degree, Teacher Training, and Science Teaching A liberal education approached directly in terms of the disciplines will thus be composed of the study of at least paradigm examples of all the various forms of knowledge. This study will be sufficiently detailed and sustained to give genuine insight so that pupils come to think in these terms, using the concepts, logic and criteria accurately in the different domains. (Hirst, 1974, p. 48)

An immediate implication is that teachers, then students, come to have knowledge or appreciation of the history and philosophy of the different domains they teach and are learning; the epistemology and methodology of the domains. They need to know, for instance, if there are truth criteria for a domain (History, Art, Maths), and if so, what they are. Traditional societies had different understandings of education, as did dictatorships of every stripe, ditto different cultures and subcultures. Despite trying to avoid simple prescriptivism, which was its initial attraction, APE finally had to recognise that it was analysing a particular tradition’s understanding of education and related concepts. Scientific terms can take on different meanings, depending on the theories or paradigms in which they occur, so too for commonplace and educational terms. Colin Evers, a former Sydney PESA and then UNSW colleague, expressed the matter as: ‘For claims about education, the interesting question shifts therefore to what counts as justification for choosing between theories of education’ (Evers, 1979, p. 14). And there are many such theories, from serious and well-supported ones such as Deweyan, Marxist, Thomist, Existentialist, Catholic, Liberal, and so on (Henry, 1955) to ephemeral ones. For my own part, the arguments for liberal education were powerful and could be advanced a long way with a ‘Broad Church’ backing and in a common front with a variety of different, but aligned, political, religious, cultural, and educational interests. The liberal tradition had a clear core, but this became less clear as it diffused in societies and cultures. The liberal tradition was not geographically or nationally confined, it was not peculiar to the West. Eastern cultures had their own equivalents. In many cases the core just needed to be restated and folk concurred: Who did not want music and the arts in the curriculum? Who thought history could be omitted from school programmes? Who thought logical thinking need not be cultivated? Who thought that development of character and promotion of moral sensibility was irrelevant to education? And so on. Manifestly these concerns were not confined to the West. But, so as to speak, the devil is in the detail. For some, it was equally clear or manifest that the State, Church, or Ruling Party should dictate the content and purposes of education. Witness the Chinese Communist Party’s interventions in Hong Kong, and more nakedly how it conducts Uyghur education in Xinjiang. John Dewey in his justly famous 1916 Democracy and Education stated a fundamental of the Western Rationalist Tradition: Our predilection for premature acceptance and assertion, our aversion to suspended judgment, are signs that we tend naturally to cut short the process of testing. We are satisfied with superficial and immediate short-visioned applications. … Science represents the safeguard of the race against these natural propensities and the evils which flow from them. … It is artificial (an acquired art), not spontaneous; learned, not native. To this fact is due the unique, the invaluable place of science in education. (Dewey, 1916/1966, p. 189)

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The principles of this scientific tradition were first formulated in the ancient Greek world of the pre-Socratics, Plato, and Aristotle, and were made explicit in the Enlightenment. Peters, and proponents of Liberal Education, mostly just assumed them without explicit argument. John Searle (1994) usefully summarised them as: (1) (2) (3)

(4)

(5) (6)

Reality exists independently of human representation. Language enables speakers and hearers to successfully refer to objects and states of affairs in the world. Truth admits of degrees or approximation but is a matter of the accuracy of representation, ultimately a matter of correspondence between statement and reality. Knowledge is objective and does not depend on nor derive from the subjective attitudes and feelings of particular investigators. The truth or falsity of claims is unrelated and independent of the motives, morality, gender, race, or ethnicity of the person making the claim. Logic and rationality are formal; they judge the adequacy of arguments, not the content or reference of arguments. There are objectively, meaning intersubjectively, valid criteria of intellectual achievement.

These principles might not have been in the foreground in typical London Institute Analytic Philosophy discussion but, clearly, they underwrote all APE debate about teaching, curriculum, discipline structure, assessment, and so on. They were backroom or silent partners in the APE programme. If you are not a realist about historical events—for instance, the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King or the 1939 invasion of Poland—why are they in the curriculum? If different accounts, or hypotheses, about these events cannot be evaluated against evidence, why ask students to do so? Elaboration and defence of the principles of liberal education, along with educational implications to be drawn from them, will be returned to later in this book.

2.3.3 Analytic Philosophy and Science Education A surprising feature of formal philosophy of education has been its relative neglect of science education, and the specific philosophical considerations that arise in the teaching of science. The vast corpus of Analytic Philosophy of Education which dominated the professional field in the final decades of the last century, including my 1968 DipEd year, is almost devoid of questions about science education; and little, if any, analysis is informed by the history and philosophy of science. There is only minimal mention of science education or HPS in the influential books of Richard Peters that largely defined the field (Peters, 1966, 1967, 1973) or in collections such as the major 3-volume anthology Education and the Development of Reason (Dearden, 1972) that was the flagship of analytic philosophy of education. The neglect at the time of science and HPS is the more puzzling as, across the world, science curricula were being overhauled in the post-Sputnik era, and at the

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same time HPS had its own ‘Sputnik-moment’ with the publication of Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, first in 1962 in an obscure barely noticed edition of the logical empiricist Encyclopaedia of Unified Science, then 1970 in an internationally noticed, run-away best-selling, University of Chicago Press, second edition (Kuhn, 1970). The consequent tsunami of Kuhnian studies washed over all university faculties. It could have been expected that formal philosophy of education would have engaged with both science curricula and the scholarly HPS enterprises. But with some exceptions, notably Gerald Holton’s Harvard Project Physics (Holton et al., 1967), this did not happen. One exception is Robert Ennis who, 40 years ago while at the University of Illinois, wrote a comprehensive review of the minimal literature on philosophy of science and science teaching (Ennis, 1979). His review listed six questions that science teachers constantly encounter in their classrooms and staffrooms, questions that the deliberations and researchers of philosophers and historians of science could illuminate. These questions were: • • • • • •

What characterises the scientific method? What constitutes critical thinking about empirical statements? What is the structure of scientific disciplines? What is a scientific explanation? What role do value judgements play in the work of scientists? What constitutes good tests of scientific understanding?

These questions are of perennial concern to science teachers, and science teachereducation programmes. But Ennis made the melancholic observation that: With some exceptions philosophers of science have not shown much explicit interest in the problems of science education. (Ennis, 1979, p. 138)

Philosophers of education showed some interest in the problems. Peter Nidditch, the Hume scholar, did contribute the final article titled ‘Philosophy of Education and the Place of Science in the Curriculum’ to the 1973 anthology New Essays in the Philosophy of Education (Nidditch, 1973). David Stenhouse published a book on philosophy of education and science education (Stenhouse, 1985). Denis Phillips, a former Australian biology teacher, later president of the US Philosophy of Education Society (PES), published a number of valuable pieces in the field (Phillips, 1981, 1985). Harvey Siegel, another former PES president and student of Israel Scheffler, also published important articles on issues in science education (Siegel, 1978, 1979, 1989, 1993). Israel Scheffler, professor of philosophy and of education at Harvard, was the standout philosopher of the time to pay serious attention to issues in science education (Scheffler, 1970, 1973, 1982). Twenty years after my DipEd, in the late 1980s, the disciplines of philosophy of education, science education, and HPS would be brought together to produce an incredibly rich vein of research and informed teaching (Schulz, 2014). It was my good fortune to play a role in that flowering of research and pedagogy that became known as ‘History, Philosophy and Science Teaching’ research (HPS&ST).

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2.4 Science Teaching at Dulwich Hill (1969–1972) In 1969, at age twenty I began science teaching at Dulwich High School, a lower middle-class school, close to the city with a substantial Greek and other immigrant component. This was very good fortune. I could have been posted anywhere in the State, and anywhere in huge metropolitan Sydney, but my first school was just 8 kms from the University of Sydney so continuing to study, while teaching, was a real and simple option. And one that I took up. Full of Peters-inspired ideas of liberal education, I put enormous energy into both teaching and broader school life. I coached the school’s moderately successful First XV rugby team, ran a debating group, and taught an optional General Studies class. I had internalised the idea that being an educator involved more than just competent classroom teaching, you had to contribute to the development of the ‘whole’ student.

2.4.1 A Rocky Career Start But my teaching career got off to a rocky start. On the second day I was involved in an argument with the Head of Science. He had given me my programme for the Year Nine class. Week one was ‘the eye’, week two ‘sedimentary rocks’, week three ‘batteries’, week four ‘flowers’, week five ‘falling bodies’, week six ‘acids’, and so on to week twenty-eight. I told him that this was silly; that no student could come to understand the subject matter when it was so fragmented, and salami-fashion sliced up. He told me that this was the new ‘Spiral Curriculum’ (something he wrongly thought was promoted by Jerome Bruner (1915–2016) from Harvard University), where subject matter was constantly changed to prevent boredom setting in. I repeated that, spiral or not, it was a stupid (I perhaps said ‘undesirable’) way to organise a programme and suggested that, at least for my class, all the chemistry, biology, geology, and physics topics be grouped and taught together so as to give kids some chance of understanding what was being taught. I later learnt that by the time the Spiral Curriculum reached the science department at Dulwich High School it had almost no relationship with what Jerome Bruner, in his The Process of Education (Bruner, 1960) was advocating, indeed almost the reverse. Bruner was not part of our DipEd studies. My argument depended upon accepting that a chief goal of education was the promotion of understanding of subject matter, not the avoidance of boredom, keeping children busy, or enabling them to pass final exams. As such it was a philosophical position. The department head had little time for philosophy, and furthermore explained that my proposal could not happen as students had progressive year-wide exams across all classes in weeks five, ten, fifteen, etc. So reluctantly I had to teach the ‘thought-to-be’ spiral curriculum. Thus, on the second day of my teaching career I had solid confirmation of the ‘practical’ value of philosophy of education; a confirmation much repeated through the rest of my teaching career.

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2.4.2 Jerome Bruner With his The Study of Thinking (Bruner, 1956), Bruner brought the ‘cognitive turn’ that was taking place in broader psychology to education discussion and research. At the time psychology had been taken over by behaviourism, and his own Harvard Department was ‘locked in a standoff between Skinner’s operant conditioning and Steven’s psychophysics’ (Bruner, 1983, p. 122). Bruner’s The Process of Education (Bruner, 1960) was a landmark study in educational theory. It emerged out of a ten-day meeting at Woods Hole on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, convened by the US National Academy of Sciences in 1959 to address the problems of science education and the promotion of scientific literacy in society. Some 35 major scientists, psychologists, mathematicians, and educators participated, with a goal of discerning and laying out: … the fundamental processes involved in imparting to young students a sense of the substance and method of science’. (Bruner, 1960, p. xvii)

The meeting was one of countless many at all levels initiated by the US government in response to the Sputnik Crisis occasioned by the Soviet’s launch of its first earth-circling satellite in October 1957 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_c risis). Dianne Ravitch, a historian of education, has commented: The Soviet launch … promptly ended the debate that had raged for several years about the quality of American education. Those who had argued since the late 1940s that American schools were not rigorous enough and that life adjustment education had cheapened intellectual values felt vindicated, and as one historian later wrote, ‘a shocked and humbled nation embarked on a bitter orgy of pedagogical soul-searching’. (DeBoer, 1991, p. 146)

Bruner was charged with writing the meeting’s report. Concerning the ‘Spiral Curriculum’ he writes: If one respects the ways of thought of the growing child, if one is courteous enough to translate material into his logical forms and challenging enough to tempt him to advance, then it is possible to introduce him at an early age to the ideas and style s that in later life make an educated man. (Bruner, 1960, p. 52)

He proceeds with a restatement of the foundation of liberal education: A curriculum ought to be built around the great issues, principles, and values that a society deems worthy of the continual concern of its members. (Bruner, 1960, p. 52)

In a later work, The Culture of Education, Bruner wrote: A long time ago, I proposed the concept of a ‘spiral curriculum’, the idea that in teaching a subject you begin with an ‘intuitive’ account that is well within the reach of a student, then circle back later to a more formal or highly structured account, until with how ever many more recyclings are necessary, the learner has mastered the topic or subject in its full generative power. (Bruner, 1996, p. 119)

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All of this is a long way from the programme enacted at Dulwich High School in 1969. It confirms the educational truism that there is a lot of slippage between the generals of curriculum theory and writing, the sergeants of school programming, and the privates of classroom teaching. Important things get lost, misunderstood, and confused on the way down. But, conversely, not every deviation on the ground should be seen as a loss; locally it might be a gain. Teachers legitimately need authority to bend materials and teaching methodologies to local conditions. In Melanesian societies, for instance, direct questioning of people is seriously impolite; it is a cultural taboo, it is not done. In schools, pupils do not ask direct questions of teachers, and teachers hesitate to ask such questions of students; so, the Socratic ‘questioning method’ needs local adjustment. This is one of the considerations against pursuit of any universal, best-for-everyone pedagogical method.

2.4.3 NSW Wyndham Scheme and US National Science Foundation Curricula At Waverley, I was in the last year of the ‘old’ system of five years of high school— three for the Intermediate Certificate and another two for the Leaving Certificate. When I began teaching, the new Wyndham Scheme of six years of high school was in place. The new science curriculum had been overseen by Harry Messel, Sydney University’s American professor of physics. It owed a lot to the US National Science Foundation. The NSF supported the explosion of ‘alphabet curricula’ in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The first curriculum to be widely used was that of the MIT’s Physical Sciences Study Committee (PSSC). Then followed the Chemical Bond Approach (CBA), Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS), Chemical Education Materials (CHEMS), Earth Science Curriculum Project (ESCP), Introductory Physical Science (IPS), Project Physics, and a host of others. By 1975 the NSF supported twenty-eight science curriculum reform projects. During the boom period, millions of students studied the NSF supported curricula: PSSC (one million in 1956–1960), CHEMS (one million in 1959–1963), BSCS (ten million in 1959–1990), IPS (one million in 1963–1972), ESS (one million in 1961–1971), SAPA (one million in 1963–1974). These constituted the major league of curricula. In 1976–1977 it was estimated that nineteen million students were using the new curriculum materials; this number represented forty-three per cent of the school population (Andersen, 1969). It is useful to note that no historians or philosophers of science were invited to participate in the influential 1959 Woods Hole conference. There were 35 eminent specialists and education-related scholars, but no philosophers of education, philosophers of science, or historians of science. Yet the conference was focused on understanding and promoting the ‘substance and method of science’. Surely something to which a historian or philosopher could have contributed.

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The ramifications of this ‘constitutional’ separation of science education from HPS is the storyline of this autobiography. Most of the NSF-funded projects neglected practical and technological applications of science. One review said: There is little or nothing of STS [Science-Technology-Society] in currently available textbooks. Our group reviewed a number of widely used textbooks … and found virtually no references to technology in general, or to our eight specific areas of concern. In fact, we found fewer references to technology than in textbooks of twenty years ago. The books have become more theoretical, more abstract with fewer practical applications. They appear to have evolved in a context where science education is considered the domain of an ‘elite’ group of students. (Piel, 1981, p. 106)

In the absence of historians and philosophers, it is hardly surprising that ‘corner-shop’ views about the substance and method of science would inform the new curricula. This can be seen in representative documents such as the 1966 Education and the Spirit of Science, published by the Education Policies Commission. There it is stated that in science: ‘generalizations are induced from discrete bits of information gathered through observation conducted as accurately as the circumstances permit’, and that science seeks for ‘verification’ of its claims (Education Policies Commission, 1966, p. 18). Just a little bit of HPS-input could have corrected this glaring mistake: science does not proceed by induction, nor does it seek to verify its claims; more modestly it seeks to confirm them. This experience at Dulwich Hill was the first of innumerable occasions in my teaching career where I came up against structures defeating good education. At the time I had perhaps a too idealistic view of education, and thought these structural barriers were accidental impediments. Later I would come to have a more ‘nonaccidental’ and Marxist-informed view of ‘structures’. The Illich-Freirean radical position that I endorsed was that schools, and their structures, were set up and organised precisely in such a way as to minimise the possibility of good education and thus the possibility of an informed and critical citizenry. I began to appreciate how one could have a Marxist theory of schooling, and a liberal theory of education: there was no contradiction. The former explained what is and what has been the case, the latter pointed to what should be the case.

2.4.4 Teacher Expectancy Effects On the third day at Dulwich Hill, the Year Seven students, about 160 of them, came fresh to their new high school from various primary schools. The deputy principal called out 30 names and told them they were in class 7A and their teacher would take them marching smartly and proudly to their classroom, another 30 were told they were in 7B and given a teacher, and so on, each group marching a little less smartly and proudly, until there were about 20–30 students left who were told that they were in the ‘General Activities’ (GA) class and to wait in the playground until someone came to collect them. Welcome to high school.

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Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson’s classic Pygmalion in the Classroom on the impact of Teacher Expectancy Effects had been published the previous year (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968) but it did not figure in our DipEd readings. Their research ran as follows: …. 20 percent of the children in a certain elementary school were reported to their teachers as showing unusual potential for intellectual growth. The names of these 20 percent of the children were drawn by means of a table of random numbers, which is to say that the names were drawn out of a hat. Eight months later these unusual or ‘magic’ children showed significantly greater pains in IQ than did the remaining children who had not been singled out for the teachers’ attention. The change in the teachers’ expectations regarding the intellectual performance of these allegedly ‘special’ children had led to an actual change in the intellectual performance of the randomly selected children. (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968, p. viii)

Pygmalion was a study of expectancy effects on IQ scores, and had been criticised by methodologists, but there was no gainsaying the impact of expectancy effects on more general student learning. At Dulwich High, one did not have to read it to recognise the essential correctness of its claims about the deleterious impact of low teacher expectations: if you were one of the ‘left overs’ in General Activities, that is where you most likely were going to stay to the end of school. It took very special, committed teachers to embrace the GA class and promote their learning. During one Practice Teaching session when a university student was at the school, and had been allocated a GA class, the student collected his books and aids in the staff common room at the end of lunch to go to the class and the class teacher, only half-jokingly, told him: ‘don’t bother with all that, just take a watering can’.

2.4.5 General Studies Course Anna Hogg’s philosophy course informed my teaching life. Philosophy was very practical, indeed the most practical part of my teacher-education programme. Apart from teaching science classes, I ran an optional after-school class for an examined, but not usually taught, HSC subject called ‘General Studies’. This was a wonderful optional subject that ranged over philosophy, social, and topical issues, cultural developments and criticism, and so on. It could have been a ‘capstone’ HSC course. In 1969, 26,500 students in NSW sat for the exam, perhaps a quarter or less of the cohort. In very few schools, and even fewer government schools, was timetable space allocated. At Dulwich I taught it one afternoon per week after school and ran occasional weekend camps in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney and Araluen Valley south of Sydney. To these camps various Newman Society and other friends would come and talk about diverse subjects—the essays of George Orwell, the writings of Eric Fromm, the Enlightenment, Anarchism, the Vietnam War, lyrics of Cat Stevens, Dolly magazine, and so on.

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Students from lower middle-class, migrant backgrounds were engaged by such extra-curricular questions and investigations. Fifty years later I am pleased to be still in touch with some of the students. In addition, I coached the school’s rugby team, ran the debating group, and set up periodic senior school ‘symposia evenings’ with neighbouring schools, including a nearby Christian Brothers’ school where a Christian brother and former Waverley teacher was then working. It was debatable whether his boys’ enthusiasm for this venture was fuelled by the topics discussed or by the attraction of the senior girls that Dulwich High provided.

References Adelstein, D. (1972). “The philosophy of education” or the wisdom and wit of R.S. Peters. In T. Pateman (Ed.), Counter course: A handbook for course criticism (pp. 115–139). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Adúriz-Bravo, A. (2014). Revisiting school scientific argumentation from the perspective of the history and philosophy of science. In M. R. Matthews (Ed.), International handbook of research in history, philosophy and science teaching (pp. 1443–1472). Dordrecht: Springer. Andersen, H. O. (Ed.). (1969). Readings in science education for the secondary school. New York: The Macmillan Co. Anderson, J. (1962). Studies in empirical philosophy. Sydney: Angus & Robertson. Appiah, K. A. (2017). As If: Idealization and Ideals. Cambridge: Harvard University Press; Boston. Armstrong, D. M. (1978). Universals and scientific realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baker, A. J. (1979). Anderson’s social philosophy. Sydney: Angus & Robertson. Baker, A. J. (1986). Australian realism: The systematic philosophy of John Anderson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Biesta, G. (2002). Bildung and modernity: The future of Bildung in a world of difference. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 21(4–5), 343–351. Bruner, J. S. (1960). The process of education. New York: Random House. Bruner, J. S. (1983). In search of mind: Essays in autobiography. New York: Harper & Row. Bruner, J. S. (1996). The culture of education. Cambridge MA: Cambridge University Press. Buckley, V. (Ed.). (1963). The incarnation in the university: Studies in the university apostolate. Melbourne: Geoffrey Chapman. Campion, E. (1987). Australian Catholics. Ringwood, VIC: Penguin. Campion, E. (1994). A place in the city: Living around the cathedral—From the mysteries to the wider world. Melbourne: Penguin Books. Collingwood, R. G. (1945). The idea of nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Conant, J. B. (1945). General education in a free society: Report of the Harvard Committee. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Coombs, A. (1996). Sex and anarchy: The life and death of the Sydney Push. Melbourne: Viking Press. Copi, I. M. (1965). Symbolic logic (2nd ed.). New York: Macmillan. Curren, R., Robertson, E., & Hager, P. (2003). The analytic movement. In R. Curren (Ed.), A companion to the philosophy of education (pp. 176–191). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Curthoys, A. (2002). Freedom ride: A freedom rider remembers. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Dearden, R. F., Hirst, P. H., & Peters, R. S. (Eds.). (1972). Education and the development of reason (3 vols.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Dearden, R. F. (1972). “Needs” in education. In R. F. Dearden, P. H. Hirst, & R. S. Peters (Eds.), A critique of current educational aims (pp. 48–62). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

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Chapter 3

Further Studies: Psychology, Philosophy, and Philosophy of Education

Abstract The chapter describes how, while school teaching, further part-time studies were undertaken at Sydney University. First, an MEd degree in Philosophy of Education in which an exceptionally talented group of teachers and scholars were enrolled, nearly all of whom went on to be professors of education. The necessity of combining philosophy of education with ‘mainstream’ philosophy was constantly reinforced. Second, a double-honours BA degree in Psychology and Philosophy. The Psychology Department was overwhelmingly behaviourist. My fourth-year empirical thesis was about designing a particular configuration to study the avoidance behaviour of rats without recourse to teleological constructs; a critique of behaviourism from within. To the detriment of students, the department operated as an academic silo, it had no engagement with related departments. The Philosophy Department was among the strongest in Australia. Of lasting note was the critical honours seminar on Thomas Kuhn. My philosophy thesis was on the perennial topic of the place of intentions in the scientific explanation of behaviour. Productive involvement during these years with the Sydney Theological Studies Society is described.

By great good fortune, Dulwich High School was just 8 kms ‘down the road’ from Sydney University. This made it very easy to be a part-time student, which I became in my first year of teaching. While doing the Dip Ed I caught the education bug; the simple belief that if someone was to be an educator, they had to be well-educated. Although I had a raft of after-school activities including rugby training and General Studies class, and was still living at Waverley with my mother, I had, by this stage, a fantastic old BMW 500 motor cycle, enabled me to easily enough get to university classes.

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3.1 Philosophy of Education MEd Degree (1969–1973) In 1969, my first year of school teaching, I enrolled part-time in a Master of Education degree at Sydney University. The programme involved four year-long subjects. I did all three available philosophy subjects and one sociology of education subject. William (Bill) Andersen (1924–2019) was director of the philosophy programme. Like Anna Hogg he was a Christian academic, indeed the very model of ‘A Christian Gentleman’, to use the title of a Waverley Christian Doctrine text. After post-war psychology training, he did a doctorate in analytic philosophy of education with Richard Peters and Paul Hirst at the London Institute of Education. At the time this was, with Israel Scheffler’s programme at Harvard, one of two powerhouses in international philosophy of education. The London Institute provided well-trained philosophy of education teachers to universities and teachers colleges throughout the far-flung British Commonwealth—Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Canada, Fiji—and many other destinations. Andersen brought the London School of analytic philosophy of education to Sydney. He was a gentle, non-dogmatic, thoughtful teacher who in those years of the late 60s and early 70s encouraged an enormously enthusiastic, and one can probably say gifted, group of graduate students to apply themselves to philosophical issues in education. There was a core group of perhaps 10–15 students in the graduate philosophy of education programme. Most became professors of education: Kevin Harris, Brian Hill, Jim Walker, Paul Hager, Gabrielle Lakomski, Bob Mackie, and Colin Evers come to mind, but there were assuredly others. Many graduates of the programme had their administrative, teaching, and research lives enriched by Bill Andersen’s patient guidance and simple good example of an academic life. They were heady days. Every eight weeks or so, the Thursday evening class would morph into the Sydney Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA) branch meeting. Local philosophers such as David Armstrong, John Kleinig, George Molnar, Wallis Suchting, and Paul Crittenden would present papers; as would visitors such as Richard Peters, Elizabeth Rapaport and Paul Hirst. Educational sociologists such as Robert Young and historians such as Bob Petersen and David Hogan used to attend and contribute to the meetings. With Bill Andersen’s class as a core, attendance would perhaps vary from 25 to 50 for each PESA branch meeting. As I write this, I have in front of me an old weathered Gestetner-copied paper by Wallis Suchting titled ‘Capitalism and Education: Some Marxist Bearings’, subtitled ‘Paper to the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia, July 12, 1973’. The references cited include Althusser, Aptheker, Blackburn, Bowles, Gintis, Freire, Gramsci, and Wittgenstein. The general sense was that when Suchting made comment on the arguments of any such writers, you should pay careful attention; he did not comment idly or in ignorance. We proto-philosophers thought that we were at the intellectual heart of progressive Australian educational studies. Assuredly we were not far from it.

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3.2 Psychology Honours BA Degree (1969–1973) With teaching and extra-curricular activities at Dulwich High School, the master’s degree, plus rugby football in season, I was leading a busy life, but not so busy as to prevent me enrolling in 1969 in a part-time double-honours Arts degree in Psychology and Philosophy. I wanted to continue philosophy studies; and the clear message from PESA colleagues was that educational philosophy is best done in conjunction with straight philosophy. In addition to John Dewey, Alfred North Whitehead, Jacques Maritain, and other significant moderns, the examples of Israel Scheffler at Harvard, Richard Peters in London, Paul Hirst at Cambridge, Walter Feinberg in Illinois, and closer to home, John Kleinig at Macquarie University and Paul Crittenden at Sydney University, were ample testament to the wisdom of combining philosophy of education with academic philosophy. The first without the second has constantly to search for foundations. These scholars were all philosophers first, and this enabled them to make substantial contributions to educational studies and analysis. John Kleinig’s Philosophical Issues in Education (Kleinig, 1982), which came out of his own Macquarie University lecture course, was a sterling local model of the genre. So, choosing to major in philosophy for my BA was straightforward, but a second major was needed, and doing psychology seemed a natural fit for a teaching career.

3.2.1 Sydney Behaviourism I was a part-time student in the Sydney University Psychology Department for five years (1969–1973)—three years undergraduate study, then two years part-time for the honours, or fourth, year. The period was the high-water mark of Behaviourism in Australia, and the Sydney department had risen on this Pavlovian-Skinnerian tide for some decades. The Professor, Richard (Dick) Champion (1925–1999), used to only half-jokingly say that: ‘I would like to study humans, but what do they tell us about rats?’! He was happy for other Australian departments to occupy themselves with social psychology, developmental psychology, personality theory, humanistic psychology, transpersonal psychology, and the like. Champion had no interest in philosophy, but would have smiled if he had read the Australian philosopher Michael Scriven, himself an ardent critic of behaviourism (Scriven, 1956), who wrote: In point of fact, the concept of ‘being more philosophically confused than humanistic psychology’, for example, not only lacks instances but is probably beyond the reach of human comprehension. (Scriven, 1976, p. 413)

At Sydney, humanistic psychology and the like were side-shows; the core teaching and research was experimental, behaviourist learning theory, and physiologically informed studies of perception.

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There was a not very subtle assumption in the Sydney department that other ‘nonscientific’ approaches to psychology were all just a matter of opinion; they could not aspire to knowledge. Students in the honours stream understood that if you were serious, or at least serious about a good result, you did not go down those alternative routes. The weighty texts were Theories of Learning (Hilgard & Bower, 1966) and Conditioning and Learning (Kimble, 1961). There was little, if any, distinction between learning and conditioning. As much distinction as Kimble admits is: … learning is not, as is so often said, a change in behavior. Rather it is a change in behavior potentiality. …such reasoning leads naturally to a distinction between learning and performance which has figured in most of the influential systematic accounts of learning. (Kimble, 1961, pp. 4–5)

Sydney, of course, was not the Lone Ranger in its championing of behaviourism; it was the disciplinary norm in psychology through the 1950s to at least the 1990s; and it flowed over to education, clinical psychology, management, and numerous other fields. A cottage industry on ‘behavioural objectives’ was launched. The 72nd Yearbook of the US National Society for the Study of Education was titled Behavior Modification in Education (Thoresen, 1973). Therein is a chapter on ‘Behavior Modification in Teacher Education’ which states that: Teacher education programs may be conceptualized as behavior modification systems designed to modify complex behavioral repertoires which are adaptable to a variety of learning problems. (McDonald, 1973, p. 41)

And the chapter on ‘The Applications of Behavior Principles in Typical Classrooms’ concludes with the advice: Various conditioned punishers such as threats, reprimands, and ‘I’s’ may be effective if they are now and then backed up with an effective punisher. In classrooms, however, these procedures are generally found not to work because the teacher has difficulty providing the backup punishments when required. … In general, the effective use of positive reinforcers usually makes it unnecessary to use punishment procedures. (Becker, 1973, p. 102)

In 1978 when visiting the University of Cincinnati I was told by an education professor, who was the brother of Stanley Milgram (famous for his ‘Obedience to Authority’ studies), that ten years earlier, successful completion of an animal conditioning study was a requirement for progression in the education doctoral programme. Just as the philosophy doctoral programme required a foreign language proficiency, the education programme required mastery of animal conditioning. For Milgram’s brother, it was pigeon training. Fortunately, at least for Milgram, as his pigeon had, over the semester, failed to learn, it died the evening before the showcase presentation in front of the doctoral committee. My psychology honours degree involved, in addition to a seminar, both a practical (empirical) and a theoretical thesis. These were completed part-time over two years, as previously mentioned.

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3.2.2 Empirical Thesis: Avoidance Behaviour in Rats The empirical thesis was titled An Examination of R.C. Bolles’ Safety-Signal Account of Bar Press Avoidance Learning in Rats. As I was still science teaching at Dulwich High, this involved months and months of after-school, late-night, rat running in the depths of the psychology department’s animal laboratory. My plan was to construct a situation where the rat, by pressing the appropriate bar at the appropriate time, did not get shocked, but where the explanation could not be given without recourse to teleological or intentional constructs—these being verboten for behaviourism, and rarely uttered in the corridors of Sydney psychology. Indeed, to describe the behaviour as ‘avoidance’ was already seen by Dick Champion as sliding down a dangerous mentalistic, teleological, animistic slope. For me, the thesis was to be a critique of behaviourism from within the cage, so as to speak. Avoidance behaviour is a major problem for behaviourist, stimulus-response (S-R) learning theory. A conditioned stimulus (CS, light) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (UCS, electric shock) that itself produces an unconditioned response (UCR, pain). If the CS is turned off by the subject, a conditioned response (CR), then the UCS does not occur, the subject avoids pain. But how does a non-event cause the CR? How does something that does not happen, cause something to happen? The initial behaviourist explanation was that the pain response was attached (conditioned) to the CS. So, there was an event causing the response, namely the pain attached now to the light. This was the supposed ‘two-factor’ theory of avoidance. The avoidance behaviour (turning the light off) was not really avoidance, but a learnt reaction to a now ‘painful’ stimulus. This sort of sounded OK. For some people digestion of a particular food might bring on nausea, and afterwards even the sight of that food, without eating it, can bring on nausea. So, the behaviourist Stimulus-Response caravan could keep moving on through psychology, education, and medical departments. But two-factor theory did not quite stack up: avoidance continued despite the CS no longer eliciting its own fear response. The subject did not fear the CS in the way it feared the UCS (shock). In a later work, the philosophers Barry Schwartz and Hugh Lacey detailed the problems avoidance behaviour posed for behaviourism (Schwartz & Lacey, 1982, Chap. 8). My thesis had 313 references with most being photocopied and filed in boxes which, like my philosophy photostats, 50 years later are only now being cleared out. I mention this because the scholarly pattern then was to absorb oneself in what had previously been written in the field and make some attempt to extend it. Fifty years ago, immersing yourself in the literature meant literally that—going to library shelves and stacks and reading and/or photocopying scores, if not hundreds, of articles. Very different from reviewing the literature on a phone while having coffee in a café. Indicative of changing academic fashions, the Sydney psychology department now has a chair in animal cognition. For Champion, something unimaginable. The whole episode is a testament to the changing fashions, and fads, in academia and how

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institutionally deep-rooted by appointments, research degrees, scholarships these fads are. Thomas Kuhn’s much over-worked term ‘paradigm’ is applicable.

3.2.3 Theoretical Thesis: Intentions and the Explanation of Behaviour My theoretical thesis was a 200-page study of Causality, Intentions and the Explanation of Behaviour. Its core was Hume’s account of causation, and modern critiques of it, along with accounts of dispositional constructs. I argued against the application of Hempel’s hypothetico-deductive model to the explanation of human action, and argued in favour of local, idiosyncratic intentions, but concluded that ‘we have to leave open the quest for historic and social factors being the determiners of why people have the intentions they have’. The thesis’s conclusion was based on the distinction between proximal and distal causation, with psychologists concerning themselves with the former and sociologists and historians with the latter. There were hundreds of references cited, and boxes and boxes of photocopied articles collected, which, along with above-mentioned empirical thesis references, are only now are being cleared from my study. Among other issues, the thesis criticised the behaviourist conceptualisation, or paradigm, of teaching and learning; and did so by reference to arguments advanced by philosophers of education that I had read in my MEd studies. I supported Israel Scheffler’s view that: Teaching ….is clearly not, as the behaviourists would have it, a matter of the teacher’s shaping the student’s behaviour or of controlling his mind. It is a matter of passing on those traditions of principled thought and action which define the rational life for teacher as well as pupil. (Scheffler, 1967, p. 133)

And Richard Peters’ elaboration: Teaching is a complex activity which unites together processes, such as instructing and training by the overall intention of getting pupils not only to acquire knowledge, skills and modes of conduct, but to acquire them in a manner which involves understanding and evaluation of the rationale underlying them. (Peters, 1966, p. 261)

Conversely, the behaviourist tradition maintained that learning had nothing to do with thinking; or more accurately, the science of learning could not include mentalistic terms; behaviourism meant just behaviour was studied, and behaviour was explained only by public, visible processes, and events. Learnt behaviour was a particular response to a stimulus, the ‘Stimulus-Response’ (S-R) theory of learning. According to the basic Sydney text: Learning is the process by which an activity originates or is changed through reacting to an encountered situation, provided that the characteristics of the change in activity cannot be explained on the basis of native response tendencies, maturation, or temporary states of the organism (e.g. fatigue, drugs, etc.). (Hilgard & Bower, 1966, p. 2)

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Philosophers would pick at such definitions and ask, for instance, can activity be differentiated from behaviour without recourse to mentalist categories? Clearly, one behaviour—throwing a stone at someone—can constitute a range of different activities: wanting to hurt them, warning them of some danger, showing off your throwing accuracy to someone else, not realising that someone is within range, and so on. One such philosopher, Godfrey Vesey, concluded an article on ‘Conditioning and Learning’: … if by ‘conditioning’ is meant no more than the ‘stamping in’ of a response then at least those abilities which do involve ‘knowledge that’ cannot be acquired by anyone simply by a process of being conditioned. Whether what I earlier called ‘purely bodily learning’ can be explained in terms of conditioning is another matter. (Vesey, 1967, p. 71)

In contrast to the Sydney department’s ‘skeletal’ account of learning, philosophers had a more full-bodied account. For Michael Oakeshott: Learning is the comprehensive activity in which we come to know ourselves and the world around us. It is a paradoxical activity: it is doing and submitting at the same time. And its achievements range from merely being aware, to what may be called understanding and being able to explain. (Oakeshott, 1967, p. 156)

3.2.4 Academic Silos What was clear to me in studying philosophy and psychology in parallel was how diminished psychology was by its failure to engage with philosophy, and how detrimental this was for the education of students. In the Sydney psychology department, apart from one or two individuals (John Maze and Terry McMullin who had both been students of John Anderson), no philosophical input entered into the subjects taught. For instance, it was obvious that the course on Human Perception would have been greatly enhanced if something of the debates in philosophy of perception that began with Plato and have continued to the present had been included. The course text Human Perception (Day, 1969) had 100 or so references, none of which were from philosophy. The inclusion of elementary distinctions between seeing and noticing, object perception and propositional perception, seeing as and seeing that; and something of the whole literature on theory dependence of observation—would have enriched the educational experience of students. But there were never such inclusions; never any broadening of the horizon. David Armstrong, who had initially made his philosophical reputation with the book Perception and the Physical World (Armstrong, 1961), that argued against phenomenalism and in favour of direct realism, had his office in the adjacent building, but was never invited to contribute to Psychology’s perception course. This is being closed-minded and irresponsible. In contrast, the Newman Society while I was president, had invited Armstrong to lecture on ‘The Materialist Theory of Mind’. Which he did to a packed General Lecture Theatre house.

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Likewise, the courses on Learning (Champion, 1969) would have been enhanced if they included considerations from epistemology which also began with Plato, indeed with the pre-Socratics, and have continued to the present. In education, learning is intimately connected with the acquisition of knowledge, but the epistemological question ‘What is knowledge?’ remained unasked. For two thousand plus years, philosophers have been evaluating different answers to the question, none of which were considered by the psychologists. The same applies to the single course on cognitive psychology that, perhaps begrudgingly, was allowed to be taught. It was taught without any consideration of the two thousand plus years of philosophical writing on philosophy of mind. One result is that contemporary cognitive psychologists can breathlessly announce they have discovered that how people see the world depends on their cognitive architecture; something that Plato long ago expressed when he said: ‘we see through the eye, not with the eye’. What is seen, and how it is verbalised, is a function of what is out there (the world) and what is in here (the socialised mind). Norwood Hanson (1924–1967), a philosopher, stated it as: ‘Seeing is not only the having of a visual experience; it is also the way in which the visual experience is had’ (Hanson, 1958, p. 15). And ‘there is more to seeing than meets the eyeball’. Thomas Kuhn, routinely made this point by reference to the much-displayed ambiguous figures where two people look at the same drawing but see different things (Figs. 3.1 and 3.2). When pushed, the more reflective cognitive psychologists would say that ‘knowledge is what is retrieved from long-term memory’. But it does not take much reflection, let alone philosophy, to see that this is hardly an adequate answer. All sorts of nonsense, falsehoods, prejudice and superstition can be committed to long-term memory. Indeed, every day they are so committed by millions. Amazingly, entire sacred scriptures can be committed to memory and this is taken as a signifier of holiness. But retrieving whatever material it might be from long-term memory, does not convert it to good sense, supported truth, or knowledge. Something other than retrieval is required for knowledge, but psychologists typically proceed no further. I completed the psychology honours programme in 1973 and was awarded secondclass honours, Division One—a ‘two one’ in the vocabulary of the time.

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Fig. 3.1 Vase/face

Fig. 3.2 Old/young lady

3.3 Philosophy Honours BA Degree (1972–1975) In 1972, prior to doing the psychology honours year, I enrolled in third-year philosophy, having in 1966 completed second-year philosophy in my science degree. My programme was to go through to the fourth, or honours, year; thus graduating with a double-honours psychology and philosophy BA degree.

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In the five years that I had been away from the philosophy department, much had happened in Australia and in the university: Vietnam War demonstrations filled city streets and the university campus; the 1968 student revolutions spread from Berkeley to Paris to Rome to Sydney; and the reformist Gough Whitlam government was elected in Australia in 1972 after 23 years of conservative rule. Through the Schools’ Commission the Whitlam Government provided Federal funds to all schools, public or private, on a needs’ basis. A revolutionary development in the financing of education in Australia where hitherto there was no state support for private, predominately Catholic, education.

3.3.1 Wallis Suchting The outstanding and lasting impacts of 1972 were two classes, both taught by Wallis Suching (1931–1997). The first on David Hume, the second on Marxist philosophy. The Hume class was a methodical, diligently prepared, line-by-line, weekly study of Book One of Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature. The philosophical lesson was the inadequacy of empiricism as a theory of human knowledge and of the weakness of Hume’s constant conjunction account of causality. But the lessons were only learnt after fourteen weeks of sweating blood Well almost. The message for students was that there could be no short-cuts in a philosophical argument; that rhetoric should not be substituted for analysis; and that the text of a serious philosopher should be accorded equally serious respect and attention. Suchting took all of this very seriously indeed. In 1954 after completing an MA at Melbourne University on ‘The Concept of Necessity in Marx and Engels’, he commenced a PhD degree on ‘The Criterion of Empirical Verifiability in Science’, with Gerd Buchdahl, later professor of HPS at Cambridge, as his supervisor. In order to read ancient texts on this subject he learnt Latin and Greek; and then German, Russian, French and Spanish to understand the texts and arguments of the European philosophers. This concern with the mastery of languages was one reason why the thesis extended four years beyond his scholarship funds, and why, during this time to support himself, he became a high school history teacher. It was also a reason why one examiner described the thesis, awarded in 1961, as ‘a terrifying piece of work’. The following year, 1962, he was appointed to the Philosophy Department at Sydney University. Later, although he had no sympathy for Hegel’s philosophy, he spent years labouring on a translation of the Logic because he regarded the extant English translation as ‘careless and shoddy’ work and thought that Hegel had a misunderstood appreciation of the Scientific Revolution. Despite being a life-long atheist, he did his best to read the Bible in Greek as he recognised its centrality for the Western tradition. He also did his best to read philosophers in their own language. His view was that, if you respect an author, you should make the effort to read them in their own words. It is perhaps worth relating that, in his entire career, he attended just

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three academic conferences and regretted the time wasted away from his own books and music. He avidly kept abreast of literature, but not of conference talks; he had no interest in ‘net-working’ or ‘flesh-pumping’. Wal cared about words and what they meant. He regarded language as the greatest enabler of human culture. He took delight in reading well-written and elegant prose, poetry, and philosophy. He laboured as a craftsman over his own writing. He was a wordsmith. He strove for elegance, but not at the expense of clarity; and he did not allow the primacy of clarity to over-ride nuances of meaning. He had an abiding animus for sloppy, careless and confused writing, and for dishonest euphemisms, jargon and pretence. In his later years he despaired at how the humanities in Australia were encouraging, and rewarding with appointments, promotions and professorships, all the things he hated. In particular, he regarded the bulk of postmodernist, constructivist, and feminist writing as destructive of decent language, rationality, scholarship and of the possibility of a humanising culture. This disturbed him to his core, and with relief he took early retirement; he wanted out. Also in 1972, Michael Devitt and Suchting offered the first ever course in an Australian University on ‘Marxist Philosophy’. This was against the formal opposition of David Armstrong and David Stove. I was one of the 40–50 students and university staff attending. It was an Althusserian-informed course, with each lecture printed in full. Subsequently, Suchting articulated his position in two books: Marx: An Introduction (Suchting, 1983) and Marx and Philosophy (Suchting, 1986). The Marxism course was the first step in the splitting of the Sydney Philosophy Department. The second step was taken the following year, when against the same opposition, a course on Feminist Philosophy was proposed and taught. Feminism was too big a step and in 1973 the Sydney Philosophy Department split into two schools—General Philosophy, the radicals, and Traditional and Modern Philosophy, the conservatives (Burnheim & Crittenden, 2014, Franklin, 2003, Chap. 11). I completed my honours year in the General Department. Twenty years later, sadly for his family, colleagues, and friends, of whom I was a close one, sharing a house with him for a year, in a bout of depression he took his own life in January 1997 (https://www.hpsst.com/uploads/6/2/9/3/62931075/was_ obituary__matthews_.pdf). He was a materialist yet scorned taking anti-depressant medicine. He thought that folk should be able to pull themselves out of psychological troughs. He could not; and did not.

3.3.2 Thomas Kuhn Seminar The compulsory fourth-year, all-class, honours seminar was on Philosophy of Science. Here too, things had dramatically changed while I had moved sideways into science teaching and completing the psychology honours programme. In 1967 we were learning, in logical empiricist mode, about Ramsey sentences, how to write Carnapian reduction sentences, and puzzling over the ontological status of dispositional properties such as ‘solubility’.

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In 1970 the second edition of Thomas Kuhn’s work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn, 1970) exploded over all disciplinary corners of the academic world, and many places outside academia. The book brought the term ‘paradigm’ into everybody’s lexicon—from university students and professors, through newspaper reporters and editorialists, to coffee shop conversations. The inclusion of the word ‘paradigm’ was almost a requirement for the publication of any article in social science. The book was quickly translated into 16+ languages and sold over a million copies. In Australia’s Arts and Humanities Citation Index, it was the most-cited book on any subject through the 1970s and 1980s. Doubtless it was the same in comparable indexes in most countries, English speaking and otherwise. The 1973 honours seminar was devoted to a detailed reading of Structure, along with the essays in the related Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave edited collection Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Lakatos & Musgrave, 1970). Wal Suchting was responsible for the seminar, but Devitt and the newly appointed Alan Chalmers took part in every meeting, as did other philosophy staff. PESA colleague Paul Hager, who was doing his honours year in the Traditional Department, was also a participant. While a good many, if not most, scholars around the world were impressed, if not ‘blown away’ by Kuhn, the Sydney philosophers in 1973 were not. They were under-impressed with Kuhn’s philosophical arguments, indeed they thought there were barely any such arguments. They were also under-impressed with his historical analyses, especially his pivotal account of the Galileo episode which they thought was plainly mistaken. The Sydney department was a hold-out against the Kuhn tsunami that swept over academia and public discourse in the 1970s, washing out ideas of truth, objectivity and universality from nearly all humanities and social science departments, and a good many philosophy departments. Sydney philosophers were not the only holdouts; they were a minority, but not alone. Mario Bunge recounts in his autobiography that, in 1966, he attended an influential colloquium on causality convened in Geneva by Jean Piaget. Kuhn was also a participant. Bunge observed: Kuhn’s presentation impressed no one at the meeting, and it confirmed my impression that his history of science was second-hand, his philosophy confused and backward, and his sociology of science non-existent. (Bunge, 2016, p. 181)

John Searle, a philosopher, observed: … the remarkable interest in the work of Thomas Kuhn on the part of literary critics did not derive from a sudden passion in English departments to understand the transition from Newtonian Mechanics to Relativity Theory. Rather, Kuhn was seen as discrediting the idea that there is any such [objective] reality. If all of ‘reality’ is just a text anyway, then the role of the textual specialist, the literary critic, is totally transformed. (Searle, 1994, p. 38)

Naomi Oreskes, an historian, philosopher, and co-author of Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (Oreskes & Conway, 2010), surveyed Kuhn’s work and gave a very constrained account of his contribution to HPS:

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Scholars generally agree that the largest impact of Kuhn’s work – besides adding the term paradigm shift to the general lexicon – was in helping to launch the field of science studies. (Oreskes, 2020, p. 66)

Philosophers cannot be entirely responsible for their followers but, given the very mixed bag of subsequent STS studies, Kuhn does have something to answer for, even though he disowned much of the relativism, idealism and subjectivism that was being promoted in his name. For over a century there had been historical, sociological, and economic studies of the relations between science, technology, and society. Marx, Mannheim, Pareto, Durkheim and, perhaps most notably, Robert Merton, had all contributed to this (Curtis & Petras, 1970; Merton, 1973; Biagioli, 1999). In the 1970s, at the University of Edinburgh, there began a school of Science Technology Society (STS) studies— the ‘Strong Programme’—that focused on the production of scientific knowledge. It was not so much the sociology of science, but the sociology of scientific knowledge. Leading figures were David Bloor, Harry Collins, Barry Barnes, Stephen Woolgar, and Bruno Latour (Brown, 2001). For this school, there was nothing epistemologically distinctive about science, much less was there a philosophical/epistemological distinction between Western and any other science. They bravely or, for most, notoriously, held the Symmetry Principle: the same kind of explanation holds for rational belief and irrational belief. Truth claims were just claims about convenience, viability, or instrumentality; they are not about correspondence or alignment with the world. This may or may not happen, but it is accidental. They held a certain behaviourism about belief, both scientific and non-scientific. There was an external explanation for both. Three STS scholars acknowledged Kuhn as the founder of their discipline, and went on to say: In the wake of STS research, philosophical words such as truth, rationality, objectivity, and even method are increasingly placed in scare quotes when referring to science – not only by STS practitioners, but also by scientists themselves and the public at large. (Brante et al., 1993, p. ix)

Although the Edinburgh Programme was convincingly criticised (Bunge, 1991, 1992; Laudan, 1981/1996; Slezak, 1994a, 1994b) confidence about universal science was diminished, and relativism and agnosticism concerning knowledge of the natural, social, cultural, and moral worlds became the academic, and indeed public norm. We are told by two Cultural Studies researchers that: Recent scholarship in science studies [STS] has opened the way for more thoughtful science education discourses that consider critical, historical, political, and sociocultural views of scientific knowledge and practice …. Increased attention to the problematic nature of western science’s claims to objectivity and universal truth has created an educational space where taken-for-granted meanings are increasingly challenged, enriched, and rejected …Thus, science’s long accepted claim to epistemological superiority has now become bound to the consideration of cultural codes, social interests, and economic imperatives. (Bazzul & Sykes, 2011, p. 268)

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In Kuhn’s Structure there is no prolonged analysis of any philosophical argument, except a brief discussion of perception and what contributions the observer makes to the object as perceived. The historian Jan Golinski, wrote: I see Kuhn as having little positive influence on philosophers and almost none (directly) on historians. His most significant influence within science studies was mediated by sociologists, whose reading of his work he specifically repudiated. (Golinski, 2012, p. 15)

Alexander Bird concluded a sympathetic appraisal of Kuhn with: Kuhn’s treatment of philosophical ideas is neither systematic nor rigorous. He rarely engaged in the stock-in-trade of modern philosophers, the careful and precise analysis of the details of other philosopher’s views, and when he did so the results were not encouraging. (Bird, 2000, p. ix)

Abner Shimony, a physicist and philosopher, said of the key Kuhnian move of deriving methodological lessons from scientific practice that: His work deserves censure on this point whatever the answer might turn out to be, just because it treats central problems of methodology elliptically, ambiguously, and without the attention to details that is essential for controlled analysis. (Shimony, 1976, p. 582)

Wolfgang Stegmüller opined that the crux of Kuhn’s theory of science was ‘a bit of musing’ of a philosophical incompetent (Stegmüller, 1976, p. 216). This is one of the points that, a few years earlier, the Sydney philosophers were making in the 1973 undergraduate honours seminar. Kuhn admitted in 1997 that his Structure’s treatment of the orthodox philosophical tradition was ‘irresponsible’ (Conant & Haugeland, 2000, p. 305). And elsewhere he confessed: ‘I should never have written the purple passages’. This is a too easy mea culpa: A philosopher writing a purple passage is akin to a car mechanic not putting oil in a serviced car. For both, it is a culpable error. The mechanic has to pay for the damage done to the car; unfortunately, the philosopher does not have to pay for the damage done to students in class and to uncritical faculty reading their texts. Many would subsequently share Kuhn’s own misgivings about his work, but such hesitation was rare in the science education community where Kuhnian ‘philosophy’ became holy writ. In the Kuhnian climate, the idea of ‘multi-sciences’ was born. But once truth, objectivity, facts and the rest are put into scare quotes, then ‘human rights’, ‘women’s rights’, ‘freedom of the press’, ‘right to life’, ‘liberty’, and other moral and ethical commitments will likewise end up in scare quotes, indicating not only that they are social constructions, which they are, but they are delusional, which they are not. Not all quotation marks need be scary; the device can signify that a particular use of the concept is debatable or contested in a particular circumstance. As in ‘Donald Trump “proved” that coronavirus was first manufactured in a Wuhan laboratory”. Here the marks indicate that the author realises that in this particular case there was no such proof. But more commonly and destructively, the quote marks mean that in principle the concept is delusional, there are no proofs, no truths, no objectivity, no facts, no falsehoods.

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The function of scare quotes is that only unsophisticated or uneducated people could affirm what they designate. If you are sophisticated, you chuckle at the words or make quotation-mark signs when in a conversation or at a podium. Many students educated at the time have never recovered. They believe that, in principle, news and fake news cannot be distinguished; their memory is that Kuhn, or their philosophy professor, proved this. The conversations, reading and writing for the 1973 Kuhn seminar shaped my 30years later publication on Kuhn (Matthews, 2004; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ doi/10.1002/sce.10111). With 40 citations, this paper has at least been recognised by science education researchers.

3.3.3 Honours Thesis: Action Theory My philosophy thesis on philosophy of mind emerged from a course by William W. Rozeboom, a visiting Canadian logical empiricist, who taught the postgraduate philosophy of mind class. Most were disappointed by the course, as it was overwhelmingly preoccupied with the grammar and syntax of talk about mind. Having read Rozeboom’s publications in places like Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science (Rozeboom, 1962), most students, and certainly Armstrong and other Sydney faculty attending the course, were expecting a more full-blooded engagement with science of the brain and larger issues in philosophical psychology. This did not happen. Nevertheless, outside of the course Rozeboom provided informed comment on philosophical and methodological matters (http://web.psych.ualberta.ca/~rozeboom/Publicati ons.html). The thesis, which was related to my psychology theoretical thesis, canvassed the action/movement distinction that was then widely elaborated in Anglo philosophy of psychology literature, for instance by Peter Winch in his 1963 Wittgenstein-inspired The Idea of a Social Science (Winch, 1963); by continental Verstehen theorists such as Theodor Adorno, Wolfgang Stegmüller and Hans-Georg Gadamer; and by a host of idealist hermeneutical theorists who held that the study of reality amounted to the construction of reality (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). For these writers, the fact that the very same external behaviour by an individual could constitute different actions, depending upon the internal intentions associated with the behaviour, meant that there could be no science of behaviour comparable to the sciences of nature. As Adorno stated the matter: It is in the nature of society itself that the natural scientific model cannot be happily and unreservedly transferred to it. (Adorno, 1976, p. 73)

For those theorists, the aim of social science is to understand or interpret personal behaviour, not to explain it. Natural sciences explain while, supposedly, humanistic studies understand. The behaviour of throwing a ball could constitute the action of trying to hit someone, warn someone of danger, or just exercising an arm. Purpose, intention,

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reasons and consciousness are constitutive and defining of actions and social conduct. This is why in the legal system, and in everyday life, the distinction between doing something accidentally and doing it on purpose, is so important. Therein lies the difference between murder and manslaughter. The behaviour can be captured by the measuring instruments of natural science, but the actions not so easily captured. Indeed, Winch and the Verstehen theorists argued that this simply ruled out the possibility of any ‘scientific’ social science. But this is a premature surrender that cuts the tradition off from engagement with any social decision-making or policy formulation. My thesis gave a causal interpretation of action. It canvassed a huge amount of the current literature including, as a sample, Anscombe (1957), Taylor (1966), Davidson (1963), Geach (1957), and Melden (1961). It was awarded first-class honours. I learnt many years later, that in 1968 Paul Crittenden’s B.Litt. thesis at Oxford, supervised by Anthony Kenny, was on the same topic (Crittenden, 2008, p. 261). Sydney was not untouched by English philosophical currents. I was placed second to Elizabeth Grosz (then Elizabeth Gross) who went on to Australian and international fame as a feminist philosopher. Her subsequent writings, alas, showed nothing of the precision, clarity, and valuing of science that the Sydney philosophy department tried its best to inculcate. In elaborating her trademark ‘Corporeal Feminism’ position she separates her understanding of ‘body’ from the mundane, ordinary, everyday sense of ‘body’, saying that: the body, or rather bodies, cannot be adequately understood as ahistorical, precultural, or natural objects in any simple way; they are not only inscribed, marked, engraved, by social pressures external to them but are the products, the direct effects, of the very social constitution of nature itself. (Grosz, 1994, p. x, quoted in Franklin, 2003, p. 370)

Being able to write such a sentence, when joined with her Kuhnian rejection of truth in science, doubtless facilitated her appointment as Director of the Institute for Critical and Cultural Studies at Monash University. I mention this matter here because, as I will elaborate in Chap. 9, thirty years later Cultural Studies became an beguiling fashion in science education.

3.4 Sydney Theological Studies Society (1968–1975) For a number of years while school teaching and doing my Arts and Education degrees, I was involved with the Sydney Theological Studies Society. This was a natural follow-on from Newman Society involvement. The Theological society was blessed, so to speak, with the participation of some outstanding philosophertheologians—Crawford Millar, Barry Miller, Angus Holland, come to mind; and some fine biblical scholars—Barbara Thiering (1930–2015; https://www.smh.com. au/national/barbara-thiering-obituary-brilliant-scholars-book-on-jesus-became-aworldwide-bestseller-20151220-gls3xd.html) and the Manly seminary lecturers Fathers Eugene Stockton and Bede Heather. Others involved were Jim Tulip, a

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professor of English Literature; Gary Trompf, the university’s first appointment in Religious Studies; Godfrey Tanner, the Classics professor; and a good many other fine folk, including mathematicians and scientists such as Charles Birch (1918–2009; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Birch). Birch was professor and head of the Biology Department and in 1988 contributed a paper on ‘Whitehead and Science Education’ (Birch 1988; https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j. 1469-5812.1988.tb00142.x) to the first of the journal special issues that I edited on History, Philosophy and Science Teaching (https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rep t20/20/2?nav=tocList). It is worth recording a 55-years earlier action of Charles Birch that revealed a great deal about him, and also about a different era of university functioning. I, along with perhaps 300 others, completed first-year biology in 1965. It was a year-long course for which there was one 3-hour exam at the end. There was no progressive assessment, or harassment, as it was commonly called. In the afternoon of the exam day, I travelled by bus to the university and on alighting, saw hundreds of fellow students streaming down Parramatta Road. They said the exam had just finished. It was in the morning. This was the era when, for whatever bizarre reason, to pass a year, you had to pass all subjects in that year. To fail one subject meant repeating the whole year. Predictably, some repeating students passed the originally failed subject, but then failed an originally passed subject. For them, the whole year had to be repeated, and paid for, a third time. For me, missing or failing the biology exam would have been the end of university and of a prospective teaching career. I would have lost my teachers scholarship. I went, in some state of distress, to Birch’s office. I had never before met him. He said: ‘go to the canteen, have a cup of tea, come back in 30 minutes and do the exam here’. There was no formality, form-filling, referral to committee, or anything else. The example stayed with me. My first academic conference papers were given to the Theological Studies Society. The first was titled ‘Christology Today’ and dealt with the writings of, among others, Balthasar, Bultmann, Pannenberg, Moltmann, and Crowe. The second was ‘The Religious and Social Teaching of Reinhold Niebuhr’. A third was ‘The Kingdom of God in Modern Theology’. These embarrassingly amateurish, Gestetner-printed papers are still in my files. I recall Barbara Thiering, remarking on the first paper that: ‘It is a good synthesis, but makes no original contribution’. This is perhaps a fair call on most, if not all, of my subsequent scholarly work. These engagements led to an invitation by the Anglican Reverend Rex Davis to join the Theological Commission of the Australian Council of Churches. There I was completely out of my intellectual depth, but the company was stimulating. Davis subsequently became Dean of Lincoln Cathedral, where I spent some happy days with him on a trip to England in the late 1970s.

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3.4.1 A Theological Library When I buy books, I put my name and purchase date on the inside cover. And I keep them. My intellectual and religious interests of the time can be gauged from the relevant books in my library. The following is a selection from the Theology section, along with the dates I acquired them. Some are more read than others. If nothing more, they serve the purpose of showing what at least some young Catholic would-be-intellectuals were reading at the time. The books, and more, are still on my shelves. 1967 Evans, Illtud (ed.): 1965, Light on the Natural Law, Burns & Oates, London (20 December 1967). White, Victor: 1967, God and the Unconscious, Fontana Books, London (7 July 1967). Adolfs, Robert: 1967, The Grave of God: Has the Church a Future? Burns & Oates, London (20 December 1967). Bultmann, Rudolf: 1934, Jesus and the Word, Fontana, London (30 August 1967). Huxley, Aldous: 1946, The Perennial Philosophy, Fontana Books, London (31 May 1967). Roberts, David E.: 1959, Existentialism and Religious Belief , Oxford University Press, Oxford (12 July 1967). Graham, Aelred: 1964, Zen Catholicism, Collins, London (1 August 1967). Graham, Aelred: 1939, The Love of God, Collins, London (24 November 1967). Taylor, A.E.: 1945, Does God Exist? Collins, London (20 August 1967). Hughes, Philip: 1957, The Reformation: A Popular History, Burns & Oates, London (16 October 1967). Vann, Gerald: 1960, Morals and Man, Collins, London (8 May 1967). Vann, Gerald: 1959, The Son’s Course: What Is God like? How can We Find Out? Collins, London (31 May 1967). Chesterton, G.K.: 1943, St. Thomas Aquinas, Hodder & Stroughton, London (3 September 1967). 1968 Adolfs, Robert: 1966, The Church Is Different, Burns & Oates, London (24 February 1968). Baum, Gregory (ed.): 1967, The Future of Belief Debate, Herder and Herder, New York (28 March 1968). Wikenhauser, Alfred: 1958, New Testament: Introduction, Herder & Herder (12 October 1968). Stanley, David M.: 1966, The Apostolic Church in the New Testament, The Newman Press (28 November 1968). Perrin, Norman: 1963, The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus, SCM Press (27 September 1968).

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Neuner, Joseph (ed.): 1967, Christian Revelation and World Religions, Burns & Oates, London (9 May 1968) Mascall, E.L.: 1943, He Who Is, Darton, Longmore & Todd, London (25 November 1968). Davis, Charles: 1966, God’s Grace in History, Fontana, London (5 April 1968). Pelikan, Jaroslav: 1960, The Riddle of Roman Catholicism: Its History, Its Beliefs, Its Future, Hodder and Stoughton, London (11 November 1968) Chadwick, Henry: 1967, The Early Church, Penguin, Harmondsworth (5 April 1968). Dodd, C.H.: 1935, The Parables of the Kingdom, Collins, London (26 July 1968). Vermes, G.: 1962, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, Penguin, Harmondsworth (3 July 1968). Vidler, A.R.: 1961, The Church in an Age of Revolution: 1789 to the Present Day, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth (1 May 1968). Ramsey, Ian T.: 1957, Religious Language: An Empirical Placing of Theological Phrases, SCM Press, London (27 September 1968). Flew, Anthony & MacIntyre, Alasdair (eds.): 1955, New Essays in Philosophical Theology, SCM Press, London (29 February 1968). Barbour, Ian G.: 1966, Issues in Science and Religion, SCM Press, London (27 September 1968) Dewart, Leslie: 1967, The Future of Belief: Theism in a World Come of Age, Burns & Oates, London (28 March 1968). Trethowan, Illtyd: 1961, The Basis of Belief , Burns & Oates, London (11 November 1968). Williams, Colin: 1966, Faith in a Secular Age, Fontana, London (29 February 1968). Russell, D.S.: 1960, Between the Testaments, SCM Press, London). 1969 Burns, Patrick J.: 1965, Mission and Witness: The Life of the Church, Geoffrey Chapman (12 May 1969). Bultmann, Rudolf: 1955, Theology of the New Testament, SCM Press, London (15 March 1969). Klein, Ludwig (ed.): 1965, The Bible in a New Age, Sheed & Ward, London (15 March 1969). Cullmann, Oscar: 1951, Christ and Time, SCM Press, London (28 March 1969). Durand, Alfred, Huby & Joseph (trans. Heenan, John J.): 1957, The Word of Salvation: A Commentary on the Gospels, Bruce Publishing (12 May 1969). Ward, Barbara: 1954, Faith and Freedom, Hamish Hamilton (12 May 1969). McKenzie, John L.: 1963, Myths and Realities: Studies in Biblical Theology, Geoffrey Chapman, London (12 May 1969). Tresmontant, Claude: 1965, Christian Metaphysics, Sheed & Ward, New York (12 May 1969). Bultmann, Rudolf: 1960, Existence and Faith, Fontana (8 July 1969).

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Robinson, James M. (ed.): 1968, The Beginnings of Dialectic Theology, John Knox Press (14 October 1969). Grandmaison, Léonce de: 1961, Jesus Christ, Sheed and Ward, New York (12 May 1969). Cullmann, Oscar: The Early Church, SCM Press (28 March 1969). Gleason, Robert W.: 1960, Christ and the Christian, Sheed & Ward, London (12 May 1969). von Balthasar, Hans Urs: 1964, Word and Revelation: Essays in Theology, Herder & Herder, New York (5 January 1969). Latourelle, René: 1968, Theology of Revelation, Mercier Press, Cork (3 January 1969). Corbishley, Thomas: 1960, Religion Is Reasonable, Burns & Oates, London (12 May 1969). 1970 Brown, Raymond: 1965, New Testament Essays, Doubleday (10 January 1970). Callahan, Daniel (ed.): 1969, God, Jesus, Spirit, Herder & Herder (15 February 1970). Belloc, Hilaire: 1920, Europe and the Faith, Burns & Oates, London (8 August 1970). Guitton, Jean: 1961, The Church and the Gospel, Burns & Oates, London (24 July 1970). Pelikan, Jaroslav (ed.): 1970, Twentieth Century Theology in the Making Vol. II, Fontana, London (26 May 1970). Xavier, Léon-Dufour: 1968, The Gospels and the Jesus of History, Fontana, London (9 June 1970). O’Brien, Elmer (ed.): 1965, Theology in Transition: A Bibliographic Evaluation of the ‘Decisive Decade’ 1954-1964, Herder and Herder, New York (16 May 1970). Cameron, J.M.: 1966, Images of Authority, Burns & Oates, London (16 May 1970). Fransen, Peter: 1965, Divine Grace and Man, Mentor-Omega Books, New York (13 November 1970). Fuller, Reginald H.: 1965, New Testament Christology, Collins, London (7 March 1970). Daniélou, Jean: 1957, God and the Ways of Knowing, Meridian Books, New York (13 November 1970). Neill, Stephen: 1966, The Interpretation of the New Testament: 1861-1961, Oxford University Press, Oxford (29 January 1970). 1971 Robinson, James M. (et al.): 1965, The Bultmann School of Biblical Interpretation: New Directions? Harper (24 October 1971). Dawson, Christopher: 1960, The Historical Reality of Christian Culture, Harper, New York (28 August 1971).

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Mackenzie, R.A.F.: 1963, Faith and History in the Old Testament, Macmillan Comp., New York (20 December 1971). Blomjous, Joseph J.: 1969, Priesthood in Crisis, Bruce Publishing (19 July 1971). Pelikan, Jaroslav (ed.): 1970, Twentieth Century Theology in the Making, Vol. 3, Fontana, London (24 October 1971). 1972 Pelikan, Jaroslav: 1966, The Christian Intellectual, Collins (20 January 1972). McNeill, John T.: 1935, Makers of the Christian Tradition, Harper (1 August 1972). Harnack, Adolf: 1901, What Is Christianity? Williams and Norgate (20 January 1972). Dewart, Leslie: 1969, The Foundations of Belief , Herder and Herder, New York (20 March 1972) Granfield, Patrick: 1967, Theologians at Work, The Macmillan Company, New York (24 July 1972) Brunner, Emil: 1934, The Mediator: A Study of the Central Doctrine of the Christian Faith, Lutterworth Press, London (20 January 1972). Brunner, Emil: 1939, Man in Revolt: A Christian Anthropology, Lutterworth Press, London (20 January 1972). Jeremias, Joachim: 1954, The Parables of Jesus, SCM Press (20 January 1972). Fuller, Reginald H.: 1962, The New Testament in Current Study: Some Trends in the Years 1941-1962, SCM Press, London (20 January 1972). Maritain, Jacques: 1969, On the Grace and Humanity of Jesus, Herder and Herder, New York (20 March 1972). Baun, Herbert: 1968, God and Christ: Existence and Province, Harper & Row, New York (15 March 1972). Meynell, Hugo A.: 1965, Grace versus Nature: Studies in Karl Barth’s ‘Church Dogmatics’, Sheed and Ward, London (20 March 1972). Baillie, D.M.: 1948, God Was in Christ: An Essay on Incarnation and Atonement, Faber & Faber, London (20 January 1972). These theological readings, meetings, conferences, and related activities were an important part of my early life. They no longer are. I was engaged sufficiently, and impressed by Barbara Thiering the subject coordinator, to enrol in the university’s Biblical Studies I subject. This did not last long. It was too demanding and too outside my ‘comfort zone’. One takeaway memory is that in response to a student query about the length of a required essay, a rabbi, who was a part-time lecturer said: ‘I received a letter from a European friend that began: “Dear Mendel, I am sorry I have no time to write you a short letter, so it must be a long one”’. We were told to bear this in mind when considering the length of our essay. Clearly, I was leading a full and rich life outside of my ‘day job’ science teaching at Dulwich High School. Initially it began from the conviction that educators need themselves to be educated. After a few years of maintaining the regime, I came to

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see the value of a career in teacher education: a good classroom teacher affects many, a good teacher educator potentially impacts many times more.

References Adorno, T. W. (1976). Sociology and empirical research. In T. W. Adorno (Ed.), The positivist dispute in German sociology (pp. 68–86). New York: Harper & Row. Anscombe, G. E. M. (1957). Intention. Oxford: Blackwell. Bazzul, J., & Sykes, H. (2011). The secret identity of a biology textbook: Straight and naturally sexed. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 6, 265–286. Becker, W. C. (1973). Application of behavior principles in typical classrooms. In C. E. Thoresen (Ed.), Behavior modification in education: The seventy-second yearbook of the national society for the study of education (pp. 77–106). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Biagioli, M. (Ed.). (1999). The science studies reader. New York: Routledge. Birch, L. C. (1988). Whitehead and science education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 20(2), 33–41. Bird, A. (2000). Thomas Kuhn. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Brante, T., Fuller, S., & Lynch, W. (Eds.). (1993). Controversial science: From content to contention. Albany: State University of New York Press. Brown, J. R. (2001). Who rules in science: An opinionated guide to the science wars. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bunge, M. (1991). A critical examination of the new sociology of science: Part 1. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 21(4), 524–560. Bunge, M. (1992). A critical examination of the new sociology of science: Part 2. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 22(1), 46–76. Bunge, M. (2016). Between two worlds: Memoirs of a philosopher-scientist. Dordrecht: Springer. Burnheim, J., & Crittenden, P. (2014). Political polarisation: 1960s. In G. Oppy & N. N. Trakakis (Eds.), History of philosophy in Australia and New Zealand (pp. 149–174). Dordrecht: Springer. Conant, J., & Haugeland, J. (Eds.). (2000). The road since structure: Thomas S. Kuhn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Crittenden, P. (2008). Changing orders: Scenes of clerical and academic life. Blackheath: Brandl & Schlesinger. Curtis, J. E., & Petras, J. W. (Eds.). (1970). The sociology of knowledge: A reader. New York: Praeger Publishers. Davidson, D. (1963). Actions, reasons and causes. Journal of Philosophy, 60, 685–700. Franklin, J. (2003). Corrupting the youth: A history of philosophy in Australia. Sydney: Macleay Press. Geach, P. T. (1957). Mental acts. New York: Humanities Press. Golinski, J. (2012). Thomas Kuhn and interdisciplinary conversation: Why historians and philosophers of science stopped talking to one another. In S. Mauskopf & T. Schmaltz (Eds.), Integrating history and philosophy of science (pp. 13–28). Dordrecht: Springer. Grosz, E. (1994). Volatile bodies: Toward a corporeal feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hanson, N. R. (1958). Patterns of discovery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hilgard, E. R., & Bower, G. H. (1966). Theories of learning (3rd ed.). New York: Appleton-CenturyCorfts. Kimble, G. A. (1961). Conditioning and learning. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Kleinig, J. (1982). Philosophical issues in education. London: Croom Helm.

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Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions (2nd ed.). Chicago: Chicago University Press. (First edition, 1962). Lakatos, I., & Musgrave, A. (Eds.). (1970). Criticism and the growth of knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Laudan, L. (1981/1996). The pseudo-science of science? Philosophy of Social Science, 11, 173–198. In his Beyond positivism and relativism (pp. 183–209). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Matthews, M. R. (2004). Thomas Kuhn’s impact and science education: What lessons can be learnt? Science Education, 88(1), 90–118. McDonald, F. J. (1973). Behavior modification in teacher education. In C. E. Thoresen (Ed.), Behavior modification in education: The seventy-second yearbook of the national society for the study of education (pp. 41–76). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Melden, A. I. (1961). Free action. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Merton, R. K. (1973). The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations (N. W. Storer, ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Oakeshott, M. (1967). Learning and teaching. In R. S. Peters (Ed.), The concept of education (pp. 156–176). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Oreskes, N., & Conway, E. M. (2010). Merchants of doubt: How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming. New York: Bloomsbury Press. Oreskes, N. (2020). Why trust science?. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Peters, R. S. (1966). Ethics and education. London: George Allen and Unwin. Rozeboom, W. W. (1962). The factual content of theoretical concepts. Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science, 3, 273–357. Scheffler, I. (1967). Philosophical models of teaching. In R. S. Peters (Ed.), The concept of education (pp. 120–134). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Schwartz, B., & Lacey, H. (1982). Behaviorism, science, and human nature. New York: W. W. Norton. Scriven, M. (1956). A study of radical behaviorism. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 1, 88–130. Scriven, M. (1976). The philosophy of behavioral modification. In H. G. Thoresen (Ed.), Behavior modification in education, 72nd yearbook of the national society for the study of education (pp. 425–442). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Searle, J. R. (1994). Postmodernism and the Western rationalist tradition. In J. Arthur & A. Shapiro (Eds.), Campus wars: Multicultrualism and the politics of difference (pp. 28–48). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Shimony, A. (1976). Comments on two epistemological theses of Thomas Kuhn. In R. S. Cohen, P. K. Feyerabend, & M. W. Wartofsky (Eds.), Essays in memory of Imre Lakatos (pp. 569–588). Dordrecht: Reidel. Slezak, P. (1994a). Sociology of science and science education: Part I. Science & Education, 3(3), 265–294. Slezak, P. (1994b). Sociology of science and science education. Part 11: Laboratory life under the microscope. Science & Education, 3(4), 329–356. Stegmüller, W. (1976). The structure and dynamics of theories. New York: Springer. Suchting, W. A. (1983). Marx: An introduction. Brighton: Harvester Press. Suchting, W. A. (1986). Marx and philosophy: Three studies. London: Macmillan. Taylor, R. (1966). Action and purpose. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Thoresen, C. E. (Ed.). (1973). Behavior modification in education: The seventy-second yearbook of the national society for the study of education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Vesey, G. (1967). Conditioning and learning. In R. S. Peters (Ed.), The concept of education (pp. 61– 72). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Winch, P. (1963). The idea of a social science. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Chapter 4

Sydney Teachers College and University of New South Wales

Abstract The chapter details my first academic appointment as a lecturer in philosophy of education at Sydney Teachers College; the tumultuous college-wide debates about assessment; the impact of ‘radical education’ in the college, including the conduct of a large ‘counter course’. It details my appointment to UNSW and beginning of my personal HPS&ST teaching and research. It covers the all important sabbatical year spent at the Boston University Centre for History and Philosophy of Science and the enormous influence on me of BU staff: Michael Martin, Bob Cohen, Marx Wartofsky, and Abner Shimony. Apart from so many other things, it was the beginning of my work on Galileo, particularly his pendulum studies. The unfortunate decline of both philosophy of education and of HPS at UNSW are noted. The chapter discusses the MA thesis on Galileo’s physics I wrote for Sydney University, and which emerged from my BU studies with Shimony.

A career-defining event occurred in mid-1972. While still teaching science and completing my BA and MEd degrees, I was offered an appointment as a lecturer in philosophy of education at Sydney Teachers College (STC). The appointment meant leaving classroom teaching and moving into teacher education. A field in which I have spent my subsequent career.

4.1 Sydney Teachers College (1972–1974) At the same time as the Teachers College position, I was offered a tutorship in the Sydney Psychology Department but my enthusiasm for, what amounted to an education vocation, and my high regard and indebtedness to Anna Hogg the head of the college education department, meant my immediate acceptance of the Teachers College position. I am forever pleased to have made this choice. Having burnt the candle at both ends, and sometimes in-between, for four years, the opportunity to work on the Sydney University campus, where the Teachers College was located, and to be a short walk from the bountiful resources of Fisher Library,

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and to be close to the university departments of Philosophy and Education, was irresistible. Unlike now, philosophers were in demand. There were half-a-dozen on staff at STC, but an extra was needed.

4.1.1 Radical Education Era My Teachers College years were tumultuous. Radical education was in the air everywhere except at the college, which was caught in a 1950s, or earlier, timewarp. The 1960s and ’70s saw a flood of progressive and radical education books. The following are just those on my own shelves: A.S. Neill Summerhill (1961), Ivan Illich Deschooling Society (1973), John Holt How Children Fail (1970), Paul Goodman Compulsory Miseducation (1971), Everett Reimer School is Dead (1971), N. Postman and C. Weingartner Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1971) and Trevor Pateman Counter Course: A Handbook for Course Criticism (1972). Along with books, there were many influential papers, one particularly important one being Louis Althusser’s ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’ that appeared in his Lenin and Philosophy (Althusser, 1971). The genre would grow exponentially in the late ’70s, and change to a more sociological, systematic, and Marxist-influenced analysis. Progressive, psychologyinfluenced, ‘humanistic’ education gave way to radical, class-theory influenced educational analysis and action. The major works of this period were Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis Schooling in Capitalist America (Bowles & Gintis, 1976) and Michael Apple’s Ideology and Curriculum (Apple, 1979). When these authors visited Australia, they lectured to packed classrooms, halls, and auditoria. Apart from the core philosophy of education, STC staff offered seminars in their various research areas. My first, and most popular, was ‘Ideology, Society, and Schooling’. Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1972) appeared the year I was appointed to STC. In the second half of 1972 I taught, as an option, probably the first course in Australia on his educational theory and practice. Wal Suchting had directed me to the book. I was privileged to spend time with Freire during his Australian tour in 1973. He was the subject of my first ever publication where I argued that Freire’s epistemology is best understood as the embodiment of that developed in Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach (Matthews, 1980a). Another option course I taught was ‘Christianity and Marxism’, ambitiously based on Gustavo Gutiérrez’s A Theology of Liberation (Gutiérrez, 1973). One-hour option classes regularly extended to 2– 3 hours. This was indicative of the, then reality, that ideas and convictions were important in teacher education. They are less so now. These radical works examined the social, economic, historical, and cultural contexts in which education was defined and conducted. They all challenged the standard Jeffersonian, liberal, individualist, meritocratic view of educational success, in which success, and hence access to economic and career benefits, was the outcome of personal effort plus intelligence; and conversely social and economic failure was the result of inadequate effort or diminished intelligence. In contrast, the radicals

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were documenting the contribution of race, gender, ethnicity, culture, poverty and class to educational success, or more commonly failure. All of this ferment had by-passed most Teachers College staff. I recall a coffeetable conversation where colleagues derided the very idea of affirmative action for Aboriginal entry to the college. The college sat fortress-like, isolated, and unmoved within the university grounds. But pleasingly the curriculum did allow for staff to contribute to a pool of options, one of which could be included in the students’ programme.

4.1.2 Assessment Battles There were constant battles with Education colleagues, and with the wider STC staff, over assessment matters. One among many, but typical, was the ‘Green Frog’ case. In response to an education exam question along the lines of ‘Describe your ideal school’, a student drew, for an hour or more, page after page of coloured cartoons, the final one being a large green frog saying ‘an ideal school is children doing what they are interested in and teachers approving’. I did not know, and had not taught, the student, but I did supervise the exam and noted one student with a huge tin of Derwent coloured pencils drawing feverishly page after page. When exam scripts were collected and distributed for marking, Education staff were outraged; they saw the student as making fun of the course. The recommendation was that not only the student be failed, but he not be offered a try-again post-exam, no coming back to repeat the subject. Which would have meant unemployment and the end of a teaching career before it even began. Philosophy colleagues, the English staff, other ‘softies’ and I moved an amendment at the general college assessment meeting that he be given a deferred exam and told that written prose was required. The English staff wrote to the College Principal: ‘What disturbs us is the assumption that cartoons and/or drawings are necessarily lacking in seriousness and ipso facto a sign of contempt’. Students in school were expected to attempt non-written communication. This amendment was rejected in the College Education Department by about 20 votes to 5. On 4 December 1974 it was subsequently rejected by the entire STC staff by 85 votes to 32 (all department results had to be approved by a full STC staff meeting). However, that was not the end of the matter. The DipEd was taught and graded by STC staff, but it was formally under the power of the University Faculty of Education who granted the degree. The student had otherwise excellent results, with high distinctions in English and outstanding practice teaching reports. From one supervising teacher: ‘X’s lessons involved a rather difficult class of girls. His tact, discretion and presentation of drama lessons won them to a degree of co-operation in the lessons that was most impressive’. And another teacher: ‘X’s ability to establish instant rapport with a difficult 2B class can only do him credit. Although normally bored with school, this class became so involved that they begged for extra lessons’. On 12 December 1974 the minority STC faction took all this information to the head of the University School of Education and indicated not just the injustice of the decision but the public relations disaster that was primed to follow if he endorsed

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the STC decision. Hopefully from wisdom, but it might have been institutional selfinterest, he overturned the result and STC was directed to give the student a deferred exam in Education. He passed, taught briefly in a difficult boys’ school, resigned, and went on to an outstanding international career in the theatre and cinema as an acclaimed choreographer for productions of Moulin Rouge, Strictly Ballroom, The Great Gatsby, Shall We Dance? and many other box-office hits. He became known as the ‘choreographer to the stars’. Of course, at STC he was just an unknown but clearly creative student with whom the system could not cope. There was a string of other such cases, including that of a college Physical Education student who was failed PE for not attending the required number of practical classes. I pointed out at the full staff meeting that the student was a rugby union international who missed classes because he was in New Zealand playing for Australia against the All Blacks rugby team (there is no tougher assignment in international rugby union). This argument fell on deaf ears, and he was drummed out by a vote of about 180 to 50. He was not a DipEd student, so the avenue of appeal to the University was not available. He subsequently became a dual international when he played rugby league for Australia. These cases went on and on. The battles pitched 1970s Progressives against 1950s bureaucratic Conservatives and Traditionalists.

4.1.3 A Counter Course One response was that Barbara Bee, Kevin Harris, a handful of education progressives and I mounted an almost year-long series of lunchtime lectures and discussions. This was a sort of counter DipEd. It was partly inspired by Trevor Pateman’s then recently published anthology Counter Course: A Handbook for Course Criticism (Pateman, 1972). We wanted to provide some alternative view of education, and the role of teachers, to that which dominated the College. As I was secretary of the NSW branch of the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia, it was a simple matter to have the line-up of speakers for the evening branch meetings come to STC and repeat their lectures in daytime. Students engaged with serious scholars talking intelligently about topical, and not so-topical, issues in education. Sadly, they heard precious little of this in STC programmes where most was neither topical nor intelligent. There were other speakers apart from PESA presenters. For example, a lesbian student who had her education scholarship at Macquarie University withdrawn because she had published, over her name, a lovemaking poem in the university newspaper. This ‘incident’ had gotten into the popular press. Dunstan Kemp, the then Principal of STC, called me to his office and threatened all manner of dire consequences if her appearance was not cancelled. I was stiffened by my newly embraced Richard Peters’ account of what education should be, namely open debate and the appraisal of positions, and refused to budge on this matter. The lecture went ahead to a large and appreciative student audience.

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Hugh Bygott was another speaker who triggered a similar threat from the Principal. He had been the head of a government school science department but was dismissed because he wore a ‘Stop the War’ badge to his school. This was taken as violating the government’s ‘no politics in schools’ policy. Bygott was a senior experienced teacher, who had himself completed a Sydney philosophy degree after his science degree. His dismissal crystallised issues about teacher professionalism and independence, the legitimate power of the State in education, the teaching of controversial issues, the role of schools as ‘ideological state apparatuses’ (to use Althusser’s terminology), and so on. Students were deeply engaged by Bygott’s talk, and indeed by most of the other talks in the programme. This engagement contrasted markedly with their almost complete lack of engagement and boredom in most STC education classes. Promoting these lectures opened up the serious issue of what degree of control education authorities can reasonably and legally have over teachers’ private lives and opinions. This is a perennial topic brought to the fore whenever controversial social issues such as environmental protection, law reform, gender equality, same-sex marriage, racial discrimination, union power, climate change, the Republic, etc.— are debated in society. A constant question is: Should or should not teachers express or make known their views on the matter? This is just an extension of the more routine, everyday issue of the desirability or otherwise of teachers expressing opinions on evaluative matters in the subjects they teach; an issue daily faced by history, economics, social science, literature, and religion teachers. This is a routine topic in philosophy of education and students could benefit from the extant arguments and analysis (Warnock, 1975; Norman, 1975). One immediate response is that teachers should stay mute on these topics for fear of dominating, if not manufacturing, students’ opinions; teachers should not indoctrinate. On the other hand, what example is set if pupils see their thought-to-be educated teachers having no view at all on the roll call of issues that fill newspapers, TV news, and radio? In one famous, or more properly infamous, case a STC student was removed from their practice teaching school because they had a Save the Whales sticker on their briefcase. The school principal insisted that he was not having ‘politics brought into his school’. Apart from lunchtime talks we staged three-weekend conferences attended by about 80–100 students and with all manner of ‘radical’ speakers and workshops. These conferences were held before economic pressures meant that student weekends were taken up by employment at Bakers Delight, McDonalds, and Kentucky Fried. For the record, and as an indicator of the ‘Spirit of the 1970s’, it is worth recording that at these riverside centres, most staff and students swam naked. Fifty years on, with phone cameras, Instagram and Facebook, not to mention serious abuse concerns, this would become newspaper material, trend on social media and result in departmental action, if not dismissal. For the most part, being an education radical at the time meant simply striving for good education: namely, education governed by respect for individuals, that sought understanding of subject matter, supported personal, cultural, and social flourishing, and was responsive to moral concerns. In other words, striving for liberal education.

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The Progressives took the view that it was just immoral, or unethical, for teachers to lose their livelihood because of their sexual orientation, their opposition to the Vietnam war, or their support for whales. Just as immoral as it would be to fail a student on account of their race. As Peters and others maintained, education had to be conducted in a moral framework. Anyone embracing the Peters, or most views of liberal education, could not just look the other way, much less endorse those kinds of moral transgressions in education. Opposition was not just political, it was moral; and it stemmed from the view that education could not be indifferent to moral issues that impinged upon it. A teacher or a coach can be indifferent to racial discrimination in schools (‘only whites pass’), gender discrimination (‘no physics class for girls’) but an educator, qua educator, cannot be. All the foregoing engagements stemmed from philosophical convictions about education; convictions developed in Anna Hogg’s 1968 compulsory philosophy of education course. A course, the likes of which, have long since been deleted from teacher education programmes in favour of who knows what?

4.1.4 Employment Threat This ‘extra-curricular’ activity was not a cost-free indulgence. I did not have tenure at STC and was employed at the grace of the Head of Education and ultimately the Principal of the College. Not unexpectedly, in December 1973 Eric Pearson, the then head of the STC Education department, citing Michael Matteson’s invited ‘anti-war’ lecture, and other matters, formally asked for my dismissal. As Pearson was the President of the NSW Teachers Federation, this request became something of an industrial issue—‘union president seeks dismissal of union member’—and was debated in union meetings and publications. As some students were members of the Communist Party the issue was aired in the pages of the Communist Party’s weekly paper The Tribune. Recognising that I was in the middle of completing my double-honours BA degree and MEd degree, and perhaps seeing other problems, the Principal Dunstan Kemp shelved the request. Sydney Teachers’ College was an ‘Exhibit A’ for Louis Althusser’s conceptualisation of ‘Education as an Ideological State Apparatus’ (Althusser, 1971). My whole experience, and that of students, supported his analysis. But in an open, democratic society even those in State Apparatuses have some wiggle room. Not so in closed one-party states such as North Korea and China.

4.1.5 Wither Foundation Subjects? These were heady days which are now all gone. Foundation subjects—philosophy, psychology, sociology, and perhaps history—had long been recognised as an essential part of the preparation of professional teachers or educators (Tozer et al., 1990). If teaching was to be a profession as distinct from simply a craft, then teachers needed some awareness of these domains. But over the past 20–30 years, foundation

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subjects have been progressively eliminated from teacher-education programmes; classroom management skills and what masquerades as ‘learning theory’ now dominant the programmes. Too often teachers are reduced to education assembly line workers. And they burn out at the same, or even greater rate. Both in the USA and Australia, the rule-of-thumb figure is half of all beginning teachers leave the profession within five years (https://www.aitsl.edu.au/docs/default-source/researchevidence/spotlight/spotlight—attrition.pdf?sfvrsn=40d1ed3c_0). Paul Hirst observes of the requirements of the UK 1994 Education Act that: These restrictions, insisting on the direct practical relevance of all education courses, have led to the near demise of all courses concerned specifically with the disciplines of educational theory within British universities. (Hirst, 2008, p. 309)

So, for instance, a relatively recent 76-chapter Handbook of Research on Teachers and Teaching (Saha & Dworkin, 2009) has no entry for ‘Foundation Studies’ or indeed any specific foundation discipline. Philosophy has gone. Social, historical, critical perspective has gone; teaching as a profession is threatened. The question of foundation subjects in teacher education will be returned to in the concluding chapter of this work.

4.2 University of New South Wales (1975–Present) Thankfully, less than 200 meters from the STC, my philosophy, psychology and education classes continued. I was secretary of the PESA state branch and meetings were held each 6–8 weeks. At the end of 1974, my master’s degree in philosophy of education and my double-honours BA were complete. In the middle of yet another finger-pointing, loud-voiced, end-of-year STC staff assessment meeting, I slipped out for an interview at the University of New South Wales for an advertised lectureship in philosophy of education. The Vice-Principal of STC, Vic Couch, had graciously written a positive reference saying that I was ‘the leader of innovative education in the college’. The philosopher of education, Kevin Harris had moved to UNSW the year before, and I phoned him during the afternoon of the assessment meeting and was told that I had been offered the position. This did give me a nice secure base to let go with both barrels in the remainder of the STC staff meeting. Whatever inhibitions I might have felt were completely gone. At the end of the meeting I told the Principal that I was moving to UNSW, effective 1 January 1975. It is difficult to know whose feeling of relief was greater. Nevertheless, Dunstan Kemp wrote (3 January 1975) a gracious note: ‘Once again please accept my congratulations on your fine university performance and on your new appointment in which I trust you will be successful’.

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4.2.1 Philosophers Aplenty I stayed at UNSW, with an interlude as Foundation Professor of Science Education in Auckland (1992–1993), until my retirement on 4 July 2008. Philosophers of education Jim Gribble and Martin Bibby joined the UNSW staff at the same time. The school then, in the mid-70s, had perhaps the largest group of philosophers of education in the world (seven), led by Professor Les Brown who was Head of School. Sadly, we as a group did not make the best of our commanding situation. As each one of this original group retired, they were not replaced. In 2008 I was the last philosopher to retire and was not replaced. This local picture of the demise of philosophy of education is a snapshot of the worldwide decline, not just of philosophy of education, but all the other foundation subjects (psychology, sociology, history). In teacher-education programmes, theory has been replaced by practice; university courses by in-school apprenticeships. Upon appointment at UNSW I put enormous time into preparing DipEd philosophy of education lectures. These were 36 detailed lectures, each of 12–15 typed pages, that I used to multiple copy and mail to a group of perhaps 20–30 colleagues throughout Australia and overseas, obtaining feedback and encouragement from many. Some of the lecture titles were: ‘Science and Observation’, ‘Karl Popper and Falsificationism Pt.1’, ‘Thomas Kuhn I: The Background’, ‘Thomas Kuhn II: Two Issues’, ‘Science and Society Pt.1’, ‘Ideology II: Althusser’s Theory’, ‘Marx’s Theory of Religion’, ‘Marxist Epistemology I: Early Marx’, ‘Marxist Epistemology IV: Lenin’, ‘Paul Hirst’s Epistemology III’, ‘Public Knowledge and Social Control’. Philosophy of science, epistemology and Marxist theory were the core of the lectures. They were way over the head of, and inappropriate for, DipEd students so what was prepared and what was delivered turned out to be different things. But when told that I needed a PhD for tenure, they provided a ready-made core for a thesis whose title was Epistemology and Education: A Critique of Analytic Philosophy of Education. It was examined and awarded in 1980. The same year a modified version was published by Harvester Press as The Marxist Theory of Schooling: A Study of Epistemology and Education (Matthews, 1980b). In retrospect it would have been better personally and professionally to have improved and published these lectures in science education journals. This could much earlier have connected me to the handful of scholars who had been publishing on HPS&ST questions: Cawthron & Rowell, 1978; Connelly, 1969, 1974; Eger, 1972; Elkana, 1970; Ennis, 1979; Hodson, 1981, 1982; Holton, 1975, 1978; Klopfer, 1969; Koertge, 1969; Phillips, 1978; and Siegel, 1978, 1979. But this was in the time before there was pressure for new staff to publish; a time when staff could afford to have an unpublished thought. My sense was that the subject matter needed to be mastered before being written on. Coming out of the Sydney philosophy department, I knew what amounted to competence in HPS and I knew I did not have it. Some other educators of the period (notably none of those in the preceding parentheses) did not have this sense, and so

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lightweight, and misleading, publications on HPS subjects appeared, and of course have continued to appear in science education literature. These lower the image and status of education research in the eyes of philosophers, and of funding agencies who have philosopher advisors.

4.2.2 IQ Writings In chapter eight of the book, I used the ‘IQ Controversy’ to illustrate the differences between a Marxist and philosophy of science informed approach on the one hand, and on the other, the more orthodox analytic approach. I first showed that little was gained by doing a conceptual analysis of ‘intelligence’ along the lines of analyses of ‘indoctrination’, ‘learning’, ‘conditioning’, ‘teaching’, ‘autonomy’ that were then common in the literature. Intelligence functioned as a theoretical term in psychology and had to be understood as such. For some theorists it was an intervening variable and thus had no ontological status, for other theorists it was a hypothetical construct and did have ontological status. Theoretical and problematic issues in psychology had to be addressed by the philosophers of education. But Marxism led one to look at the social functioning of IQ tests and consequently the history of such tests. For Marx there is no understanding of any significant subject without attention to its history. To understand social events, institutions, structures, ideologies—begin by looking at their history. Later this would inform my approach to study in the history and philosophy of science. Once the history of IQ tests was laid out, it became very clear that the science of intelligence was contaminated with ideology; ideological assumptions had gotten into the definition of theoretical terms. The IQ chapter was taken up by NSW Teacher’s Federation submissions to the State government on Selective Schools (government high schools restricted to supposedly talented or gifted students), and in 1985 was the subject of debates in the Canadian Journal of Education. James T. Sanders after surveying the contributions of such recognised scholars as Stephen J. Gould, Clarence Karier, Brian Simon, and Richard Lewontin chose my writings to exemplify the Marxist case he was criticising: I realise that I could be accused of unduly and arbitrarily narrowing the focus for discussion and debate on the issue by short-circuiting the voluminous literature on the IQ controversy. This is not my intent. There is to be sure, no small amount of literature on the controversy; if anything there is an overabundance. And considering the buzzing, blooming polemical confusion that characterises much of this discursive literature Matthews’ circumscribed case against IQ does have certain virtues. It is current (or post-Burtian), sustained, and organised along the major technical issues that (to my mind) make up the core of the controversy. (Sanders, 1985, p. 403)

It was nice to have such beyond Australia recognition. PESA meetings continued in 1975, with some of us trying to engage with the current radical critiques of education, some continuing the programme of Analytic Philosophy of Education. Paul Hirst’s Forms of Knowledge thesis was one of the chief targets: it was attacked from within (as being conceptually incoherent) and from without (as functioning as justificatory

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ideology for the current divisions in the school curriculum). In that year, 1975, the inaugural Australasian PESA conference was held at Macquarie University.

4.3 Philosophy of Education Course Once settled in, I taught a standard 14-week, 3-hours per week, philosophy of education course for undergraduates, and a HPS-focused course for those doing the MEd degree. For the historical record, the following is the opening rubric used for the undergraduate course. It shared a lot with countless such courses around the world, that have now all but disappeared; informed and reflective foundational thinking is no longer such an important component of teacher education. Getting on with the job, whatever it might be, is the important thing. The course outline said; The content, conduct and organisation of education gives rise to a host of philosophical or reflective questions. These questions usually ask what things should be done in schools? Are certain arrangements or treatments justified? And, what is the meaning of various claims or arguments. Philosophical or reflective questions about formal education (schooling) or informal education (child raising) have been asked and discussed since time immemorial. These questions take on different hues at different times, but ones such as the following are perennial: # What are the aims and purposes of education? To produce well informed citizens? To produce capable workers? To cultivate intellectual and academic abilities? To develop selfesteem? To maintain cultural identity? To assist religious development? All of these? # Who should have authority for educational decisions? Parents? The State? The Church? Local communities? Professional subject matter or educational authorities? # Who should provide education? The State? Parents? Church? Local communities? # Who should be educated? Everyone? Boys? Girls? Bright students? Less bright students? Ruling Party members? # What principles should guide the development of curricula? Personal development and well-being? University requirements? National economic needs? Social engineering considerations? Wealth redistribution considerations? # Are there special responsibilities that teachers have? What are the limits of teacher’s authority? All great philosophers in the Western tradition, and probably in other traditions as well, have thought that their philosophies should assist with answering the above kinds of educational questions. Plato and Aristotle wrote central works on education in the 4th century bc, as did Augustine in the 4th century ad. Aquinas and the medieval philosophers were concerned with the aims of education and how they related to ideas of the good life and of the fulfilment of human potential. John Locke in the 17th century wrote two works on education. Immanuel Kant, the great German philosopher of the 18th century, spent a lot of time on issues of moral education and moral development. Jean Rousseau, the influential French philosopher of the 18th century wrote an educational classic – Emile – that is still in print and still studied. In the 19th century, John Stuart Mill and John Henry Newman both wrote educational works that are still engaging and relevant to contemporary issues. In the 20th century, John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead and countless other philosophers have thought it important to address educational matters.

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The engagement of philosophers with education is not accidental: most philosophers have tried to articulate a view of what is important in life, what constitutes good human development, what can be known and what is worth knowing. All of these questions are also at the heart of education.

I gave two lectures each week and there was one tutorial based on printed and distributed readings. Initially there were comparable Psychology of Education and Sociology of Education courses. UNSW had the, then standard, Foundations + Methods (Pedagogy) structure for teacher education.

4.3.1 Beginning of HPS&ST Research My professional concern with HPS&ST questions commenced because I was teaching philosophy of education to science graduates enrolled in the UNSW Diploma of Education. At the time it was widely recognised that there was a crisis in Western science education. Levels of science literacy were disturbingly low. This was anomalous because science is one of the greatest achievements of human culture. It has a wonderfully interesting and complex past, it has revealed an enormous amount about ourselves and the world in which we live, it has directly and indirectly transformed the social and natural worlds, and the human and environmental problems requiring scientific understanding are pressing—yet, disturbingly, students and teachers were and are deserting science. It was and is internationally recognised that there are problems with science education. Orthodox, technical, non-contextual teaching is largely failing to engage students, or to promote knowledge and appreciation of science in the population. There is a well-documented crisis in contemporary science education, evidenced in the flight from the science classroom of both teachers and students, and in the appallingly high figures for science illiteracy in the Western world. This has prompted massive rethinking and reforms in national curricula and science education policy across the world. In the USA these reform efforts have been rolling on for the past thirty years. The most visible and influential have been, first the National Research Council’s National Science Education Standards (NRC, 1996), Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards (NRC, 2000), America’s Lab Report (NRC, 2006), Taking Science to School (NRC, 2007), A Framework for K-12 Science Education (NRC, 2012) and Next Generation Science Standards (NRC, 2013); and second, the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Science for All Americans (AAAS, 1989), The Liberal Art of Science (AAAS, 1990) and Benchmarks for Science Literacy (AAAS, 1993). Two decades ago, in the USA seventy per cent of all school students dropped science from their programme at the first available opportunity. The American National Science Foundation charged that ‘the nation’s undergraduate programs in science, mathematics and technology have declined in quality and scope to such an extent that they are no longer meeting national needs. A unique American resource

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has been eroded’ (Heilbron, 1987, p. 556). Recent US reports on college science enrolments are similarly bleak (Ashby, 2006). The National Research Council says in its Next Generation Science Standards that: The U.S. has a leaky K–12 science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) talent pipeline, with too few students entering STEM majors and careers at every level … We need new science standards that stimulate and build interest in STEM. (NRC, 2013)

In Europe, political and educational effort has gone into similar wide-ranging reform initiatives (Dibattista & Morgese, 2014). Acknowledging the failure of science teaching and the flight from science, a 2004 European Commission report was bluntly titled Europe needs more scientists! (EC, 2004). The following year the Commission commissioned a Europe-wide survey that revealed that 50% of adults saw their school science courses as ‘not sufficiently appealing’ and curriculum and pedagogical changes were called for to redress the science literacy and engagement problems. There are complex economic, social, cultural, and systemic reasons for this rejection of science. These are beyond the scope of teachers to rectify. But there are also educational reasons for the rejection of science that are within the power of teachers and administrators to change. In 1989, for example, a disturbing number of the very top Australian school science achievers gave ‘too boring’ as the reason for not pursuing university science. It is these curriculum and pedagogical failings that the history and philosophy of science (HPS) can help rectify, provided teachers are familiar with HPS and can appreciate its relevance to both the topics and the students they are teaching. I endeavoured in my undergraduate and graduate teaching to generate such appreciation. The melding of philosophy of education and HPS in my UNSW courses was the beginning of my more formal HPS&ST research. Although it was a small conceptual step from HPS for trainee science teachers to a full-blown HPS&ST research programme, the actual step would come a decade after my appointment. Initially my interests were purely local—my own UNSW classes—I was not thinking about any wider, much less international and institutionalised (societies, journals, and books) picture. All of this was unplanned, and to come.

4.3.2 Assessment Scandal I thought that at UNSW the kind of battles that had been fought at Teachers College were behind me. This was a mistake. In 1977, the STC Green Frog case was replicated by the UNSW ‘Idi Amin and his Dancing Girls’ case. The School’s educational psychologists told students that their compulsory final exam would have a multiplechoice format. Students objected to this, saying that their knowledge of educational psychology could not be adequately assessed by such means and, in a series of meetings, they demanded prose-type exams. Led by Professor Desmond Drinkwater, the psychologists dug in and would not change. There was much agitation. A leading group went on a deputation to

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Drinkwater who dismissed them as ‘Idi Amin and his dancing girls’—the lead, and energetic, male student had a Lebanese father and an Irish mother. The student was full of fight, having had industrial experience in the workforce prior to coming as a mature-age student into teacher education. The previous year, one of the ‘dancing girls’ had been Head of History at one of Sydney’s most prestigious girls’ private schools. After more deputations and meetings, the School of Education, in a school vote, asked the psychologists to offer two forms of exam—objective choice and prose. They refused. This was appealed to the Faculty of Professional Studies who directed the psychologists to do as asked. They had to comply. At the end of the year the psychologists presented their results: 130 passed and 110 failed. At the School staff meeting Professor Drinkwater, head of the psychology group, was asked to identify which of the failures had opted for the prose exam. He refused to do so. Failure in the subject was serious as it meant students did not obtain a DipEd, and thus could not have a teaching career. Nearly 50% of the university’s teacher-education cohort were being failed! All the philosophers, and some other staff members, fought this matter through meeting after meeting. After we contacted by phone maybe fifty of the failed students and found that all of them had opted for the prose exam (including the lead ‘dancing girl’ who had high distinctions in each of her other subjects, and who would after graduation be appointed Headmistress of one of Sydney’s major Anglican girls’ schools) it was clear how vindictive, and frankly short-sighted, Drinkwater and his psychology colleagues were. How could they ever imagine, even in a pre-Facebook era, getting away with this travesty? The furore got into newspapers and appeared in the Australian-wide National Times. With the scandal going public, on the radio, and about to hit television screens, the university authorities finally stepped in and passed every student enrolled in the 1977 DipEd, including some who had dropped out of the programme mid-year and had not even completed practice teaching. This truly jaw-dropping, incomprehensible episode, just like the Teachers College ‘Green Frog’ case, invites the question: How could adult, well-educated people, most having PhDs, make such abominable decisions and stand by them? Sadly, in world history, this is more the norm than the exception. Thereafter, my time at UNSW went easily and productively enough, right through to my retirement at age 60 in 2008. I taught undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of education, including for a few years a graduate course ‘Philosophy and Psychology’ based on a reading of core writings of Jean Piaget (Gruber & Vonèche, 1977), and a graduate course in ‘HPS&ST’ (Matthews, 1990b; https://link.springer. com/article/10.1007/BF00367690). The content of my HPS&ST courses changed as my own research and writing moved along. But around me, as elsewhere in the world, foundation subjects were progressively taken out of the programme. History went very early, then sociology was removed, and as philosophers retired, they were not replaced. It was the same situation in England (Hirst, 2008). I was the last left standing. Psychology, more specifically learning theory, flourished. As discussed below, there was a two-year break (1992–1993) when I moved to New Zealand as

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the Foundation Professor of Science Education. Since 2008 when I retired I have been an honorary associate professor with no teaching or administrative responsibility.

4.3.3 The Rise and Fall of HPS at UNSW The UNSW library has a huge HPS collection of books and journals. This was largely because, when the university was established in 1949 out of a former Technical College, it had a visionary, C.P. Snow-inspired ‘Two Cultures’, Vice-Chancellor (Philip Baxter) who decreed that an HPS course was to be compulsory for all students. Consequently, the first-year HPS class had 1,000 students and it was, by all accounts, marvellously taught by John Thornton, Robert Gascoigne, Bill Leatherdale, and others (Ellis et al., 2014). This course had very popular ‘naked eye’ astronomy exercises and other ‘hands-on’ experiential components. Forty and fifty years later, students spoke glowingly of this HPS course experience. Of particular interest to me, the library had subscriptions to The Modern Schoolman, The Thomist and New Scholasticism—journals not oft found in Australian universities. As will be mentioned below, in 2000 I published my first pendulum motion book which had 1,300 references, nearly all of which were in the UNSW library. Unfortunately, the history and philosophy dimensions of the foundation HPS School were progressively diminished in favour of sociology, science policy, and Science-Technology-Studies (STS). Despite a line of stellar philosophy of science candidates, successive new professorships went to other parts of the HPS domain. Philosophy was allowed to die off, with just my friend and colleague Peter Slezak, who was appointed in 1981 after completing his PhD at Columbia University, remaining to hold the philosophy fort. The school name was changed from ‘HPS’ to ‘STS’ but when this ‘new direction’ ran out of steam, the name was changed back, but sadly too late. Among a raft of ‘efficiency’ measures, UNSW HPS School was closed in 2008. Progressively, all other HPS Schools in Australia have closed except for the University of Sydney. So it is a moot point where Australian students can learn about the achievements of Galen, Buridan, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Huygens, Newton, Boyle, Priestley, Lavoisier, Dalton, Darwin, Mendel, Einstein, Bohr, and the diverse revolutions and intellectual and cultural upheavals with which they were associated. All indications are that the bulk of students studying in Australia— science students, humanities students, and even the new Ramsay-funded ‘Western Civilization’ students—will learn nothing of the scientific tradition that so powerfully shaped the modern world. Scientific lights have dimmed, or gone out, in Australian philosophy departments.

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4.4 Boston University Sabbatical (1978) The year following the School of Education assessment battles, 1978, was a watershed year. It was my first university sabbatical leave during which, on Wal Suchting’s recommendation, I went to the Boston University Centre for the History and Philosophy of Science. Some years earlier, Suchting had visited the Centre and presented a paper on ‘Regularity and Law’ to the Boston HPS Colloquium (Suchting, 1974). The BU School of Philosophy, and the Centre, were, arguably, at their peak. The marvellous Boston Studies in HPS series that began in 1961 co-edited by Robert Cohen and Marx Wartofsky was regularly appearing (https://www.springer.com/ser ies/5710). It was in the top three HPS book series at the time, and for some time thereafter. The Centre Colloquium was held every 6 weeks or so with stellar scholars presenting papers. The BU staff were outstanding and ranged over a wide spectrum of philosophical schools—Christians, Marxists, Idealists, Phenomenologists, Personalists, Analysts, Whiteheadians, Existentialists, Logical Empiricists, Critical Theorists, and perhaps others.

4.4.1 Boston University Faculty and Courses Michael Martin (1932–2015)—an analytic philosopher of science, social science and law, a former marine and Golden Gloves light-heavyweight boxing champion, and a champion of atheism (Martin, 1990)—was on staff. His Concepts of Science Education (Martin, 1972) was one of the first full-scale philosophical treatments of issues in science education. Michael and his philosopher of education wife Jane Roland Martin, who has also published in science education (Martin, J.R., 1991), have been good friends of mine from that time (https://www.hpsst.com/uploads/6/2/ 9/3/62931075/martin__obituary_.pdf). At BU everyone respected each other; there was an obvious sense of civility and collegiality in relationships. The contrast with the Sydney Philosophy Department and the UNSW School of Education of the time was palpable. I did one graduate course on ‘Marxism and Philosophy’ taught jointly by Robert Cohen and Marx Wartofsky. The course text was Robert Tucker’s The Marx-Engels Reader (Tucker, 1972). We worked our way through a selection of the major texts, with Cohen and Wartofsky providing historical and philosophical commentary and elaboration. Their command of philosophy, history of philosophy, and of Marx’s work was impressive, as was their good humour. Robert Cohen (1923–2017) was a joint appointment in physics and philosophy; and beginning in the late 1940s was secretary of the ‘Vienna Circle’ group in the USA, whose members included Gerald Holton and Philip Frank. In 1955 he had published a chapter ‘On the Marxist Philosophy of Education’ in the prestigious National Society for the Study of Education Yearbook (Cohen, 1955). This was not a good career move for a young academic in McCarthy-era USA, but his Methodist

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University, Wesleyan, stood by him. This was in contrast to many big-name, public, and private universities who rolled over and fired ‘suspect’, ‘subversive’, or staff who were merely mentioned in McCarthy’s Hearing for Un-American Activities Committee. Boston University, founded by the Methodist Church, was his next, and final, academic home. Cohen never forgot that he, a Marxist and Communist, had been supported by a Christian institution (https://www.hpsst.com/uploads/6/2/9/3/ 62931075/cohen__obituary_.pdf). The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) just across the Charles River from Boston University, stood down for five years in the mid-1950s Dirk Jan Struik (1894–2000), the renowned Marxist historian of mathematics. To MIT’s credit they did continue to pay him while stood down, but whatever guilt they may have felt about denying their students the benefits of his teaching, was not sufficient to overcome their fear of McCarthy and his Senate Un-American Activities Committee. In 1978 Cohen gave me an off-print of a paper ‘Individuality and Common Purpose: The Philosophy of Science’ (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF0 0488454) that he had delivered as a plenary address to the annual conference of the US Science Teachers Association—‘The largest audience I have ever addressed’, as he said. Twenty-five years later, as editor of Science & Education I published the lecture as the journal’s third ‘Golden Oldie’ (Cohen, 1964/1994). He worked closely with Gerald Holton, also a Wesleyan alumnus, on the creation of Harvard Project Physics and wrote a university Physical Science text that embodied his philosophy of science and philosophy of education (Cohen, 1975). Marx Wartofsky (1928–1997) was a luminary of North American philosophy. At Columbia he was a student of John Herman Randall Jr., a world-class historian of philosophy, and of Ernest Nagel, the noted philosopher of science whose major work was the text in my 1967 University of Sydney philosophy of science course. Wartofsky graduated from Columbia in 1952 but, on account of his very publicly aired socialist views, could not secure an academic appointment for the following five years. In 1957 he was employed as a philosophy professor by the Methodistcontrolled, Boston University (https://www-jstor-org.wwwproxy1.library.unsw.edu. au/stable/3130948?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents). Wartofsky’s masterful study Feuerbach had been published the year before I arrived (Wartofsky, 1977). It would not have been unusual for his Marxism course to simply be based on the book, but it was not. Unfortunately, his Conceptual Foundations of Scientific Thought (Wartofsky, 1968a) had not been mentioned in Sydney University philosophy of science programmes, nor indeed it seems in many other philosophy programmes. It was an over-looked rich philosophical resource. The professional neglect of Conceptual Foundations is a pity as the book exhibits most of the features of good philosophy of science: it is wide-ranging in its historical sweep, it is informed by scientific practice, it connects philosophy of science to general philosophy and metaphysics, it recognises the place of ethical and social values in science, intelligently endeavours to accommodate values into the epistemology and methodology of science—and it is clearly written. In crucial respects, the book was decades ahead of its time. What did, however, receive rightful and wide philosophical attention was his paper ‘Metaphysics as Heuristic for Science’ (Wartofsky, 1968b).

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My other graduate course was on Galileo taught by Abner Shimony (1928–2015) who, like Cohen, was a joint appointment in the Departments of Philosophy and of Physics. Shimony had a PhD in physics from Princeton University, supervised by Eugene Wigner; he contributed original work to theoretical and experimental quantum mechanics, specifically a monumental paper on the experimental test of Bell’s Inequality Theorem (Clauser & Shimony, 1978). He had a second PhD in philosophy from Yale, supervised by Rudolf Carnap. He was one of Carnap’s very few doctoral students (https://www.hpsst.com/uploads/6/2/9/3/62931075/shimony__obi tuary_.pdf). Shimony published original, highly technical and significant pieces on many foundational questions in physics and in philosophy (Shimony, 1993a, 1993b). The twenty-four contributions to his Festschrift are witness to this (Myrvold & Christian, 2009; https://www.springer.com/gp/book/978140209 1063). Additionally, he wrote poems, plays, and a children’s book about a child whose birthday was ‘wiped out’ by the Gregorian calendar reform of 1582 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar#:~:text=The%20Greg orian%20calendar%20was%20a,whom%20the%20calendar%20is%20named).

4.4.2 Reading Galileo It is noteworthy that Shimony’s graduate philosophy of science course was simply a reading from front to back of Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Galileo, 1633/1953), with his philosophical commentary on Galileo’s developing argument. He did not try to impress or intimidate students with his own immense erudition. Galileo, and understanding Galileo, was the focus; as that was done, the philosophical ‘lessons’ were drawn. The course was conducted the same year as his above-mentioned ground-breaking paper on Bell’s Inequality Theorem. To my shame, and perhaps also to the discredit of my Sydney University education, I had never to that time read a page of Galileo: We read about Galileo, and quotes in support of different philosophers’ arguments, but we did not read Galileo’s text. This signifies, in part, the difference between philosophy making use of history, cherrypicking history usually to support a preciously arrived at position, and philosophy taking history seriously, and consequently being informed by it. Shimony’s course was a head-turner. It introduced me, belatedly, to the wonderful and engaging texts of Galileo, one of the heroic figures and great minds of our lineage. The course also set me on a path of historical-philosophical investigation that I have tried to follow to the present. The semester course manifested the value of wedding philosophy of science to history of science. This was the pattern of ‘BU Integration’, so clearly displayed in volume after volume of the Boston Studies series. The Sydney Philosophy Department certainly defended science, but they did so as informed spectators, as readers of Scientific American or Nature. The philosophers of science at Boston University were both defenders of and participants in science. The university had the admirable practice of joint appointments, so that a number of

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philosophy professors were also professors of sociology, history, education, physics, biology, divinity, and so on. Boston University embodied a good deal of Cardinal Newman’s ‘no silos’ view of learning, research and academic structure. In reading the Dialogue I was particularly taken by Galileo’s pendulum experiments and their fecundity for elaboration of fundamental epistemological issues. They so well-embodied and manifested the difference between the old Aristotelian, perceptually anchored science, and the new experimentally anchored Galilean/Newtonian science. Additionally, they had tremendous pedagogical utility. I gave some papers on these topics at PESA and PES conferences (Matthews, 1998, 2001). As I will later relate, I wrote a book on the subject Time for Science Education: How Teaching the History and Philosophy of Pendulum Motion can Contribute to Science Literacy (2000), and edited, with Colin Gauld and Art Stinner, a pendulum-studies anthology (Matthews et al., 2005). Another important ‘takeaway’ from Shimony’s course was the role of thought experiment, Gedankenexperiment, in Galileo’s new science, and subsequently in modern science. This led me to the rich world of Ernst Mach studies (Matthews, 1989, 1990a). A subject I returned to thirty years later (Matthews, 2019).

4.5 MA Thesis on Galileo’s Physics (1979–1985) In 1979 I enrolled in an honours MA degree in history and philosophy of science at the University of Sydney. I did this in order to write up in a more systematic and disciplined way the Galileo interests I had developed during the previous year’s Boston University sabbatical. The thesis topic was The Natural/Violent Motion Distinction in Galilean Mechanics. At the time of enrolment, I did not anticipate attending a local Ultimo protest meeting, much less becoming in the following year, the first independent alderman on City Council. Thereafter, research and writing competed with Council commitments and UNSW teaching. A busy period, described in the following chapter. The thesis had two components: First, the Aristotelian metaphysics underlying the natural/violent motion distinction in Galilean mechanics; second, the introduction and justification of idealisation in Galileo’s theory of motion. In retrospect, and informed by examiners’ comments, I should have concentrated on one or the other.

4.5.1 The Natural and Violent Motion Distinction I benefited from writings on the subject by Thomist philosophers of science, in particular the Catholic priests William Wallace (1918–2015) Prelude to Galileo (Wallace, 1981) and James Weisheipl (1923–1984) Nature and Motion in the Middle Ages (Weisheipl, 1985). The six chapter-headings of the thesis chart its contents: Introduction; Aristotle on Motion; the Medieval Inheritance; the De Motu period; Nature,

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Natural Motion and Gravity in Galileo’s Mature Works; Post-Galilean Developments. There were 160 references, nearly all of which, most conveniently, were in the UNSW library. Aristotle’s treatment of motion, or more generally of movement, had both physical and metaphysical dimensions. A metaphysical understanding of nature undergirded his entire philosophical and scientific programme. As stated in Metaphysics Book V: From what has been said, then, it is plain that nature in the primary and strict sense is the substance of things which have in themselves, as such, a source of movement; for the matter is called the nature because it is qualified to receive this, and processes of becoming and growing are called nature because they are movements proceeding from this. And nature in this sense is the source of the movement of natural objects, being present in them somehow, either potentially or actually. (Barnes, 1984, Bk.II, p. 1603)

This statement is the condensation of a worldview at odds with the Democretian, Humean, John Stuart Mill view of nature as a series of random, unconnected, except accidently, events and happenings. John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) stated the core of this tradition’s view of nature as: We know not the essence, nor the real mode of production, of any fact, but only its relations to other facts in the way o succession or similitude. These relations are constant; that is, always the same in the same circumstances. The constant resemblances which unite them as antecedent and consequent, are termed their laws. The laws of phenomena are all we know respecting them. Their essential nature and their ultimate causes, either efficient or final, are unknown and inscrutable to us. (Mill, 1866, p. 6)

Most discussion in education concentrates on the physical side of Aristotle’s account, usually identifying the erroneous Aristotelian ‘law’ of motion: an object’s speed equals force applied divided by resistance of the medium through which the object moves. Speed = force/resistance The bigger the force applied the faster the body moves; the more resistance by the medium, the slower the speed. This is erroneous, but it corresponds with a good deal of common sense and everyday experience. It is the common assumption brought to school by students and which then has to be unlearnt (diSessa, 1982); and frequently it is not unlearnt. Students learn a formula, but they do not internalise the physics (Ebison, 1993). Pierre Duhem (1861–1916), the French historian and philosopher, warned against grounding science instruction in common sense: Now is it clear merely in the light of common sense that a body in the absence of any force acting on it moves perpetually in a straight line with constant speed? Or that a body subject to a constant weight constantly accelerates the velocity of its fall? On the contrary such opinions are remarkably far from common-sense knowledge; in order to give birth to them, it has taken the accumulated efforts of all the geniuses who for two thousand years have dealt with dynamics. (Duhem, 1906/1954, p. 263)

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Idealisation in science has been recognised as one of the major stumbling blocks to meaningful learning of science. This is in part because intuitive beliefs are so strongly influenced by everyday, concrete experience. Lewis Wolpert, in his The Unnatural Nature of Science remarked: Scientific ideas are, with rare exceptions, counter-intuitive: they cannot be acquired by simple inspection of phenomena and are often outside everyday experience … doing science requires a conscious awareness of the pitfalls of ‘natural’ thinking. (Wolpert, 1992, p. xi)

The fundamentality of idealisation is, of course, a massive stumbling block for simplistic and naïve advocacy of discovery learning or inquiry learning. This is a point that I would return to later in my writings on constructivism. It is an inherent feature of science that Romantic critiques fail to recognise. In physics, and everyday use, motion means an object’s change of place, what Aristotle calls ‘local motion’, and what now is basically just called ‘movement’. This can be absolute or relative. Aristotle thought in the broader term of change, of which motion is just one of three kinds; change of place, change of composition, change of size. For Aristotle, understanding change necessarily led to metaphysics (Buckley, 1971, Pt.1). Famously he opens Book VII Chapter 1 of his Physics with the claim that: Everything that is in motion must be moved by something. For if it has not the source of motion in itself it is evident that it is moved by something other than itself, for there must be something else that moves it. (Barnes, 1984, p. 407)

And then in Chapter 2: And since there are three kinds of motion, local, qualitative, and quantitative, there must also be three kinds of mover, that which causes locomotion, that which causes alteration, and that which causes increase or decrease. (Barnes, 1984, p. 409)

In Thomism, the Aristotelian understanding of change led to theology, and on to God. In the Summa Theologica (First part, Quest II, Article 3) Aquinas succinctly stated: ‘The existence of God can be proved in five ways’. And ‘The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion’ (Aquinas, 1270/1952, p. 12). This has been labelled the Kinetological Argument, which Aquinas takes direct from Books V-VIII of Aristotle’s Physics. He elaborates it as: Therefore, whatever is moved must be moved by another. If that by which it is moved be itself moved, then this also must be moved by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go onto infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and consequently, no other mover, seeing that subsequent movers move only because they are moved by the first mover, just as the staff moves only because it is moved by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at the first mover which is moved by no other. And this everyone understands to be God. (Aquinas, 1270/1952, p. 13)

Aquinas recognised that this kinetological argument did not necessitate a beginning in time; he was relaxed about such movement inducing movement having no beginning; philosophically he allowed it to go back to infinity. In Summa Theologica Bk.1 Question XLVI he deals with ‘Of the beginning of the duration of creatures’, and in Article 2 after canvassing various arguments, he concludes: ‘We hold by faith

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alone, and it cannot be proved by demonstration, that the world did not always exist’ (Aquinas, 1270/1952, p. 253). All five of Aquinas’s arguments for the existence of God conclude with the same refrain: ‘And this everyone understands to be God’. This appeals to an antecedent conception of God, or such a prime mover or being. The philosopher is making clear something that nevertheless is dimly perceived.

4.5.2 Real Potentials Aquinas elaborates an understanding of all movement, including local motion whereby something goes from A to B, in terms of potency and actuality, saying: ‘For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potency to act [actuality]’ (Aquinas, 1270/1952, p. 12). This is Aristotle’s realism about potentiality and its actualisation. The Anglican Thomist, E.L. Mascall, defended this fundamental Aristotelian tenet: For unless we are prepared to say that, if X changes into Y, Y was potentially in X before the change, we shall not be recognizing that X has changed at all. We shall, instead, be assuming that X has been annihilated and that Y has been created to take its place, and we shall be substituting for the rich complexity of a universe which, with all its processes of generation and corruption, of life and death, persists through time—a succession of discrete states without any real continuity. (Mascall, 1943, p. 43)

The idea of real potentiality is not without problems, nevertheless it was accepted by non-Thomist philosophers such as Leibniz in the seventeenth century and Whitehead and Shimony in the twentieth. A recurrent Leibnizian claim is that ‘the present is heavy with the past and big with the future’. Whitehead wrote in terms of ‘the present being pregnant with the future’. The topic of potentiality has had a considerable revival in contemporary philosophy, with a Springer Handbook devoted to the subject (Engelhard & Quante, 2018) with one chapter being on ‘Potentiality in Aristotle’s Metaphysics’ (Marmodoro, 2019). More generally, Aristotelian metaphysics has had a revival in contemporary philosophy of science; a matter documented by the philosopher and theologian John Lamont in a Science & Education thematic issue and subsequent anthology (Lamont, 2009). Rom Harré and Edward Madden advanced arguments in their Causal Powers book (Harré & Madden, 1975) that are explicitly Aristotelian, indeed Thomist. They talk of internal powers rather than potentials; and say that ‘we would assent in all essentials to Aquinas’ theory, as interpreted by Anscombe and Geach’ (Harré & Madden, 1975, p. 100). Against the Humean and widespread empiricist understanding of causality, they echo Mascall’s foregoing argument: It is our contention that the Humean event-ontology is unable to make sense of the material identity and continuity involved in the rational explanation of change we have been examining. … On our view, ‘event’ is to be understood in terms of an ontology of enduring things, while on the Humean view enduring things are conceived to be constructions of events. (Harré & Madden, 1975, p. 109)

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Roy Bhaskar, in the Introduction of his rightly influential A Realist Theory of Science, takes the same Aristotelian-themed position: … the real basis of causal laws are provided by the generative mechanisms of nature. Such generative mechanisms are, it is argued, nothing other than the ways of acting of things. And causal laws must be analysed as their tendencies. (Bhaskar, 1975, p. 14)

Bhaskar’s subsequent Critical Realism work has been influential, but less rightly so. There are too many claims enunciated in opaque language. For instance: In a multi-determined, multi-levelled, multi-linear, multi-relational, multi-angular, multiperspectival, multiply [sic] determined and open pluriverse, emergence situates the widespread phenomena of dual, multiple, complex and open control. (Bhaskar, 1993, p. 53)

A reader might see what is being gotten at, namely: ‘Thus typically, in our zone of being, higher-order agencies set the boundary conditions for the operation of lowerorder laws’ (Bhaskar, 1993, p. 53), but the premise is so opaque that any position at all could be derived from it. Mario Bunge, as will be outlined in Chapter IX, offers a clearer and more cogent argument for such an emergent view of natural and social causation. Tuukka Kaidesoja, a Finnish philosopher who has written extensively on the philosophy of social science, has provided a detailed appraisal of the parallel work of Roy Bhaskar and Mario Bunge, concluding: Roy Bhaskar and Mario Bunge have both developed influential realist philosophies of social science. Both of them use the ontological concept of emergence and advocate a doctrine of emergent materialism in their social ontologies. … I argued that Bunge’s perspective on emergence enables one to conceptualize levels of organization in complex systems including social systems, while Bhaskar’s account of levels of reality is problematic. (Kaidesoja, 2009, p. 318)

Education authorities and teachers constantly invoke the reality of potentials when they speak of ‘students realising their potential’; this is an everyday expression. Literally they are saying that there is something there to be realised; they are Aristotelian realists about potential. Perhaps when pulled up, their realism might dissolve into instrumentalism: there is nothing there, the expression simply refers to a possible future state-of-affairs. This desiccated account of potential hardly captures the educational realities with which teachers, parents, and administrators deal. Israel Scheffler has written well on the subject (Scheffler, 1985). It is one topic, for instance, with which a decent philosophy of education course could engage students. But there are few such courses.

4.5.3 Idealisation in Galileo and the Beginning of Modern Science Aside from historical background, the fundamental epistemological distinction that I articulated was between real objects and the theorised objects of science. I saw this distinction in Galileo’s work (Matthews, 1988). The distinction sat comfortably with Althusser’s anti-empiricist, Marxist distinction of real and theoretical objects. History

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of science and Marxist epistemology fitted well together. This was a recurrent theme in Wal Suchting’s writings; and also in the work of Bob Cohen and Marx Wartofsky, the Boston University philosophers from whom I learnt so much. The distinction is fairly basic and not especially sophisticated: real objects, events, and processes are always ‘messy’, they are mostly imperfect, and subject to multiple influences. The objects or entities with which science deals, scientific objects, are abstracted or idealised versions of real objects and real processes. Galileo acknowledged that events do not always correspond to his theory. The material world and his so-called ‘world on paper’, the theoretical world, did not correspond. In his Two Chief World Systems, concerning his inclined plane experiment, he instructs Simplicio: Remember that I said a perfectly round ball and a highly polished surface, in order to remove all external and accidental impediments. Similarly, I want you to take away any impediment of the air. (Galileo, 1633/1953, p. 146)

In his Two New Sciences, after mathematically establishing his famous law for the parabolic motion of projectiles, he writes: I grant that these conclusions proved in the abstract will be different when applied in the concrete and will be fallacious to this extent, that neither will the horizontal motion be uniform nor the natural acceleration be in the ratio assumed, nor the path of the projectile a parabola. (Galileo, 1638/1954, p. 251)

Science both abstracts from and idealises the natural world; it does not deal with the world as given in experience. Science simplifies reality; it describes idealised objects and processes: the reaction of pure chemical substances, frictionless movements, idealised genetic transmission, elliptical planetary orbits, and so on. This is why Nancy Cartwright titled her well-received book How the Laws of Physics Lie (Cartwright, 1983). They lie because physics and the laws of physics are not immediately about everyday objects and processes. Even less so are chemistry and biology immediately about real chemical or biological entities and processes. Galileo approached the law of falling bodies by rolling them down inclined planes, not by dealing with them directly, not by looking at a naturally falling body. Kant had precision philosophical insight on this Galilean turn in scientific methodology remarking: 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. (Kant, 1787/1933, p. 20)

For this reason, the Romantic criticism of science (both original nineteenth century and current)—science does not deal with the full complexity of nature—misses the point. Science advances precisely by not dealing with the full complexity of nature. Aldous Huxley correctly observed:

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The scientific picture of the world is inadequate, for the simple reason that science does not even profess to deal with experience as a whole, but only with certain aspects of it in certain contexts. All of this is quite clearly understood by the more philosophically minded men of science… . [Unfortunately] our times contains a large element of what may be called ‘nothing but’ thinking. (Huxley, 1947, p. 28)

Bill Rozeboom, my philosophy honours advisor, had made the same point: … the natural sciences have long since learned to appreciate the power of idealized approximations (‘models’) which highlight the essentials of phenomena too intricate to be grasped at the outset with errorless accuracy, and the importance of ‘robust’ conclusions which are largely indifferent to the particular details of simplifying assumptions. (Rozeboom, 1970, p. 196)

While acknowledging the importance and centrality of idealisation in science, it is important to be aware of associated significant problems, especially evident when idealisation is utilised in social science. Here, idealisation can insulate ideology from counter evidence. So, if when assessing communism as a social system, someone points to Lenin’s USSR, Mao’s China or Hoxha’s Albania the ideologue can keep saying: ‘they were impure, compromised cases of communism’. Or, when assessing Milton Friedman’s liberal, laissez-faire economic theory, one points to the devastating effects in Chile and other South American countries where it was enacted, the ideologue can say: ‘but it was not perfectly enacted; accidents and impediments were preventing its proper working’. It was argued, for instance, that religious and moral considerations were thwarting the free operation of markets in the welfare domain. The MA degree was awarded, with second-class honours, in 1985. There were still some Sydney PESA meetings, and one in the early 1980s at Newcastle that I attended. I also began attending US PES meetings, presenting some of my Galileo studies (Matthews, 1988), and profitably engaging with science-interested PES members— Harvey Siegel, Denis Phillips, Jim Garrison, Robert Ennis and Stephen Norris. Although I had graduated in science, taught science, studied history and philosophy of science, and taught philosophy of education to science undergraduates and graduates—at this stage, I had not engaged with the professional science education research community. The MA years were times for learning, not for publishing. My engagement with the international science education community would begin in 1987 and is described in Chapter 6 below.

References Althusser, L. (1971). Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. Lenin and philosophy (pp. 127– 186). New York: Monthly Review Press. American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). (1989). Project 2061: Science for all Americans. Washington, DC: AAAS. Also published by Oxford University Press, 1990. American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). (1990). The liberal art of science: Agenda for action. Washington, DC: AAAS.

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American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). (1993). Benchmarks for science literacy. New York: Oxford University Press. Apple, M. W. (1979). Ideology and curriculum. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Aquinas, T. (1270/1952). Summa Theologica (English Dominican Province, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ashby, C. M. (2006). Higher education: Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics trends and the role of federal programs. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office (Education Resources Information Center Document ED 491614). Barnes, J. (Ed.). (1984). The complete works of Aristotle (2 Vols.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bhaskar, R. (1975). A realist theory of science. Leeds: Leeds Books. Bhaskar, R. (1993). Dialectic: The pulse of freedom. London: Verso. Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Buckley, M. J. (1971). Motion and motion’s god: Thematic variations in Aristotle, Cicero, Newton and Hegel. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cartwright, N. (1983). How the laws of physics lie. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Cawthron, E. R., & Rowell, J. A. (1978). Epistemology and science education. Studies in Science Education, 5, 31–59. Clauser, J. F., & Shimony, A. (1978). Bell’s theorem: Experimental tests and implications. Reports on Progress in Physics, 41, 1881–1927. Cohen, R. S. (1955). On the marxist philosophy of education. In N. B. Henry (Ed.), Modern philosophies and education: The 54th yearbook of the national association for the study of education (pp. 175–214). Chicago: NSSE. Cohen, R. S. (1964/1994). Individuality and common purpose: The philosophy of science. The Science Teacher, 31(4). Reprinted in Science & Education 3(4), 1994, pp. 393–407. Cohen, R. S. (1975). Physical science. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Connelly, F. M. (1969). Philosophy of science and the science curriculum. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 6, 108–113. Connelly, F. M. (1974). Significant connections between philosophy of science and science education. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 8, 245–257. Dibattista, L., & Morgese, F. (2014). Incorporation of history and philosophy of science and nature of science content in school and teacher education programmes in Europe. In M. R. Matthews (Ed.), International handbook of research in history, philosophy and science teaching (pp. 2083–2117). Dordrecht: Springer. diSessa, A. A. (1982). Unlearning Aristotelian physics: A study of knowledge-based learning. Cognitive Science, 6, 37–75. Duhem, P. (1906/1954). The aim and structure of physical theory (P. P. Wiener, trans.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ebison, M. (1993). Newtonian in mind but Aristotelian in heart. Science & Education, 2(4), 345–362. Eger, M. (1972). Physics and philosophy: A problem for education today. American Journal of Physics, 40, 404–415. Elkana, Y. (1970). Science, philosophy of science, and science teaching. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2, 15–35. Ellis, B., et al. (2014). History and philosophy of science. In G. Oppy & N. N. Trakakis (Eds.), History of philosophy in Australia and New Zealand (pp. 707–772). Dodrecht: Springer. Engelhard, K., & Quante, M. (Eds.). (2018). Handbook of potentiality. Dordrecht: Springer. Ennis, R. H. (1979). Research in philosophy of science bearing on science education. In P. D. Asquith & H. E. Kyburg (Eds.), Current research in philosophy of science (pp. 138–170). East Lansing: PSA. European Commission (EC). (2004). Europe needs more scientists! Increasing human resources for science and technology in Europe. Brussels. http://ec.europa.eu/research/conferences/2004/ sciprof/pdf/final_en.pdf. Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

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Galileo, G. (1633/1953). Dialogue concerning the two chief world systems (S. Drake, Trans.). Berkeley: University of California Press (second revised edition, 1967). Galileo, G. (1638/1954). Dialogues concerning two new sciences (H. Crew & A. de Salvio, trans.). New York: Dover Publications (orig. 1914). Gruber, H. E., & Vonèche, J. J. (Eds.). (1977). The essential piaget. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Gutiérrez, G. (1973). A theology of liberation: History, politics and salvation. Orbis Books. Harré, R., & Madden, E. H. (1975). Causal powers. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Heilbron, J. L. (1987). Applied history of science. ISIS, 78, 552–563. Hirst, P. H. (2008). Philosophy of education in the UK: The institutional context. In L. J. Waks (Ed.), Leaders in philosophy of education: Intellectual self portraits (pp. 305–310). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Hodson, D. (1981). The nature of scientific knowledge. The School Science Review, 63(223), 360– 365. Hodson, D. (1982). Science—The pursuit of truth? Parts I, II. School Science Review, 63(225), 643–652; (226), 23–30. Holton, G. (1975). Science, science teaching and rationality. In S. Hook, et al. (Eds.), The philosophy of the curriculum (pp. 101–118). Buffalo: Promethus Books. Holton, G. (1978). On the educational philosophy of the project physics course. The scientific imagination: Case studies (pp. 284–298). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Huxley, A. (1947). Science, liberty and peace. London: Chatto & Windus. Kaidesoja, T. (2009). Bhaskar and Bunge on social emergence. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 39(3), 300–322. Kant, I. (1787/1933). Critique of pure reason (2nd ed., N. K. Smith Trans.). London: Macmillan (First edition, 1781). Klopfer, L. E. (1969). The teaching of science and the history of science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 6, 87–95. Koertge, N. (1969). Towards an integration of content and method in the science curriculum. Curriculum Theory Network, 4, 26–43. Lamont, J. (2009). The fall and rise of aristotelian metaphysics in the philosophy of science. Science & Education, 18(6–7), 861–884. Marmodoro, A. (2019). Potentiality in Aristotle’s metaphysics. In K. Engelhard & M. Quante (Eds.), Handbook of potentiality (pp. 15–43). Dordrecht: Springer. Martin, J. R. (1991). What should science educators do about the gender bias in science? In M. R. Matthews (Ed.), History, philosophy and science teaching: Selected readings (pp. 151–165). Toronto: OISE Press. Martin, M. (1972). Concepts of science education: A philosophical analysis. New York: Scott, Foresman & Co. Martin, M. (1990). Atheism: A philosophical justification. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Mascall, E. L. (1943). He who is: A study in traditional theism. London: Darton, Longman & Todd. Matthews, M. R. (1980a). Knowledge, action and power. In R. Mackie (Ed.), Literacy and revolution: The pedagogy of Paulo Freire (pp. 82–92). London: Pluto Press. Matthews, M. R. (1980b). The marxist theory of schooling: A study in epistemology and education. Brighton: Harvester Press. Matthews, M. R. (1988). Galileo’s pendulum and the objects of science. In B. D. Arnstine (Ed.), Philosophy of education (pp. 309–319). Normal, IL: Philosophy of Education Society. Matthews, M. R. (1989). Ernst mach and thought experiments in science education. Research in Science Education, 18, 235–241. Matthews, M. R. (1990a). Ernst mach and contemporary science education reforms. International Journal of Science Education, 12(3), 317–325. Matthews, M. R. (1990b). History, philosophy, and science teaching: What can be done in an undergraduate course? Studies in Philosophy and Education, 10(1), 93–98. Matthews, M. R. (1998). In defence of modest goals for teaching about the nature of science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 35(2), 161–174.

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Matthews, M. R. (2001). Learning about scientific methodology and the “big picture” of science: The contribution of pendulum motion studies. Philosophy of Education, 2001, 204–213. Matthews, M. R. (2019). Mach’s educational theory and practice. In F. Stadler (Ed.), Ernst Mach: Life, work, influence (pp. 553–570). Dordrecht: Springer. Matthews, M. R., Gauld, C. F., & Stinner, A. (Eds.). (2005). The pendulum: Scientific, historical, philosophical and educational perspectives. Dordrecht: Springer. Mill, J. S. (1866). Auguste Comte and positivism (2nd ed.). London. Myrvold, W. C., & Christian, J. (Eds.). (2009). Quantum reality, relativistic causality, and closing the epistemic circle: Essays in honour of Abner Shimony. Dordrecht: Springer. National Research Council (NRC). (1996). National science education standards. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. National Research Council (NRC). (2000). Inquiry and the national science education standards: A guide for teaching and learning. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. National Research Council (NRC). (2006). America’s lab report: Investigations in high school science. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. National Research Council (NRC). (2007). Taking science to school: Learning and teaching science in grades K-8. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. National Research Council (NRC). (2012). A framework for K-12 science education: Practices, crosscutting concepts, and core ideas. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. National Research Council (NRC). (2013). Next generation science standards. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Norman, R. (1975). The neutral teacher? In S. C. Brown (Ed.), Philosophers discuss education (pp. 172–187). London: Macmillan. Pateman, T. (1972). Counter course: A handbook for course criticism. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Phillips, D. C. (1978). The Piagetian child and the scientist: Problems of assimilation and accommodation. Educational Theory, 28, 3–15. Rozeboom, W. W. (1970). The crisis in philosophical semantics. Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science, 4, 196–219. Saha, L. J., & Dworkin, A. G. (Eds.). (2009). International handbook of research on teachers and teaching. Dordrecht: Springer. Sanders, J. T. (1985). Marxist criticisms of IQ: A defence of Jensen. Canadian Journal of Education, 10(4), 403–414. Scheffler, I. (1985). Of human potential: An essay in the philosophy of education. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Shimony, A. (1993a). Search for a naturalistic world view. Vol. I: Scientific method and epistemology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shimony, A. (1993b). Search for a naturalistic world view. Vol. II: Natural sciences and metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Siegel, H. (1978). Kuhn and Schwab on science texts and the goals of science education. Educational Theory, 28, 302–309. Siegel, H. (1979). On the distortion of the history of science in science education. Science Education, 63, 111–118. Suchting, W. A. (1974). Regularity and law. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 14, 73–90. Tozer, S., Anderson, T. H., & Armbruster, B. B. (Eds.). (1990). Foundational studies in teacher education: A reexamination. New York: Teachers College Press. Tucker, R. C. (Ed.). (1972). The marx-engels reader. New York: W. W. Norton. Wallace, W. A. (1981). Prelude to Galileo: Essays on medieval and sixteenth-century sources of Galileo’s thought. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company. Warnock, M. (1975). The neutral teacher. In S. C. Brown (Ed.), Philosophers discuss education (pp. 159–171). London: Macmillan. Wartofsky, M. W. (1968a). Conceptual foundations of scientific thought: An introduction to the philosophy of science. New York: Macmillan.

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Wartofsky, M. (1968b). Metaphysics as a heuristic for science. In R. S. Cohen & M. W. Wartofsky (Eds.), Boston studies in the philosophy of science (Vol. 3, pp. 123–172). Republished in his Models, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1979, pp. 40–89. Wartofsky, M. W. (1977). Feuerbach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weisheipl, J. A. (1985). Nature and motion in the middle ages (essays edited by W. E. Carroll). Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. Wolpert, L. (1992). The unnatural nature of science. London: Faber & Faber.

Chapter 5

Political Interlude: Sydney City Council (1980–1985)

Abstract The chapter deals with an important political interlude in my life. In 1980 I was elected the first independent alderman on Sydney City Council since 1919 when political parties entered local government and was re-elected in 1983. This was a very consuming five-year period as my UNSW teaching continued along with my M.A. research and writing. One personal outcome of the period was publication of the best-selling local history book Pyrmont and Ultimo: A History. A larger outcome was that political control of Council passed to independents; the power of the political parties over City Council was broken and, 40 years later, remain broken.

Returning at the end of 1978 from half-a-year of rich intellectual and personal life in Boston, local Sydney politics unexpectedly loomed large in my life. It would be nice to think that this was a ‘philosopher takes on City Hall’ story, but the reality was more prosaic. In 1975 I had moved to Ultimo, a run-down tiny suburb literally in the shadow of Sydney’s Central Business District. There, large 4-bedroom houses sold for almost nothing, so I could afford to buy one. In 1980 I attended a small neighbourhood protest meeting over a clearly obnoxious development and being the only person attending with no legitimate excuse not to take the protest to a Council meeting, I became spokesperson for the group. The same year a long-sitting Australian Labor Party (ALP) alderman, Sid Fegan, (who had never lived in the area) was retiring and he organised for his son John (who also had never lived in the area) and his son’s girlfriend (who, needless to say, had never lived in, and perhaps had never even visited, the area) to be the Labor Party candidates for this inner-city ward in the 1980 election. People were prepared to accept the son as their alderman. Nepotism was how innercity politics worked at the time; they were less prepared to accept the free-loading girlfriend. There was general agitation for an alternative, and as better known and credentialed locals stepped back, I became the candidate of the hastily formed Active Residents Campaign. Phillip Ward was a collection of, at that time, poor inner-city suburbs—Pyrmont, Ultimo, Chippendale, North Newtown, Camperdown, Haymarket, and Sydney University, plus the southern half of the Central Business District of Sydney. The ward had a voting population of about 10,000. Pyrmont and Ultimo were called © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. R. Matthews, History, Philosophy and Science Teaching: A Personal Story, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0558-1_5

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‘Sydney’s Sink’. Whatever developments were not wanted by better suburbs went into Pyrmont and Ultimo: a coal-fired power station for the city tram network, a massive city garbage incinerator, wholesale vegetable and fish markets, the nation’s largest sugar refinery, flour mills, wool stores, quarries, shipbuilding, numerous small-manufacturing and mechanical repair yards, and so on. Locals told me that, not so long before I moved in, it used to be a race between washing drying on the line and turning black with soot. In the house I bought, there was an inch of soot atop the ceiling boards, a matter discovered when I went into the roof to put in a skylight. Traditionally Phillip Ward returned two Labor and one Civic Reform (Liberal Party, conservative) aldermen. It was the Central Business District (CBD) that returned a Civic Reform alderman. This was greatly helped by the franchise rules that allowed all partners in a CBD rented office to vote in the election. Some law firms had 50+ partners registered in the one office; with hundreds of offices in one building, it is easy to see how the system was rigged in favour of business. I gained the votes of many on the left of the ALP, so splitting the total Labor vote and thus denying election of the girlfriend. In September 1980 I was thus elected to Sydney City Council as the first independent alderman since the First World War. When I was elected, 365 votes were cast in the Pyrmont sector of the ward, and not many more in the Ultimo sector; now 15,000 people live in Pyrmont and 10,000 in Ultimo. As with inner cities all around the world, the development of abandoned industrial sites, has led to gentrification and explosion of the population. In 1980, as with a number of other moments in my life, I happened to be in a good place at a good time. Many early resident and political struggles were about needless demolition of occupied and unoccupied houses and factories. In 1980 a row of splendid terrace houses in Pyrmont was knocked down for a car park of the adjacent Colonial Sugar Refinery, which ten years later itself was to close and be abandoned. I led campaigns against demolition of the terrace. The Sydney Morning Herald published a letter from the Pyrmont Catholic priest, Father John Ford, supporting my stand and refuting the Labor Party’s claims. At the very next Council meeting, the Labor Party cut off funding to Father Ford’s ‘Mission to Seamen’, a charitable work that the Council had been funding for 50+ years. City politics was played hard. In Ultimo abandoned industrial sites were cleared for a road that was never built. With a stream of letters to the Herald and radio interviews I was able to shed light upon the usually hidden ‘underbelly’ of Council business. My unexpected election was one of those common-enough little things that had wide, and wildly, unintended consequences. With the girlfriend not elected, the left wing took power over the right wing within the ruling Labor Party group of the City Council by just one vote (4:3), but the one vote had significant ongoing repercussions for city life and politics. Losing control of Council was intolerable to the right-wing leadership of the State Labor Party who controlled NSW parliament. The State party had to be able to deliver favourable Sydney Central Business District (CBD) zoning, development applications and their modifications, and other ‘favours’ (opening hours, parking restrictions, building heights etc.) to its financial backers and friends. A spot-rezoning here, an

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extra story there, a street closure somewhere else—these were the accepted bread and butter routines of Council, irrespective of what party was in control. Without control of the City Council, neither party could do this. The answer was for the State to amalgamate City Council with the adjacent right-wing dominated South Sydney Council in 1982. This sounded like a good, and routine, idea at the time—City Council boundaries always took the shape of the last State government’s foot that trod upon Council: outwards with Labor, inwards with Liberals. But it spectacularly backfired when, at the following 1984 election, independent candidates won seats in all the old South Sydney wards, and the Labor Party lost control of the expanded City Council. I served two terms on Council. The time commitment was immense—fortnightly Council meetings interspersed with fortnightly committee meetings, site inspections, constituent meetings, newsletter editing, writing letters and articles for Sydney newspapers, radio interviews, and so on. During this period, utilising Council resources and records that were freely available to me, I wrote a local history book Pyrmont and Ultimo: A History (Matthews, 1982). With just under 5,000 sales, this became at the time, and might still be, the largest selling ‘local history’ book published in Australia. Pleasingly Stephen Harris, then Head of the Planning and Urban Development Programme at UNSW, wrote of the book: It is my opinion that the book broke new ground in the compilation of local area histories. Until this time, local histories had tended to be either ‘sponsored’ publications (usually by local councils but sometimes by local corporations or associations), and these concentrated heavily on the sponsoring organisation and the personalities involved. Michael Matthews’ book was among the first to deal thematically with the history of the locality: an approach advocated by those who deal with the heritage of an area and the processes of conservation of that heritage. The book has been used extensively by subsequent researchers and others. To my personal knowledge, it has formed a basic text at the University of Sydney and this University in courses dealing with heritage and its study and conservation. Doubtless it has also been similarly used elsewhere. It has also been used by government departments and private corporations when considering their responses to the past, present and future of the locality.

My six years in local government were valuable and formative. Council dealt with millions and millions of dollars of development applications every second week. Weighing up development, against conservation, against city planning rules and regulations, against resident opinion, state demands, and so on, was an exhausting but formative regime. There were committee meetings in the in-between weeks. Additionally, there were troves of other business that needed attention and decisions. After the 1984 ‘boil-over’ election I failed by one vote on the expanded 27member Council to be elected Deputy Lord Mayor of Sydney. I had support of the independents and the conservative Civic Reform group, but Jack Mundey, a prominent and successful independent candidate was offered, and took, chairmanship of the Planning Committee in return for supporting the Labor candidate (https://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Mundey).

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After my retirement in 1985, independents did take control of Council and have, on and off, kept it to this day. I must have done something right in my trailblazing two terms. The two independents who worked with me and followed me into Council—Clover Moore (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clover_Moore) and Frank Sartor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Sartor)—both went on to be progressive and notable Lord Mayors of Sydney. Both became members of State parliament. Frank, who joined the Labor Party, missed out by two internal party votes on becoming Premier of NSW. Doubtless I could have extended my sojourn in local government and maybe risen higher, but it would have meant a complete break with academic life which I was not prepared to accept. It is perhaps worth relating, just for the sake of general political education, that in the 1984 Council election campaign I used to doorknock lonely streets on weekends with Frank Sartor, Frank taking one side and me the other. At the end of the street he would ask for the house numbers of those who were not at home so we could go back another time! I kept no such list; I was inwardly relieved when a door was not opened. Later, when elected, Frank would phone at 11 p.m. or later to discuss an amendment to a following day’s motion that eight times out of ten could have been suitably sorted out on the floor of the meeting. But 8/10 was not good enough. For Frank, near enough was never good enough; for me it was. Frank’s drive was indicative of the sort of focus that is needed to go to the top of politics. Something Frank subsequently did in both local and state government. Anyone who gets within sight of the top, has Frank’s drive and focus. Clearly, in part I had it or I would not have been elected to City Council in the first place, but I did not have it in full. Further, during my brief political life I had other things to do, namely university teaching and writing of my MA (Hons) thesis on Galileo. If there was any ‘philosophical’ perspective evident in my Council activity, it was my commitment to judging matters on their merits. This might be a simple and obvious point. But, in a situation where Council votes were determined by prior caucus decisions made by both major parties, or by the financial interests of the political parties (and their donors), or by how aldermen had voted on some previous motion (‘if you vote for my park, I will vote for your rezoning’), to argue that matters be considered on their merits, was revolutionary, or at least uncommon. What constituted ‘merit’ was not always obvious, and it was an evolving idea. Some things had obvious merit—conservation of historic buildings and precincts, support for the underdog, elimination of cronyism in Council grants and housing allocation, support for residents against through traffic, provision of pedestrian malls, height limits to avoid gross shadow effects, provision of Council recreation facilities, favouring public transport over private car use, transparency in decision-making, and so on. These were political platforms. But the City of Sydney was not just some ordinary local town or suburb. It was the transport hub of NSW, it was the financial hub of the State if not of Australia, perhaps a quarter of a million commuters daily came to the city to work in establishments that paid the bulk of the city’s rates. So, Council deliberations were not just about local

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resident affairs; ‘merit’ had a wider purview. Making a local connecting street a peakhour clearway greatly benefited thousands of commuters, and adversely affected a hundred residents. What is the outcome of a merit analysis? Transparency was an early issue for me. The salaries of the Prime Minister of Australia and the Vice-Chancellor of UNSW were public but not that of the Council’s Town Clerk. In State government, business, and universities, senior positions were publicly advertised, for City Council they were only advertised internally. Council had a rightly lauded ‘public housing’ policy and owned hundreds of flats, apartments, and houses. These were for deserving members of the public. As an election candidate, then as an alderman, I had occasion to visit many. What became clear was that predominately the tenants were Council employees. Council was running an employee-housing scheme under the name ‘public housing’. This extended to the highly paid head of the Parks Department living in the two-story ranger’s house in a large harbourside park. The policy was defended on the grounds that ‘the tenants can never avoid paying rent, it comes out of their salaries’. These arrangements had been the status quo for decades; both political parties benefiting from it. With some success, I set about publicising and ending these arrangements. Being a serious liberal was revolutionary enough in local government, one did not have to be a radical Marxist to standout or make headlines. Though in one council meeting I was accused by a Civic Reform alderman of being one. In 1998 Frank Sartor, then the Lord Mayor of Sydney, wrote a letter in support of my promotion to associate professor at UNSW, saying in part: In 1980, Matthews became the first independent alderman elected to Council since the First World War. During his time in office, he established the Pyrmont-Ultimo Festival and a local newsletter – The West Sydney Post – as well as working to address planning and traffic control matters in the inner-west of Sydney. The then City Council was riven by political factions and antagonisms. Michael Matthews brought a fair mindedness and intelligence that was respected by all aldermen. During the most heated debates and upheavals, he calmly insisted that the issue at hand be addressed, and that extraneous personal or political matters be left aside. This demeanour was sustained over a particularly volatile and difficult six-year period, a commendable achievement. During his first elected term, Michael’s reputation was such that, at the subsequent Council elections, a total of seven non-party aldermen were elected, due in part to the respect afforded to him. Also, I would add that Michael served on Council at a time when alderman were basically unpaid for their time and effort. He undertook this duty as a most commendable civil service.

A nice memento of my political years.

Reference Matthews, M. R. (1982). Pyrmont and Ultimo: A history. Sydney: Southwood Press.

Chapter 6

History, Philosophy, and Science Teaching: The Beginning

Abstract This chapter details the origins of the modern, institutionalised HPS&ST research programme during my sabbatical year at Florida State University in 1987. It commenced with an invitation to guest edit a special issue of Synthese journal on the subject; this expanded to six such special issues of different journals, providing a base for the first NSF-funded HPS&ST international conference at Tallahassee in 1989 at which the International History, Philosophy and Science Teaching Group (IHPST Group) was formed. The next institutional step was creation of the Kluwer journal Science & Education: Contributions from History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science; I was the founding editor and remained such for 25 years. Publication of a score of thematic issues was a feature of the journal over that time. The chapter also outlines the European Enlightenment and the continuing Enlightenment Tradition in education; the life, times and educational contributions of Ernst Mach; and the publication and reception of the edited 1989 Hackett anthology The Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy that provides the core scientific texts to which the founders of early modern European philosophy were responding. My three decades of engagement with the International History, Philosophy and Science Teaching Group (IHPST Group) has shaped and defined whatever long-term contribution to academic life that I have made. In 1987, after six years of political activity in which university work was barely ticking over, I took sabbatical leave in the Philosophy Department at Florida State University, Tallahassee. It was from there that my subsequent History, Philosophy and Science Teaching (HPS&ST) research was launched (https://ihpst. clubexpress.com/).

6.1 Florida State University, Tallahassee Conference, and Founding of IHPST Group (1987–1989) I went to Tallahassee because David Gruender (1928–2007), who had written on Galileo was there, and because there were some capable philosophers—Jim McMillan and Manny Shargel—in the Education Department. Jim Garrison, subsequently a leader of US Philosophy of Education and a contributor to HPS&ST research (Garrison, 1997; Garrison & Bentley, 1989), had just completed his Ph.D. in © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. R. Matthews, History, Philosophy and Science Teaching: A Personal Story, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0558-1_6

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philosophy supervised by Jaakko Hintikka. In addition, FSU had the national champion college women’s rugby union team that had been written up in the Australian press. In 1979 I had played my last game of rugby league for Sydney University so in 1987 at FSU I enjoyed coaching both the women’s team and the men’s team, with the women being ever more serious and diligent about training than the men. In one game, a Tongan fellow playing for another university proceeded to carve up the FSU team. A chap on the sideline turned to me and said: ‘You know, that in the war Japan wanted Tonga, but not that much’. This captured the energy of Tongan rugby.

6.1.1 Synthese Invitation My HPS&ST work, and subsequently the IHPST Group, was launched when I returned in April 1987 from a large Washington AAAS conference to mark the tri-centenary of publication of Newton’s Principia (1687). I remarked over coffee to Jaakko Hintikka (1929–2015), the FSU philosopher who was the editor of Springer’s prestigious Synthese journal, that it was a great pity that science teachers do not attend such HPS conferences as there was so much presented that would interest them, and inform their teaching. He suggested I guest edit a special issue of Synthese on the topic of ‘History, Philosophy and Science Teaching’ as a means of ascertaining interest in the area. I jumped at the opportunity. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaakko_Hintikka). It is perhaps worth noting that from something very casual and unplanned, a substantial scholarly and institutionalised research field grew. A common matter with which historians need to deal. I began writing to a dozen individuals who I knew would be interested in contributing. They in turn recommended others, who recommended still others. In the end I had about 60 excellent manuscripts from scholars all over the world. About ten could appear in Synthese, so rather than return the others I contacted journal editors I knew to see if they were interested in special issues of their journals on the topic. Among those responding positively was James Kaminsky, the editor of PESA’s Educational Philosophy and Theory journal. As it turned out, this was the first of the six special issues to be published (Vol. 20, No. 2, 1988; https://www.tan dfonline.com/toc/rept20/20/2?nav=tocList). Others were Interchange (Vol. 20, No. 2, 1989, Vol. 24, Nos. 1–2, 1993), Studies in Philosophy and Education (Vol. 10, No. 1, 1990), Science Education (Vol. 75, No. 1, 1991), Journal of Research in Science Teaching (Vol. 29, No. 4, 1992 and of course the flag-ship Synthese (Vol. 80, No. 1, 1989). https://link.springer.com/journal/10780/volumes-and-issues/20-2 https://link.springer.com/journal/10780/volumes-and-issues/24-1 https://link.springer.com/journal/11217/volumes-and-issues/10-1 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1098237x/1991/75/1 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/10982736/1992/29/4 https://link.springer.com/journal/11229/volumes-and-issues/80-1

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Among scholars published in these seminal issues were: Harvey Siegel, Mark Silverman, Martin Eger, Nancy Nersessian, James Cushing, Ian Winchester, Stephen Brush, George Kauffman, Joseph Pitt, James Garrison, Michael Ruse, Fritz Rohrlich, Arnold Arons, Charles Birch, Joan Solomon, Roger Bybee, Jim Stewart, Dimitri Ginev, Norman Lederman, James Wandersee, Zoubeida Dagher, George Cossman and Derek Hodson. I had the good fortune to come to know, personally engage with, and learn from most of these scholars.

6.1.2 Tallahassee Conference (1989) The time was ripe for a concerted international effort to bring the worlds of HPS and science teaching together; something hitherto done only spasmodically, for instance around creation of the Harvard Project Physics course and the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) Web of Life course. David Gruender, the wonderfully supportive FSU philosopher, suggested seeking National Science Foundation funding to bring all contributors, and others, together for a conference on the subject at Florida State University. After a good deal of his effort, and use of his many contacts, this application was successful. Both of us worked with Kenneth Tobin, an Australian newly appointed to a professorship of Science Education at FSU, to organise the first HPS&ST conference which was held in Tallahassee in November 1989. Fortunately, in the process of ‘networking’ for the conference, contact was made with Fabio Bevilacqua from the University of Pavia who was chairman of the Interdivisional Group on History of Physics of the European Physical Society. The European group had already held education conferences in Pavia (1983), Munich (1986), and Paris (1988). Subsequently it would hold conferences in Cambridge (1990), Madrid (1992), Szombathely (1994), and Bratislava (1996) with printed Proceedings being produced for each of these meetings. Bevilacqua, an historian of physics in the Pavia University Physics Department, had completed a Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University, with a thesis supervised by Mary Hesse and Gerd Buchdahl. The latter had, some years earlier, supervised Wallis Suchting’s PhD at University of Melbourne. About 200 researchers from 30 countries attended the Tallahassee conference. It was an overwhelmingly successful, productive, happy, and still-remembered conference. It marked the beginning of the International History, Philosophy and Science Teaching Group, of which I was foundation secretary and Newsletter editor. In its different forms, I have retained the latter position to the present time (https://www. hpsst.com/).

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6.1.3 Social Constructivism and the Science Wars There are many things that can be said about the background and deliberations of the Tallahassee meeting. The first is that although the bulk of the conference was concerned with the traditional liberal education agenda of how HPS can enhance and improve the teaching of science, it did occur at the same time that the ‘Science Wars’ (Brown, 2001; Gross et al., 1996; Koertge, 1998) were erupting in the HPS and Science Studies communities. It was an intellectually exciting and polarising time. The wars erupted on many fronts. In sociology of science, the Edinburgh ‘Strong Programme’ was gaining academic traction, fuelled in part by relativist and constructivist interpretations of Thomas Kuhn; many feminist and multicultural critiques of science and of orthodox philosophy of science had been published; postmodernist agendas were being pursued in many departments. By the time of the conference, the work of Jean-Franc˛ois Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Michael Mulkay, Bruno Latour, Harry Collins, Sandra Harding, Evelyn Fox Keller, Andrew Pickering, David Bloor, Michael Lynch, Steve Woolgar, Donna Haraway, Sal Restivo, Mary Belenky, and Jacques Derrida had been published. These prominent constructivists made bold and unorthodox claims. Steve Woolgar asserted that STS study: undermines the standard presumption about the existence of the object prior to its discovery. The argument is not just that social networks mediate between the object and observational work done by the participants. Rather, the social network constitutes the object. (Woolgar, 1988, p. 65)

And: The relationship between representations (inscriptions) and reality are not simple or direct. …. that which is represented in the inscription is as much a construction of reality as the inscription itself. In other words, the underlying reality of representation is never fixed, but changes with the context of their use. (Woolgar, 1988, p. 295)

Harry Collins, another leader in the Social Constructivist School, maintained that we need to treat all descriptive language in science as if it were about ‘imaginary objects’ (Collins, 1985, p. 16). For Bruno Latour, Tasmania did not exist until Tasman ‘discovered’ it in 1642 and tuberculosis did not exist till Koch ‘discovered’ it in 1882 (Latour, 1999, p. 169). Thus, all facts become artefacts; the next step is to require inverts for facts, so they become ‘facts’; then finally to deny that there are any facts at all. This is Donald Trump’s option. It stretches academic civility to say these claims are merely contentious, rather than just call them ‘peculiar’ or ‘silly’. Yet they had influence in science education, especially after the publication of the best-selling book Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts (Latour & Woolgar, 1979/1986). This influence is well-documented in Peter Fensham’s book Defining an Identity: The Evolution of Science Education as a Field of Research (Fensham, 2004). The book is built around his interviews with 79 leading science educators. Fensham reports that: ‘One book stood out as an influence about the culture of science and that was Latour and Woolgar’s Laboratory Life’ (Fensham, 2004, p. 58).

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Laboratory Life is an anthropological study of laboratory research on THR (thyrotropin releasing hormone) where one author, Latour, surprisingly thought it advantageous that he knew absolutely no science. The book argues that all science is ‘the construction of fictions’, and that scientific success is simply the ability of one group, in this case the Nobel Prize winners Schally and Guillemin, to ‘extract compliance’ from other scientists (Latour & Woolgar, 1979/1986, p. 285). They make the outright idealist claim that THR exists only if a certain bioassay procedure is accepted. Just stating this should suffice to set off philosophical alarm bells. Their THR claim is peculiar. Acceptance or otherwise of a bioassay result might be grounds for believing or not believing in THR, but hardly grounds for it coming into and out of existence. For Bishop Berkeley, and for idealist followers down to the present day, that view is convincing, but not for most others. Fensham’s interview pool included the ‘biggest and best’, the most published researchers in international science education. The book’s philosophical idealism was widely and authoritatively promoted in science education. What does it say about the education of these folk that Laboratory Life was the standout influential book on their development? Did they lack serious scientific training? Philosophical training? Or maybe both? Rosalind Driver, a rightly famous and internationally recognised UK science educator, a Fensham interviewee, and a recipient of the NARST Distinguished Science Education Researcher Award (1997), frequently affirmed the idealist position. For instance: science as public knowledge is not so much a “discovery” as a carefully checked “construction” … and that scientists construct theoretical entities (magnetic fields, genes, electron orbitals …) which in turn take on a “reality”’. (Driver, 1988, p. 137)

A decade later, a prominent US science educator, John Staver, another Fensham interviewee, wrote: …. For constructivists, observations, objects, events, data, laws, and theory do not exist independently of observers. The lawful and certain nature of natural phenomena are properties of us, those who describe, not of nature, that is described. (Staver, 1998, p. 503)

These two science educators are, at face-value, saying that the earth does not have a structure until geophysicists impose it; there is not an evolutionary structure in the animal world till biologists impose such structure; atoms have no structure until such is imposed by physicists; and so on. One might ask: If gravity waves are our creation, why spend so much time and money looking for them? Why not just think them into existence? The fact that theories and their posits are humanly constructed, and that natural objects are considered in science only in their theoretical dress—apples as point masses in physics, as exchange values in economics or as calories in biochemistry— does not imply that the real objects are human creations, or that the real objects have no part in the appraisal of the scientific worth of the conceptual structures brought to bear upon them.

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Generously, it might be that the above quotes from Driver and Staver are just examples of loose or lazy writing, and not too much store should be placed on them. Indeed, once at an international conference I pressed a prominent Australian constructivist professor on a comparable claim he had made in his plenary lecture. His reply was: ‘Michael, you pay too much attention to what is said. We only say these things, we do not mean them’. That reply is hardly reassuring. In the third volume of Science & Education Peter Slezak published a two-part detailed critique of the Latour and Woolgar book, titled ‘Laboratory Life under the Microscope’ (Slezak, 1994a, 1994b). In the second of the articles, he wrote: In the present article the celebrated work Laboratory Life of Latour and Woolgar is critically examined. Its radical, iconoclastic view of science is shown to be not merely without foundation but an extravagant deconstructionist nihilism according to which all science is fiction and the world is said to be socially constructed by negotiation. On this view, the success of a theory is not due to its intellectual merits or explanatory plausibility but to the capacity of its proponents to “extract compliance” from others. If warranted, such views pose a revolutionary challenge to the entire Western tradition of science and the goals of science education which must be misguided and unrealizable in principle. Fortunately, there is little reason to take these views seriously, though their widespread popularity is cause for concern among science educators. (Slezak 1994b, p. 329)

As it turned out, the cause of concern was the popularity of the work not outside of, but inside the science education research community. The Science Wars, Postmodernism, and Realist versus Constructivist debates about ontology and epistemology were played out at the 1989 Tallahassee conference. Ernst von Glasersfeld Glasersfeld, the self-styled ‘radical constructivist’ (von Glasersfeld, 1989, 1995), was an energetic participant. A plenary session was devoted to the Constructivist debate. It was chaired by Ken Tobin, a champion of constructivism, and contributed to by the Canadian constructivists Jaques Désautels and Marie Larochelle, Ernst von Glasersfeld, and Florida State University realist philosopher, David Gruender. Constructivism bristles with philosophical questions: it explicitly assumes positions in the philosophy of science (particularly regarding ontology and epistemology), the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of education. This is not surprising. It is at once a theory of science, of human learning, and of teaching; and there is also an ethical element when constructivists write of good teaching and education. It makes epistemological claims about our knowledge of the world, and often makes ontological claims about the nature of that world. Désautels and Larochelle asserted the common constructivist position that reality is forever veiled: Scientific knowledge is invented in order to make sense of observations which are themselves theory-laden. There is no great book of nature that can be consulted in order to check if the models or theories correspond to an ontological reality. (Désautels & Larochelle, 1990, p. 236)

Though, typically for constructivists, this formulation itself is ambiguous. By saying there is ‘no great book of nature’ do they mean there is no nature? If the latter, why not just state it. What is the adjectival ‘great book’ part adding to simply ‘nature’?

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The allusion is to Galileo, Harvey, Bacon, Newton, and other ‘New Scientists’ who spoke of the ‘book of nature’, but for them it was an authorial allusion; it was pointed to God as the creator or writer of the Book of Nature in the same way as He was also author of the books of scripture. Realists can happily admit there is no book of nature, in the same way they can admit there is no movie of nature, yet maintain there is nature. The ‘great book’ phrase is just rhetorical. Earlier Désautels had co-authored a national Canadian Science Education Report making the altogether contentious claim: Science as knowledge is an intellectual construct, and what are referred to as the laws of nature are merely the result of this human activity. Nature as such does not have laws. (Nadeau & Destautels, 1984, p. 19)

Again, typically, this contention trades on ambiguity: humans formulate, of course, the laws of nature; but the reference of these laws, what they refer to, is not created by humans. Bodies fell with uniform acceleration long before Galileo formulated the law of fall, and we have every reason to believe they will continue to do so after the disappearance of our species. Ernst von Glasersfeld in a preliminary paper for the conference wrote: The fact that scientific knowledge enables us to cope does not justify the belief that scientific knowledge provides a picture of the world that corresponds to an absolute reality. (von Glasersfeld, 1989, p. 135)

And he quite correctly opined that: If the theory of knowing that constructivism builds… were adopted as a working hypothesis, it could bring about some rather profound changes in the general practice of education. (von Glasersfeld, 1989, p. 135)

It certainly would bring about such a change, and where it has been practised, it has bought about such change. And for the worst, as will be detailed in the following chapter.

6.1.4 Division Over Constructivism Gruender’s conference paper was titled: ‘Some Philosophical Reflections on Constructivism’, and he wrote: ‘It is impossible to look at current literature dealing with the education of teachers, especially in science and mathematics, without noticing the galvanizing effects of the newly introduced theory of “constructivism”’. He went on to caution that: this whole approach of defining knowledge in terms of environmental feedback leading to constructs which better enable the knower to survive in the environment raises serious theoretical issues of its own. And this is so whether one prefers the version offered by Piaget or by Dewey’. (Gruender, 1989, p. 175)

There were divisions at the conference about the epistemological, ontological, and pedagogical merits of constructivism; yet pleasingly the conference was marked

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by convivial and congenial exchanges on the subject. There was wide agreement about the benefit of constructivist pedagogy, but disagreement about its commonly discussed epistemological and ontological claims. This tension has carried through the subsequent history of the IHPST group and its soon-to-be-founded journal Science & Education. Ultimately ‘the centre could not hold’ and a number at the more constructivist end of the spectrum moved out of the HPS&ST tent and took residence in Cultural Studies. So in 2006 Kenneth Tobin and Wolff-Michael Roth founded the Springer journal Cultural Studies of Science Education which has taken a more relaxed, to put it mildly, editorial view of philosophical competence (https://www.springer.com/jou rnal/11422). For the Science & Education journal, debate began with Wallis Suchting’s critical paper ‘Constructivism Deconstructed’ (Suchting, 1992) and Ernst von Glasersfeld’s ‘Reply’ (Glasersfeld, 1992) both in the first volume (1992), and continued through a special double issue on the subject in the sixth volume (1997) which was published as a book Constructivism in Science Education: A Philosophical Examination (Matthews, 1998; https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780792350330). For everyone at the conference, the value of scientists, and science and mathematics educators working with philosophers, historians, and cognitive psychologists was immediately obvious. The IHPST group’s distinctiveness has always been bringing historians, philosophers, philosophers of education, cognitive scientists, science education researchers and science teachers together to investigate how historical and philosophical scholarship can inform theoretical, curricular and pedagogical problems that engage science teachers and administrators. Since the beginning, the educative dimension of the conferences has been emphasised and valued. For instance, great effort was made to have bound printed copies of the talks distributed at the conference so that presenters could speak to a text that the audience had in front of them. Effort was made to ensure that presentation and discussion was conducted in a convivial and collegial manner. Some groups have conviviality and little scholarship, others have scholarship and little conviviality, the IHPST group has succeeded in having both. Ian Winchester, the Canadian philosopher and educator, was editor of Teachers College Press’s philosophy of education book series and also a contributor to the Tallahassee conference. At his invitation I chose seventeen of the special-issue journal papers for publication in a Teachers College Press book, History, Philosophy and Science Teaching: Selected Readings (Matthews, 1991). In a pre-web age, the book made the early HPS&ST papers widely available. Deserving of special mention is the exchange in the book between physicists Martin Eger (1936–2002) and Abner Shimony on the demarcation (Shimony) or otherwise (Eger) of ethics and science. Shimony expressed his realist conviction as: It should be clear why I resist Eger’s attempt to narrow the gulf between the natural sciences and ethics. With regard to the former, I have argued, albeit briefly, that there is a domain of entities independent of human experience which is endowed with definite properties, and a scientific proposition is objectively true if it correctly characterizes this domain. Whatever the difficulties may be for human beings to discover on the basis of their limited experience the objective truth, it is, so to speak, ‘there’ to be found out. (Shimony, 1991, p. 98)

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Shimony is both an ontological realist (there is a human-independent world out there), and an epistemological realist (aspects of that world can, with whatever difficulty, be known, and evidence-based appraisal can be made between competing claims to such knowledge). Both claims have been contested in the HPS&ST community and, of course, beyond where they are not only contested but routinely rejected as delusional. Whole domains of postmodernist, constructivist, multiculturalist, feminist, liberationist, and other such educational theory and practice hinge upon the truth or falsehood of epistemological realism. If realism is rejected, then the claim, for instance, of Graham Smith, a leader of international indigenous science education can easily be defended: There is a need to struggle to assert the equal validity of M¯aori knowledge and frameworks and conversely to critically engage ideologies which reify Western knowledge (science) as being superior, more scientific, and therefore more legitimate. (Smith, 1992, p. 7)

If realism is not rejected, then this, and other comparable claims, become much harder to defend; arguments need be made and evidence marshalled. The profound philosophical differences between the two philosophical physicists—Eger defended a hermeneutical-constructivist account of science—did not impede their mutual respect and valuation. After Eger’s death in 2004 Shimony edited a 540-page collection of Eger’s scientific, philosophical, and educational papers (Eger, 2006).

6.1.5 IHPST International and Regional Conferences Since the first 1989 meeting, biennial IHPST conferences have been well-attended and successful in bringing philosophers, historians, and educators together to address theoretical, curricular, and pedagogical issues in science teaching. The conferences were held in Kingston Canada (1992), Minneapolis USA (1995), Calgary Canada (1997), Pavia Italy (1999), Denver USA (2001), Winnipeg Canada (2003), Leeds England (2005), Calgary (2007), Notre Dame USA (2009), Thessaloniki Greece (2011), Pittsburgh USA (2013), Rio de Janeiro Brazil (2015), Ankara Turkey (2017), Thessaloniki Greece (2019) and Calgary Canada (2021). (https://ihpst.clubexpress. com/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=360747&module_id=187166). Regional meetings have been held in South America, Asia, and Europe. Apart from, on doctor’s orders, missing a couple I have contributed to most of these conferences. They have been a happy and intellectually productive constant in my scholarly and personal life. Over the decades, many significant personal friendships have been forged with scholars in many countries. The 1999 fifth IHPST conference, for example, on ‘Science Education and Culture’ was held at Pavia University and Lake Como. It was jointly organised with the Interdivisional Group on History of Physics of the European Physical Society and chaired by Fabio Bevilacqua and Enrico Giannetto who was also a physics professor with a higher degree in philosophy.

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The conference, attended by about 220 individuals from thirty countries, was a joint venture of the IHPST group and the History of Physics and Physics Teaching Division of the European Physical Society (its eighth conference). The magnificent Villa Olmo, on the lakeshore, provided a memorable location for the presenters of the 160 papers and the audience that discussed them. The conference was part of local celebrations of the bicentenary of Alessandro Volta’s creation of the battery in 1799. Volta was born in Como in 1745, and for forty years from 1778 he was a professor of experimental physics at Pavia University. The conference was fortunate to have had the generous financial support of the Italian government’s Volta Bicentenary Fund, Lombardy region, Pavia University, Italian Research Council, and Kluwer Academic Publishers. Among contributors to the Pavia conference were Alberto Cordero, Robert Carson, Peter Machamer, James Donnelly, Ron Good, Norm Lederman, James Rutherford, Edgar Jenkins, James Donnelly, Sibel Erduran, Robert Nola, Olivia Levrini, Cibelle Celestino, Art Stinner, Alexander Levine, Fanny Seroglou, and Panagiotis Koumaras. Again, I had the good fortune of becoming personal friends with all of these scholars and learning from them over many years. In 2001, select and reviewed papers presented at the conference were published in a 21-chapter Springer book (Bevilacqua et al., 2001: https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780792369721).

6.1.6 Formalisation of IHPST Group After twenty years of productive but informal existence without office bearers, the IHPST Group was formalised at its 2007 Calgary conference. I was honoured to be founding president of the newly formalised group. The following aims were adopted: (a)

(b)

(c) (d)

(e)

The utilisation of historical, philosophical and sociological scholarship to clarify and deal with the many curricular, pedagogical and theoretical issues facing contemporary science education. Among the latter are serious educational questions raised by Religion, Multiculturalism, Worldviews, Feminism, and teaching the Nature of Science. Collaboration between the communities of scientists, historians, philosophers, cognitive psychologists, sociologists, and science educators, and school and college teachers. The inclusion of appropriate history, philosophy, and sociology of science courses in science teacher-education programmes. The dissemination of accounts of lessons, units of work, and programmes in science, at all levels, that have successfully utilised history, philosophy, and sociology. Discussion of the philosophy and purposes of science education, and its contribution to the intellectual and ethical development of individuals and cultures.

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The pros and cons of formalisation were apparent. Before formalisation, little if any time was spent on internal administrative matters, all group member time was spent on the ‘mission’ of the group (research, publishing, conference organising, preparation of classroom materials, and so on). Whoever volunteered to organise the next conference became president of the group. After formalisation, time had to be spent on internal administrative matters (holding elections, maintaining membership rolls, obtaining credit-card bank-accounts, securing tax-exempt status, voting on amendments to the constitution, on and on). Although necessary, such expenditure of time was a considerable drain on personal time and did not advance the main game.

6.2 Editorship of Science & Education Journal (1992–2015) Perhaps the most significant and lasting consequence of the creation of the IHPST Group was the launching in 1992 of the journal Science & Education: The Contribution of History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science and Education. It was the first ever international journal devoted to HPS&ST research (https://www.springer.com/ gp/book/9780792369721). In 1990 I met the Kluwer Education Editor, Peter de Liefde, at one of the American Philosophy of Education Society (PES) conferences that I used regularly attend. Over beers he suggested turning the IHPST newsletter that I had been editing into a Kluwer journal with myself as Foundation Editor. Starting an academic journal was a big step, but I was happy to take it. I was buoyed by the range and competence of the authors already published in the above-mentioned six seminal special issues on HPS&ST. By writing, phoning, and travelling, I was able to find a group of 40 outstanding individuals to constitute the initial editorial committee. They included a number of past presidents of the US Philosophy of Science Association, the US History of Science Society, the US Philosophy of Education Society, and many presidents of national science teaching associations. There were also editors of major educational and philosophy journals on the committee. This was perhaps the most illustrious editorial board ever of any science education journal. The journal first appeared in 1992, with four numbers per year. It was the first research journal dedicated to this particular niche—the application of historical and philosophical scholarship to theoretical, curricular, and pedagogical problems in the teaching of science. The journal has been, on all measures, very successful. Contributors include a long list of major contemporary philosophers and historians; as well as philosophers of education, cognitive scientists, and science educators. Due to the quantity and quality of manuscripts submitted, it has progressively grown to ten numbers per volume.

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6.2.1 Thematic Issues I was very pleased that during my 25 years of editorship I was able to organise the publication of many thematic issues that brought together substantial research articles on topics such as: ‘Science and Culture’ (1994), ‘Hermeneutics and Science Education’ (1995), ‘Religion and Science Education’ (1996), ‘Philosophy and Constructivism in Science Education’ (1997), ‘The Nature of Science and Science Education’ (1997), ‘Galileo and Science Education’ (1999), ‘Children’s Theories and Scientific Theories’ (1999), ‘Thomas Kuhn and Science Education’ (2000), ‘Constructivism and Science Education’ (2000), ‘History, Philosophy and the Teaching of Quantum Theory’ (2003), ‘Science Education and Positivism: A Re-evaluation’ (2004), ‘Science Education in Early Modern Europe’ (2005), ‘Models in Science and in Science Education’ (2007), ‘Social and Ethical Issues in Science Education’ (2008), ‘Feminism and Science Education’ (2008), ‘Teaching and Assessing the Nature of Science’ (2008), ‘Worldviews in Science and in Science Education’ (2009), ‘Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on Darwin and Darwinism in Education’ (2009), ‘Mendel, Mendelism and Education’ (2015), ‘Physics and Mathematics: Historical, Philosophical and Pedagogical Considerations’ (2015). Some of the thematic issues have been published as separate anthologies: Constructivism (Matthews, 1998), Culture (Bevilacqua et al., 2001), Pendulum Motion and Worldviews (Matthews, 2009). The range of thematic issues underscores the fundamental point that research in science education needs to be broader than merely research on pedagogy, on effective teaching and learning, on characteristics of the teaching profession, and other such routine topics. These are all important matters, but there are other important questions that research needs to address, illuminate, and bring to popular attention; Science & Education did this.

6.2.2 Journal Contributors and Reviewers Prior to publication of Science & Education journal it was rare for philosophically informed and sophisticated work to appear in science education journals; some was published but not much. One of the great successes of the journal was the regular

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appearance of such work. Among philosophers published in the journal are: Robert S. Cohen, Richard Kitchner, Gerd Buchdahl, Harvey Siegel, Israel Scheffler, Alberto Cordero, John Worrall, Alan Musgrave, Hasok Chang, Peter Machamer, Peter Slezak, Michael Martin, James Garrison, Noretta Koertge, Robert Crease, Patrick Heelan, James Cushing, Richard Grandy, Robert Nola, Alan Chalmers, Mario Bunge, Robert Pennock, Jane Roland Martin, Howard Sankey, Demetris Portides, Michael Ruse, Paul Thagard, Hugh Lacey, Gürol Irzik, Cassandra Pinnick, Thomas Reydon, and Peter Kosso. Among historians were: Helge Kragh, John Heilbron, Lewis Pyenson, I. Bernard Cohen, Zev Bechler, Fabio Bevilacqua, Roger Stuewer, William Carroll, Stephen Brush, Roberto de Andrade Martins, Lesley Cormack, Antonio Clericuzio, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Anders Lundgren, Olival Freire Jr., Kathryn Olesko, David Depew, Ana Barahona, Yves Gingras, and Irina Gouzevitch. Prominent science educators also contributed to the journal: Derek Hodson, Nancy Brickhouse, Kevin de Berg, Mike Smith, Jack Rowell, William Cobern, Norm Lederman, Eduardo Mortimer, Douglas Allchin, William McComas, Michael Clough, Mick Nott, Cathleen Loving, Jerry Wellington, Edgar Jenkins, George DeBoer, Igal Galili, Peter Heering, Art Stinner, Richard Duschl, Fritz Kubli, Mansoor Niaz, Nahum Kipnis, Robert Carson, James Garrison, Ismo Koponen, Lisa Martin, William Cobern, David Rudge, and many others. These constituted a stellar, and altogether novel, pool of contributors to education research. These scholars, by their writing and reviewing, have made an important contribution to raising the quality of educational research, discussion, and debate. They set an example of how good philosophy and good history is done in addressing theoretical, curricular, and pedagogical issues in science education. Additionally, their papers show that the local classroom teaching of science occurs on a much broader historical, philosophical, and cultural stage. This is something important for the professional identity of science teachers. Teachers can appreciate that they are part of a larger, illustrious, professional community contributed to by many disciplines. Rigorous reviewing, with signed reviews and my final editorial decision and letter being shared among reviewers, was a feature of the journal’s editorial process from the beginning. At the time, many remarked that this was uncommon. This transparency alerted reviewers to the different emphases and concerns that historians, philosophers, and educators had about submissions. My ‘non-egalitarian’ practice was to send only substantial manuscripts to review (about 60% of submissions), and then to have these reviewed by three, four, five, or more scholars drawn from the Editorial Committee and from a large group (950+) of other reviewers. An egalitarian policy would be to send all submissions to review. I did not do this. It would have made too much of a claim on reviewers’ time and turned reviewers into unwitting thesis supervisors. The review pool included over 500 scientists, and science and mathematics educators, and about 250 philosophers of science, 120 historians of science, and 50 cognitive scientists and psychologists. Informed and careful reviewing is very time consuming yet garners no reward, acknowledgement, or reimbursement. But without such informed examination, the whole scholarly research programme would

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be rendered worthless; everything would just be a blog. Reviewers are the ‘unsung heroes’ of serious research. Their work is appreciated by authors who have explicitly indicated such. For example: • We are thankful for the decision of sending the manuscript to eight competent reviewers. Despite the bigger amount of work, we are sure that it has greatly improved the quality of the paper. The decision demonstrates your awareness of the complexity and interdisciplinary character of our proposal. This is confirmed by noticing that the reviews address different issues, which are related to different parts of the article. It also attests your commitment to the quality of the papers published in Science & Education. • I have never been provided with such a comprehensive body of criticism to any paper I have submitted to press. Furthermore, I agree with most of the criticism and believe it will help me to improve on the paper. There are some issues I do not agree with, but I will argue this in detail in my response. Many other authors have expressed comparable gratitude for the detailed and informed attention of generous reviewers who themselves gain no personal or professional benefit from their labours.

6.2.3 Editorial Pain It is well-known and appreciated that an editor’s job is not an easy one. At every stage there is potential for difficulty and hurt. My editorship was no different. Rejection letters are difficult to write and depressing to read. There was one especially painful episode that warrants elaboration due to certain principles involved. In 1995 I coordinated a thematic issue of Science & Education (Vol. 4, No. 2, 1995) on ‘Hermeneutics and Science Education’ (https://link.springer.com/journal/11191/vol umes-and-issues/4-2) that focused on the earlier Martin Eger articles that had been published in the journal (Eger, 1993a, 1993b). The issue was contributed to by Robert Crease, Fabio Bevilacqua, Enrico Giannetto, Patrick Heelan, James Cushing, Dimitri Ginev, and Wallis Suchting. Suchting had published two substantial papers in early volumes of the journal: one on ‘The Cultural Significance of Science’ (Suchting, 1994; https://link.spr inger.com/article/10.1007/BF00540222), the other on ‘The Nature of Scientific Thought’ (Suchting, 1995a; https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00486588. And a detailed critical review of Zev Bechler’s Newton’s Physics and the Conceptual Structure of the Scientific Revolution (Suchting, 1993; https://link.springer. com/article/10.1007/BF00490069). These pieces displayed his immense learning in the history of philosophy and of science, his command of classical and contemporary languages, and his commitment to clear and careful writing—all of which characterised his earlier described teaching at the University of Sydney. But Suchting was unsparing in his withering assessment of just what hermeneutics as a methodology contributed to understanding the practice of science (Suchting,

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1995b; https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00486583). For Suchting, interpreting a text makes perfect sense, and hermeneutics is the science of such interpretation. His own exacting, multi-year translation of Hegel’s Logic was just such an exercise in the craft of hermeneutics. Suchting was well-aware that scientists wrote, read, and argued about texts. But, crucially, Eger went further saying that ‘natural things like trees, molecules, or stars could have meaning’ and equally be illuminated by hermeneutics. For Suchting, to talk of interpreting nature, objects, or processes is nonsensical; it is a misuse of the word, a category mistake, something to raise the hackles of philosophers. Suchting wrote at the end of his typical pages of detailed line-by-line analysis: I believe that Eger’s pieces lack serious substance. …[they are] characterised by devices like the pumping up of platitudes into apparently deep truths by the hot air of jargon; conversely, the use of ordinary words as Trojan horses concealing subjectivistic absurdities; and tools of evasion like scare-quotes and clauses that qualify that to which they refer to every degree not short of vacuity. …. Unfortunately, these devices are increasingly common in academic circles. (Suchting, 1995b, pp. 167–168)

As editor, publishing such a harsh assessment, by one good friend of another close friend, was not without anguish. Eger was a contributor to the Tallahassee conference, a founding member of the journal’s editorial committee, I had been a guest of he and his wife Judith in their up-state New York home. On the other side, Suchting had been my philosophy teacher, and I had shared an Ultimo house and a wide circle of friends with him. Suchting’s conclusion was harsh, but arrived at, as with all of his work, after pages of patient, line-by-line analysis. It is the responsibility of an editor to see that an argument is sustained and not ambiguous, and that the conclusion does not overstep the evidence. I judged this to be the case with Suchting’s paper and so published it. How does one sugar-coat Suchting’s assessment or say it gently? For Suchting, direct and unambiguous communication was the gold standard of philosophy; if you did not speak clearly, you were not doing philosophy. Both authors had their own complaints. Suchting thought that I, as with so many other academic editors, had lowered the scholarly drawbridge allowing the publication of intellectual rubbish of which there was already a plenitude filling university libraries. For him, this was a case of a former student and current close friend going ‘over to the enemy’. Eger thought that I had offended basic standards of scholarly civility, something that had characterised the IHPST group since its foundation. Every editor has such painful experiences, but that does not make them less painful. There were significant personal repercussions of my editorial decision that the heading ‘Editorial Pain’ does not quite capture.

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6.2.4 HPS&ST Handbook In 2009, there were 65,000 article-downloads from the publisher’s website with, interestingly, 21% of the downloads being from China (23% from USA). By the end of my editorship in 2015, the downloads were edging towards 100,000 pa. In 2019, at the end of my successor’s (Kostas Kampourakis) editorship there were 162,000 articledownloads pa. With Asia-Pacific having 27%, Europe 27%, and North America 26%. The download figures are testament to the impact and importance internationally of HPS on science education research. The journal is now in the capable editing hands of Sibel Erduran at Oxford University. Creating and sustaining the journal for 25 years was a satisfying career accomplishment. I have written at length some reflections on the subject (Matthews, 2015b; https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11191015-9764-8). To celebrate the 25th‘birthday’ of the journal Springer asked me to edit an International Handbook of Research in History, Philosophy and Science Teaching. This was prepared over a three-year period and published in 2014 (Matthews, 2014). There were 3 volumes, 76 chapters, 2,544 pages, and 125 authors from 30 countries contributed. The Subject Index had 2,000 entries, the Name Index had 3,600 entries, and there were 10,200 References. A truly comprehensive, and mega time-consuming, work (https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789400776531). It was the first handbook to be published covering the field of historical and philosophical research in science education. Given that science through its long history has always been engaged with philosophy, and that for over a century it has been recognised that science curriculum development, teaching, assessment, and learning give rise to so many historical and philosophical questions, it is surprising that such a handbook took so long to appear. But this is more the reason to celebrate its appearance. The handbook is structured in four sections: pedagogical, theoretical, national, and biographical research. Each chapter sets the relevant literature in its historical context, and engages in an assessment of the strengths and weakness of the research addressed, and suggests potentially fruitful avenues of future research. There are 25 chapters (840 pages) on ‘Pedagogical Studies’ that provide comprehensive information on the classroom utility of HPS-informed approaches to teaching standard curriculum topics in physics, chemistry, biology, earth sciences, cosmology, astronomy, ecology, and mathematics. A host of theoretical issues are covered in the 35 chapters on ‘HPS and Theoretical Issues in Science Education’. Three of these chapters, but only three (Hodson, 2014; Lederman et al., 2014; Irzik & Nola, 2014), deal with ‘Nature of Science’ (NOS) research which many have taken to be the entirety of HPS-related theoretical issues in science education. The field is much wider. Other theoretical chapters deal with Naturalism, Postmodernism, Constructivism, Religion, Inquiry, Laws and Explanations, Thought Experiments, Values, Critical Thinking, Philosophy of Science Education, Scientific Literacy, Argumentation, Cultural Studies, and so on.

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The five ‘Biographical Studies’ discuss Ernst Mach, Frederick W. Westaway, E.J. Holmyard, John Dewey and Joseph Schwab. These are the ‘starting five’ scholars who seriously engaged with the HPS of their time and used the engagement to inform their educational work. More lives and lessons drawn from them could be added—Thomas Huxley, Gerald Holton, Walter Jung, Arnold Arons, Martin Eger, and Stephen Norris come immediately to mind. The eleven ‘Regional Studies’ chapters deal with the different trajectories of HPS-informed educational interventions in European, Asian, North America, and Latin American countries; and the educational and political lessons learnt from these interventions. Again more countries could be added; beginning with France, Spain, Turkey, Finland, and India where in each of which there has been significant engagement between HPS and national and provincial science education. In the first six years (to 2020) of the handbook’s life, there have been 348 citations and 322,000 chapter-downloads. This is very tangible evidence of the impact and usefulness of HPS&ST research both for the science education and the HPS communities. The IHPST Group, and the journal Science & Education with which it is associated, was a constant in my scholarly and personal life for 30 years. As mentioned, the group existed informally from 1989 to 2007, during which time I was secretary. In 2007 it was formalised, and I had the honour to be elected its Foundation President. Through these connections, I have had the good fortune to visit and give lectures and short courses in education, physics and philosophy departments in 30 + countries. This has resulted in many life-long, long-distance friendships. Over this time a number of my papers have been translated and published in Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian journals; and different books have appeared in Greek, Korean, Chinese, Spanish, and Turkish editions. Many of the international scholarly contacts in Finland, Turkey, Korea, Greece, Portugal, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, USA, England, and elsewhere have grown into significant personal friendships, something for which I am very happy indeed. My decades-long editorship of the monthly HPS&ST Newsletter which now goes direct to about 9,500 emails, and to many science education lists and HPS lists, is a small way of returning something to the international network from which I have directly and indirectly gained so much. Paulo Maurício in Lisbon and Nathan Oseroff-Spicer in London contribute a great deal to this task (https://www.hpsst.com/ hpsst-newsletter.html).

6.3 The Enlightenment Tradition in Science Education One unfortunate omission from the roll call of thematic issues that Science & Education published was the ‘Enlightenment Tradition in Science Education’. Parts of the tradition were addressed in different articles, but not the totality as a coherent whole. Neither was it explicitly addressed in the three-volume HPS&ST Handbook (Matthews, 2014). This was a great pity. I made some effort at rectification in Chapter

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Two of the revised and expanded Routledge Science Teaching book (Matthews, 2015a) and by commissioning two studies for the HPS&ST: New Perspectives volume (Peker & Taskin, 2018, Nola, 2018).

6.3.1 The European Enlightenment The eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophers—John Locke (1632–1704), Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), Voltaire (1694–1778), Jean D’Alembert (1717–1783), Denis Diderot (1713–1784), Nicolas de Condorcet (1743–1794), Julien de la Mettrie (1709–1751), David Hume (1711–1776); and a little later Benjamin Franklin (1706– 1790), Joseph Priestley (1733–1804), Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)—were inspired by the dramatic achievements of the New Science of the seventeenth century. They were all concerned for the promotion of education, in particular for the diffusion of knowledge about science. This was a defining feature of the European Enlightenment. Of this founding group, Isaiah Berlin well-said: The intellectual power, honesty, lucidity, courage and disinterested love of the truth of the most gifted thinkers of the eighteenth century remain to this day without parallel. Their age is one of the best and most hopeful episodes in the life of mankind. (Berlin, 1956, p. 29)

The Enlightenment project in the modern world has many cultural, political, historical, philosophical, and educational dimensions that deserve amplification and better analysis. It should be part of everyone’s education to appreciate, if only dimly, that many taken-for-granted policies and institutions in the modern world, especially the liberal-democratic world, owe their origin to the intellectual and practical efforts of the Enlightenment protagonists, There are numerous good scholarly studies of the Enlightenment such as those provided by Himmelfarb (2004), Israel (2001, 2006, 2011), Outram (2005) and Porter (2000). Three ‘popular’ expositions and defences have been written by Grayling (2007), Pagden (2013), and Postman (1999). These latter works provide a good entrée to the discussion.

6.3.2 Enlightenment Commitments The eighteenth-century Enlightenment was the fruit of the seventeenth-century scientific revolution. It was not a monolithic grouping holding to a ‘party line’. Understandably, given the range of political, cultural, philosophical, and religious commitments of the period, the proponents held a diverse set of opinions on many core subjects, but not so diverse that certain fundamental commitments cannot be identified (Matthews, 2015a, pp. 23–26; Shimony, 1997). These can be itemised as:

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Universalism: All normal human beings share a similar nature and consequently are capable of acquiring knowledge, and are equally subject to ethical considerations; universalism about law and human rights was a natural outgrowth of universalism about laws of nature and of scientific explanation. Objectivity: On matters of fact, that is empirical claims, whether particular or general, there is objective truth or falsity Rationality: Individuals are capable in principle of determining the truth or falsity of propositions concerning matters of fact. Empiricism: Sensory evidence is required for the determination of matters of fact. Scientism: The method of the new physical sciences needs to be followed in social, political, moral and historical/empirical religious investigations in order to obtain knowledge in these fields. Anti-Revelationism: The only sound method in theology is that of natural theology; knowledge of God is constrained to what can be reasoned from experience and the natural world. Reason thus judges putative revelations; revelation does not correct reason. Naturalism: Two versions, first methodological naturalism, whereby the only entities that can figure in serious explanations of events, are those entities revealed by science; second ontological naturalism, wherein there are no existent entities outside of what science currently or could reveal. Utilitarianism: Ethical norms are to be formulated on the basis of their personal and social utility, not on the basis of revealed religion or their impact on one’s afterlife; nor on any putative deontological grounds. Optimism: Human beings and society can and should be improved, and this by the application of sound reasoning and right conduct. Independence: Neither secular or religious authorities have any special means to determine truths about the world, ethics, politics or even religion; the claim of individual reason following right method is paramount over mere authoritarian pronouncements.

The sourcing, elaboration, qualification, appraisal, and defence of each could constitute a mini-HPS, theology, or cultural-history course. How much elaboration can occur within a science programme depends on local curricula and teacher competencies; where there is coordination between religion, philosophy, and history departments, then more elaboration can occur, and students’ education can be so enriched.

6.3.3 Education and the Enlightenment The Enlightenment put large-scale public education on the cultural and political map. It was distinguished, among other things, by its commitment to social and cultural improvement, to progress (Shimony, 1997). The latter was to be achieved through

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education, broadly understood to include periodicals, newspapers, books, colleges, and embryonic schools. The hallmark of Enlightenment education was to be the spread of scientific (natural philosophy) knowledge and outlooks; Enlightenment figures believed in ‘Science for All’ some three centuries before it became a popular educational commitment (Brock, 1996; Jenkins, 2019). The tradition deserves to be a core topic in science teacher education, even if it cannot be adequately dealt with in school programmes. Teachers need to know and appreciate more of their discipline than is required by a school curriculum. The Enlightenment’s educational, cultural, religious, political, historical, and philosophical dimensions are deep, rich, and demanding; the topic is, one might say, very illuminating. There can be productive cooperation between school science, history, religion, economics, politics, and literature teachers if more were known of the scientific roots of the Enlightenment. For instance, there was an intimate connection between science, politics, and Enlightenment thinking in the founding of the United States (Cohen, 1995; Koch, 1965; Stewart, 2014). This would make any cross-disciplinary teaching there especially rewarding for students. And such collaborative teaching can be conducted in most other countries as they have their own histories of engagement with Enlightenment thinking. The Enlightenment tradition has many detractors. Contemporary postmodernism is basically defined in terms of its rejection of the historic Enlightenment project; wherever postmodernism holds sway all, or most, of the above Enlightenment commitments are abandoned. As the editor of a Postmodernism Reader wrote: We began this book with a brief memorial service for the Enlightenment project whose demise is so often used to mark the start of the postmodern era. …. Our eternal truths now appear to be inseparable from the cultures that created them and the languages in which they are stated. The human mind now appears to be anything but a neat thinking machine that – when properly operated – poses right questions and prints out right answers. (Anderson, 1996, pp. 215–216)

Assuredly the Enlightenment is out of favour in education where it is seen to be intimately connected to the ills, real and imagined, of universalism, imperialism, rationalism, and patriarchy. Michael Peters, the editor of an influential journal and book series and whom I have mentioned in the earlier section on my time at University of Auckland, is one such voice. Being influenced by Foucault and other postmodernists, he argues for a new philosophy of education in which: This line of philosophical investigation might question the way the modern ‘subject of education’ has been grounded in a European universalism and rationalism heavily buttressed by highly individualistic assumptions inherited from the Enlightenment grand narratives. Informed by a new awareness of the dangers of Western ethnocentrism and a critical understanding of difference and ‘otherness’ it would provide approaches to the constitution of subjectivity which recognise and redefine the relationship between representation and power at the levels of discourse and practice. (Peters, 1995, pp. 327–328)

The nuances, as with all postmodern-influenced writing, are difficult to grasp, but the general drift is clear: ‘The Enlightenment was bad’.

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There were many more dimensions of the Enlightenment. It had connections to embryonic democratic movements; it was opposed to political and religious absolutism; it supported human rights, freedom of the press, open debate, freedom of association and secularism (separation of Church and State, sin from crime, education from religious control); it promoted a critical and self-critical spirit or habit of mind. Often, little of this is recognised, but such Enlightenment principles were appealed to in the Arab Spring of 2011–2012 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_S pring), the Hong Kong Democracy Movement of 2018–2020 (https://en.wikipe dia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Hong_Kong_protests) and the Thai Monarchy Reform Movement of 2020 (https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/30/asia/thailand-pro test-lese-majeste-intl-hnk/index.html). What is living and what is dead in the historic European Enlightenment movement needs to be made clear, and a good education would endeavour to do so. HPS-informed science teachers can, as will be detailed in the following section, contribute positively to this project. An indication of the current neglect of the Enlightenment tradition in education is its absence in well-regarded handbooks and encyclopedias. There is no entry for the topic in the multi-hundred entry Springer Encyclopedia of Science Education (Gunstone, 2014), or the multi-hundred entries Sage Encyclopedia of Educational Theory and Philosophy (Phillips, 2014), or the multi-hundred entries in the subject index of International Handbook of Science Education (Fraser & Tobin, 1998). National struggles between Enlightenment-informed science education and conservative and reactionary forces in Brazil, Mexico, France, Portugal, Spain, India, Turkey, and Japan are well-documented. Also well-known, are the arguments that arise wherever Western science is to be taught in indigenous cultures whose worldviews clash with those of the scientific tradition. Argument over the Enlightenment is played out anew in the Islamic world where some want to reaffirm an enlightenment tradition in Islam as old and even older than that in the Christian tradition, some want to selectively absorb commitments of the Western Enlightenment, while yet others want to affirm anti-Enlightenment conservative, if not reactionary positions. There is an educational (and cultural and political) flow-on for each of these options that warrants serious engagement. But serious engagement requires a modicum of understanding of the history and philosophy of science, something that can, as will be detailed in Chapter 9, be provided in teacher-education programmes or in-service courses. The ‘Islamisation of knowledge’ project sees the Enlightenment as one of its central protagonists (Nasr, 1996). For this project, metaphysics is outside and above science; the external Koran-based metaphysics judges science, and determines the acceptable ontology and epistemology of science and, of course, it dictates the content and ethos of school science, as can be seen in many Islamic countries (Edis & BouJaoude, 2014; Hoodbhoy, 1991; Peker & Taskin, 2018). This, of course, has been the case in the West around the teaching of evolution and cosmology.

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6.3.4 Spirit of the Enlightenment Neil Postman, the educationalist who co-authored the 1960s popular book that was covered in my teaching way back at Sydney Teachers’ College, Teaching as a Subversive Activity (Postman & Weingartner, 1969) subsequently wrote a book on the Enlightenment. It has the engaging title: Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future (Postman, 1999). After laying out a familiar litany of modern social and cultural ills he writes: With this in mind, I suggest that we turn our attention to the eighteenth century. It is there, I think, that we may find ideas that offer a humane direction to the future, ideas that we can carry with confidence and dignity across the bridge to the twenty-first century. (Postman, 1999, p. 17)

Echoing Kant, and all intelligent commentators, Postman recognises that it is the spirit, outlook, and methods that define the historic Enlightenment: [We should not] turn to the eighteenth century in order to copy the institutions she fashioned for herself but in order that we may better understand what suits us. Let us look there for instruction rather than models. Let us adopt the principles rather than the details. (Postman, 1999, p. 17)

This section has described the salient features of the Enlightenment Tradition, particularly in terms of its relevance to science education. Given the near universal appeal, implicitly or explicitly, for or against Enlightenment principles and their historic and current connection to science, one might expect that ‘Science and the Enlightenment’ would simply be a routine part of all science programmes; a component of science education that might be dealt with more or less adequately as time and teacher interest allows. An obvious candidate for cross-disciplinary teaching among science, history, philosophy, and religion faculties. But, to the detriment of students, this does not happen.

6.4 Ernst Mach: Philosopher and Educator (1989–2019) Abner Shimony’s 1978 Galileo course at Boston University led to two research interests. One on Ernst Mach, the second on pendulum studies, a matter which will be elaborated in Chapter 7 of this book. The connection to Mach was through Shimony’s discussion of Galileo’s thought experiments, something from which Mach drew both epistemological and educational lessons. The lessons he drew about thought experiments were the subject of my first publications in science education journals (Matthews, 1989a, 1990a). While on leave in Boston, Bob Cohen gave me volume six of the Boston Studies series—Ernst Mach: Physicist and Philosopher (Cohen & Seeger, 1970). I worked through this wonderful collection of papers by, among others, Robert Cohen, Gerald Holton, Peter Bergmann, Erwin Hiebert, and Otto Blüh. To say that reading that

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volume widened my appreciation and understanding of Mach is an understatement: before that reading I knew of Mach’s name, but nothing more. This despite having a decent science and philosophy education, and despite Mach being the first advocate of HPS&ST studies.

6.4.1 Mach’s Life and Influence Ernst Mach (1838–1916) was a major contributor to the European Enlightenment tradition, and one of the great philosopher-scientists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Mach). He was fluent in most European languages and was an enthusiast of Greek and Latin classics. In addition, Mach was a physicist (he made significant contributions to such diverse fields as electricity, gas dynamics, thermodynamics, optics, energy theory and mechanics); a historian; a philosopher of science; a psychologist; Rector of Prague German University; a member of the Upper House in the Austrian Parliament; and a writer of lucid prose. He was a person of strong character and convictions, a socialist an outspoken liberal-humanist in the centre of the arch-conservative Catholic Austro-Hungarian Empire. Mach made scientific and philosophical contributions across the whole temporal span from Darwin to Einstein. The first of his five hundred publications appeared in 1859, the same year as Darwin’s The Origin of Species; his last work was published five years after his death in 1921, the year of Einstein’s Relativity: The Special and General Theory. Effectively, his publication life stretched from Darwin to Einstein. He taught courses on ‘School Physics Teaching’ at Prague German University. In 1887 Mach founded and co-edited the world’s first science education journal— Zeitschrift für den Physikalischen und Chemischen Unterricht (Journal of Instruction in Physics and Chemistry). Einstein said of Mach’s The Science of Mechanics that: ‘This book exercised a profound influence upon me …. while I was a student. I see Mach’s greatness in his incorruptible skepticism and independence’ (Einstein, 1951, p. 21). Einstein wrote in a letter to Mach that all the physicists of his generation had ‘imbibed Mach with their mother’s milk’. He repeated this in his obituary for Mach. And elsewhere said: ‘he peered into the world with the inquisitive eyes of a carefree child taking delight in the understanding of relationships’ (Hiebert, 1976, p. xxi). Of particular impact on Einstein was Mach’s historical sensibility; his awareness that human cognition is historically influenced and contingent. In The Science of Mechanics Mach writes: The historical investigation of the development of a science is most needful, lest the principles treasured up in it become a system of half-understood prescripts, or worse, a system of prejudices. Historical investigation not only promotes the understanding of that which now is, but also brings new possibilities before us, by showing that which exists to be in great measure conventional and accidental. (Mach, 1893/1974, p. 316)

Einstein said that this recognition gave him the freedom to think outside the categories of Newtonian science. As related earlier in this book, Cardinal Newman called

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on the same historical sensibility to better understand or legitimise the development of religious doctrine (Newman, 1846/1960). Mach’s position is contrary to fundamentalisms of all kinds—political, religious, scientific, or any others. William James (1842–1910), the US philosopher and psychologist, in an 1882 letter to his wife written after visiting Mach in Prague, said: Mach came to my hotel and I spent four hours walking and supping with him at his club, an unforgettable conversation. I don’t think anyone ever gave me so strong an impression of pure intellectual genius. He apparently has read everything and thought about everything and has an absolute simplicity of manner and a winningness of smile, when his face lights up, that are charming. (Frank, 1950, p. 79)

6.4.2 Mach’s Image Among Contemporary Educators Einstein’s and James’s appreciation of Mach, indeed much about Mach, is unknown to contemporary Anglo-American science educators for whom ‘Machian’ is just a label for the accursed Positivism for which he was responsible. Ken Tobin, a prominent science educator writes: ‘as ideology [positivism] has led to the domination of class, race, gender and nature’ (Tobin, 1998, p. 196). Tobin, as with so many other science educators, frequently just lumps together each of the mutually incompatible positivist, empiricist, and realist positions, dismissing them all as ‘objectivism’ (Tobin, 1998, p. 209). That this is nonsense, is obvious to anyone with even the rudiments of philosophy. Mach’s positivism underwrote his campaign against belief in the reality of atoms, against nineteenth-century atomism. However, for Tobin, positivism was not brought into the world by Mach, it was the ‘original sin’ of science: The roots of positivism permeate science and science education and have done so since the birth of modern science and the time of Leonardo Da Vinci. (Tobin, 1998, p. 209)

That the most lauded and awarded figure in international science education asserts such a claim, is sobering. What does it say about the discipline? Not much. Tobin’s oft co-author, the equally prominent and awarded Wolff-Michael Roth, maintains that positivists, or those imagined to be, are said to have a ‘right-wing’ view of the nature of science, and are opposed to ‘genuine reform efforts’ in education (Roth, 1998, p. 1). This is also plain nonsense. The founding Vienna Circle (or ‘Mach Circle’, as it was initially known) positivists, were all, along with Mach, left-wing supporters of the Austrian socialist movement (Edmonds, 2020; Uebel, 2004). I elaborated this philosophical-political point in a publication on two of the foremost positivists, Philipp Frank and Herbert Feigl, detailing how each was dedicated to the improvement and reform of education (Matthews, 2004). In contrast to the make-believe that is so commonly written about positivism by educators, even the most acclaimed and awarded ones, the philosopher Michael Friedman, with good reason, maintains:

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Our understanding of logical positivism and its intellectual significance must be fundamentally revised when we reinsert the positivists into their original intellectual context, that of the revolutionary scientific developments, together with the equally revolutionary philosophical developments, of their time. As a result, our understanding of the significance of the rise and fall of logical positivism for our own time also must be fundamentally revised. (Friedman, 1999, p. xv)

Writing clearly was not the least of positivism’s commitments that could still well be emulated.

6.4.3 Phenomenalism All of Mach’s philosophical commitments or ‘system’, to use a term he would disavow, coalesce around phenomenalism. This commitment came early in his life when as a 15-year-old he found among his father’s books Kant’s Prolegomena (Kant 1783/1950). In Mach’s autobiographical essay, written in jumbled first and third person tenses, he writes: … [he] gobbled down this clear and relatively uncomplicated work. It made a powerful impression upon him, destroyed the young man’s naïve realism, stimulated an interest in epistemology, and with the help of Kant the metaphysician annihilated all tendency toward metaphysics within himself. In equal fashion, the book stimulated my thinking about scientific and psychological matters. I soon detached myself from Kant’s critical idealism. I recognized even as a boy that the thing-in-itself was a useless, metaphysical fabrication [Erfindung], a superfluous metaphysical illusion. (Mach, 1913/1992, p. 22)

That Mach as a teenager found Kant’s 130-page disquisition on Any Future Metaphysics Which Will be Able to Come Forward as Science ‘clear and relatively uncomplicated’ says something about his intellect and the quality of his early education, or perhaps an overreach of his own capability. This Kantian experience was the root of his phenomenalism, or sensationalism as it is sometimes called, a philosophy from which he never wavered. And he embraced both versions, epistemological and ontological (Alexander, 1963, chap. 1; Cekic, 1992). Mach was not just a common-enough epistemological phenomenalist; he was an ontological one. He passed from the epistemological claim that all our knowledge is given by and is about sensation, to the ontological claim that the world is the only sensation. He believed that phenomena were the only existents. In this he was a faithful follower of Bishop George Berkeley (1685–1753) who pronounced in his 1610 Principles of Human Knowledge, that for material objects: Their esse is percipi, nor is it possible they should have any existence out of the minds or thinking things which perceive them. (Berkeley, 1710/1962, p. 66)

Berkeley had God on his side for this very counter-intuitive, counter common-sense argument: when you woke up after sleeping, your room was as you left it because all the time it was in God’s omniscient purview. When you were not experiencing it, God was; so it was there undisturbed in the morning.

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Mach and the whole host of contemporary constructivists, and educators, who say the same thing as Berkeley—‘there were no gravitational waves until Einstein postulated them’—do not have God on their side. They need more earthly support; they need different arguments. These are hard to find. Mach enunciated a positivist version of phenomenalism. This is found in his first long and considered philosophical work, Conservation of Energy, where he states: One thing we maintain, and that is, that in the investigation of nature, we have to deal only with knowledge of the connections of appearances with one another. What we represent to ourselves behind the appearances exists only in our understanding, and has for us only the value of a memoria technica or a formula, whose form, because it is arbitrary and irrelevant, varies very easily with the standpoint of our culture. (Mach, 1872/1911, p. 49)

And in the same place: The aim of natural science is to obtain connections among phenomena. Theories, however, are like withered leaves, which drop off after having enabled the organism of science to breathe for a time. (ibid.)

In his Mechanics he writes: Faithful adherence to the method that led the greatest investigators of nature, Galileo, Newton, Sadi Carnot, Faraday, and J.R. Mayer, to their great results, restricts physics to the expression of actual facts, and forbid the construction of hypotheses behind the facts, where nothing tangible and verifiable is found. (Mach, 1893/1974, p. 597)

His consistent phenomenalism is a challenge for realists who, rightly, maintain that science purports to construct hypotheses referring to theoretical entities that have a purported reality and that do explain appearances. Not only does science so purport, but it has been partially successful in its referents and their properties: once molecules were only conjectured in thought, they are now manipulated and engineered. Mario Bunge in his chapter ‘Antirealism Today: Positivism, Phenomenology, Constructivism’ (Bunge, 2006, chap. 3) does deal directly with Mach’s argument, saying in part: Mach did not explain how his phenomenalism squared with his own pioneering study of bullets moving at supersonic speeds – which he was the first to photograph. Surely neither the bullets nor the shock waves they generated, could have been sensations, not only because they did not occur in anyone’s brain, but also because they could not be seen directly. To be sure, the moving bullets could be touched, but the ensuring sensation would have been a datum for the surgeon, not the physicist. (Bunge, 2006, p. 60)

6.4.4 Thought Experiments Although a renowned experimentalist and champion of measurement, Mach, in his Mechanics, draws attention to Galileo’s most famed thought experiment, the experiment Shimony discussed in the Boston 1978 class. The ‘experiment’ occurs in Day One of Galileo’s 1638 Discourses Concerning Two New Sciences, which is directed at disproving the Aristotelian thesis that bodies in free fall descend with a speed that

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is proportional to their weight. In Galileo’s text the Aristotelian, Simplicio, stated the received view that ‘bodies of different weight move in one and the same medium with different speeds which stand to one another in the same ratio as the weights’ (Galileo, 1638/1954, p. 60). There follows inconclusive talk about dropping cannonballs and musket balls from great heights and the claimed differences in time when they hit the ground. The dialogue continues as follows, with Salviati the spokesperson for Galileo. SALV:

SIMP:

SALV:

SIMP: SALV:

SIMP:

But, even without further experiment, it is possible to prove clearly, by means of a short and conclusive argument, that a heavier body does not move more rapidly than a lighter one provided both bodies are of the same material and in short such as those mentioned by Aristotle. But tell me, Simplicio, whether you admit that each falling body acquires a definite speed fixed by nature, a velocity which cannot be increased or diminished except by the use of force [violenza] or resistance. There can be no doubt that one and the same body moving in a single medium has a fixed velocity which is determined by nature and which cannot be increased except by the addition of momentum [impeto] or diminished except by some resistance which retards it. If then we take two bodies whose natural speeds are different, it is clear that on uniting the two, the more rapid one will be partly retarded by the slower, and the slower will be somewhat hastened by the swifter. Do you not agree with me in this opinion? You are unquestionably right. But if this is true, and if a large stone moves with a speed of, say, eight while a smaller moves with a speed of four, then when they are united, the system will move with a speed less than eight; but the two stones when tied together make a stone larger than that which before moved with a speed of eight. Hence the heavier body moves with less speed than the lighter, an effect which is contrary to your supposition. Thus you see how, from your assumption that the heavier body moves more rapidly than the lighter one, I infer that the heavier body moves more slowly. I am all at sea because it appears to me that the smaller stone when added to the larger increases its weight and by adding weight I do not see how it can fail to increase its speed or, at least, not to diminish it (Galileo, 1638/1954, pp. 62–63).

Galileo’s argument is short, it is conclusive, and it is extremely elegant. Karl Popper described it as: One of the most important imaginary experiments in the history of natural philosophy, and one of the simplest and most ingenious arguments in the history of rational thought about our universe. (Popper 1934/1959, p. 442)

Galileo offers a model of thought experiment for the classroom. He begins with familiar circumstances, he conceptualises these in the old theory, in thought he

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extends the familiar circumstances, and then he sees whether the old conceptualisations are adequate to the new situation: where they are not, he proposes new conceptualisations and new theories. This is also a model of philosophical investigation, which can be considered one, large, ongoing thought experiment. Think, for instance, of philosophical investigation of the adequacy of ethical distinctions and their application. We commonly ask students to conjecture the meaning of right conduct with respect to, say, theft, and then propose circumstances where their understanding is first challenged, then has to be modified or abandoned: the person is hungry, is hungry and dying; their child is hungry, is dying; and so on. Do these circumstances legitimise theft? What about other conjectured circumstances? What does this process say about moral precepts? This philosophical experimenting in thought is as old as the Socratic dialogues. Thought experiments can be divided into those that are destructive of accepted conceptual schemes or theories and those that are constructive or supportive of new or accepted theories. A big divide is between those maintaining that thought experiments tell us about the properties of the world, and others who maintain that they tell us only about the properties of thought, or more correctly, of concepts (Brown, 1991; Sorensen, 1992; Horowitz & Massey, 1991). In a well-known paper Thomas Kuhn discusses the thought experiments of Galileo, Newton, and Einstein holding that: Because it embodies no new information about the world, a thought experiment can teach us nothing that was not known before. Or, rather, it can teach nothing about the world. Instead it teaches the scientist about his mental apparatus. Its function is limited to the correction of previous conceptual mistakes. (Kuhn, 1964/1977, p. 252)

Mach maintained that: ‘Experimenting in thought is important not only for the professional inquirer, but also for mental development as such’, not only the student but ‘the teacher gains immeasurably by this method’ (Mach, 1896/1796, p. 143). However, some thought experiments are not anticipatory but idealised because the circumstances postulated cannot be produced—Newton‘s bucket experiment (Laymon, 1978), Galileo’s well through the centre of the earth and so on. Mach encouraged such exercises, believing that the exercise of imagination and creativity was another way of bridging the gap between humanities and the sciences: ‘The planner, the builder of castles in the air, the novelist, the author of social and technological utopias is experimenting with thought’ (Mach, 1896/1796, p. 136). The bulk of exchanges between Einstein, Bohr, Planck and the early quantum theorists were all about experiments in thought. During my editorship of Science & Education journal I was fortunate to be able to publish a number of good studies on thought experiments (Reiner & Burko, 2003; Velentzas & Halkia, 2013; Galili, 2009).

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6.4.5 Mach’s Educational Programme While at Prague German University Mach taught courses on ‘School Physics Teaching’. In 1887 he founded and co-edited the world’s first science education journal—Zeitschrift für den Physikalischen und Chemischen Unterricht (Journal of Instruction in Physics and Chemistry). He contributed regularly to this journal until a stroke forced his retirement in 1898. He introduced thought experiments (Gedankenexperimente) to science education, saying of them: The method of letting people guess the outcome of an experimental arrangement has didactic value too. … Experimenting in thought is important not only for the professional inquirer, but also for mental development as such, not only the student but the teacher gains immeasurably by this method. (Mach, 1905/1976, pp. 142–143)

Thought experiments enabled the teacher to know what grasp students had on the fundamental concepts of a discipline. And Mach meant any discipline: science, mathematics, economics, history, theology, or politics. Each edition of his Zeitschrift carried thought experiments for his readers to perform. For instance, he asks, what is expected to happen to a beaker of water in equilibrium on a balance when a suspended mass is lowered into it? Or in another issue, what happens when a stoppered bottle with a fly on its base is in equilibrium on a balance and then the fly takes off? These examples are of thought experiments of an anticipatory type—the actual experiment can be performed. They engage the mind, and they reveal what a student believes about the relevant concepts being investigated; think first, then act. Mach explicitly addressed pedagogical issues in three famous papers. One was his most systematic treatment of education in general and science education in particular—‘On Instruction in the Classics and the Mathematico-Physical Sciences’ (Mach, 1898/1986), translated in his Popular Scientific Lectures. Two others were ‘Instruction in Heat Theory’, and ‘About the Psychological and Logical Moment in Scientific Instruction’ (Mach, 1890/2018). The last paper has not been available in English until recently. Fortunately, I was able to organise its translation by Hayo Siemsen, a youthful Mach expert, and its publication in the anthology History, Philosophy and Science Teaching: New Perspectives (Matthews, 2018). Sadly, Hayo died within a year of its publication. Despite being an extraordinary scholar who read and knew so much in so many languages, Mach was appalled at overfilled German and Austrian curricula. For him, the principal aims of education were to develop understanding, strengthen reason, and promote imagination. A bloated curriculum counteracted these aims: I know nothing more terrible than the poor creatures who have learned too much. What they have acquired is a spider’s web of thoughts too weak to furnish sure supports, but complicated enough to produce confusion. (Mach, 1898/1986, p. 367)

He believed in presenting science historically, or as he put it, teaching should follow the genetic approach:

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every young student could come into living contact with and pursue to their ultimate logical consequences merely a few mathematical or scientific discoveries. Such selections would be mainly and naturally associated with selections from the great scientific classics. A few powerful and lucid ideas could thus be made to take root in the mind and receive thorough elaboration. (Mach, 1898/1986, p. 368)

Mach’s educational ideas are fairly simple and uncontroversial: • Begin instruction with concrete materials and thoroughly familiarise students with the phenomena discussed. • Aim for understanding and comprehension of the subject matter. • Teach a little; but teach it well. • Follow the historical order of development of a subject. • Tailor teaching to the intellectual level and capacity of students. • Address the philosophical questions that science entails and which gave rise to science. • Show that just as individual ideas can be improved, so also scientific ideas have constantly been, and will continue to be, overhauled and improved. • Engage the mind of the learner. Mach made important contributions to both the theory and the practice of education. It is a great pity that his work is not better known in the Anglo-American science education community. It is telling that Mach’s name does not appear in the Index of the best-selling and scholarly A History of Ideas in Science Education (DeBoer, 1991). I kept up my Mach interests and acquired a considerable Mach library. For the three-volume Springer Handbook of Research in History, Philosophy and Science Teaching I commissioned a chapter on Mach (Siemsen, 2014) and another chapter on ‘Thought Experiments in Science and in Science Education’ (Asikainen & Hirvonen, 2014). In 2014 I was invited to give a plenary lecture on ‘Mach and Education’ to the 2016 Mach Centenary Conference being staged by the Vienna Circle Studies Centre at University of Vienna. This was an opportunity to gather together a good deal of my reading and accumulated writing on Mach. I wrote a 50,000-word piece on Mach’s philosophical and educational positions. This attempted to situate him in his historical and cultural times. However, the manuscript fell between book and conference-paper stools. It has sat undeveloped in my study for a number of years; and in all likelihood, will continue to sit there. Pleasingly, a much-reduced version was given as the conference lecture (Matthews, 2019) and subsequently published in the 50-chapter select conference proceedings (Stadler, 2019; https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030043773).

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6.5 Hackett Anthology (1989) During my 1987 sabbatical leave I had conversations in Boston with Jay Hullett, the owner of Hackett Publishing Company and a former Boston University philosopher, about the contribution of Galileo, Newton and others of the ‘new’ science to early modern philosophy. He invited me to compile, with commentary, a selection of writings of the ‘scientists’ of the Scientific Revolution who had a formative impact on the origins of modern European philosophy. The result was the anthology The Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy (Matthews, 1989b; https://www.hacket tpublishing.com/philosophy/the-scientific-background-to-modern-philosophy).

6.5.1 Science and Philosophy in Dialogue I had learned during my 1978 stay in Boston, and subsequently, that the history of philosophy and the history of science go hand-in-hand; one should not be studied without the other. The early modern philosophers—Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and many others—were in dialogue with the new science of their time. They examined the philosophical implications of the method and spectacular results of the natural scientists. But philosophy students for the most part are not taught the history of philosophy as a dialogue between philosophy and science; it is taught as a soliloquy with itself, the philosophers are simply talking to each other. Unfortunately, the philosophically important texts of the scientists (‘natural philosophers’)—Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Boyle, Huygens, Descartes—were not readily available to philosophy students. The anthology was put together while housesitting the lovely home of Richard Burian in delightful Blacksburg Virginia and published in 1989. The book has now sold 50,000+ copies which indicates that a good many philosophy lecturers agree that the teaching of early modern philosophy needs to recognise its intimate connection with early modern science. The book contributes a little to enabling humanities students to appreciate the central role of science in the formation of modern thought and worldviews. The obvious challenge is to enable science students to have the same appreciation. Pleasingly, after 30 years of constantly good sales, Hackett has invited me to edit an expanded version of the book dealing with the impacts of eighteenthand nineteenth-century science—pneumatics, the chemical revolution, electricity, electro-magnetism, Darwinism, genetics, Einstein—on modern philosophy. John Herman Randall Jr., one of Marx Wartofsky’s teachers, well-captured the symbiotic relationship between science and philosophy when he wrote: …it will be apparent that modern philosophy is here seen as primarily the response to challenging new scientific ideas – to Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Freud, Franz Boas, and the like. During the modern period, it has been chiefly science that has driven men to the searching thought that is philosophy. This is true even of those philosophers who have tried to escape from science, like the romantic idealists and the present-day existentialists; they are heavily colored by what they are trying to emancipate themselves from. (Randall, 1962, p. viii)

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6.5.2 Philosophy of Science and History of Science The same connection holds between the philosophy of science and the history of science. Imre Lakatos memorably wrote: ‘Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind’ (Lakatos, 1978, p. 102). The case has been argued for by many (McMullin, 1970; Wartofsky, 1976; Shapere, 1977; Mauskopf & Schmaltz, 2012). This is a particularly important insight for science teachers for whom, just on pedagogical grounds, the history and philosophy of any syllabus topic or subject need to go hand-in-hand with each other for the benefit of students’ learning and education. The proper relation between the history and philosophy of science is much debated, with experts disagreeing on just how necessary the former is for the latter. Hilary Putnam at one point exclaimed that the history of science is ‘irrelevant’ to the philosophy of science (Suppe, 1977, p. 437). Willard van Orman Quine had the same opinion, saying at one point that he was ‘the most unhistorical’ of people. His influential epistemological works are devoid of any historical reference (Quine, 1953, 1960). Conversely, some have maintained that philosophy is irrelevant to history of science. This is an impossible position. How do we identify the history of science without some philosophical presuppositions? How do we separate useful history of science from useless history of science without some prior conception of proper scientific method? We need to know in advance of writing a history of science what will count as science; if we do not have such a view then we could presumably set off researching astrology, numerology, and stamp collecting, rather than chemistry or geology. As with many either/or questions, the answer lies somewhere between. There has to be an interactive relationship between the history of science and the philosophy of science. There is ample evidence of history of science being written in the service of philosophical, political, and religious commitments. It is notorious that Galileo has become a ‘Man for all philosophical seasons’ (Crombie, 1981) with every methodologist seeing their own favoured methodology being followed by Galileo. Here history is at best cherry-picked, and the opportunity for history of science to refine or change philosophical commitments is lost. On the other hand, Thomas Kuhn’s story of his philosophical transformation, occasioned by having to teach a Harvard General Education course on the history of science, is a well-known recent example where history transformed philosophy. Philosophy is required to begin writing history, but it should be capable of being transformed by historical study. One value for science teachers of collections like The Scientific Background is to make them aware of the significant philosophical and cultural import of so many ‘famous’ scientists who together constitute our scientific heritage, and who routinely appear in school and university programmes. Galileo, Huygens, Newton, Priestley, Darwin, Mach, Planck, Bohr, Einstein, and so many others, not only made important contributions to our understanding of the constituents and mechanisms of the world,

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but also contributions to worldviews, theology, and philosophy, especially to epistemology or theory of knowledge. The names are already in the science curriculum, the elaborations and connections to culture is something that knowledgeable teachers can bring to the classroom and to student assignments. In schools with a liberal education tradition, science teachers can cooperate with teachers of religion, history, mathematics, commerce, art and philosophy in this task.

References Alexander, P. (1963). Sensationalism and scientific explanation. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Anderson, W. T. (1996). The Fontana postmodernism reader. London: Fontana Press. Asikainen, M. A., & Hirvonen, P. E. (2014). Thought experiments in science and in science education. In M. R. Matthews (Ed.), International handbook of research in history, philosophy and science teaching (pp. 1235–1256). Dordrecht: Springer. Berkeley, G. (1710/1962). The principles of human knowledge (G. J. Warnock, Ed.). London: Collins. Berlin, I. (Ed.). (1956). The age of enlightenment: The eighteenth century philosophers. New York: Mentor Books. Bevilacqua, F., Giannetto, E., & Matthews, M. R. (Eds.). (2001). Science education and culture: The role of history and philosophy of science. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Brock, W. H. (1996). Science for all: Studies in the history of victorian science and education. Aldershot, UK: Variorum Press. Brown, J. R. (1991). The laboratory of the mind: Thought experiments in the natural sciences. New York: Routledge. Brown, J. R. (2001). Who rules in science: An opinionated guide to the science wars. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bunge, M. (2006). Chasing reality: Strife over realism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Cekic, M. (1992). Mach’s phenomenalism as a link between physics and psychology. In J. Blackmore (Ed.), Ernst Mach: A deeper look (pp. 201–214). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Cohen, I. B. (1995). Science and the founding fathers: Science in the political thought of Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and Madison. NY: W. W. Norton & Company. Cohen, R. S., & Seeger, R. J. (Eds.). (1970). Ernst Mach: Physicist and philosopher. Dordrecht: Reidel. Collins, H. M. (1985). Changing order: Replication and induction in scientific practice. London: Sage Publications. Crombie, A. C. (1981). Philosophical presuppositions and the shifting interpretations of Galileo. In J. Hintikka et al. (eds.), Theory change, ancient Axiomatics, and Galileo’s methodology (pp. 271– 286). Boston: Reidel. Reproduced in A. C. Crombie, Science, optics and music in medieval and early modern thought (pp.345–362). London: The Hambledon Press. DeBoer, G. E. (1991). A history of ideas in science education. New York: Teachers College Press. Désautels, J., & Larochelle, M. (1990). A constructivist pedagogical strategy: The epistemological disturbance (experiment and preliminary results). In D. E. Herget (Ed.), More history and philosophy of science in science teaching (pp. 236–257). Tallahassee, Fl: Florida State University. Driver, R. (1988). A constructivist approach to curriculum development. In P. Fensham (Ed.), Development and dilemmas in science education (pp. 133–149). New York: Falmer Press. Edis, T., & BouJaoude, S. (2014). Rejecting materialism: Responses to modern science in the Muslim Middle East. In M. R. Matthews (Ed.), International handbook of research in history, philosophy and science teaching (pp. 1663–1691). Dordrecht: Springer.

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Edmonds, D. (2020). The murder of professor Schlick: The rise and fall of the vienna circle. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Eger, M. (1993a). Hermeneutics as an approach to science: Part 1. Science & Education, 2(1), 1–30. Eger, M. (1993b). Hermeneutics as an approach to science: Part II. Science & Education, 2(4), 303–328. Eger, M. (2006). Science, understanding and justice: The philosophical essays of Martin Eger (A. Shimony, Ed.). Chicago: Open Court. Einstein, A. (1951). Autobiographical notes. In P. A. Schilpp. Albert Einstein: Philosopher-scientist (2nd ed., pp. 1–95). New York: Tudor Publishing Company. Fensham, P. J. (2004). Defining an identity: The evolution of science education as a field of research. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Frank, P. (1950). Ernst Mach and the unity of science. His modern science and its philosophy (pp. 79–89). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Fraser, B. J., & Tobin, K. G. (eds.). (1998). International handbook of science education (2 vols.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Friedman, M. (1999). Reconsidering logical positivism. New York: Cambridge University Press. Galileo, G. (1638/1954). Dialogues concerning two new sciences (H. Crew & A.de Salvio, Trans). New York: Dover Publications (orig. 1914). Galili, I. (2009). Thought experiments: Determining their meaning. Science & Education, 18(1), 1–23. Garrison, J. W. (1997). An alternative to von Glasersfeld’s subjectivism in science education: Deweyan social constructivism. Science & Education, 6(6), 543–554. Garrison, J. W., & Bentley, M. (1989). Science education, conceptual change, and breaking with everyday experience. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 10(1), 19–36. von Glasersfeld, E. (1989). Cognition, construction of knowledge and teaching. Synthese, 80(1), 121–140. von Glasersfeld, E. (1992). Constructivism reconstructed: A reply to Suchting. Science & Education, 1(4), 379–384. von Glasersfeld, E. (1995). Radical constructivism: A way of knowing and learning. London: The Falmer Press. Grayling, A. C. (2007). Towards the light: The story of the struggles for liberty & rights that made the Modern West. London: Bloomsbury. Gross, P. R., Levitt, N., & Lewis, M. W. (Eds.). (1996). The flight from science and reason. New York: New York Academy of Sciences, New York, (distributed by Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore). Gruender, C. D. (1989). Some philosophical reflections on constructivism. In D. E. Herget (ed.), The history and philosophy of science in science teaching (pp. 170–176). Florida State University. Gunstone, R. F. (2014). Encyclopedia of science education. Dordrecht: Springer. http://link.spr inger.com/referencework/10.1007/978–94-007-2150-0. Hiebert, E. N. (1976). Introduction. In E. Mach. Knowledge and error.: Reidel. Himmelfarb, G. (2004). The roads to modernity: The British, French, and American enlightenments. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Hodson, D. (2014). Nature of science in the science curriculum: Origin, development and shifting emphases. In M. R. Matthews (Ed.), International handbook of research in history, philosophy and science teaching (pp. 911–970). Dordrecht: Springer. Hoodbhoy, P. (1991). Islam and science: Religious orthodoxy and the battle for rationality. London: Zed Books. Horowitz, T., & Massey, G. (Eds.). (1991). Thought experiments in science and philosophy. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Irzik, G., & Nola, R. (2014). new directions in nature of science research. In M. R. Matthews (Ed.), International handbook of research in history, philosophy and science teaching (pp. 999–1021). Dordrecht: Springer.

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Chapter 7

Constructivism in Science Education and a HPS&ST Roadmap

Abstract This chapter describes my first encounters with constructivism in the science education community, the topic being elaborated by Ernst von Glasersfeld in a plenary lecture at a NARST meeting. I identified it as updated Bishop Berkeley’s radical empiricism. Apart from philosophical criticism, the deficiency of constructivism as a teaching method is documented. My two-year period (1992–1993) as foundation professor of science education at University of Auckland is elaborated, including a significant national debate with New Zealand’s powerful constructivist lobby. The origins and contents of the 1994 Routledge Science Teaching: The Contribution of History and Philosophy of Science are given; and its functioning as somewhat of a ‘roadmap’ for the discipline, being translated into five languages and reissued 20 years later in a revised and updated edition. My pendulum studies (a book and papers), and the large International Pendulum Project and subsequent anthology, are outlined. These demonstrate that HPS can enliven and transform even the most routine topics in science programmes.

For the first sixteen years of my academic career I attended and contributed to national and international philosophy of education and HPS conferences and, as related earlier in this account, I prepared HPS&ST lectures and materials for my own UNSW undergraduate and graduate classes. It was only in 1988, thirteen years after being appointed to UNSW, and ten years after my Boston University sabbatical, that I began attending science education research conferences, first in Australia (ASERA) and then the USA (NARST). Debate, if not confrontation, with constructivism was a feature of my early engagement with the science education community. First at academic conferences, then in New Zealand after my appointment in 1992 at the University of Auckland as Foundation Professor of Science Education.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. R. Matthews, History, Philosophy and Science Teaching: A Personal Story, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0558-1_7

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7.1 First Engagement with Science Education Research and Constructivism (1989) My first science education conference was a National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST) conference in 1989. This delayed participation was a personal and professional loss. There was HPS-related research in science education that I could have learnt from, and perhaps contributed to, especially the work of scholars near to my own age: Rick Duschl (Duschl, 1985, 1988), Stephen Norris (Norris, 1984a, 1984b, 1985), Derek Hodson (Hodson, 1986a, 1986b, 1988), Norman Lederman (Lederman 1986), and Harvey Siegel (Siegel, 1978, 1979, 1985). I came to know all of them and count them as friends. The pity is that I did not engage intellectually with them some 10–15 years earlier. Although aged 40, I was a ‘new boy’, or stranger, at science education conferences. They were eye-opening occasions. I was familiar with the Science Wars, whose opening shots were fired by the Edinburgh Sociology of Scientific Knowledge group. These wars were raging through HPS Schools, tearing some apart (Brown, 2001; Ross, 1996); but I was unaware that the wars had flowed over into science education. At the 1989 NARST conference I found myself in the trenches.

7.1.1 Berkeley’s Shadow The conference was awash with philosophically doubtful relativist and idealistconstructivist ideas. Amid the cheering and foot-stomping for a plenary constructivist address by Ernst von Glasersfeld, I recall saying to University of Illinois fellow alongside me: ‘This is pure Bishop Berkeley. Why are people clapping?’. This initial estimation was confirmed when I later read von Glasersfeld’s autobiographical essay where he says that the Bishop of Dublin was the first philosopher he read, and that 1710 (the year of publication of Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge) was one of the greatest years in the history of philosophy (Glasersfeld, 1995, Chap. 1). At the NARST meeting, this warmed-over Berkeleyan philosophy, with its idealism about the world and in-principle rejection of knowledge claims about Nature—‘we only have access to our perceptions’—received rapturous applause. I was dismayed. Others were not as dismayed; von Glasersfeld was invited back the following year for another plenary address. On anyone’s accounting, George Berkeley (1685–1753) was an exceptional scholar and philosopher (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/). His still-read works An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous were all published before his 30th birthday; and his anti-Newtonian De Motu only a few years later. Berkeley’s idealism, his phenomenalism, his opposition to Newtonian science, his theory of perception and ideas—are standard topics in beginning years, and even later, of philosophy programmes. David Stove, at the University of Sydney, used a comment

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that: ‘An undergraduate philosophy course without Berkeley is like a zoo without elephants’. David Armstrong, the University of Sydney’s philosophy professor, wrote a book on Berkeley’s Theory of Vision (Armstrong, 1960) and edited a collection of his philosophical works (Armstrong, 1965). Understandably, the Bishop featured in Armstrong’s first-year philosophy class. My copy of The Principles was bought in 1966. It was partially read then for philosophy tutorials and the yearly exam. Berkeley’s arguments do not warrant cheering, but rather attention to their details, and ultimately to their fundamental weakness (Popper, 1953/1963). Had I known then, that nearly sixty years later, leading figures in international science education were paraphrasing or citing him, I would have paid more attention in class and to his writings. And especially to his opposition to Newtonian science. Berkeley’s ontological phenomenalism is famously stated as: Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, viz. that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind – that their being is to be perceived or known; that consequently so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind, or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit. (Berkeley, 1710/1962, p. 67)

Isaac Newton (1642–1727) was a realist in the tradition of Aristotle and Galileo. He proposed a mechanism (gravitational attraction) that moved the planets and that underwrote the celestial laws of planetary motion uncovered by Kepler, and the terrestrial laws discovered by Galileo. His realism underlies his insistence on the reality of absolute space and time, in contradiction to those who maintain that only relative space and time exist—the space and time of our experience. In his Scholium on ‘Space and Time’, Newton says: But because the parts of space cannot be seen, or distinguished from one another by our senses, therefore in their stead we use sensible measures of them. … And so, instead of absolute places and motions, we use relative ones; and that without any inconvenience in common affairs; but in philosophical disquisitions, we ought to abstract from our senses, and consider things themselves, distinct from what are only sensible measures of them. (Newton, 1729/1934, p. 8)

Newton was also a realist about forces: when a body accelerates, including moving steadily in an orbit, there was a real force acting upon it, something is making the body accelerate or change direction. Forces were not just mathematical conveniences or conventions useful in linking together successive locations of a moving body. Force was responsible for the body moving; it had the same ontological status as the body moved. Although, in free fall and planetary motion for instance, only the accelerating body could be seen, Newton believed that a real, unseen, force is responsible for the acceleration. Famously, the mechanical philosophers Huygens and Leibniz rejected such forces; for them, forces only arose from contact, from the collision of bodies. Untouchable,

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unfeelable, forces at a distance, were deemed occult. In contrast, Newton remained a realist about these non-contact forces; for him, force is a theoretical construct postulated to explain observational occurrences; although not observed or experienced, it was real (Cohen, 2002). Berkeley, in his 1721 De Motu, developed this empiricist critique of the reality of gravitational attraction, but in addition he argued against the reality of forces more generally, writing: Force, gravity, attraction and similar terms are convenient for purposes of reasoning and for computations of motion and of moving bodies, but not for the understanding of the nature of motion itself. (Berkeley, 1721/1901, p. 506)

If you have not studied philosophy, then Berkeley is certainly a novel and engaging figure. Countless senior, and not so senior, science educators along with graduate students, followed von Glasersfeld’s Berkeley-paved path into constructivism, idealism, and scepticism. For example, Wolff-Michael Roth, a senior figure in science education and enthusiast for von Glasersfeld’s work, maintains: according to radical constructivism, we live forever in our own, self-constructed worlds; the world cannot ever be described apart from our frames of experience. This understanding is consistent with the view that there are as many worlds as there are knowers. (Roth, 1995, p. 13)

He goes on to assert something very unhelpful for those arguing for curriculum space for science: Through this research [sociology of science], we have come to realize that scientific rationality and special problem-solving-skills are parts of a myth. (Roth, 1995, p. 31)

7.1.2 Constructivism as Ideology In the early 1990s an Editorial in the Journal of Teacher Education announced that: Constructivism is the new rallying theme in education. Its popularity derives from its origins in a variety of disciplines, notably philosophy of science, psychology, and sociology. The implications of a constructivist perspective for education differ depending on its disciplinary foundation, but professional education groups as diverse as the National Association for the Education of Young Children and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics have based revisions of their standards for practice on the constructivist assumption that learners do not passively absorb knowledge but rather construct it from their experiences. (Ashton, 1992, p. 322)

In a review article at the time, Peter Fensham, the doyen of the Australian science education community, claimed that: ‘The most conspicuous psychological influence on curriculum thinking in science since 1980 has been the constructivist view of learning’ (Fensham, 1992, p. 801). Russell Yeany, a former president of the US National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST), wrote:

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A unification of thinking, research, curriculum development, and teacher education appears to now be occurring under the theme of constructivism … there is a lack of polarised debate. (Yeany, 1991, p. 1)

Dick Yeany was correct; there was no debate about constructivism at science education conferences or in the literature. At one conference, someone commented: ‘if “constructivism” is not in the title, your paper does not get on the programme’. A particular worry was the near unanimous assumption that constructivism had triumphed in philosophy. When adherents were pressed, they would look quizzed and say: ‘but haven’t you heard of Thomas Kuhn?’ or ‘Don’t you know that positivism is dead?’. In one place, Wolff-Michael Roth and a co-author, casually claim that constructivism is ‘the most mature epistemological commitment’ (Roth & Roychoudhury, 1994, p. 28). It is noteworthy, to put it mildly, the ease with which one of the two most prominent constructivists (the other being Ken Tobin), and indeed most prominent science educators, could say that constructivism was ‘the most mature epistemological commitment’ thereby dismissing as ‘immature’ scholars such as Suchting, Shimony, Wartofsky, Cohen, Ruse, Nola, Slezak, and McMullin whom I personally have known, to say nothing of most scientists I have known. The more so as Roth frankly admits to having never completed any philosophy course: physics and education, yes; philosophy, no. But his audience knew no better. With some exceptions, the science education community has been untouched and uninformed by serious philosophy. A point well-captured by Rick Duschl in the title of his influential paper of nearly 40 years ago: ‘Science Education and Philosophy of Science: Twenty-five of Years of Mutually Exclusive Development’ (Duschl, 1985). As the Constructivist tide rose, it progressively occupied more and more educational, philosophical, and cultural space; converts were everywhere and growing in size and influence. Although constructivism began with Piaget, Vygotsky, and Bruner as a theory of learning, and hence a moderately limited psychological theory, it fairly quickly became a theory of teaching, a theory of education, a theory of the origin of ideas, and a theory of both personal knowledge and scientific knowledge. It became education’s answer to physics’ ‘Grand Unified Theory’. Constructivism as a psychological, educational, and philosophical orientation fuels the student-centered, teacher-as-facilitator, multiculturalist, ‘progressive’ side of the educational maths wars, phonics debates, and discovery learning disputes. It is the default theory in ‘student-centered’ education programmes and courses. As stated by one group of researchers: From a constructivist perspective, the individual learner has a primary role in determining what will be learned. Emphasis is placed on providing students with opportunities to develop skills and knowledge which they can connect with prior knowledge and future utility. … The learner decides with others what learning is important to him or her and means of learning are explored. While working with others, the student solves problems and examines solutions. This view of curriculum is closer to the actual work of scientists. (Davis et al., 1993, p. 629)

For this group, constructivism expanded to the limits and became a worldview or Weltanschuung:

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Constructivism offers a viable alternative view of knowledge, reality, science and education. … The constructivist view of education provides us with a hope for the future as individuals value their own and others’ understandings, take responsibility for their own destinies, and lead us forward into a changing but promising world. (Davis et al., 1993, pp. 628, 635)

Ken Tobin, a former Australian physics teacher mentioned earlier in this book, who became a leading figure in international constructivism before he ‘moved on’, wrote: To become a constructivist is to use constructivism as a referent for thoughts and actions. That is to say when thinking or acting, beliefs associated with constructivism assume a higher value than other beliefs. For a variety of reasons, the process is not easy. (Tobin, 1991, p. 1)

These are bugle-blowing rallying calls. In Tobin’s formulation, Constructivism is akin to, or indeed becomes, an ideology. In his statement ‘constructivism’ can be replaced with ‘communism’, ‘Catholicism’, ‘Islam’, ‘Liberalism’, Maoism, and most other ideological ‘isms’ without any necessity to change the structure of the statement; constructivism just takes its place along with other ideologies. As with all ideologies, it is a serious worry when the commitment takes precedence over, or ‘assumes a higher value’, than evidence. Years later this was borne out when in 2015 the US State of Missouri introduced a teacher pay-scale where pay increases are tied to teachers adopting constructivist classroom methods, independently of student learning outcomes (Krahenbuhl, 2016). Student learning can go backwards, and still you are paid more for having been a constructivist. This is the triumph of ideology over common sense. E.D. Hirsch Jr., in his The Schools We Need, documents the impact of constructivism in the USA and concludes: In short, the term ‘constructivism’ has become a kind of magical incantation used to defend discovery learning, which is no more sanctioned by psychological theory than any other form of constructed learning. To pretend that it is so sanctioned illustrates what I mean by the ‘selective use of research’. (Hirsch, 1996, p. 135)

7.1.3 Opposing Constructivism I felt such constructivist views, when I saw them in embryonic form, had to be contested; a polarised debate was warranted and called for. Graduate students and junior staff should not see such views go unchallenged at conferences and in journals. I made beginning efforts at the 1989 NARST conference, and more effort subsequently. I gave my first anti-constructivist paper at the US PES conference in 1992, modestly titled ‘Old Wine in New Bottles: A Problem with Constructivist Epistemology’ (Matthews, 1993). Denis Phillips, an Australian biology teacher, philosopher of education, and philosopher of science, who moved from Australia’s Monash University to Stanford University in the early 1970s, commented on the paper saying:

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Mike Matthews has been too gentle on the constructivists. He recognizes that they commit philosophical blunders, but nevertheless he charitably treats them as informed, competent, well-trained people who happen to hold a venerable philosophical position – classic empiricism. … My own interpretation is less charitable. (Phillips, 1993, p. 312)

I repeated the paper at a meeting in Washington attended by Bill Aldridge, the Executive Secretary of the huge, 50,000-member US National Science Teachers Association. He was anxious to publish the paper in the NSTA Scope, Sequence, and Coordination: Relevant Research book (Pearsall, 1992) as a counterweight to constructivist pieces that had been commissioned by others for the work. His words were: ‘We need your view’. I was happy to give it (Matthews, 1992). My critique of constructivism continued with publication of the edited anthology Constructivism in Science Education: A Philosophical Examination (Matthews, 1998) to which critics such as Wallis Suchting, Denis Phillips, Robert Nola, and Peter Slezak, among others contributed (https://www.springer.com/gp/book/978079 2350330). This was followed by publication of a critical article in National Society for the Study of Education 2000 Yearbook edited by Denis Phillips (Matthews, 2000b). Constructivism had taken the science education world, and indeed most educational worlds, by storm. Its appraisal was timely, if not long overdue. In the first volume of Science & Education Wallis Suchting published ‘Constructivism Deconstructed’ (Suchting, 1992; https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/ BF00430275), the most sophisticated and detailed philosophical critique of radical constructivism published in education, and probably beyond education. It shows the benefit of having competent philosophers engaged in educational debates. It is worth quoting here his conclusion: First, much of the doctrine known as ‘constructivism’ … is simply unintelligible. Second, to the extent that it is intelligible … it is simply confused. Third, there is a complete absence of any argument for whatever positions can be made out. … In general, far from being what it is claimed to be, namely, the New Age in philosophy of science, an even slightly perceptive ear can detect the familiar voice of a really quite primitive, traditional subjectivistic empiricism with some overtones of diverse provenance like Piaget and Kuhn. (Suchting, 1992, p. 247)

Such a critique should have dampened educational enthusiasm for constructivism, but it did not; the constructivist caravan just rolled on. The Suchting piece was ignored, except by Ken Tobin who dismissed it as ‘nit-picking’ and mistakenly focused on individual sentences and not the text as a whole. Tobin did not appreciate that philosophy is a fine-grained enterprise, and the price of progress is attention to detail.

7.1.4 Failures of Constructivist Teaching Method Initially my concern was with problems in the theory or philosophy of constructivism; I did not attend to constructivist pedagogy or its effectiveness when employed in teaching science. I shared the common response to criticism of constructivist theory,

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namely that although the theory might be poorly articulated and philosophically problematic, nevertheless constructivist pedagogy can be supported. This position is understandable, but it rests on a moot point: How effective is constructivist pedagogy in teaching science, or indeed any other discipline? My first doubts about constructivist pedagogy were expressed in a long and critical 1994 book review (Matthews, 1994b). The review was of the flagship, Australian Research Council supported, anthology The Content of Science: A Constructivist Approach to it Teaching and Learning (Fensham et al., 1994). Major constructivists from a dozen countries were brought to Monash University to address the pressing issue captured in the title of the anthology. My review pointed not just to the many philosophically confused assertions in different chapters, but to the acknowledged inefficiency of constructivist pedagogy. For instance, in the Leeds group’s chapter on constructivist teaching of oxidation it is acknowledged that: The theory that rusting is a chemical reaction between iron, oxygen and water, resulting in the formation of a new substance, is not one that students are likely to generate for themselves. (Fensham et al., 1994, p. 206)

This is obvious. But then, after weeks of constructivist ‘instruction’, the four senior researchers conclude: The process of investigating personal ideas and theories may lead students to reflect upon and question them. At the same time, it is unlikely to lead to the scientific view. (Fensham et al., 1994, p. 217)

Again, something pretty obvious. What then becomes of constructivism as a method for teaching the content of science? This central question is just passed over; the constructivist caravan rolled on; more and more research grants were garnered; and more appointments made. Years later, the efficacy side of constructivism abruptly presented itself in the primary schooling of my own daughters. They attended a middle-class State primary school whose principal and teachers had been instructed in, and became committed to, constructivism. Our girls were, as with everyone else, having maths classes, but they were not learning maths. They came home with random pieces of paper with random problems that they had to work out. There was nothing systematic. They did group work, had discussions, negotiated, dialogued, and did all the other progressive things that constructivism supposedly demanded, but they did not learn. And there was no textbook, so parents could not easily assist their children or make up for poor teaching. Parents did not know what their children were supposed to be learning. When my wife and I went to the principal to present our concerns, he told us that he did not ‘believe in the tyranny of textbooks’. Increasingly over-burdened teachers have to reinvent the wheel every class, every term, and every year. There is nothing tyrannical about textbooks if good ones are chosen and they are utilised by informed teachers. This presented no problem for us as we went to the web and bought the entire suite of the excellent Singapore Primary Maths books and worked through, with our

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daughters, each book topic by topic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_math). Our girls did well in school maths; one later graduated with a B.Sc. in mathematics and is now a mathematics teacher in the Northern Territory. None of this achievement owed anything to constructivism; it was achieved despite constructivism. Nevertheless, our daughters’ success would be listed as a success of the school when it came to tabling education outcomes. Such a conclusion is a common fault of shallow, surface-only, educational research: Teaching programme X correlates with good outcome Y, so X must be good/efficacious/responsible/commended. Zero attempt is made to identify the input of parents, tutors, or other external factors to the measured outcome. This fatal deficiency is the predictable outcome of conducting supposed ‘research’ without any attention to control conditions—a common failing of educational research. An American friend had the same experience with his daughters. He had graduated in physics and mathematics from the very best US and UK universities—bachelor and master’s degrees in mathematics and physics, Ph.D. in physics; published maths textbooks; lectured in physics, mathematics, and engineering; and had worked with international education organisations including PISA. Along with other parents he ran the Mathematics Club at his daughters’ Boston-area Elementary school. In 2018, the eldest daughter was beginning 6th grade when the school adopted the constructivistaligned Illustrative Mathematics programme. Appalled at what he saw, he sent the following note to the principal: Thus, with apologies for being blunt but recognizing that everyone’s time is short and that I have beat around the bush long enough, the new Illustrative Mathematics “Open Up” curriculum is complete rubbish. It is classic progressive non-education. It never teaches, i.e. explains, mathematics. Instead, the units follow an awful pattern. First, students get vague chit-chat and a series of vaguer problems, from which they must intuit a general idea not stated explicitly. This mystery idea is then used in further problems. Finally, the “Summary” section has the chutzpah to list the mystery idea as if it had been taught. And the idea is often expressed in a confusing and mathematically incompetent way. (personal communication, 2018)

He went on: As I mentioned, the curriculum attempts to compensate for its superficiality by attaching “be prepared to explain your reasoning“ to most problems, thereby forcing students to fill the class period writing long explanations to ill-defined and mostly pointless problems. In a typical class period, students will solve two or three problems - all trivial. I dread the thought that my daughter, and the other students, will spend so much time in math class and learn so little. (personal communication, 2018)

And: Even a great teacher cannot overcome the obstacles set by this awful curriculum. Please, save the […] students from it. It will make the parents with enough time and money arrange tutoring for their own children, often using Singapore Math, while leaving the poorer children adrift. That is not fair or just. (personal communication, 2018)

It is not just the learning of science and mathematics that is hindered by constructivist pedagogy, literacy suffers the same fate. The vehicle here is the Dame Marie Clay,

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University of Auckland-originated, now internationally adopted, Reading Recovery programme that uses ‘Whole Language’ and/or ‘Whole Word’ literacy instruction in an intense, multi-week, one-to-one sessions with a tutor and a student (https://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_Recovery). Students are supposed to be constructing meanings and making meaningful connections between letters grouped together in words, and words grouped into sentences. They are supposed to learn words by sight. The programme has received massive New Zealand government funding (currently NZD25 million pa); it has effectively elbowing phonics instruction out of New Zealand’s, and other countries’ schools. But it has been demonstrated to be a barrier to development of children’s reading, writing, and literacy competencies (Hattie, 2009; Nicholson, 1998; Stahl, 1999). It is an expensive and distracting mistake. Not just a barrier, but a complete disaster for countless hundreds of thousands of young children who simply never learnt to read, and perhaps millions worldwide whose reading level is severely truncated. In the light of staggering illiteracy levels, the State of New South Wales has mandated phonics instruction, with the Education Minister saying the Reading Wars are over, and the constructivist era of making up your own sounds and meanings is finished (Sydney Morning Herald, 30 November 2020; https://www.smh.com.au/national/phonics-check-to-be-compul sory-as-minister-declares-reading-wars-won-20201127-p56iol.html). My U.S. friend said of his daughters’ school that the reading teaching is almost completely whole language, where students are taught every strategy possible: They are taught to use pictures, to use neighbouring words, to use the first letter, the last letter, etc. He added: ‘The only strategy not taught is what I learnt as reading: decoding a word from left to right to produce one phoneme at a time and blending it into a word (or doing so one syllable at a time)’. And related that: As a result, in my older daughter’s grade [5th grade, ages 10/11], all the students who read well (fluently, rapidly, and correctly) were taught to read by their parents. The rest got the school nonsense, reinforced by the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and are unskilled readers, reading slowly and/or guessing at multisyllable words. (personal communication, 2018)

My experience, and that of my US friend, provides anecdotal evidence against constructivist pedagogy, the kind of evidence of which there is too much in education where it is common enough to see a second anecdote being counted as a replication study. But the supposed efficacy of constructivist, or minimally guided pedagogy, has now been challenged by serious educational researchers. Richard Mayer, a pastPresident of the Division of Educational Psychology of the American Psychological Association, a former editor of the Educational Psychologist, and a former co-editor of Instructional Science, reviewed an extensive body of research on constructivist pedagogy and concluded that it did not work, and where it did work, it worked in virtue of departing from constructivist principles (Mayer, 2004, 2009). Mayer’s analysis was confirmed by John Sweller, my UNSW educational psychologist colleague, who in a much-cited co-authored review article, concluded:

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… the past half century of research on this issue has provided overwhelming and unambiguous evidence that unguided or minimally guided learning is significantly less effective and efficient than guidance that is specifically designed to support the cognitive processing necessary for learning. Not only is minimally-guided learning ineffective for most learners, it may even be harmful for some … (Kirschner et al., 2006, p. 75)

And it is a very large ‘most’ for whom constructivism is harmful, including slow learners, students from poor or socially stressed families, students from homes where education is either not valued or not evident, and so on. Other researchers disputed Sweller and colleagues’ surmising (Hmelo-Silver et al., 2007) but in turn these were answered (Sweller et al., 2007). Conveniently, some of the major contributions to this debate have been gathered into a single anthology (Tobias & Duffy, 2009). Notwithstanding the philosophical and pedagogical problems documented by so many, the constructivist caravan rolled on across the international educational landscape, being adopted by country after country, province after province, as the ‘official’ or endorsed educational theory. The mathematics, literacy, and science casualties are not just individual students, here and there, but entire cohorts of children in entire provinces, states, and countries. Two Swedish researchers, after noting that ‘The findings in the TIMSS and PISA assessments suggest that there has been a significant decline in knowledge among Swedish students in recent years’, commented: Sweden has gone the farthest toward abandoning a knowledge-based core curriculum and a pedagogy in which students internalize and learn to apply knowledge under the teacher’s instruction and supervision. Sweden has a long history of incorporating far-reaching socialconstructivist ideas into the school system. At the same time, Sweden is also unique among Western democracies in its commitment to for-profit voucher schools and school competition. This combination has proven profoundly toxic for the quality of Sweden’s education. (Henrekson & Wennström, 2018)

7.2 University of Auckland, Science Education Chair (1992–1993) In 1992 I applied for and was appointed to the Foundation Chair of Science Education at the University of Auckland. It was a significant step for me, and also for New Zealand as this was the country’s first professorship in science education. The university handsomely supported the position with a full-time secretary/researcher, library space, offices, a second appointment, and a dedicated fund to support visiting lecturers and scholars. Being cautious, I took leave from UNSW when taking up the Auckland position. This suited the UNSW School of Education, because at a time of university cutbacks, it effectively kept a position on its books, without costing it anything. As will be detailed below, my caution was wise.

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7.2.1 New Zealand’s Education Tradition New Zealand’s population of about 5 million, is the same as Sydney’s. When I went there it had seven important and internationally known universities: University of Otago (Dunedin), University of Canterbury (Christchurch), Victoria University (Wellington), Massey University (Palmerston North), University of Waikato (Hamilton), and University of Auckland (Auckland). The influence of Scotland, Wales, and England on the universities was manifest, both in architecture and programmes. Academically, just like in rugby union, the country fights well above its population weight. Beginning with Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937), there has been a long string of notable New Zealand scientists, including Nobel Laureates. Though the local lore is that if a laureate was also an All Black, his memorial note would lead with mention of his rugby achievement. The country also had notable philosophers of science. Karl Popper had taken refuge at the University of Canterbury from 1937 to 1945. He sought a position at the University of Sydney but was vetoed as an ‘enemy alien’ by conservative political forces, and so took up the London School of Economics position he famously occupied to his end. Among philosophers of science when I went to the country were Alan Musgrave at Otago (Musgrave, 1993, 1999) and Robert Nola in Auckland (Nola, 1988, 2003; Nola & Sankey, 2007). Derek Hodson, who had made valuable contributions to HPS&ST research was also at Auckland (Hodson, 1981, 1982, 1986a, 1986b, 1988). The University of Waikato did have a science education centre, but no professor. To my regret, I had not attended to its work before taking the Auckland position. Doing so would have prepared me for what was to come. I thought that my HPS priorities and competencies would well fit New Zealand’s own academic and educational tradition; and dared thought that perhaps a HPSaware national science education research programme, with immediate connections to the national government, curriculum development, and teacher education, might be established. A sort of ‘HPS&ST in One Country’ situation.

7.2.2 Philosophy of Education and Obscurantist Writing Going to Auckland brought me into immediate contact with New Zealand’s Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA) colleagues Jim Marshall, Michael Peters, Colin Lankshear, and others. They were friends, and welcoming colleagues. Within days of arriving in Auckland I was given a random collection of about half-a-dozen M.A. theses and/or proposals to read and grade. I was staggered at how poorly written some of them were; and it was the writing of young adults who were already university graduates. I recall saying to my wife: ‘How can students get so far and write so badly?’ I soon learnt part of the answer: it was the philosophical diet that many of the students could not adequately digest and master.

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Marshall, was born in Auckland and who played serious rugby there, did his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Bristol with Stephen Körner, the Kant scholar; and published a well-used Introduction to Philosophy of Education (Marshall, 1983). By the time I went to Auckland, Jim’s philosophical interests were solidly Wittgensteinian (Smeyers & Marshall, 1995), and moving in decidedly continental, Foucaultian, and postmodern directions (Marshall, 1989). This trajectory was charted in a subsequent Festschrift celebrating his work (Smeyers & Peters, 2006). He regarded Foucault as ‘one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century’. All of this flowed on, and part-formed, Michael Peters his graduate student who became a prime mover in international philosophy of education, holding professorships in different universities, editing journals, book series, encyclopedias and handbooks, and publishing numerous articles and books (Peters, 1989, 1995a, 1995b, 2003, Peters & Marshall, 1999). I envied their command of Wittgenstein, which was later to find expression in a co-authored book (Peters & Marshall, 1999) but we differed on the philosophical merit of the Heidegger-Lyotard-Derrida-Foucault-inspired work they were pursuing in numerous books, articles, and higher degree supervision. To my simple, or jaundiced, eye, much of it was unintelligible, and did not reward the effort of trying to discern its ‘deep’ meaning. And where the meaning is clear enough, it is contentious. In a recent publication, Peters has restated the unifying postmodern claim that he made 30+ years ago: There is no universal metalanguage in which to understand science. The reality is that there are [as] many sciences as there are languages and, as Wittgenstein argued, new languages are added to the old ones, like suburbs to an old town. (Peters, 2020, p. 1229)

As will shortly be seen, this position had enormous consequence for science education debate in New Zealand and, of course, elsewhere where serious economic, health, education, and personal well-being matters hinge upon being able to identify the good from the bogus claimants to science; science from scientology; genuine science from pseudoscience. I was moving in a different direction to my Auckland colleagues. For good or bad, nothing in my philosophical background prepared me to understand, much less engage with, for instance, the sort of thinking and writing that, some years later, led Michael Peters, after multiple pages explicating Heidegger and Derrida, two of the foremost obscurantists of the modern age, to write: It might be argued that the prospect of a critical pedagogy of difference, of a genuinely multicultural and internationalist pedagogy suitable for the future, is located at the interstices and in the interplay between a ‘democracy to come’ and a ‘subject to come’, a global subject whose critical function it is to both initiate and interrogate the new International. (Peters, 2003, p. 327)

Much less was I prepared for an evaluation of the kind of claim, in the same article, that ‘Heidegger’s thought is guided by the double motif of being as presence and of the proximity of being to the essence of man’ (ibid., p. 315). Perhaps this means something, but I do not know what, and I doubt whether the effort of finding out would be worth it. But Auckland graduate students had to master, or become proficient in, this form of thought; some did, many did not.

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Henry Giroux, a critical theorist much-admired by New Zealand science educators, and lauded by Jim Marshall and Michael Peters, penned the following 80-word sentence: In this case, the notion of voice is developed around a politics of difference and community that is not rooted in simply a celebration of plurality, but rather in a particular form of human community that encourages and dignifies plurality as part of an ongoing effort to develop social relations in which all voices in their differences become unified in their efforts to identify and recall moments of human suffering and the need to overcome the conditions that perpetuate such suffering. (Giroux, 1987, p. 119)

What can one say? Giroux is trying to say something about equality, a fair society, and the need to respect different opinions. All of this is laudable, but he is not succeeding. That someone of his education and standing cannot write clearly is a mark against the profession. He edited the Critical Studies in Education and Culture book series in which Peters and Marshall’s Wittgenstein book was published (Peters & Marshall, 1999). In the Foreword, Giroux less than helpfully writes: … both cultural studies theorists and critical educators have … analyzed the challenges that teachers will have to face in redefining a new mission for education, one that is linked to honoring the experiences, concerns, and diverse histories and languages that give expression to the multiple narratives that engage and challenge the legacy of democracy. (Peters & Marshall, 1999, p. xiii)

Such discourse has now come to dominate PES and PESA conferences and publications. Writers of such sentences rise to be senior professors, authors, and editors of scores of books and handbooks. A significant educational problem, a problem extending far beyond the shores of New Zealand, is that such obscure, if not unintelligible, writing has become the norm in education programmes. Incomprehensibility—‘educobabble’—is becoming the disciplinary norm. For instance, consider the following sentence written by a trio of prominent education constructivists: The path of constituted objectivity is in essence welcoming a variety of worldviews, and thus recognizes the path of transcendental objectivity as a legitimate one, because even though one pretends to make observations in transcendental objectivity, the human praxis in which these observations are made is still a path of constituted objectivity. (Maheus et al., 2010, p. 218)

Assuming that this sentence is trying to assert something, is it saying any more than: ‘unbiased observation is impossible’? If stated the latter way, then the claim can be historically, philosophically, and psychologically examined in the routine ways that have been common for the past four hundred years. There is a comprehensive literature on just the subject, going back at least to Bacon’s famed discussion of the ‘Idols of the Mind’ in his 1620 Novum Organum (Bacon, 1620/1960). Importantly Bacon did not believe that such influences or bias needed to be denied or eradicated, just that they had to be recognised and corrected, or compensated for where necessary (Gaukroger, 2001, pp. 118–131). He did not believe in, nor seek, a virgin perception. The damage done to the minds of students who are subject to one, two, three, or more years of reading texts such as those above, is inestimable. I saw the effects with

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my own eyes within days of arriving in Auckland. If that is the academic norm, if that is how you are supposed to learn to write, then what possible chance is there that university education can contribute to people writing clearly, being able to judge sense from nonsense, good advice from gobbledegook, and appreciate the difference between sound and unsound arguments? Minimal chance. At the time of life when so much can be learnt, students’ brains are scrambled. Sadly, their education prepares them when employed to make contributions such as the following from the New South Wales (Australia) government’s Official Handbook of Grammar for Teachers of English K-6 (1994): Explanation and information report tend to use either a positive or negative polarity or a high modality as they account for the certainty or usuality of phenomena. (p. 30)

And this in an official Handbook of Grammar for primary teachers! What does it say about a major national education bureaucracy that such a sentence could be written, find its way into print, and be distributed? Either everyone in the bureaucracy is looking the other way, or their training numbs them to such literary atrocities; they have become educrats. Little wonder that education schools and faculty are held in low esteem. So much for the claim that humanities education needs to be encouraged, funded, and protected for ‘the good of the country’. What is the social good, if at the end of a well-funded programme, students cannot write a clear sentence, or construct a decent and connected argument? Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) lamented: Pretentious rhetoric, deliberate or compulsive obscurity or vagueness, metaphysical patter studded with irrelevant or misleading allusions to (at best) half-understood scientific or philosophical theories or to famous names, is an old, but at present particularly prevalent, device for concealing poverty of thought or muddle, and sometimes perilously near a confidence trick. (Berlin, 2000, p. 221)

Fifty years earlier, George Orwell (1903–1950) well-nailed the problem: [language] becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. … to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. (Orwell, 1945, in Locke et al., 1962, p. 126)

In the philosophy of education community, there had been, sadly, a marked turn away from engagement with science and philosophy of science. For instance, I arrived a day late for the 1999 US Philosophy of Education Society (PES) New Orleans conference. When signing in, all those enrolled received one sticker that they could put on any book in the publisher’s display. I thought I would have missed all the best books. It was revealing that the only two books out of perhaps 200 not ‘ticketed’ for later collection were Alexander Bird’s Philosophy of Science (Bird, 1998) and Mario Bunge’s anthology The Critical Approach: Essays in Honour of Karl Popper (Bunge, 1964). I rescued both from their dumper-bin fate, and they now sit happily in my library. Twenty years earlier at PES such books would have been the first taken; perhaps now they would not even get onto the ‘give away’ table. The history and philosophy of science has gone ‘off the boil’ in academic circles.

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7.2.3 Constructivist Dominance of Science Education It was only after arriving in New Zealand that I realised that the country’s science education establishment—curriculum writing, examinations, graduate student programmes—had been taken over lock-stock-and-barrel by constructivists. There was a Stalinesque ‘Constructivism in one country’ situation obtaining. The University of Waikato’s Science and Mathematics Education Research Group (SMER) was the beating heart of the constructivist operation. Academics there, notably Beverley Bell, had studied at, and been mesmerised by, the then powerful Leeds University Science Education Department headed by the late Rosalind Driver (1941–1997). The Waikato group had brought the true constructivist religion back to New Zealand and, as it is a small country, they just needed to fill maybe four or five key positions in universities and the government’s Education Unit, in order to have control over the nation’s science education. This they did. A key element was their government-funded Learning in Science Programme (LISP). The basic problem was that the Leeds group, as with many other constructivist groups around the world, were saying things that were philosophically doubtful, to put not too fine a point on it, but to folk with no knowledge of the history of philosophy, or no time to think philosophically, these contentious things sounded profound and seemingly had great intellectual gravitas. For example, the Leeds group maintained, in a popular publication, that ‘the criterion for truth lies in each of us’. A moment’s reflection should show that there are serious problems with this formulation; yet it was repeated mantra-like by the Waikato group. Elsewhere the Leeds group asserted that, because theoretical entities postulated by science are human constructions, they can have no existential reference. This anti-realist, idealist assertion was question-begging and clearly silly, nevertheless was widely repeated; as was the sceptical mantra that ‘we can have no access to reality’. Also widely repeated by constructivists was the idealist slogan that there is no independent reality: objects and events are all human dependent—if you do not recognise or name a tsunami, then there will not be one. Grayson Wheatley, a prominent US mathematics educator and constructivist, unapologetically and clearly states the idealist position: From a constructivist perspective, knowledge originates in the learner’s activity performed on objects. But objects do not lie around ready made in the world but are mental constructs. (Wheatley, 1991, p. 10)

As has already been mentioned, John Staver a prominent US science educator and constructivist, affirmed: ‘For constructivists, observations, objects, events, data, laws, and theory do not exist independently of observers’ (Staver, 1998, p. 503). Charitably, these statements might be seen as just lazy writing; neither Staver nor Wheatley can literally mean what they say. Clearly there are no observations, data, or theories without observers. This need not be said. But on the coat-tails of a mundane, undisputed claim, comes the disputed and false claim that objects, events, and lawful behaviours do not exist without observers. Did nature not exist prior to

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the appearance of homo sapiens? Heart surgeons cannot work in a lazy and casual way, nor should academics so write. Steve Woolgar says of his own version of constructivism that it: is consistent with the position of the idealist wing of ethnomethodology that there is no reality independent of the words (texts, signs, documents, and so on) used to apprehend it. In other words, reality is constituted in and through discourse. (Woolgar, 1986, p. 312)

This is a startling narcissistic, idealist, and false claim. Does the world really contain devils because people speak of them? Did a dream-time serpent move across the surface of Australia forming the rivers and escarpments because Aboriginal people uniformly say there was such? Are all recovered memory claims to be recognised because people talk about them? Was there phlogiston in the eighteenth-century world because people were talking about it? Was Donald Trump’s inauguration crowd the biggest in history because he said it was? Do Sudanese women become witches because the village talk of them as such? This ‘discourse makes the world’ claim, is not just philosophical folly, it is human and political folly. Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) in Turandot Scene 4A nicely captures the matter: Teacher Si Fu Teacher Si Fu Teacher Si Fu

Si Fu, name the basic questions of philosophy. Are things external to us, self-sufficient, independent of us, or are things in us, dependent on us, non-existent without us? Which opinion is the correct one? There has been no decision about it. Why does the question remain unresolved? The Congress which was to have made the decision took place two hundred years ago at Mi Sang monastery, which lies on the bank of the Yellow River. The question was: Is the Yellow River real or does it exist only in people’s heads? But during the Congress the snow thawed in the mountains and swept away the Mi Sang monastery with all the participants in the Congress. So the proof that things exist, independently of us was not furnished. (in Suchting, 1986, p. 53)

7.2.4 A National Debate In 1993 the rift between the constructivists on the one hand and myself on the other burst onto the NZ national stage. The debate was over the new constructivist-inspired National Science Curriculum, and was sparked by two articles in Auckland’s New Zealand Herald newspaper, both written by school teachers and complaining first about the introduction of Achievement Based Assessment (ABA) and, second, about the ‘Dumbing Down of the Curriculum’. The debate went national when I supported the teachers by contributing an Opinion Piece to the newspaper titled ‘Curriculum Reform Degrades Sciences’ (NZH, 26 August 1993). This article was reproduced the same year in Christchurch’s The Press (27 September 1993), and Wellington’s The Dominion (12 October 1993).

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Though written thirty years ago, I still stand by each of its claims. As many of the claims and related arguments were developed in my subsequent writing, it is useful to reproduce the piece in full. The New Zealand Herald has done a valuable service to the country in publishing the recent articles of Martin Hanson (10 August) and Max Thomson (18 August) on the sorry state of New Zealand science education ‘reforms’ and the associated changes to school assessment procedures. Hanson and Thomson are right in suggesting that the country is being led into an educational and scientific abyss. However neither author has identified the doctrinal engine powering the supposed reforms: this is the theory of Constructivism which has been enthusiastically embraced by the official science education establishment in New Zealand. The country is small and thus, unfortunately, only a few key people need convert to a loony doctrine for it to have national influence. These are exceedingly contentious claims. Not just contentious but many, myself included, would say down-right silly. The mystery is that there seems to have been no criticism of officialdom’s wrapping of itself, and New Zealand’s science education, in this Constructivist cloak. The Draft Forms 1-5 Science Syllabus was explicitly based on Constructivist principles. So also is the 1993 Science in the National Curriculum statement. The refrain ‘children construct their own knowledge’ is repeated mantra-like in these documents. But like most mantras the meaning of the refrain is never examined or defended. Science in the National Curriculum identifies scientific thinking as: being curious, being creative, having hunches, clarifying ideas and feelings, thinking about your own thinking. All of these traits are laudable, but they are not uniquely scientific. The national curriculum document holds that scientific thinking is anything but knowing science, anything but mastering the special conceptual tools of science. The same document lists a number of possible learning experiences that are supposed to develop the above version of scientific thinking. These include asking questions about the observed changes during the cooking of pikelets, clarifying ideas on an environmental issue, clarifying ideas about what an animal is, guessing the reason for the distribution of crabs on a rocky shore. This is scientific thinking made easy, it is scientific thinking without the hard work of conceptual mastery. One fears for students subjected to this regime. The only opportunity most of them will have to be introduced to the hard-won, culturally significant, world of scientific thought and its disciplines will have been squandered. Scientific thinking is so degraded in the official documents that anything counts as science. Unfortunately for New Zealand students, most of the world, including the best research institutes, do not share this delusion. Along with this degrading of the subject matter of science, or ‘dumbing of the curriculum’ as Thomson and Hanson call it, goes a degrading of the profession of teaching. Constructivism fundamentally asserts that knowledge has to be individually constructed, the transmission of knowledge is in principle ruled out. The Draft Forms 1–5 Syllabus devotes one page to ‘the role of the teacher’. Included in its ten-part characterisation of the teacher’s role are: ensuring equity for all students, creating a friendly learning environment, listening to students, ensuring students communicate, challenging sensitively the ideas of students and providing resources. A teacher’s role is to do everything but teach; instead of teachers we now have facilitators. This democratising of the teaching profession might give many a warm feeling, but soon the economic penny will drop: if teachers are just facilitators, then why spend money ensuring

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they have a science degree, and why pay them high salaries when lots of good but untrained people could equally listen, encourage, support, provide, and challenge students. What replaces truth and knowledge in constructivist wonderland is ‘making sense’. The draft syllabus says that ‘Science is about people exploring and investigating their biological, physical, and technical worlds, and making sense of them in logical and creative ways’. The curriculum opens with a restatement of this sensism doctrine. ‘Sensism’ appears in nearly all Ministry documents relating to science education. I believe this is a fundamentally erroneous and dangerous conception of the nature and goals of science: science does not strive to make sense of the world, it strives to find out the truth about the world. These truths when found, normally do not make obvious sense; rather they require the overturn and reconstitution of common sense. As many people have observed, if it makes sense it is probably not scientific. Most scientific advances have entailed commitment to propositions that literally defied sense – Copernicus’s rotating earth, Galileo’s point masses and colourless bodies, Newton’s inertial systems that in principle cannot be experienced, Darwin’s gradualist evolutionary assumptions so at odds with the fossil record, Einstein’s mass-energy equivalence etc. Constructivist and relativist ideas have unhappy consequences for culture and social life that are seldom examined. It is notorious that people have for centuries thought that the grossest injustices, and the greatest evils, have all made sense. The subjection of women to men has, and still does, make perfectly good sense to millions of people and to scores of societies; explaining illness in terms of possession by evil spirits makes perfectly good sense to countless millions; the intellectual inferiority of particular races is perfectly sensible to millions of people including some of the most advanced thinkers. It is clear that the appeal to sense is not going to be sufficient to refute such views; but the appeal to truth which is independent of human desires or power, may be able to overturn such opinions. Science, and science education, can play a powerful role in the general improvement of culture. But it can only do this if it is seen as seeking the truth about the world, and as being partially successful in its efforts. It can play its much-needed role if it inculcates an attitude of humility before the world: The world judges our claims to knowledge of it, we cannot just construct whatever suits our fancy, our interests, or our culture, and call it knowledge.

The controversy—‘Professors Divided’—was picked up in radio interviews, and many newspaper feature-writers up and down the country contributed their bit. There was a lot at stake. Beverley Bell and other Waikato staff confidently said: In taking into account the findings of the Learning in Science Projects [LISP], most teachers are challenged to change their implicit theories of students, schools, how children learn, the nature of knowing and knowledge, and the implications of these for teaching and learning activities in their classrooms. (Bell et al., 1990, p. 32)

The extent to which New Zealand constructivism had blossomed beyond its initial concern with children’s learning could be seen in an article by Beverley Bell, which made confident pronouncements upon: ‘A constructivist view of learning’, ‘A constructivist view of teaching’, ‘A view of science’, ‘Aims of science education’, ‘A constructivist view of curriculum’, and ‘A constructivist view of curriculum development’—to quote just the subheadings of the single article (Bell, 1991). The LISP project picks out the critical theorists Michael Apple, Stanley Aronowitz, Peter McLaren, and Henry Giroux as being particularly important thinkers. Apple’s first book Ideology and Curriculum (Apple, 1979) had great merit;

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his following books, less merit. Giroux has been cited above as an exemplar of ‘should do better’ writing. Jane Gilbert, a Waikato University constructivist, had correctly drawn attention to the ‘many parallels between the literature on the development of critical pedagogy [and] the literature on constructivist learning’ (Gilbert, 1993, p. 35). And she rejoiced that: Critical theorists question the value of such concepts as individualism, efficiency, rationality and objectivity, and the forms of curriculum and pedagogy that have developed from these concepts. (Gilbert, 1993, p. 20).

When university educators proclaim that rationality and objectivity are, per se, undesirable, then there truly has been a profound change in the educational climate; and one that prefigures a profound change for the worst in New Zealand culture, and the cultures of any other society adopting such catastrophic educational programmes. It is difficult enough to separate Fake News from Genuine News; it is impossible, to make the separation when the very idea of objectivity and rationality is abandoned. This leads immediately to Trump Land. The deleterious cultural consequence was recognised sixty years ago by Karl Popper: The belief of a liberal - the belief in the possibility of a rule of law, of equal justice, of fundamental rights, and a free society - can easily survive the recognition that judges are not omniscient and may make mistakes about facts. … But the belief in the possibility of a rule of law, of justice, and of freedom, can hardly survive the acceptance of an epistemology which teaches that there are no objective facts; not merely in this particular case, but in any other case. (Popper, 1963, p. 5)

But critical theorists and constructivists have been relaxed and comfortable about denying not just knowledge of reality and the existence of facts but have ‘officially’ embraced a ‘many truths’, pluralistic, thoroughly relativist epistemology. Along with a ‘many worlds’ ontology. It should have been obvious, but wasn’t, that serious critical thinking depends upon there being ‘facts of the matter’ about which evidence can be adduced and arguments intelligently progressed. The facts may not be agreed upon, but to say in advance that there are not any facts, and even if there were, they could not be known, is just destructive of the rational enterprise and of education. Peter Boghossian well observed that: Constructivist pedagogies cannot achieve their critical thinking ambitions. Constructivism, and constructivist epistemological presuppositions, actively thwarts the critical thinking process. Using Wittgenstein’s private language argument, this paper argues that corrective mechanisms—the ability to correct a student’s propositions and cognitions against the background of a shared, knowable world—are indispensible to critical thinking. (Boghossian, 2012, p. 73)

One participant in the fourth LISP project on Teacher Development spoke of her understanding of teaching prior to exposure to Waikato constructivism: … those teachers I thought were effective at school were those who seemed … very knowledgeable and put it across in the form that I could understand. And so I always strived in my teaching to try and put things across in a nicely structured form that made sense and had easily followed steps. I thought that was what a good teacher was. (Bell, 1992, p. 7)

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She was in for a surprise. What she so clearly described, and aspired to, would become Exhibit A of Bad Teaching in the Waikato educational scheme of things. It so happened that the very public 1993 debate that I was involved in was an amplification and re-run of a comparable 1989 debate occasioned by the preparation of the Draft Forms 1–5 Science Curriculum which had also been overseen by the Centre for Science and Mathematics Education Research at the University of Waikato. Beverley Bell, who directed the development of the draft, acknowledged that ‘my [her] promotion of the constructivist view of learning and of the curriculum is well known’ (Bell, 1986, p. 9). Unfortunately, the 1989 debate was contained within ‘official channels’ and surfaced publicly only in provincial papers. It did not engage a wide cross-section of the country—it happened under the public radar. It did, however, raise substantial educational and philosophical concerns that were still unresolved three years later when I arrived in the country. The Education Committee of the Royal Society of New Zealand commented adversely upon the 1989 Draft. The Society said of the Draft’s definition of science, that: Science is based on observation, organisation of observations, and devising explanations. It is regrettable that there is no emphasis on the need to learn how to reason scientifically. It is not an innate process, but one that we struggle to acquire through learning. (Wells, 1989, p. 3)

Of the Draft’s purported aims of science education, the Royal Society said: The aim of ‘making better sense of their world’ is judgemental and should be replaced by ‘achieve a better understanding of their world’. (Wells, 1989, p. 4)

Of the section on Girls and Science, the Society commented that: This section is offensive to many scientists, including women. It is a sexist connotation that girls do not understand disciplines such as physics. (Wells, 1989, p. 6)

About the Learning in Science section, the Society observed: This section appears to be written for educationalists and is almost unintelligible to scientists. In most areas of science there are right answers and the authors should not encourage erroneous views. … Little science can be learned by watching a laser show. (Wells, 1989, p. 6)

Concerning the Role of the Teacher section, the Society noted that: Listed are all the aspects of teaching that any good teacher has. … [however] the duty of a teacher is to be knowledgeable in what he or she teaches. Most scientists believe that teachers do not have the scientific knowledge to do the job. The deficit in, for example physics, is cause for real concern. (Wells, 1989, p. 7)

On the important matter of M¯aori Science, the Society asked: Do the authors really claim that an alternative body of science (Maori Science) exists, is documented, is available to be taught as an alternative to Western science, and that the Department of Education has the people, knowledge, skills, and resources to teach this as an alternative? (Wells, 1989, p. 1)

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And on this matter the Society believed that: The general tones in the syllabus are condescending and insulting. The statement, ‘M¯aori people do not see science as something separated from everyday skills, knowledge, attitudes, and values’ reflects a child’s holistic view. … We do not want to introduce mysticism into science, but try to teach a base for science. (Wells, 1989, p. 5)

Dr. Gwen Struik, a marine biologist, ecologist, school teacher, university lecturer, member of the Nelson Education Board, and member of the Government’s Syllabus Advisory Committee (and incidentally daughter of Dirk Struik, the earlier mentioned renowned Marxist historian of mathematics at the MIT), made submissions in 1988 and 1989 on the Draft syllabus, saying, among other things: Science is NOT about ‘growing plants’, ‘making toffee’, ‘making concrete’ etc. All these examples are technology or hobbies, not science. They could be introductory to a science activity, but only if they are linked into an investigation which asks questions, hypothesises, organises and makes a logical summary. … Science is NOT about ‘people’ – there are other disciplines which specialise in people, e.g. social studies, history. (Struik, 1989a, p. 3)

In one submission of May 1989 Struik wrote: I continue to be very unhappy with it [the draft document] for many of the reasons I outlined in my August 1988 letter … The total impact of page 7 is one long trivialisation of science, as in paragraph 4 ‘We are all scientists’. This is not true. Scientists are those who contribute to scientific knowledge. Would you say everyone who made a noise is a musician? … Scientific knowledge can be gained by non-professionals, but such knowledge becomes science only when it is incorporated by formal and recognised methods. (Struik, 1989b)

After three years of frustration, and having numerous submissions ignored, she resigned from the Syllabus Advisory Committee.

7.2.5 M¯aori Science Dr. Warwick Don, a senior lecturer in Zoology at the University of Otago, made a submission criticising, among other things, the Draft’s statement that ‘Teachers need, in their teaching and learning activities, to …. acknowledge the beliefs, values and heritage of M¯aori students’. He wrote: … science is conducted irrespective of the cultural milieu of its participants. The recognition of any ‘cultural context’ in a science syllabus only introduces an irrelevance which will inevitably distort and could even destroy the very fabric of science education. Lysenkoism [in the former USSR] and ‘scientific creationism’ graphically illustrate what can happen when non-scientific ingredients permeate the process. (Don, 1989)

And concluded: It is most regrettable that for the sake of satisfying certain political or social requirements, the integrity of science education at Forms 1-5 level is being compromised. An aim of science education is surely to produce an informed student body, not add to the high level of misunderstanding already rife in the community where science is concerned. (Don, 1989)

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Professor Jack Dodd (1922–2005), the national president of the Royal Society and internationally known quantum physicist (Dodd, 1991), said in a statement to the Society, that: Parts of the draft can only be written by people who do not understand what science is, let alone what science is about … there are patronising remarks about M¯aori and girls … science is universal. The observations and laws are the same whether you live here or on the moon … whether you are male or female, rich or poor, Jew or Gentile, black or white, M¯aori or Pakeha [non-M¯aori, whether European or Asian]. (in Dobson, 1989)

The important questions about what was labelled ‘M¯aori science’ were not resolved in 1989 and remained unresolved in 1992 when I arrived in Auckland. An item on the first Faculty of Arts meeting I attended was a motion to have completion of the Anthropology Department’s ‘M¯aori Views of the World’ course meet the ‘one science course’ requirement for trainee primary teachers. The motion brought the educational, cultural, and philosophical issues into clear focus. I argued that the Anthropology course was of great importance in New Zealand, but it was not a science subject. Further, that course could itself be made compulsory along with having also to complete a science subject, but the latter was crucial. My arguments failed to convince, and the motion was carried. Thereafter both M¯aori and Pakeha primary teachers need not have completed any science subject in their degree. Predictably, many Maori students choose to do Maori science. A blow for New Zealand primary education, and beyond. Something from which, as documented below, the country will be suffering for decades. This position has, since 2005, become official government policy in New Zealand. Researchers seeking funding, for example to the Royal Society Marsden Fund, must state how they will include M¯atauranga M¯aori (M¯aori knowledge) in their research. There are Australian and Canadian equivalents of this policy. A 2020 advertisement for a lecturer in Zoology at Otago University requires: advancing M¯atauranga M¯aori/Te Ao M¯aori perspectives in the study of Zoology with the position affording an exciting opportunity for an emerging scholar to research and teach from a kaupapa M¯aori perspective. ( Corballis et al., 2020)

Such acceptance of M¯aori science as being science is now just part of mainstream New Zealand thinking, all the way up to university departments of zoology. It is not remarked upon. A comparable advertisement in a State University in Tennessee giving preference for someone who could incorporate Creationist Science into their biology classes would surely draw attention, if not immediate outrage. New Zealand is closer to Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia, and other Muslim countries where such advertisements seeking staff who can incorporate Koranic Science into their classes are not remarked upon, except by the minority of liberals who believe that culture and politics should be kept out of scientific research, decision-making, and teaching. In an increasingly heterogeneous society, if M¯aori science is to be elevated to science status and incorporated into school science programmes, then why not Feng Shui science, Christian science, or Islamic science? Each of these has a degree of presence in the New Zealand population; they have cultural roots.

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7.2.6 Reflections on the New Zealand Experience At the end of 1993 the UNSW School of Education wanted to ‘cash in’ their heldvacant staff position. I had the alternative of continuing on with my struggles in New Zealand or returning to Australia. I chose the latter. I wrote up the New Zealand episode as a book, Challenging NZ Science Education (Matthews, 1995), and drew out some systematic lessons from the experience. In the Introduction I wrote: This book will attempt to defend a liberal, rationalist approach to science pedagogy against its detractors from both the soft left and the conservative right. It proposes a liberal theory of education and pedagogy, not a liberal theory of schooling. The former is a normative theory about what should happen in schools; the latter, as with all theories of schooling, are factual or social scientific theories that attempt to understand and explain schools as elements in the reproduction of society. … The liberal approach to science teaching attempts to teach the content of science (facts, concepts, definitions, laws, formulae, technique and methodology) and also an appreciation and knowledge of science as an important component of our intellectual history and cultural world.

After my departure, constructivist domination of New Zealand science and mathematics education was little challenged. Despite a 32% increase in government expenditure on education since 2001 there was, over the years 2000–2018, a steady decline of the nation’s performance on all internationally recognised measures of achievement in reading, science, and mathematics. The Ministry of Education’s own research showed New Zealand’s point drops in the OECD triennial PISA tests were: Reading (23 points), Science (22), and Maths (43) (JangJones, 2019; https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/series/insights-forteachers/teaching-in-nz-inquiry-based-or-teacher-directed). The Ministry Report noted that: Based on the PISA index of inquiry-based instruction, frequent exposure to inquiry-based science instruction is linked, on average, to lower scientific literacy, after accounting for student and school factors. In New Zealand, it is associated with a decrease in science performance of 14 points, equivalent to about half a year of schooling – the second highest negative association with performance among the PISA 2015 countries. (Jang-Jones, 2019, p. 4)

So, the drop in science score represents almost a lost year of teaching, and the drop in mathematics almost two years. And, as has long been known, the report noted: It appears that inquiry-based science instruction is less effective in disadvantaged schools and works best for advantaged students in advantaged schools. (Jang-Jones, 2019, p. 9)

And it might well be, as in the case of my own children and that of the American friend detailed above, that advantaged parents in constructivist schools can pay tutors for their children or teach them at home with Singapore maths or the science equivalent. Regardless, the drop in PISA science performance 2006–2018 was dramatic. At the beginning, the point difference with the USA was 530 (NZ) vs 490 (USA), twelve years later it was 508 (NZ) vs 503 (USA). New Zealand had dropped to near parity

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with the USA! If it happened in rugby, there would be a national uprising. Citizens are more sanguine about education. Linking the fall to constructivism requires much more to be filled in; pleasingly a start has been made in a recent book aptly subtitled How Bad Ideas Ruined a Once World-Leading School System (Lipson, 2020). Jane Gilbert, the aforementioned and quoted Waikato constructivist and champion of ‘critical education’, went on to be chief researcher at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, and was appointed professor of education at Auckland University of Technology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Gilbert_(New_Zealand). In 1993 she had questioned ‘the value of such concepts as individualism, efficiency, rationality and objectivity’, and having curricula based upon such suspect notions. In 2005 she published Catching the Knowledge Wave? The Knowledge Society and the Future of Education (Gilbert, 2005). This book and her work more generally were influential in government policy development, teacher education, and curriculum writing. Among other things, the book asserts that: In the world outside education, knowledge’s meaning is changing. Here, people are increasingly thinking of knowledge not as a thing, developed and stored in people, but as a kind of energy, something that does things. They are using the word ‘knowledge’ as a verb, not a noun, as a process rather than a product. (Gilbert, 2005, p. 75)

This is typical constructivist verbiage amounting to not much. Leaving aside that a process is a noun while to process is the verb, what people are supposed to be thinking or not thinking, of itself, carries no educational or philosophical weight; it settles no argument, even if many are so thinking. This is the distraction that Donald Trump refined: ‘people tell me that Obama was not born in the USA’, ‘everyone is saying that the election was rigged’, and so on. To say that knowledge is ‘a kind of energy’ advances nothing and legitimates everything that can pass itself off as energised. It is the last gasp of philosophy-free constructivism. Lots of social movements are energetic; whether they are knowledgeable or not is unrelated to how energetic they are. Sadly, it is oft an inverse relationship between the vigour of the battle-cry, and how epistemologically warranted the slogan is. Of lasting value to the wider HPS&ST research community, was the contact I made with Robert Nola, the Auckland philosopher of science who joined in the local debates, contributed to public meetings, and who has since been a regular contributor to IHPST conferences and to Science & Education journal during my editorship (Nola, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2004; Irzik & Nola, 2011, 2014). All of his papers are model examples of how philosophers of science can productively engage with, and inform discussion and research in, science education.

7.3 A Roadmap for HPS&ST Research: Routledge Book (1994, 2015) In 1989, in the process of organising the first IHPST conference at Tallahassee, I met Israel Scheffler at Harvard University and after discussion about philosophy of

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education, philosophy of science, and my own experience of combining them, I was offered a contract to write for his Routledge ‘Philosophy of Education Research Library’ series. This turned out to be a milestone in my own development; and it made a not insignificant contribution to the HPS&ST research programme. It was consciously a crossover book between philosophy of education and science education. The book’s title was Science Teaching: The Role of History and Philosophy of Science. I spent four years extensively researching and writing the manuscript, and it was published in 1994 (Matthews, 1994a). It was the first monograph whose title conjoined ‘science teaching’ with ‘history and philosophy of science’. The book gave a brief history of efforts to engage HPS in science teaching; it pointed to contemporary theoretical issues engaging science teachers and that required HPS for their illumination (constructivism, multiculturalism, and religion); it indicated how curriculum and pedagogy in certain areas (air pressure and pendulum motion) might be better served by attention to the relevant history and philosophy of the topics. It had 700 references, which reflected the ‘read things, get on top of subject matter, do not overly bother with publication’ ethos of Australian universities at the time. In the Preface I wrote: For all its faults, the scientific tradition has promoted rationality, critical thinking and objectivity. It instils a concern for evidence, and for having ideas judged not by personal or social interest, but by how the world is; a sense of ‘Cosmic Piety’, as Bertrand Russell called it. These values are under attack both inside and outside the academy. Some educationallyinfluential versions of postmodernism and constructivism turn their back on rationality and objectivity, saying that their pursuit is Quixotic. This is indeed a serious challenge to the profession of science teaching. The vitality of the scientific tradition, and its positive impact on society, depends upon children being successfully introduced to its achievements, methods and thought processes, by teachers who understand and value science. The history and philosophy of science contributes to this understanding and valuation. (Matthews, 1994a, p. xv)

This Enlightenment conviction has not changed. Pleasingly the book was wellreceived. Google Scholar listed 1,500 citations which were more than double that of the next most-cited science education book. On account of sales and citations, a second, revised, and expanded edition was published in 2015 and translated into Korean, Chinese, Turkish, Greek, and Spanish (Matthews, 2015). This edition has 2,699 citations. (https://www.routledge.com/Science-Teaching-The-Contribut ion-of-History-and-Philosophy-of-Science/Matthews/p/book/9780203123058). The basic conviction of the book was that there are many fundamental philosophical issues raised by science that can also be raised with students in science classrooms. Pleasingly philosophy does not have to be brought into science classrooms as it is already there; it just needs to be identified and discussed in a way whereby students can themselves begin to appreciate the philosophical dimension of science and to take beginning steps in thinking philosophically; philosophy is not an added burden for teachers, it is part of the subject they teach. Any philosophy of science textbook, anthology or encyclopedia will, for example, have chapters on: theory change, experimentation, idealisation, scientific revolutions,

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laws, reduction, metaphor, analogy, models, causation, explanation, values, methodology, observation, truth, approximate truth, and so on. These philosophical features can be identified and elaborated in the classroom when teaching routine topics such as evolution, genetics, oxidation, mechanics, relativity, electricity, palaeontology, photosynthesis, and so on. The features or aspects can appropriately be pointed to when students make inquiries, design and conduct experiments, collect data, propose and appraise hypotheses, argue over alternative interpretations, and so on. Likewise, philosophy is present in most of the theoretical issues that engage teachers, curriculum writers, and administrators: religion, worldviews, multiculturalism, pseudoscience, discipline structure, values, social responsibility, social justice, environmentalism, and numerous other such common issues. One such theoretical issue, constructivism, has already been discussed.

7.3.1 Realism and Anti-realism Constructivism leads naturally into discussion of a central philosophical topic that has echoed through the history of science, and that bears significantly upon what is taught about the nature of science: namely, the debate between realists and antirealists over the aims of science, and the reality and knowability of theoretical entities postulated in scientific theories—atoms, fields, forces, quanta, and the like. The Routledge book elaborated in some detail the fundamental arguments between realism and anti-realism, illustrating them from episodes in the history of science that are commonly found in science curricula: Copernicus and the heliocentric solar system, Newton and gravitation, phlogistic account of combustion, genetic mechanisms for evolution, and others. The basic realist conviction is that the world and our knowledge of it are two different things; what we learn about something and the thing itself are not identical. Contrary to Protagoras, realists do not believe that man is the measure of all things. There are a variety of realisms (Agazzi, 2017) but they share the following commitments: • An ontological commitment to the reality and independence of the world— external things and events, including unobservable and inferred entities, exist independently of cognising subjects. • A semantic commitment to the linkage of scientific claims to external things and events—science makes claims about the world. • An epistemological commitment—namely that science has made some truthful, or approximately truthful, claims about entities and processes in both the observed and unobserved world. The observed or experienced world being the everyday world revealed by ordinary vision (billiard balls, fish, clouds, etc.), the unobserved world is that indicated by instruments and about which inference are made (molecules, atoms, magnetic fields, proteins, gravity waves, etc.). • An axiological commitment that the aim and purpose of science are to produce statements and theories about the world that are true; other purposes, such as

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utility, economic gain, professional advancement, or national pride, are secondary, or merely by-products of truthfulness. Counter-wise, there is a family of anti-realist positions that are united by their rejection, sometimes for different reasons, of one or all of the realist’s ontological, semantic, epistemological, and axiological claims. The anti-realist family include positivism, empiricism, instrumentalism, constructivism, constructive empiricism, idealism, and of course the whole gamut of postmodernisms. Anti-realists believe that scientific knowledge is confined to the world of experience or sensory phenomena; that any postulated theoretical entities that go beyond such experience have to be treated only as aids, tools, models, or heuristic devices for coordinating sensory or observable phenomena, but they do not have any existence. And further, the aim of science is to produce theories that predict phenomena and connect economically—usually mathematically—items of experience. The three most powerful arguments that empiricists urge against realists are: first, the ‘idleness’ argument; second, the ‘graveyard’ argument; and third, the ‘underdetermination’ argument. Arguably Larry Laudan (1984) and Bas van Fraassen (1980) have provided the most wide-ranging critiques of realism, while van Fraassen has given the most sophisticated restatement of empiricism and instrumentalism as a viable philosophy of science. Van Fraassen says that: To be an empiricist is to withhold belief in anything that goes beyond the actual, observable phenomena, and to recognize no objective modality in nature … [it] involves throughout a resolute rejection of the demand for an explanation of the regularities in the observable course of nature, by means of truths concerning a reality beyond what is actual and observable. (van Fraassen, 1980, p. 202)

The ‘idleness’ argument was stated by Mach and was succinctly expressed by Carl Hempel (1905–1997) in his famous paper—‘The Theoretician’s Dilemma’ (Hempel, 1958)—which I had closely studied in the University of Sydney second-year philosophy of science course in 1967. Hempel states that empiricists (Braithwaite, Carnap, Feigl and others) regarded all scientific terms as belonging to either of two realms: the observable or the theoretical. The function of theories was to deductively explain or inductively enjoin observations, so that given one set of observations a second set could be predicted. Realists believed that these explanations worked because of connections in the world between the theoretical entities and processes they postulated and visible events. The postulated theoretical entities behaved in a lawlike manner (hence excluding angels and spirits from the class of scientific theoretical entities). After quoting the behaviourists Hull and Skinner on the subject, Hempel then poses the theoretician’s dilemma as follows: If the terms and principles of a theory serve their purpose they are unnecessary … if they do not serve their purpose they are surely unnecessary. But given any theory, its terms and principles either serve their purpose or they do not. Hence the terms and principles of any theory are unnecessary. (Hempel, 1958/1965, p. 186)

For Hempel, the theoretical terms—‘force’, ‘field’, ‘aether’, ‘caloric’, ‘intelligence’, ‘class’, ‘gene’, and so on—occupy scientific space but pay no rent. Well, just very

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low rent; they merely hold observables together. After due elaboration, Hempel goes further, saying that the supposed observational/experiential bed-rock is ‘a fiction’: ‘the language of actual science contains no statements of this kind’ (Hempel, 1963, p. 702). And ‘the bold structure of its theories rises, as it were, above a swamp’ there is no bedrock (ibid). Theories have to provide for inductive expansion of claims and this cannot be done using just observational terms (Hempel, 1963, p. 700). The ‘graveyard’ argument against realism has traditionally been most convincing. It was given sharp formulation by Larry Laudan (Laudan, 1984) who points out that the history of science is littered with discarded theoretical entities which earlier were firmly ensconced in the best and most successful science of their time—crystalline spheres, caloric, phlogiston, humours, the aether, and others—all these theoretical terms were assumed to be referential. It turns out they were not. And Laudan adds that there is no reason to think that our best current candidates for truth will have a different fate. This is his widely endorsed ‘pessismistic meta-induction’ (PMI) argument against realism (Laudan, 1984). The ‘underdetermination’ argument appeals to the fact that theoretical terms are always underdetermined by the evidence available, and consequently the same evidence will also support other extant or potential, theoretical entities. So, the evidence provides no special basis for any particular referential claim. Drawing on the work of Boyd (1984), Bunge (2006), Hooker (1985, 1987), McMullin (1984), Musgrave (1996), Psillos (1999), Schlagel (1986), Snyder (2005), and others, I offered defences against the empiricist arguments outlined above, and the thrust of these can be readily understood and utilised in classroom discussion and elaborations. Laudan’s Pessimistic Meta-Induction (PMI) can be countered. First, it is nullified by making burial conditions more stringent, and hence reducing the number of tombs in the scientific graveyard. Not just any old, discarded theory warrants burial in the sacred graveyard, but only well-confirmed theories whose confirmation came from prediction of novel facts. Empirical adequacy is not just passive agreement with facts or phenomena—astrology and natural theology are both capable of that—but to be buried in the scientific section of the cemetery requires that the theory has made novel confirmed predictions that result from its recourse to its postulated theoretical entities. This step reduces the number of graves on which to base the pessimistic induction. The second rebuttal is achieved by checking whether the buried theories are indeed dead. The realist assuredly needs to acknowledge theory change even for substantial and successful theories. But it is always an open question as to what degree the new theory retains elements or entities from the old theory it replaced. To the degree that there is continuity in theory change, then the grounds for PMI are further diminished (Cordero, 2013). Parts of some corpses might still be alive; or perhaps better, parts might be able to be reused. Fresnel’s theory of light warranted burial in the scientific cemetery (it was widely endorsed, successful, and made confirmed predictions), but although buried, parts of the theory did live on and inform subsequent nineteenth-century optics, so it could

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be exhumed and not take up so much cemetery space. Laudan has an argument, but it is not the lay down misère that it is oft taken to be. Ian Hacking has cautioned that if science is conceived as simply a representation of the world, then the empiricist arguments are so strong that realism has no satisfactory reply; realism has to look to new forms of justification. He finds these in the success of scientific intervention and experimentation. Hacking provides a pragmatic, but not utilitarian, justification of realism. On the reality of electrons, Hacking provided philosophical support for a scientist’s observation: ‘So far as I’m concerned, if you can spray them, then they are real’ (Hacking, 1983, p. 23). Allan Franklin, a philosophically informed physicist, also argues that the ongoing success of experimental practice confirms modest realism: Supporting a realist position does not, however, mean that I believe in either the absolute truth of the laws or in the ‘real’ existence of the entities. It means only that I think we have good reasons for believing in the truth of the laws and in the existence of the entities. (Franklin, 1999, p. 160)

The modest realism that I supported in the book, and still do, maintains that: • Theoretical terms in a science attempt to refer to some reality. • Scientific theories are to varying degrees successful in their attempts at reference. • Scientific progress, in at least mature sciences, is due to their being increasingly true. • The natural world that science investigates is independent of our thoughts and our minds. In addition to being pleased with the book’s widespread readership and translations, I hope that teachers have been able to find within its covers sufficient material to help them to change the way they teach science in the classroom, where the ultimate purpose of science education can be found.

7.4 Pendulum Studies (1995–2005) In 1994, returning to UNSW from Auckland, I was able to turn back to my Shimonyinspired pendulum studies. Utilising the wonderful resources of the UNSW library (in the days before everything was available online), I wrote a comprehensive book on the history, philosophy, and pedagogy of pendulum motion. The book Time for Science Education: How the History and Philosophy of Pendulum Motion can Contribute to Science Literacy—had 1,300 references and was published in 2000 (Matthews, 2000a; https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780306458804). All references were available in the wonderful UNSW library, and without the relentless pressure to publish, I was able, in my own time, to read them all. It is oft asked: How could 1,300 papers be written about the pendulum? The answer I give is: ‘read the book and see’.

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7.4.1 Centrality of the Pendulum in the Founding of Modern Science The pendulum had a major impact on the development of science and thereby on society and culture. The pendulum was central to the studies of Galileo, Huygens, Newton, Hooke, and all the leading figures of the Scientific Revolution. The study and manipulation of the pendulum established many things: an accurate method of timekeeping and hence solving the longitude problem; discovering the conservation and collision laws; ascertaining the value of the acceleration due to gravity g, and the variation of g from equatorial to polar regions, and hence the oblate shape of the earth; provided crucial evidence for Newton’s synthesis of terrestrial and celestial mechanics, showing that fundamental laws are universal in the solar system; a dynamical proof for the rotation of the earth on its axis; the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass; an accurate measurement of the density and hence mass of the earth (Baker & Blackburn, 2005). And if that is not enough, there was much more. Pendulum motion was central to the argument between Aristotelians and Galileo over the role of experience in settling conflicting claims about the world. And it figured in Newton’s major metaphysical dispute with the Cartesians, namely the dispute concerning the existence of the aether. The pendulum provided a very clear and accessible window into the methodological innovation of the Scientific Revolution, of the methodological difference between the old Aristotelian and the new Galilean/Newtonian science. Domenico Bertoloni Meli observed that: Starting with Galileo, the pendulum was taking a prominent place in the study of motion and mechanics, both as a time-measuring device and as a tool for studying motion, force, gravity, and collision. (Meli, 2006, p. 206)

With good reason the historian Bertrand Hall attested: In the history of physics, the pendulum plays a role of singular importance. From the early years of the seventeenth century, when Galileo announced his formulation of the laws governing pendular motion, to the early years of this century, when it was displaced by devices of superior accuracy, the pendulum was either an object of study or a means to study questions in astronomy, gravitation and mechanics. (Hall, 1978, p. 441)

The importance of the pendulum in science and philosophy was exceeded only by its importance to commerce, navigation, exploration, and European expansion. A convenient and accurate measure of the passage of time was crucial for the pressing commercial and military problem of determining longitude at sea, as well as for everyday economic and social affairs. The pendulum answered these problems. Unfortunately, the centrality and importance of the pendulum for the development of modern science is not reflected in textbooks and school curricula where it appears as an ‘exceedingly arid’ √ subject and is mostly, even in the best classes, dismissed with a formula T = 2π l/g], some routine mathematical exercises, and perhaps some practical classes. It is frequently mentioned as the ‘most boring subject in the physics

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programme’, and folk are not surprised to see, in movies, the swinging pendulum used to induce hypnosis: ‘it did that to me in science class’! In the Introduction of Time for Science Education I wrote: This book outlines something of the pendulum story and its scientific, philosophical, and cultural ramifications. It also tries to indicate how understanding that story can assist teachers to improve science education by suggesting pendulum-related curricular content, experimental and project work, and points of connection with other parts of science and other school subjects. Although the pendulum is a minor topic in most curricula, it is argued that the richer approach to its treatment can result in enhanced science literacy, and enhanced appreciation of the part played by science in the development of society and culture. (Matthews, 2000a, p. xx)

A reviewer of the book wrote that: ‘Matthews should spend more time in classrooms and less in libraries’. I can appreciate the point, but limited aspects of the pendulum story have been well-taught in classrooms for 100+ years and have been figured in textbooks for the same period. My claim was that neither the classrooms nor the textbooks were capturing, or doing justice to, the incredible philosophical, technical, social, and cultural significance of the pendulum. The only time in libraries, or the web equivalent, reveals that rich history. I became aware of this history by doing a graduate philosophy of science course at Boston University in 1978, not by doing a physics course or a science education course. Some years ago, after giving a pendulum lecture in the physics department at Bratislava University, different faculty said: ‘we knew nothing of this’. There is a lesson to be drawn from this professional blind-spot. The rear-cover endorsement by Gerald Holton, a major figure in history and philosophy of science, coordinator of the HPS-informed Harvard Project Physics, and for 70 years a contributor to HPS&ST research and debate (https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Gerald_Holton), had a particular importance for me: Matthews’ book is a source of enormous pleasure and solid instruction. Like a magician, he seamlessly pulls out one surprise after another: How a pendulum moves leads to how to understand history and philosophy of science, the solution of ancient problems of navigation, how clocks work, what Piaget discovered about children’s ideas of time, and on and on. A thoroughly enlightening and civilizing book that educators, students, and lay-readers will treasure equally.

7.4.2 International Pendulum Project With the pendulum book published, I moved on to coordinate a large International Pendulum Project. This was grounded on a number of special issues of Science & Education (2004 Vol. 13 nos. 4–5, and Vol. 13, nos. 7–8 (https://link. springer.com/journal/11191/volumes-and-issues/13-4; https://link.springer.com/jou rnal/11191/volumes-and-issues/13-7) and on two conferences held at UNSW in 2002 and 2005. These activities and publications resulted in 2005 in a 31-chapter, 540-page anthology co-edited with Colin Gauld and the late Art Stinner (1934–2014; https://www.hpsst.com/uploads/6/2/9/3/62931075/arthur_sti

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nner__obituary_.pdf) The Pendulum: Historical, Philosophical and Pedagogical Dimensions (Matthews et al., 2005a). Colin had graduated with a PhD in physics, then became a school science teacher, lecturer in science education at UNSW, a science education researcher, and chief examiner for physics in the NSW Education Department. He published significant research on history of physics and physics pedagogy (Gauld, 1998, 2014). Art was a professor of science education at the University of Manitoba where he inspired a vigorous HPS&ST research programme. He received his early education in Hungary and Germany, and his secondary and university education in Canada. He took undergraduate degrees in physics, modern languages, and education, an MSc in physics, and a Ph.D. in science education from the University of Toronto supervised by Ian Winchester. He published important work in the HPS&ST field (Stinner, 1990, 2001). The anthology was multinational, with contributions from USA, Canada, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Israel, Cyprus, and Greece. And it was multidisciplinary with contributions from physicists, historians, philosophers, psychologists, and educators. The benefit of science educators studying and researching outside the science education field and bringing what they learnt back to science education was made obvious. The pendulum played more than a scientific role in the formation of the modern world. The pendulum was central to the horological revolution that was intimately tied to the scientific revolution. Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695) in 1673, following Galileo’s epochal analysis of pendulum motion, utilised the pendulum in clockwork and so provided the world’s first accurate measure of time (Yoder, 1988; https://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiaan_Huygens). The accuracy of mechanical clocks went, in the space of a couple of decades, from plus or minus half-an-hour per day to a few seconds per day. This quantum increase in accuracy of timing enabled hitherto unimagined degrees of precision measurement in mechanics, navigation, and astronomy. It ushered in the world of precision characteristic of the scientific revolution (Wise, 1995). Time could then confidently be expressed as an independent variable in the investigation of nature; a variable against which other mechanisms, changes, and properties could be measured. Accurate time measurement was long seen as the solution to the problem of longitude determination which had vexed European maritime nations in their efforts to sail beyond Europe’s shores. If an accurate and reliable clock was carried on voyages from London, Lisbon, Genoa, or any other port, then by comparing its time with local noon (as determined by noting the moment of an object’s shortest shadow or, more precisely, by using optical instruments to determine when the sun passes the location’s north–south meridian), the longitude of any place in the journey could be ascertained. As latitude could already be determined by measuring the height of the sun above the horizon at noon, this enabled the world to be mapped. In turn, this provided a firm base on which European trade and colonisation could proceed. The chances of being lost at sea were greatly decreased. This story has been well told by Dava Sobel in her best-selling Longitude book translated into numerous languages (Sobel, 1995). A common reaction of readers

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would be: ‘Where was all this social history in my physics course?’ A good question but, conversely, Sobel’s engaging social history makes no mention of the methodology and physics that enabled creation of the seconds pendulum. In a competent liberal education, both would be done together: physics and metaphysics go handin-hand, experiments and epistemology in tandem, concepts and culture combined (Matthews et al., 2005b). The clock transformed social life and customs: patterns of daily life could be ‘liberated’ from natural chronology (the seasonally varying rising and setting of the sun) and subjected to artificial chronology; labour could be regulated by clockwork and, because time duration could be measured, there could be debate and struggle about the length of the working day and the wages that were due to agricultural and urban workers; timetables for stagecoach, and later train and ship transport, could be enacted; the starting time for religious and cultural events could be specified; punctuality could become a virtue; and so on. The transition from ‘natural’ to ‘artificial’ hours was of great social and psychological consequence: the clock, a human creation, begins Frankenstein-like to govern its creator.

7.4.3 The Seconds Pendulum as an International Length Standard Huygens, as well as working on the longitude problem and on the perfecting of pendulum clocks, also argued for a new international standard of length. Undoubtedly this would have been a major contribution to science and to everyday life. In parallel to Huygens, the Royal Society at its inception was asked to investigate the same subject, and Christopher Wren proposed, as did Huygens, the length of a pendulum beating seconds (that is, having a two-second period) as the international length standard. Concerning the long-sought natural standard of length, Huygens wrote: A certain and permanent measure of magnitudes, which is not subject to chance modifications and which cannot be abolished, corrupted, or damaged by the passage of time, is a most useful thing which many have sought for a long time. If this had been found in ancient times, we would not now be so perplexed by disputes over the measurement of the old Roman and Hebrew foot. However, this measure is easily established by means of our clock, without which this either could not be done or else could be done only with great difficulty. (Huygens, 1673/1986, p. 167)

In brief, Huygens says that first, a seconds clock is built and tested against the rotation of the fixed stars (as described on pp. 23–25 of his book), then a pendulum is to be set swinging with a small amplitude and its length adjusted until it swings in time with the seconds clock, then … measure the distance from the point of suspension to the center of the simple pendulum. For the case in which each oscillation marks off one second, divide this distance into three parts. Each of these parts is the length of an hour foot … . By doing all this, the hour foot

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can be established not only in all nations, but can also be re-established for all ages to come. Also, all other measurement s of a foot can be expressed once and for all by their proportion to the hour foot, and can thus be known with certainty for posterity. (Huygens, 1673/1986, p. 168)

His basic unit of length was thus to be 3 horological feet (0.9935 m), less than a millimetre short of what would become, after a considerable amount of political struggle, the original metre (Heilbron, 1989; Alder, 1995). This is the sensible and understandable standard lying behind the seemingly incomprehensible and arbitrary length standard of modern textbooks: ‘the distance travelled by light in 1/299,792,458 of a second’. For many students, reading this astonishing edict is their introduction to physics! Figure 7.1 indicates a multidisciplinary or liberal education approach to teaching about the pendulum in a school programme. A design argument; B European voyages of discovery; C Aristotelian physics and methodology; D pendulum clock; E idealisation and theory testing; F timekeeping and social regulation; G geometry of the circle; H applied mathematics; I measurement and standards The pendulum project, and its anthology, established that, if pendulum motion is taught from a historical and philosophical perspective, it allows connections to be made with topics in religion, history, mathematics, philosophy, and literature, as well as other topics in the science programme. And such teaching promotes greater understanding of science and its methodology, and an appreciation for the hardearned achievements of scientists in understanding the world (Matthews, 2020).

Fig. 7.1 Cross-disciplinary teaching of pendulum motion

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Peters, M. A. (1995b). Philosophy and education “after” Wittgenstein. In P. Smeyers & J. D. Marshall (Eds.), Philosophy and education: Accepting Wittgenstein’s challenge (pp. 189–328). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Peters, M. A. (2003). Derrida, pedagogy and the calculation of the subject. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 35(3), 313–332. Peters, M. A. (2020). Anti-scientism, technoscience and philosophy of technology: Wittgenstein and Lyotard. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 52(12), 1225–1232. Peters, M. A., & Marshall, J. D. (1999). Wittgenstein: Philosophy, postmodernism, pedagogy. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Phillips, D. C. (1993). On castigating constructivists. In H. Alexander (Ed.), Philosophy of Education 1992 (pp. 312–315) Proceedings of the Forty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society. Philosophy of Education Society, Urbana, IL. Popper, K. R. (1953/1963). A note on Berkeley as a precursor of Mach and Einstein. In Conjectures and refutations (pp. 166–174). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Popper, K. R. (1963). Conjectures and refutations: The growth of scientific knowledge. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Psillos, S. (1999). Scientific realism: How science tracks truth. London: Routledge. Ross, A. (Ed.). (1996). Science wars. Durham: Duke University Press. Roth, M.-W. (1995). Authentic school science: Knowing and learning in open-inquiry science laboratories. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Roth, M.-W., & Roychoudhury, A. (1994). Physics students’ epistemologies and views about knowing and learning. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 31(1), 5–30. Schlagel, R. (1986). Contextual realism: A meta-physical framework for modern science. New York: Paragon House. Siegel, H. (1978). Kuhn and Schwab on science texts and the goals of science education. Educational Theory, 28, 302–309. Siegel, H. (1979). On the distortion of the history of science in science education. Science Education, 63, 111–118. Siegel, H. (1985). Relativism, rationality and science education. Journal of College Science Teaching, 15(2), 102–106. Smeyers, P., & Marshall, J. D. (Eds.). (1995). Philosophy and education: Accepting Wittgenstein’s challenge. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Smeyers, P., & Peters, M. A. (Eds.). (2006). Postfoundationalist themes in the philosophy of education: Festschrift for James D. Wiley-Blackwell, New York: Marshall. Snyder, L. J. (2005). Confirmation for a modest realism. Philosophy of Science, 72, 839–849. Sobel, D. (1995). Longitude: The true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time. New York: Walker Publishing Company. Stahl, S. (1999). Why innovations come and go (and mostly go): The case of whole language. Educational Researcher, 28(8), 13–22. Staver, J. (1998). Constructivism: Sound theory for explicating the practice of science and science teaching. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 35(5), 501–520. Stinner, A. (1990). Philosophy, thought experiments and large context problems in the secondary school physics course. International Journal of Science Education, 12(3), 244–257. Stinner, A. (2001). Linking the “Book of Nature” and the “Book of Science”: Using circular motion as an Exemplar beyond the textbook. Science & Education, 10(4), 323–344. Struik, G. J. (1989a, June 12–14). Science syllabus woolly-witted says Dr Struik. Nelson Mail. Struik, G. J. (1989b, May 26). Comment on draft forms 1–5 Syllabus. Suchting, W. A. (1986). Marx and philosophy: Three studies. London: Macmillan. Suchting, W. A. (1992). Constructivism deconstructed. Science & Education, 1(3), 223–254. Reprinted in M. R. Matthews (Ed.). (1998). Constructivism in science education: A philosophical examination (pp. 61–92). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Sweller, J., Kirschner, P., & Clark, R. (2007). Why minimally guided teaching techniques do not work: A reply to commentaries. Educational Psychologist, 42(2), 115–121.

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Chapter 8

HPS and Worldviews in Science Classrooms

Abstract Science is, and always has been, engaged with cultural worldviews. The worldviews of cultures shape science, and the practice and findings of science shape worldviews. Five dimensions of worldviews are delineated. Illustrations of the interaction of science and worldviews are given from the mechanical worldview of the Scientific Revolution and the evolutionary naturalism of Darwinian theory. Arguments for both methodological and ontological naturalism as presuppositions of science are given; the question of the existence of good (angels) and bad (devils) spirits is elaborated; ways of dealing with real and imagined conflicts between science and cultural worldviews are explicated. Joseph Priestley’s scientific, political, and religious commitments are outlined as an example of the consistent working through of worldviews and science. This is seen in his seminal investigation of photosynthesis, an investigation that can be repeated in classrooms. Feng shui belief and practice are elaborated, especially its central commitment to the existence of chi, an ethereal, all-pervasive life force. It is argued that a distinction can be made between sciences and pseudosciences and that feng shui belongs to the latter.

The relationship between science and cultural worldviews is an issue that ticks away, sometimes softly and at other times loudly, for students, parents, science teachers, curriculum writers, examiners, and many others. At issue is, first, whether science assumes some set of worldview commitments; and second, whether learning science should require commitment to such worldviews. Clearly science need not require such commitment, it can be learnt as a spectator, in the manner that anthropologists learn about different cultures without being required to believe in what they are studying. For liberal education, the science case is different: science is in the curriculum so that students learn about the world and how to best inquire about the world. From this standpoint, the purpose of including science in the school curriculum is that students appropriately believe in the outcome and methods of science. The point of teaching about global warming is that students believe that the globe is warming and investigate scientifically the consequences and remedies.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. R. Matthews, History, Philosophy and Science Teaching: A Personal Story, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0558-1_8

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8.1 Science Education and Worldviews (2008–2010) 8.1.1 The Scope of Worldviews Worldviews are multidimensional, they standardly encompass: Ontology: Epistemology:

Ethics:

Anthropology: Teleology: Cosmogony:

What sorts of things exist and do not exist in the world; is the world really out there and independent of consciousness? How is knowledge about the world achieved and justified; are there extra-scientific authorities (political, religious, cultural) that can reliably inform us about the world and its processes? Are moral laws part of the universal fabric of the world or are they culture-bound conventions; is goodness and a moral life connected to how the world is? Are humans especially distinctive and apart from all other species in nature; do humans alone have souls, reason, conscience, feelings? Is the world purposeful or goal directed, and do natural processes occur so as to satisfy internal or external ends? How and when did the world begin?

In all cultures, from the very beginning of scientific inquiry about nature, these worldview questions have arisen because they are a part and parcel of the unavoidable questions: What is the world? How is it most reliably investigated? What is the nature of science that investigates it? There are essentially two types of questions involved when discussing worldviews and science education. First, there are academic questions such as: Does science have a particular worldview? How does the worldview (or worldviews) of science engage with the social and cultural worldviews of its milieu? These questions are addressed by the disciplines of history, philosophy, and sociology of science. Investigation of these factual questions leads naturally to the normative question: How should scientific and cultural worldviews engage? For the eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophers, and those in the Enlightenment tradition, cultural worldviews, including religious ones, should be informed by and accommodate themselves to the best-established findings and worldview of science. Second, there are also educational questions about how to deal with worldviews in science and other classrooms. Again, there are both factual and normative educational questions. Factually, there is a good deal of research on the impact of cultural worldviews on students’ ability and willingness to learn science. These are important considerations for pedagogy, especially in multicultural classrooms and for science teachers in non-Western cultures. These are tactical questions about techniques and effective pedagogy (Cobern, 1996). But there are also strategic or normative questions of whether students should affirm science as well as learning it; and whether they should be taught to develop a scientific ‘habit of mind’, as the AAAS states the matter, or a ‘scientific temper’,

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as Pandit Nehru and his fellow modernisers at the independence of India, stated the matter (Matthews, 2015, pp. 48–51). Nehru embraced Western Enlightenment ideals while studying science at Cambridge. At Indian Independence he sought, just as Jefferson had done at the independence of the USA, to embody these secular, scientific, Enlightenment ideals in the Indian constitution. These normative questions are most adequately addressed in the discipline of philosophy of education; a discipline sadly disappearing from teacher-education programmes. If teachers no longer think seriously about the purposes of education and how they relate to personal and social well-being, then questions about the content and aims of science education become trivialised, or settled by reference to whatever is the passing educational fad, or worse, political power.

8.1.2 Worldviews and Science In the West, the Atomism of the new seventeenth-century Galilean/Newtonian science, which has been labelled ‘the mechanical worldview’ (Gaukroger, 2010; Dijksterhuis, 1961/1986), brought these questions into clear relief. Pietro Redondi argued that it was Galileo’s philosophical atomism, rather than his astronomical Copernicanism, that brought him undone at the Inquisition (Redondi, 1988). John Hedley Brooke, an historian sympathetic to claims about the positive contribution of religion to science, recognised the problem that atomism posed ‘especially for the Roman Catholic Church, which took a distinctive view of the presence of Christ at the celebration of the Eucharist’ (Brooke, 1991, p. 141). Brooke writes: With an Aristotelian theory of matter and form, it was possible to understand how the bread and wine could retain their sensible properties while their substance was miraculously turned into the body and blood of Christ. …. But if, as the mechanical philosophers argued, the sensible properties were dependent on an ulterior configuration of particles, then any alteration to that internal structure would have discernible effects. The bread and wine would no longer appear as bread and wine if a real change had occurred. (Brooke, 1991, p. 142)

Whatever problems religions had with Galilean-Newtonian science and its associated Mechanical Worldview, the problems were re-played, at a higher volume, in the nineteenth century with Darwin’s evolutionary theory and its all-encompassing naturalism (Ruse, 2000, 2006). Darwin’s theory provided not just a novel account of the origin of species by natural selection, but it initiated a transformation of modern worldviews and a new understanding of the place of human beings in the natural world. In the mid-1980s I taught a graduate course on Darwinism using the 580-page Norton edition of Darwin’s works, along with important papers on the intellectual and cultural impact of Darwin (Appleman, 1970). Typically, the 14-week course would have had 8–12 science teachers enrolled part-time for a MEd degree. It was a uniformly appreciated and successful course. Teachers immediately saw the benefit

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of reading the work of the famous person whose theory most of them had to teach, and they gained by learning something of Darwin in his time and the subsequent trajectory of his theory, and the wider Darwinism. Of special interest was the class on ‘Darwin in Australia’, a part of Darwin’s life that most knew nothing of. One student from Bathurst was surprised to learn that the, soon to be famous, Darwin had once walked the streets of his hometown. Doubtless few, if any, Bathurst students ever knew this fact. It was fortunate that David Oldroyd (1936–2014), an historian of Darwinism, was in the UNSW HPS School and had published significant work on the subject (Oldroyd, 1980; Oldroyd & Langham, 1983). At a popular level the worldview dimension of Darwinism was captured at the time by the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli who famously proclaimed in 1864 at the Oxford Diocesan Society: ‘Is man an ape or an angel? My Lord, I am on the side of the angels’ (Desmond & Moore, 1992, p. 527). Versions of Darwin’s evolutionary naturalism have become commonplace in most, but not all, modern worldviews. Darwinism is denied in fundamentalist Christian communities; it is absolutely forbidden, and moreover illegal, in most formally Islamic countries and just a little less so in Turkey; it is rejected in nearly all ‘indigenous’ communities who have their own treasured creation stories and traditions about divine ancestors. Nevertheless, the Spanish Government introduced legislation in June 2008 to grant a limited number of traditional human rights (life, liberty, and freedom from physical and psychological torture) to the great apes (gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans). The Spanish Catholic Church has spoken against the legislation saying it erodes the Biblical injunction that gives humans dominion over the earth, and it diminishes the unique and primary place of human beings in the order of things: a uniqueness coming from the possession of an immortal soul that gives intelligibility to the central Christian doctrines of Redemption, Salvation, and Judgement. Education literature on the teaching of Darwinism is, deservedly, immense (Alters & Alters, 2001). In the early twentieth century the new quantum, nondeterministic theory had comparable philosophical, worldview, and cultural flow-overs (Cushing & McMullin, 1989; Kitchener, 1988). People of all philosophical, ideological, and cultural views claimed quantum mechanics as a vindication of their own deeply held position. Eighty years ago, Susan Stebbing in her Philosophy and the Physicists (Stebbing, 1937/1958), wrote critically of the philosophical mistakes of the famed and knighted Nobel laureates Arthur Eddington and James Jeans; competent physicists were drawing faulty philosophical lessons. In each of the above cases, philosophers, theologians, poets, and literary figures engaged with the new science and its thought-to-be worldview—adopting it, accommodating to it, rejecting it, denying that science is committed to any worldview but rather affirming that it is merely a metaphysics-free way of manipulating the world. With competent teachers, students can, with considerable educational benefit, be introduced to the rudiments of these arguments.

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8.1.3 The Scientific Worldview and Culture The mutual interaction of science with cultural worldviews has been a feature of the history of science (Dewitt, 2004). The world’s major religions have had an ongoing engagement with science, investigating how their own ontological, epistemological, and ethical commitments—their worldviews—are to be reconciled with scientific findings, scientific method, and putative scientific worldviews. Philosophical systems have likewise been compelled to have an engagement with science (Matthews, 1989; Gjertsen, 1989). The towering and influential Kantian programme in metaphysics and epistemology was erected in response to Newton’s science (Friedman, 1992). The positivist programme whose foundations were laid down by Ernst Mach was a philosophical reflection upon the achievements of two hundred years of Newtonian science (Cohen & Seeger, 1970). The engagement of philosophical systems with science has been especially urgent when the systems have had political and institutional embodiment—such as Thomism within the Catholic Church (McInerny, 1966; Weisheipl, 1968), and Marxism in the Soviet State (Graham, 1973) and in China (Miller, 1996). In these cases, there are educational imperatives for addressing the question of the relationship of science and cultural worldviews. The Islamic tradition frequently renounced the new scientific worldview and its Enlightenment champions. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, an Islamic philosopher at the MIT, writes that the new science of Galileo and Newton had tragic consequences for the West because it marked: The first occasion in human history when a human collectivity completely replaced the religious understanding of the order of nature for one that was not only nonreligious but that also challenged some of the most basic tenets of the religious perspective. (Nasr, 1996, p. 130)

Nasr repeats Western religious, and romantic laments, about the new science when he writes: Henceforth as long as only the quantitative face of nature was considered as real, and the new science was seen as the only science of nature, the religious meaning of the order of nature was irrelevant, at best an emotional and poetic response to ‘matter in motion’. (Nasr, 1996, p. 143)

8.1.4 The Reality of Spirits? The whole constellation of religious and animist beliefs, especially those affirming an active ongoing engagement of God, gods, angels, and spirits with human affairs, requires that the world, including human beings, be constituted in certain ways; that the world has a certain ontology with certain classes of things existing in it; and that the human beings are so constituted that they can know of and interact with these supernatural agencies. All of this amounts, in part, to a religious worldview; a view

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about how the world and human beings need to be constituted so as to enable, or ground, religious belief, experience, and practice. A Catholic priest, philosopher, and physics graduate gave succinct expression to the kind of worldview required by Roman Catholics: It will be useful to recall briefly the Catholic teaching as to the existence of spirits. The Scripture is full of references to both good and bad spirits. There are good and bad angels. Each of us has a Guardian Angel, whose presence, alas, we often forget. Angels, as the Catechism tells us, have been sent as messengers from God to man. Our Lady, at the Incarnation, St. Joseph before the flight into Egypt, both received messages. Our Lord Himself was tempted by Satan. (Gill, 1943, pp. 127–128)

Angels, and devils, are part of both the Catholic and Protestant traditions. One official Catholic exorcist, Fr Gabriele Amorth, claims to alone have driven out devils from 70,000 people who were possessed. Christian devils have counterparts in the Islam tradition where the world is populated by Jinn, the equivalent of Christian devils, who work nefarious schemes and lead people astray. Sura 72 of the Koran lays out Islamic understanding of the Jinn world. Muhammad was sent as a prophet to both human and Jinn communities. According to a 2012 study by the Pew Centre belief in Jinn among Muslims is substantial and widespread: 86% in Morocco, 84% in Bangladesh, 63% in Turkey, 55% in Iraq, 53% in Indonesia, and 47% in Thailand. In 1995 an Egyptian Sharia court pronounced the liberal Islamic theologian Nasr Abu Zayd an apostate for writing that the Koran took over the idea of Jinn from Arab culture, and they were not a creation of God. Sensibly Nasr fled Egypt when the pronouncement was made. Islamic countries do not tolerate apostates. In most, rejection or even criticism of Islam is a criminal offence. Most Asian, African, and Pacific religions have their own equivalents of angels and devils who do good or bad things with people, including taking possession of them (Laycock, 2020). Some years ago, a M¯aori couple gouged out the eyes of their young son so as to allow the possessing bad spirits causing his seizures to escape. Worse things used to be done to epileptics. The word coming from the Greek epilepsia meaning ‘to take hold of’. The Bible recounts Jesus casting out possessive devils (Mark 9:14–29) and the Koran has comparable accounts of the Prophet doing the same. Courtesy of science and modern medicine, we now know that epilepsy results from neuronal malfunction in the brain; it is not a possession by spirits problem. At issue is whether there are Jinn (or devils or Guardian Angels) in the world, do they bring about actions and states of affairs in the world, and can we know of them independently of scripture? In the Islamic tradition, the matter has long been debated (El-Zein, 2009). Since St Augustine the mainstream Christian tradition, Catholic and Protestant, has maintained that when there are conflicts between scripture and science, and the latter claims are definitively, as distinct from partially, supported, then scripture needs to be reinterpreted (McMullin, 2005). This is how Copernican claims about the movement of the earth were settled. Should, in both traditions, claims about the earthly activity of angels, devils, and jinn be treated the same? It is not just religious worldviews that seem to be discordant with the practice of science: there is a whole range of cultural beliefs and practices that are at odds with the scientific understanding of the world. These include commitment to astrology,

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parapsychology, levitation, clairvoyance, mediums, extrasensory perception, UFOs, Scientology, and so on. A 1990 Gallup poll of 1,236 adults in the USA recorded 52% believed in astrology, 42% had communicated with the dead, and 35% believed in ghosts (Shermer, 1997). Conspiracy theories, such as QAnon, about everything are everywhere including in the U.S. Congress. The depth and extent of such contra-scientific beliefs are manifest by Edgar Mitchell (1930–2016) the NASA astronaut who, during the 1971 Apollo 14 mission, made the longest ever walk in space. Yet in 2008 he frankly admitted that he believes in ESP, UFOs, and that he has been cured of kidney cancer by a man called Adam Dreamhealer who, though based in Canada, does all his healing from a distance over the telephone. Mitchell has two bachelor degrees in science and a doctorate in aeronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Many people, myself included, would think that although Mitchell’s technical science education is exemplary, something has been missing; namely, an understanding of, and commitment to, a scientific view of the world, a scientific worldview, and a scientific way of appraising claims about the natural world. All of the latter are consistent with a spiritual life; a spiritual life does not require spirits, indeed, almost the reverse: spirits are a convenient ‘get out of jail free’ card; they remove responsibility for actions. For people such as Mitchell, their science education has been technically enviable, but it has failed them; they have been well-trained but poorly educated. Others, of course, would maintain that science has no worldview, it is a purely technical or instrumental practice, and that it has no implications for whatever set of non-scientific beliefs that people might hold, be they religious, para-psychological, or ideological. The Mitchell case brings these alternatives into sharp focus. Where philosophy of education courses are part of teacher education programmes, such questions can be worked through with students. Unfortunately such courses are increasingly rare, if not extinct.

8.1.5 Worldviews in Science Programmes Reasonably, school science programmes have long been asked to elaborate upon aspects of the science/society/worldview connection. The Duke of Argyll in his 1856 Presidential Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science challenged the meeting with the claim that: What we want in the teaching of the young, is, not so much the mere results, as the methods and, above all, the history of science… that is what we ought to teach, if we desire to see education, well-conducted to the great ends in view. (Jenkins, 1990, p. 274)

The influential UK government report of 1918—Natural Science in Education (Thompson, 1918)—maintained that in science teaching: It is desirable … to introduce into the teaching some account of the main achievements of science and of the methods by which they have been obtained. There should be more of

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the spirit, and less of the valley of dry bones … One way of doing this is by lessons on the history of science. (Brock, 1989, p. 31)

Thirty years ago the American Association for the Advancement of Science in its Project 2061 restated the point in stronger terms: Becoming aware of the impact of scientific and technological developments on human beliefs and feelings should be part of everyone’s science education. (AAAS, 1989, p. 173)

And elaborated the point a year later in its The Liberal Art of Science: 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 and can illuminate contemporary issues. (AAAS, 1990, p. xiv)

These expectations pleasingly were carried into the 1996 US National Science Education Standards which had a separate strand on ‘History and Nature of Science Standards’ (NRC, 1996; https://www.nap.edu/catalog/4962/national-science-educationstandards) whose contents were to be reflected throughout the K-12 curriculum. The NRC said: Students should develop an understanding of what science is, what science is not, what science can and cannot do, and how science contributes to culture. (NRC, 1996, p. 2)

And, The standards for the history and nature of science recommend the use of history in school science programs to clarify different aspects of scientific inquiry, the human aspects of science, and the role that science has played in the development of various cultures. (NRC, 1996, p. 107)

It was less explicit, but still there, in the 2013 Next Generation Science Standards (NRC, 2013; https://www.nextgenscience.org/). Nature of Science (NOS) competence, in part, meant students had to have some appreciation and understanding of the interplay of science and culture. The same objective was part of the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA; http://www. oecd.org/pisa/). In all cases, the expectations held for students applied to teachers, and so required attention to how teachers were going to acquire such NOS or, the same thing, HPS interest and competence. As editor of Science & Education, I oversaw the publication in 2009 of a substantial 320-page, 14-article thematic double issue on the topic (Vol. 18 Nos. 6–7), which was contributed to by biologists, physicists, philosophers, theologians, and educators. The double issue was published by Springer as a book—Science, Worldviews and Education (Matthews, 2009a; https://link.springer.com/journal/11191/volumesand-issues/18-6). By 2018, there were 11,320 chapter-downloads from the book’s Springer website, and an unknown number from the original journal site. This is evidence that the HPS-informed ‘wider view’ of science education, seen in the Contents below, is shared by many.

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Science, Worldviews and Education Book Contents HUGH G. GAUCH Jr./Science, Worldviews, and Education MICHAEL R. MATTHEWS/Teaching the Philosophical and Worldview Components of Science GÜROL IRZIK & ROBERT NOLA/Worldviews and Their Relation to Science ALBERTO CORDERO/Contemporary Science and Worldview-Making HUGH LACEY/The Interplay of Scientific Activity, Worldviews, and Value Outlooks ENRICO RENATO ANTONIO GIANNETTO/Electromagnetic Conception of Nature at the Roots of the Special and General Relativity Theories, and its Revolutionary Meaning STUART GLENNAN/Whose Science and whose Religion? Reflections on the Relations between Scientific and Religious Worldviews MICHAEL REISS/Imagining the World: The Significance of Religious Worldviews for Science Education YONATAN I. FISHMAN/Can Science Test Supernatural Worldviews? COSTAS D. SKORDOULIS/Science and Worldviews in the Marxist Tradition JOHN LAMONT/The Fall and Rise of Aristotelian Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Science TANER EDIS/Modern Science and Conservative Islam: An Uneasy Relationship HUGH G. GAUCH, JR./Responses and Clarifications Regarding Science and Worldviews MICHAEL R. MATTHEWS/Science and Worldviews in the Classroom: Joseph Priestley and Photosynthesis

8.1.6 Managing Conflicts Between Scientific and Cultural Worldviews Science teachers do expect, or at least hope, that students develop a scientific habit of mind and a scientific, evidence-informed approach to problems in the natural and social worlds, and even in the personal worlds. That in dealing with Covid-19 containment, assessing the benefits and costs of Genetically Modified foods, determining degrees and causes of Global Warming, charting species extinction figures, and so on, students will not be prey just to passing fantasies, fads, prejudices, charlatans, or self-interest, but rather exercise science-informed judgement. But a scientific worldview or habit of mind does not sit easily with many extant worldviews and outlooks. People can easily be offended when matters ‘hostile’ to their own view of the world are discussed, much less promoted. Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay intelligently advised: The way to change minds, influence people, build relationships, and maintain friendships is through kindness, compassion, empathy, treating individuals with dignity and respect, and exercising these considerations in psychologically safe environments. It comes naturally to all of us to respond favorably to someone who listens, shows kindness, treats us well, and appears respectful. A sure way to entrench people in their existing beliefs, cause disunity, and sow distrust is through adversarial relationships and threatening environments. (Boghossian & Lindsay, 2019, p. 12)

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When considering the compatibility of science and religion, we need to distinguish a number of sometimes conflated issues: First, do religious claims and understandings have to be adjusted to fit proven scientific facts and theories? There really is no longer any serious debate on this issue; sensible believers and informed theologians acknowledge that religious claims about the world and its processes need to be modified, or given a non-literal interpretation to fit with proven or even highly probable science (McMullin, 2005). Joseph Priestley, the eighteenth-century Enlightenment natural philosopher and Christian believer, told the story of ‘a good old woman, who, on being asked whether she believed the literal truth of Jonah being swallowed by the whale, replied, yes, and added, that if the Scriptures had said that Jonah swallowed the whale, she would have believed it too’. Priestley thought that such convictions simply indicated that the term ‘belief’ was being misused in the context: ‘How a man can be said to believe what is, in the nature of things, impossible, on any authority, I cannot conceive’ (Rutt, 1817–1732/1972, vol. 6, p. 33). All serious thinkers on the topic, since St Augustine, agree with Priestley. Second, can religious believers be scientists? Again, at one level, there is no debate on this matter. As a simple matter of psychological, sociological, and historical fact, there have been and are perhaps hundreds of thousands, if not millions of believers of all religious stripes who are scientists. Many such individuals can be found contributing to journals such as Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science and are listed in different collections (Mott, 1991). But this sense of compatibility is not of philosophical interest. Undoubtedly some scientists are astrologers, others channel spirits, some might think they are Napoleon re-incarnated, some are racist, others are sexist, many would have voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 US election, and so on for a whole spectrum of beliefs that, as a matter of fact, have been held by scientists. No one doubts that science, as a matter of psychological fact, is compatible with any number of belief systems—recall that the Nobel laureates Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark were both Nazi ideologues. Scientists are human and humans notoriously can believe all sorts of crazy things at the same time; but such psychological compatibility has no bearing on the rationality or reasonableness of their beliefs, or the philosophical compatibility between science and belief systems. The latter is a logical or normative matter. The philosophically interesting question is whether a scientist can be a rational religious believer (or astrologer, diviner, re-incarnater, racist, sexist, Nazi, etc.). Third, is religious belief and practice compatible with the metaphysics and worldview of science? Where there is such incompatibility between scientific and religious metaphysics and worldviews—as in the case of Atomism and Catholicism outlined above—the options usually taken to reconcile the differences are to claim that: 1.

2.

Science really has no metaphysics; that it makes no metaphysical claims. This is the option made famous by the French Catholic positivist Pierre Duhem (Martin, 1991). The metaphysics of science is false; at least any such purported metaphysics that is inconsistent with religious beliefs. This is the option advocated by the

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Scholastic tradition discussed above; by Tresmontant and Nasr who are quoted above; and by philosophical theologians such as Plantinga (2000), Mascall (1956), and numerous others. There can be parallel, equally valid, metaphysics. This is an old option given recent prominence by Stephen Gould in his NOMA formulation (Gould, 1999). There is a fundamental disagreement about the metaphysics required by science, hence alternative metaphysical systems and beliefs can be freely entertained without fear of unified scientific contradiction.

All these options have their problems, but as far as education is concerned, the important thing is to have students first recognise what are the options, and second carefully examine them and their implications and ideally take up a personal, if provisional, position on the matter (Matthews, 2009b).

8.2 Joseph Priestley Twenty years ago, I became engaged with reading about the rich and, dare one say, ‘uplifting’ life and work of Joseph Priestley (1733–1804; https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Joseph_Priestley). This interest began quite accidently and casually. The fifth biennial conference of the IHPST Group was being held at Leeds University in July 2005 in conjunction with the British Society for the History of Science. Jonathan Osborne and Mick Nott were the joint organisers; Harry Collins and Meera Nanda were invited speakers. Early in the year I was asked to contribute to a panel on ‘Science and Culture’. I knew that Priestley had been associated with the north of England, and maybe even with Leeds, so I thought that the conference would be a suitable occasion for me to learn something about him and put it together as a panel contribution. What a good decision that was.

8.2.1 A Priestley Library I began buying my own collection of Priestley’s works and books about him. Its core is: Brown, I.V. (ed.): 1962, Joseph Priestley: Selections from His Writings, Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA. Clark, J.R.: 1990, Joseph Priestley: A Comet in the System, Torch Publications, San Diego. Dick, M. (ed.): 2005, Joseph Priestley and Birmingham, Brewin Books, Studley, Warwickshire. Gibbs, F.W.: 1965, Joseph Priestley: Adventurer in Science and Champion of Truth, London, Thomas Nelson and Sons.

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Gibbs, F.W.: 1967, Joseph Priestley: Revolutions of the Eighteenth Century, Doubleday, New York. (First published as Joseph Priestley: Adventurer in Science and Champion of Truth, London, 1965) Hiebert E.N, Aaron J. & Ihde, A.J. & Robert E Schofield, R.E.: 1980, Joseph Priestley Scientist Theologian and Metaphysician A Symposium Celebrating the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Discovery of Oxygen By Joseph Priestley in 1774, Lester Kieft & Bennett R Willeford Jr., (ed.), Bucknell University Press, Lewisburg. Jackson, J.: 2005, A World on Fire: A Heretic, an Aristocrat, and the Race to Discover Oxygen, Penguin, New York. Johnson, S.: 2009, The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America, Penguin, New York. Passmore, J.A. (ed.): 1965, Priestley’s Writings on Philosophy, Science and Politics, London, Collier Macmillan. Priestley, J.: 1806/1970, Memoirs of Dr. J. Priestley to the Year 1795 Written by Himself, with a Continuation by his Son, J. Priestley. 2 vols., Philadelphia. (J. Lindsay edited, Adams & Dart, Bath, 1970) Priestley, J.: 1767/1775, The History and Present State of Electricity, with Original Experiments, second edition, J. Dodsley, J. Johnson & T. Cadell, London; 3rd edit., 1775 reprinted Johnson Reprint Corporation, New York, 1966, with Introduction by Robert E. Schofield. Schofield, R.E.: 1963, The Lunar Society of Birmingham, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Schofield, R.E. (ed.): 1966, A Scientific Autobiography of Joseph Priestley (17331804): Selected Scientific Correspondence, MIT Press, Cambridge. Schofield, R.E.: 1970, Mechanism and Materialism: British Natural Philosophy in an Age of Reason, Princeton University Press, Princeton. Schofield, R.E.: 1997, The Enlightenment of Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and Work from 1733 to 1773, Penn State Press, University Park, PA. Schofield, R.E.: 2004, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and Work from 1773 to 1804, Penn State Press, University Park, PA. More books have been added to this collection, along with numerous Priestley-related articles from journals in the UNSW library. This is an enormously rich and enduring at-home source of reading pleasure and intellectual stimulation for me. And assuredly would be the same for others who might want to start with any of the listed books.

8.2.2 Priestley’s Life Priestley was one of the foremost scientists (natural philosophers) of the eighteenth century, a life-long devout Christian minister, and an energetic exponent of Enlightenment principles, in particular the necessity of applying the methodology of Newtonian science to all fields of inquiry—historical, theological, educational, psychological, and ethical. Priestley advocated the separation of Church and State, freedom of

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speech, freedom of religion, decriminalisation of heterodox religious beliefs especially non-Trinitarian belief (in his time, rejection of the Trinity led to imprisonment in England and being hanged in Scotland), the abolition of the religion test for entry to Cambridge and Oxford and for appointment thereto, and the freedom of science (including historical studies of religious scripture) from political and religious control. In addition, as with all Enlightenment philosophers, he was a ceaseless advocate of education. The pity is that, despite a good University of Sydney education in science, philosophy, and education, spanning at that stage 40 years, I had never, until 2005, read any of Priestley’s work. I knew the name, and had read throw-away references to him, but had never read Priestley. It is telling that, among the 100 or so workshops offered at the six HPS&ST in-service workshops I had organised at UNSW, none were on Priestley. He has dropped out of scholarly and educational sight. More is the pity. Priestley had a severe and disturbing Calvinistic upbringing at Birstall on the western outskirts of Leeds. In his Memoirs Priestley writes ‘I felt occasionally such distress of mind as it is not in my power to describe, and which I still look back upon with horror’ (Priestley, 1806/1970, p. 71). In his late teenage years, being a religious Dissenter and hence barred from Oxford and Cambridge universities, he attended Daventry Academy where, as a teenager, he read Locke, Newton, Hartley, and many of the major philosophical, scientific, and religious works of the time. Daventry was an institution where the ‘serious pursuit of truth’ was the preoccupation (Priestley, 1806/1970, p. 75). The Dissenting academies were outstanding centres of education and learning in marked contrast to the unscholarly, oftdebauched climate in Oxford and Cambridge (Wykes, 1996). Priestley became fluent in Greek, Latin, Syriac, and a number of European languages including High Dutch, the language of the country welcoming so many English political and religious refugees. At 22 years of age he was ordained a Dissenting minister, the duties of which vocation were the central preoccupation of his adult life (Wykes, 2008). He ministered in a number of small rural towns, where he also established schools being perhaps the first-ever teacher of science to engage students in laboratory work (Schofield, 1997, p. 79). In his late twenties he taught language, history, logic, and literature at the Warrington Academy where he also began reading contemporary works in chemistry and electricity that supplemented his earlier readings of Newton’s optics and astronomy. In 1767 at age 34 years he was called as minister to the Presbyterian Mill Hill Chapel in Leeds which was a centre for Yorkshire’s newly born and thriving commercial and industrial life. After six years, and experiments involving the production of carbon dioxide and the making of soda water, he left Leeds. He then worked five years as a secretary and children’s tutor for Lord Shelburne, a prominent liberal English politician who negotiated the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolution. During this employment he travelled in Europe, famously meeting in October 1774 in Paris with Antoine Lavoisier with whose name Priestley’s has ever since been entwined because of controversy over the discovery of oxygen and Priestley’s

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dogged refusal to accept the latter’s ‘new’ chemistry. A good popular account of the intellectual entanglement of Priestley and Lavoisier is Jackson’s A World on Fire (Jackson, 2005). Priestley lent support to the American and French revolutions, seeing both of them as the victory of liberty and freedom over the stultifying autocratic power of the State and Church (both Anglican and Roman Catholic) in both places (Miller, 1993). He publicly rejected Trinitarian belief, notwithstanding that such denial was a capital offence at the time, and founded the Unitarian sect. In detailed publications he argued that the Church’s triune doctrine was the product of Hellenistic philosophical corruption of the early Christian Church (Priestley, 1871). Newton held the same position but never advertised the matter; Priestley’s liberalism, and ultimately epistemological convictions, led him to very public affirmation of Unitarianism: His view was that truth emerges from dispute and defence of positions. He was a precursor of John Stuart Mill, Karl Popper, and all supporters of the epistemological argument for an open society. For Priestley, science demanded a free society. England was never a comfortable place for supporters of the 1789 French Revolution and it was distinctly less so after the initial ‘middle-class’ revolution gave way to the Paris Commune in 1792, and after England joined the counter-revolutionary, reactionary coalition in war against France in 1793. So at age 61 years, after his laboratory and library were destroyed by an enraged ‘King and Church’ mob, and after various close dissenter friends and political liberals were transported as convicts to Botany Bay, Priestley fled England in 1794 and travelled to Northumberland in a remote rural corner of Pennsylvania where he spent the last decade of his life of writing, ministering, and productively engaging with prominent politicians, especially Thomas Jefferson (Graham, 2008). He died in 1804 in his own still-standing home, now the Priestley Museum and Research Centre. I was a lonely visitor there in March 2008. I did learn that Robert Schofield, the pre-imminent Priestley scholar, was hopeful that his library would be relocated to the Centre (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Priestley_House). Priestley was a polymath with staggeringly wide interests. Along with maintaining an active clerical life as a Dissenting minister, Priestley published an enormous number of authoritative works across a wide range of fields: these included over two hundred books, pamphlets, and articles in the history of science (specifically of electricity and optics), political theory, theology, biblical criticism, church history, theory of language, philosophy of education, rhetoric, as well as chemistry for which he is now best known.

8.2.3 Priestley and Soda Water Much can be related about Priestley in science classes, but a minor and basically unknown matter does connect him to modern students; and illustrates an important issue about the relation between science and business. In 1767, during his ministry at Leeds, Priestley became the first person to create and bottle soda water; or ‘Pyrmont

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water’ as he called it (Gibbs, 1967, pp. 57–58, 69–70; Coley, 1984; Golinski, 1999, pp. 112–117). Pyrmont was a famous medicinal spa in Hanover (that coincidently, gave its name to the area in Sydney for which in 1980 I was elected a city alderman). Priestley saw that the Pyrmont bubbles were carbon dioxide (fixed air) that he had captured as a by-product of a Leeds brewery and that he was able to independently produce by mixing chalk and acid, and capturing the emitted air in a bladder, thus putting it under pressure. There was, at the time, great interest in ascertaining the efficacious component of English and Continental mineral waters, but no one was thinking of manufacturing them. Priestley, who recognised the enormous wealth that could be made, nevertheless turned down the opportunity of commercial bottling of his Pyrmont water, saying that natural philosophers [scientists] should ‘search for truth, not money’. A less common attitude now, especially among university administrators. The commercial opportunities were not lost on Johann J. Schweppe (1740–1821) who from 1793 began manufacturing and selling high-pressure soda water from his factory off Cavendish Square. As they say, the rest is history and explains why ‘1793’ is stamped on the underneath of tops of Schweppe’s drink bottles. A simple ‘Why is the date there?’ question for classes can lead to engaging social and scientific history, as well as posing the contemporary question of the pros and cons of the commercialisation of science (Irzik, 2013).

8.2.4 Priestley and the Enlightenment Priestley sought coherence and intellectual unity in his scholarly, personal, religious, and political activity. Newton had established that the single law of attraction applied on earth and in the heavens. Priestley thought the same simplicity of law would apply through the social and mental (psychological) realms as well; this in part because there was only a single substance, matter, throughout all realms. He was a forceful advocate of the materialist tradition in the Enlightenment. He was an ontological monist, rejecting all dualisms in natural philosophy, psychology, and religion. Priestley was a forceful critic of the hylomorphism, the matter/form metaphysics of Aristotelianism that was then, and still is, embedded in the philosophy and doctrine of the Catholic Church. In 1778 he wrote to the Jesuit philosopher/physicist Roger Boscovich (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Joseph_Boscovich) saying: the vulgar hypothesis [Aristotelian matter theory], which I combat, has been the foundation of the grossest corruptions of true Christianity; and especially [those] of the church of Rome, of which you are a member; but which I consider as properly antichristian, and a system of abominations little better than heathenism. (Schofield, 1966, p. 167)

Modern appreciation of Priestley has been significantly influenced by the harsh judgement meted out by Thomas Kuhn in his best-selling Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn, 1970). In a famous (but more properly, infamous) passage Kuhn writes of the irrationality of paradigm change and of old paradigms just fading away until

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‘at last only a few elderly hold-outs remain’. He then singularly names Priestley, the defender of phlogiston theory of combustion, as an example ‘of the man who continues to resist after his whole profession has been converted’ and adds that such a man ‘has ipso facto ceased to be a scientist’ (Kuhn, 1970, p. 159). Kuhn’s disparaging comment was just an aside, he had not done any historical study of the combustion debates; nevertheless, given Kuhn’s stature and the multimillion sales of the book, his throwaway line essentially ‘blackened’ Priestley’s reputation in the academic world and beyond, has become the widely accepted obituary for Priestley: The the stubborn old man who held on to belief in a peculiar phlogiston substance and who resisted the dawning light of Lavoisierian chemistry. Pleasingly, some historians and philosophers—Robert Schofield (1997, 2004), John McEvoy (1990), and William Brock (2008)—have provided extensive studies that refute Kuhn’s caricature of Priestley. Kuhn wrote many insightful things; but also many things that were less than insightful, his assessment of Priestley being one of them. This episode confirmed my caution about Kuhn that I first acquired during the 1973 University of Sydney honours philosophy class that I have earlier described. A more generous and accurate assessment of Priestley was given by Frederic Harrison in his Introduction of a nineteenth-century edition of Priestley’s Scientific Correspondence: If we choose one man as a type of the intellectual energy of the eighteenth century, we could hardly find a better man than Joseph Priestley, though his was not the greatest mind of the century. His versatility, eagerness, activity, and humanity; the immense range of his curiosity in all things, physical, moral, or social; his place in science, in theology, in philosophy, and in politics; his peculiar relation to the [French] Revolution, and the pathetic story of his unmerited sufferings, may make him the hero of the eighteenth century. (Bolton, 1892, Introduction)

The seamless interconnection that Priestley saw between science, religion, and politics is illustrated in one of his last scientific works published before he fled England for America. There, in his Experiments on the Generation of Air from Water (1793) he wrote: Since … the friends of philosophy in this country must separate on the ground of religion and politics … may the separation have no farther consequence than that producing a generous emulation who shall most advance the cause of science; the friends of Church and King, as they affect exclusively to call themselves, or the friends of liberty, among whom, at all times, and in all circumstances, I shall be proud to rank myself. We are, it is true, but a small minority, but not deficient, I trust, in ability, activity, and energy, qualities which will always make men respected, though oppressed. (Gibbs, 1967, p. 243)

Priestley valued Liberty because he thought it maximised human happiness and welfare, which were the true ends of government. He thought that even in republics, champions of Liberty had to be vigilant, as evidenced in a 1776 letter to Benjamin Franklin, written as the American Revolution was just starting, where he urged the colonists to make ‘some better provision for securing your natural rights against the encroachment of power, in whomsoever placed’ (Schofield, 1966, p. 155). The close relationship between religious dissent and political radicalism was a feature of English and Continental thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth

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centuries, and Priestley well-embodied the conjunction. It was seldom, if ever, the revolutionary radicalism that Marx one century later would ask for. The religious Dissenters did not agitate with the labouring poor for the overthrow of Tory privilege and the State, but nevertheless their demands were radical for the time—extension of the franchise, extension of education, freedom of worship, more democratic and accountable government, opposition to the slave trade, restricting the powers of kings, and here and there even advocacy of republicanism (Haakonssen, 1997). Priestley campaigned for repeal of the various religion-inspired Acts of Parliament that curtailed Freedom of Worship, Speech, and Vocation. The most notorious of these were the Corporation Act (1661), the Act of Uniformity (1662), and the Test Act (1672). The first was aimed at Dissenters and Unbelievers. It became law upon the Restoration of the English Monarchy with Charles II and made membership of the Church of England a condition for government employment. The second notorious Act required, under pain of State penalties, all Church services to follow the Anglican Rite as laid out in the Book of Common Prayer. Passage of this Act resulted in over 2,000 clergy leaving the Church of England—an event known as ‘The Great Separation’. The third discriminatory Act was directed against Roman Catholics, requiring all clergy, parliamentarians, army and navy officers, university teachers, magistrates, and other State employees to formally renounce belief in the doctrine of transubstantiation and the efficacy of prayers to the Virgin Mary. This Act was part of British Law for nearly two centuries. It was not repealed until 1829, fully forty years after the Irish convicts landed in Sydney. Such discriminatory Acts, of course, are just part and parcel of the legal system in most Islamic countries. A matter that brings into focus the universality of Enlightenment principles, and then the connection, or otherwise, of science teaching to those principles. While Newton opposed the entry of Catholics to Cambridge University, and Locke opposed the entry of ‘Papists’ to any government position, Priestley wanted the removal of all restrictions to government employment based on Creed.

8.2.5 Priestley and Photosynthesis Priestley is an underutilised figure in science education. Although his contribution to the discovery of oxygen is recognised, it is usually glossed by a Kuhnianesque comment that he was an obscurantist concerning Lavoisier’s new chemistry and a dogmatist concerning his own adherence to the phlogiston account of combustion and respiration. Unfortunately, Priestley’s contribution to the modern understanding of photosynthesis is seldom mentioned in school curricula. This is a pity as his role was pivotal, and students can very easily be led through many of the same experimental steps that he took—the materials and equipment are all very basic. Green leaves and brown leaves can be put in an inverted test tube in water and left in the sun; after not very long an ‘air’ bubble appears above the green leaves, nothing above the brown. The

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experiment can be done at night and no air appears over either. And so on. I have elaborated all of this in a Science & Education paper (Matthews, 2009c). Because he wrote so well and clearly, reading his texts is easy for students. There is the opportunity for students to ‘walk in the footsteps’ of a great scientist and thereby not only learn scientific content, method, and methodology, but also to get a sense of participation in a tradition of thought and analysis that is at the core of the modern world. Priestley’s work is readymade for ‘Historical-Investigative’ teaching. Such Priestley-guided activity, and exercises crafted by informed teachers, allow students to appreciate and understand key elements of the scientific tradition: hard work, experimentation, independence of mind, a respect for evidence, a preparedness to bring scientific modes of thought to the analysis and understanding of more general social and cultural problems, a deep suspicion of authoritarianism and dogmatism, and the concern for promotion of an open society as the condition for the advance of knowledge. As with the pendulum, an integrated, cross-disciplinary, HPS-informed liberal approach to teaching about photosynthesis and Priestley could look like the following (Fig. 8.1): I elaborated this picture in the first IHPST ‘President’s Address’—‘Priestley and Education’—given in 2009 at the Notre Dame University conference that followed formalisation of the Group at the preceding 2007 Calgary conference.

Fig. 8.1 Cross-disciplinary teaching of Priestley and photosynthesis. A Revelation; B French Revolution; C Composition of air; D Experiment; E Soda Water; F Epistemology; G The Enlightenment; H Providence

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8.2.6 Priestley and General Education The education of science students can only be enriched by learning something of Priestley’s life, times, and achievements. Bringing Priestley into education allows light to be shed upon the mutual interaction of worldviews and science; it allows the scientific sources of the European Enlightenment to be investigated; and it allows the evaluation of the special Enlightenment niche occupied by Priestley, namely the theistic, albeit dissenting, strand of the Enlightenment. Understanding and appreciating this connection between science and the Enlightenment, and having the opportunity to examine what is dead and what is living in that tradition, can be a major contribution of science classes to the cultural education of students in the modern world.

8.3 Feng Shui: Science or Pseudoscience? (2012–2020) Since my early university Catholic days and interests in the ‘grand scheme’ of Thomism, I have been interested in questions about science and worldviews, and not just as a spectator. I have already given some account of the 2009 anthology Science, Worldviews and Education (Matthews, 2009a). While coordinating and then editing that work, I had given brief lecture courses in Thailand, China, and Taiwan. And then I worked closely with Korean colleagues in staging the First IHPST Asian Regional Conference held at Seoul National University in October 2012; the second regional IHPST conference held in Taiwan in 2014—each attended by 200+ participants; and a third in Pusan, Korea in 2016 attended by about 70.

8.3.1 Feng Shui in Asia and Beyond Understandably, traditional medical practices, feng shui, and broadly Asian understanding of nature and science were common topics of conversation and presentations on these occasions. Describing and investigating the oft discordant relations between modern scientific culture and traditional Asian culture were the focus of many studies. During this period I developed particular interests in feng shui as a specific case that could be illuminated by educational, historical, cultural, and philosophical studies. I focused on feng shui as it clearly was not made off-limits by the much-praised, but entirely mistaken, Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA) argument advanced by Stephen Jay Gould (1999) whereby certain systems of beliefs were immune to scientific appraisal because they dealt entirely with other-worldly, non-natural events and processes. Feng shui was assertively and proudly naturalistic: it laid claim to knowledge about the constitution and mechanisms of the world.

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I first put my toe in the feng shui pond when I gave the opening lecture on ‘Scientific Inquiry, Education and Feng Shui’ at the Third HPS&ST Asian Conference held at Pusan National University in December 2016. I regarded this, in part, as taking up a challenge made 20 years earlier by Mario Bunge: Given the intrinsic interest and the cultural importance of pseudoscience and anti-science, it is surprising that they should receive so little attention on the part of philosophers, particularly in our times of crisis of public confidence in science. (Bunge, 2001, p. 189)

Given the enormity of feng shui belief and practice, I was struck by how very little serious educational and philosophical commentary and appraisal it had received. The Amazon Kindle site lists over one thousand feng shui books in English alone; there are countless thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of commercial feng shui web sites; likely millions of people throughout the world daily visit these sites and to varying degrees regulate or inform their life by what they read and purchase. Feng shui–informed Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a multi-billiondollar, international growth industry. Yet there was almost no extant discussion of the educational opportunities and responsibilities afforded by feng shui for science teachers. I believed such an investigation would be a fitting contribution to the HPS&ST research programme. After the Pusan lecture, my initial thoughts on the subject—‘Feng Shui: Educational Responsibilities and Opportunities’ (Matthews, 2018b)—were written up as a contribution to the anthology History, Philosophy, and Science Teaching: New Perspectives (Matthews, 2018a). Feng shui is a set of beliefs and practices arising from an ancient deeply entrenched Chinese and East-Asian worldview, the core of which is belief in chi (qi) as an allencompassing, universal life force and mysterious energy. Chi belief has been an integral part of Chinese culture—Confucian, Daoist, Buddhist, and other variants— for at least three thousand years. The practice of directing and controlling personal chi (qi) is called qigong (gong meaning work/effort). Feng shui belief bears upon most aspects of everyday life: the design of domestic, commercial, and government buildings; the siting and orientation of graves; personal fortune telling and divination; choosing auspicious times for marriage, commencement of building construction, opening a restaurant, launching a public company, going on holidays, and much more. The worldview underwrites and justifies traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practices of acupuncture and herbal medicine.

8.3.2 Feng Shui and Naturalism Feng shui’s worldview is purportedly naturalistic. Simon Brown, author of The Feng Shui Bible, gives an account of chi that can be found in thousands of popular books on the subject:

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Chi is the subtle charge of electromagnetic energy that runs through everything, carrying information from one thing to another. The chi flowing through your body predominantly carries your thoughts, beliefs and emotions. At the same time some of your chi is floating off, while you are also drawing in new energy. … Your energy field connects you to everything else, whether you like it or not. The secret to making this energy work is understanding the process and finding out how you can make it help you in life. (Brown, 2005, p. 24)

Two philosophers underwrite this popular view of chi as the foundation of Chinese cosmology and medicine: Qi is one of the most important and widely interpreted concepts in Chinese intellectual history. As a shared notion underlying all schools, qi is believed to be a dynamic, allpervasive, and all-transforming force animating everything in the universe. The air one breathes, the force that drives the flow of blood, the food one eats, the strength of one’s mind, the flow of one’s thoughts, the deepest urges of one’s heart—all of these are understood in terms of qi. Thus qi extends across realms that might otherwise be divided in the spiritual, mental, or physical. (Wang & Ding, 2010, p. 42)

In 1986 the Qigong Cooperative Research Group at Tsinghua Technical University in Beijing claimed that: the mind power or Qi emitted by a trained Qigong master can influence or change the molecular structure of many test samples, including those of DNA and RNA, even if these test samples are 6 to 2,000 km away from the master. Qi can also affect the half-life of radioactive isotopes and the polarization plane of a beam of light as emitted from a Helium-Neon laser. (https://www.coursehero.com/file/29182201/chinesechiresearchdoc/)

These, and countless other such feng shui claims about chi and its powers, are truly staggering. One advocate wrote: ‘They change our view of what science is’. If the claims are true, they certainly do change our view of what science is. Yet there is a surprising asymmetry between the presence, spread, and impact of feng shui and its philosophical and scientific appraisal. There is much of the former and little of the latter. The mysterious chi life force is yet to be identified in any science laboratory; there is no chi meter comparable to a Geiger counter. Their claim to being naturalistic should invite the attention of science teachers. And given the influence of the belief, I argued that science programmes have a cultural responsibility to appraise it.

8.3.3 Demarcation of Science and Pseudoscience The philosophical examination of feng shui leads directly to important and engaging issues about the role of metaphysics in science, realism versus instrumentalism, ontological versus methodological naturalism, the function of empirical evidence in theory appraisal, the demarcation of science from non-science, and more specifically the demarcation of science from pseudoscience. Although many philosophers, following Larry Laudan, deny that such a distinction can be made, others, such as contributors to Pigliucci and Boudry’s Philosophy of Pseudoscience (Pigliucci & Boudry, 2013) cogently argue that it can be. I agree with this argument and believe that feng shui belongs in the pseudoscience category.

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Larry Laudan led the ‘denialists’ when, in a much commented-upon paper, he claimed that the demarcation quest was hopelessly and in-principle contentious: … it is probably fair to say that there is no demarcation line between science and nonscience, or between science and pseudo-science, which would win assent from a majority of philosophers. (Laudan, 1983/1996, p. 211)

He also argued that the efforts were misdirected because they: managed to conflate two quite distinct questions: What makes a belief well founded (or heuristically fertile)? And what makes a belief scientific? (Laudan, 1983/1996, p. 222)

He concluded his paper with the admonition: If we would stand up and be counted on the side of reason, we ought to drop terms like ‘pseudo-science’ and ‘unscientific’ from our vocabulary; they are just hollow phrases which do only emotive work for us. (Laudan, 1983/1996, p. 222)

Laudan’s paper is puzzling. He says that the term ‘pseudoscience’ is merely rhetorical and lacks specification. Yet the following year he published a detailed contribution to the ‘Science Wars’ critical of the Edinburgh Strong Programme, and its pretension to reduce philosophy of science to sociology of science, and rationality to politics by other means. The title of his earlier paper was: ‘The Pseudo-Science of Science?’ (Laudan, 1981/1996). Why two years later, ‘pseudoscience’ is relegated to mere rhetoric is not made clear. Different philosophical, sociological, and cultural indicators or markers of pseudoscience have been advanced by different philosophers (Bunge, 2011; Mahner, 2013). Sven Hansson provided one such list whereby a corpus of belief and practice can be judged pseudoscientific in as much as: • • • • •

There is overdependence on authority figures. Unrepeatable experiments are too frequently adduced. Data selectivity, or cherry-picking of evidence, is too common. There is an unwillingness to seriously test claims and predictions. Confirmation bias is endemic and disconfirmation is neither sought nor recognized. • Some explanations are changed without systematic consideration (Hansson, 2009). Separately, but in the same work, he adds a further line of argument to enable distinctions to be made between science and pseudoscience: • They make claims about events and mechanisms in the natural world. • The claims cannot be epistemically warranted, yet effort is made to show their scientificity. • They too easily resort to auxiliary hypotheses to insulate claims from empirical refutation (Hansson, 2009). Hansson later proposes a simplified ‘common front’ account whereby a statement can be categorised as pseudoscientific if and only if it satisfies three criteria:

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• It pertains to an issue within the domains of science in the broad sense. • It suffers from such a severe lack of reliability that it cannot at all be trusted. • It is part of a doctrine whose major proponents try to create the impression that it represents the most reliable knowledge of its subject matter (Hansson, 2013, pp. 70–71). An additional sociological characteristic can be added to Hansson’s identifying list: • The practice makes scientific claims but refuses to engage with the scientific community by publishing in established research journals and presenting at research conferences. Pseudosciences violate the fundamental principle that ‘no science is an island sufficient to itself’. All scientific endeavours and disciplines have contact with their neighbours; more than contact, they need to accommodate adjacent sciences. This is what drives the creation of crossover or interdisciplinary sciences: biochemistry, electrochemistry, geophysics, paleoanthropology, physical chemistry, and so on. Intellectual isolationism is a key marker of pseudoscience. Consider for instance ‘Black Hat’ Tantric Esoteric Buddhist Feng Shui (BHB) which is enormously popular in the USA. Black Hat feng shui was brought from China by His Holiness Grandmaster Professor Thomas Lin Yun, who was feted on numerous university campuses, in many business boardrooms and has thousands and thousands of followers. According to the BHB website: ‘His Holiness was not only revered as a religious leader, a scholar, but also the world’s most prominent authority on Feng Shui’. The BHB web site says its teachings: Represent a comprehensive integration of Buddhist teachings, yin-yang philosophy, I-Ching, Feng Shui, theory of Ch’I, holistic healing, Chinese folklore, transcendental cures, meditation, spiritual cultivation and development, Chinese poetry, etc. (http://www.yunlintemple. org/home)

Further understanding, by outsiders, of the teachings is difficult as BHB can only be communicated orally; listening is essential to the message. In the Black Sect Esoteric Buddhist tradition, the only legitimate path for instruction is the sacred discipline of oral transmission from teacher to pupil. Her Holiness Kahdro Crystal Chu Rinpoche is the exclusive teacher and transmitter of the teachings of Black Sect Esoteric Buddhism, as appointed by His Holiness the late Grandmaster professor Lin Yun. (ibid.)

The fiat that ‘only insiders can understand the teachings’ is a common defensive ploy used by charlatans and purveyors of pseudoscience. It protects the ‘theory’ and isolates the practice from relevant established sciences. There is an obvious overlap, with, for instance Scientology belief and practice. Some want to blur the science/pseudoscience distinction to the extent that they say feng shui practitioners are engaged in ‘unorthodox’ or ‘alternative’ science. This is too generous an assessment. Too easily, feng shui exponents resort to this ‘mysterium’ defence, as is wellillustrated by the following authors:

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Life is defined by Qi even though it is impossible to grasp, measure, quantify, see, or isolate. Immaterial yet essential, the material world is formed by it. (Beienfield & Korngold, 1991, p. 30)

And, To subject alternative therapies to sterile, impersonal double-blind conditions strips them of intrinsic qualities that are part of their power. (Sampson, 1996, p. 195)

The mysterium defense is ruled out in science. It might function as a short-term place holder, but it cannot be entrenched beyond that. Chi is at the heart of the whole feng shui enterprise, it is supposedly in the world, a natural entity, yet failure to find and measure it in 3,000 years suggests it is an unscientific concept. After acceptance of Einstein’s 1916 general theory of relativity, gravitational waves were thought to be in the world. For one century they were searched for but not found but in 2015, Caltech and MIT scientists using the new Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) confirmed their existence (https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/ what-are-gw). Nothing comparable has happened for chi. Comparison with the aether is instructive (Spence, 2020).

8.3.4 Feng Shui in Science Programmes Where, as in Asia, the beliefs are commonplace, science students can usefully and with great benefit come to appreciate the inherent problems with the practice. Indeed, such examination should be seen as a professional obligation of science teachers and curriculum writers. Where feng shui is not commonplace, its examination is still educationally beneficial; it can be, like astrology, a case study that sheds light on important psychological, scientific, philosophical, and cultural dimensions of human life, including shedding light on the distinctive practices of science. As before with pendulum motion and photosynthesis, an integrated, coordinated, liberal inclusion of feng shui in a school programme could look like (Fig. 8.2): Feng shui beliefs in society and in classrooms presents not so much a problem for teachers as an opportunity. A considered and informed examination of feng shui is a way for students to learn about the nature of science and other important social processes—the impact of marketing, the cultural determiners of gullibility, and so on. It will be apparent that feng shui violates all constitutive and procedural components of science. Its ontology is evasive, ill-determined, and unbound; its epistemology is empiricist and subjectivist. Such learning can be science education’s contribution to the cultural health of society which is inversely related to the degree that gullibility, credulity, superstition, and unwarranted beliefs prevail in the society. Chinese people need only think of the Cultural Revolution to have this truth-driven home, while US citizens need only reflect on the election of Donald Trump to draw the same lesson. The quality of such learning will depend on the quality, sensitivity, and informedness of the teaching. At all points of classroom contact with feng shui, and its chi-based worldview, the issues should be problematised, questions asked, claims

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Fig. 8.2 Cross-disciplinary teaching of Feng Shui. A science and religion; B Christian missions in China; C energy; D naturalism; E chi machines; F instrumentalism; G Communist Party policies; H demarcation

examined, and alternatives investigated. Little is gained by a didactic, catechism-like approach to the issues. This is the deadening and useless approach to religion so frequently taken both by evangelists for religion in all religious traditions, and by opponents of religion in Soviet and Communist-States. Over time, and by engagement with problematic aspects of feng shui, the strengths and advantages of a scientific outlook should become apparent to students, along with appreciation of the methods and achievements in non-scientific intellectual and cultural domains. Over a six-year period I elaborated upon all these considerations and produced a book manuscript. The book, among other things, included some historical study of engagements of Europe with China. Of special note were the life and writings of two missionary-scholars who paid informed attention to feng shui: the sixteenth-century Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552–1610; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matteo_Ricci) and the nineteenth-century Lutheran Ernst Eitel (1838–1908). Pleasingly, the book Feng Shui: Teaching About Science and Pseudoscience was published by Springer in 2019 (Matthews, 2019; https://www.springer.com/gp/book/ 9783030188214#aboutBook). It has 14 chapters, 340 pages, and 830 references. Early appraisals of the book by Chinese scholars are encouraging. Examples being: Wang Youjun, Philosophy, Shanghai Normal University, China:

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The book is one of the best research works published on Feng Shui. It opens up vast horizons for viewing science in new perspectives. It is an outstanding contribution to the fields of the history of science, philosophy of science and science education.

Yao Dazhi, History of Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China: This excellent book provides a commendable study for those interested in theory, practice, and history of this pre-modern knowledge system, especially from a perspective of the ‘demarcation problem’ between science and pseudoscience.

To address the shortfalls in educational discussion of feng shui I was invited by Sibel Erduran to oversee and edit a collection of research papers for a thematic issue of Science & Education to appear in 2021. Fifteen scholars from China, Hong Kong, USA, Korea, UK, and Australia are contributing. Their disciplines are education, philosophy, economics, anthropology, geology, physics, psychology, and Chinese studies.

References (AAAS) American Association for the Advancement of Science. (1989). Project 2061: Science for All Americans. Washington, DC: AAAS. Also published by Oxford University Press, 1990. (AAAS) American Association for the Advancement of Science. (1990). The liberal art of science: Agenda for action. Washington, DC: AAAS. (NRC) National Research Council. (1996). National science education standards. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. (NRC) National Research Council. (2013). Next generation science standards. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Alters, B. J., & Alters, S. M. (2001). Defending evolution: A guide to the creation/evolution controversy. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers. Appleman, P. (Ed.). (1970). Darwin. New York: Norton. Beienfield, H., & Korngold, E. (1991). Between heaven and earth: A guide to Chinese medicine. New York: Random House. Boghossian, P., & Lindsay, J. (2019). How to have impossible conversations. New York: Lifelong Books. Bolton, H. C. (Ed.). (1892). Scientific correspondence of Joseph Priestley. New York. Brock, W. H. (1989). History of science in British schools: Past, present and future. In M. Shortland & A. Warwick (Eds.), Teaching the history of science (pp. 30–41). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Brock, W. H. (2008). Joseph Priestley, enlightened experimentalist. In I. Rivers & D. L. Wykes (Eds.), Joseph Priestley: Scientist, philosopher, and theologian (pp. 49–79). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brooke, J. H. (1991). Science and religion: Some historical perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, S. (2005). The Feng Shui Bible: The definitive guide to practising Feng Shui. London: Octupus Publishing Group. Bunge, M. (2001). Philosophy in crisis: The need for reconstruction. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Bunge, M. (2011). Knowledge: Genuine and bogus. Science & Education, 20(5–6), 411–438. Cobern, W. W. (1996). Worldview theory and conceptual change in science education. Science Education, 80(5), 579–610.

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Mahner, M. (2013). Science and pseudoscience: How to demarcate after the (alleged) demise of the demarcation problem. In M. Pigliucci & M. Boudry (Eds.), Philosophy of pseudoscience: Reconsidering the demarcation problem (pp. 29–59). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Martin, R. N. D. (1991). Pierre Duhem: Philosophy and history in the work of a believing physicist. La Salle, IL: Open Court. Mascall, E. L. (1956). Christian theology and natural science: Some questions in their relations. London: Longmans, Green & Co. Matthews, M. R. (Ed.). (1989). The scientific background to modern philosophy. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Matthews, M. R. (Ed.). (2009a). Science, worldviews and education. Dordrecht: Springer. Matthews, M. R. (2009b). Teaching the philosophical and worldview dimension of science. Science & Education, 18(6–7), 697–728. Reproduced in M. R. Matthews (Ed.). (2009). Science, worldviews and education (pp. 49–80). Dordrecht: Springer. Matthews, M. R. (2009c). Science and worldviews in the classroom: Joseph Priestley and photosynthesis. Science & Education, 18(6–7), 929–960. Matthews, M. R. (2015). Science teaching: The contribution of history and philosophy of science. New York: Routledge. Matthews, M. R. (Ed.). (2018a). History, philosophy and science teaching: New perspectives. Dordrecht: Springer. Matthews, M. R. (2018b). Feng Shui: Educational responsibilities and opportunities. In M. R. Matthews (Ed.), History, philosophy and science teaching: New perspectives (pp. 3–41). Dordrecht: Springer. Matthews, M. R. (2019). Feng Shui: Teaching about science and pseudoscience. Dordrecht: Springer. McEvoy, J. G. (1990). Joseph Priestley and the chemical revolution: A thematic overview. In A. T. Schwartz & J. G. McEvoy (Eds.), Motion toward perfection: The achievement of Joseph Priestley (pp. 129–160). Boston: Skinner House Books. McInerny, R. M. (1966). Thomism in an age of renewal. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. McMullin, E. (2005). Galileo’s theological venture. In E. McMullin (Ed.), The Church and Galileo (pp. 88–116). Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Miller, H. L. (1996). Science and dissent in post-Mao China: The politics of knowledge. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Miller, P. (Ed.). (1993). Priestley: Political writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mott, N. (Ed.). (1991). Can scientists believe?. London: James & James. Nasr, S. H. (1996). Religion and the order of nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oldroyd, D. R. (1980). Darwinian impacts: An introduction to the Darwinian revolution. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. Oldroyd, D. R., & Langham, I. (Eds.). (1983). The wider domain of evolutionary thought. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Reidel. Pigliucci, M., & Boudry, M. (Eds.). (2013). Philosophy of pseudoscience: Reconsidering the demarcation problem. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Plantinga, A. (2000). Warranted Christian belief . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Priestley, J. (1806/1970). Memoirs of Dr. J. Priestley to the Year 1795 written by himself, with a continuation by his Son, J. Priestley (2 vols.) Philadelphia. (J. Lindsay edited, Adams & Dart, Bath, 1970). Priestley, J. (1871). A history of the corruptions of Christianity. London: The British and Foreign Unitarian Association. Redondi, P. (1988). Galileo Heretic. London: Allen Lane. Ruse, M. (2000). The evolution wars: A guide to the debates. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. Ruse, M. (2006). Darwinism and its discontents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rutt, J. T. (Ed.). (1817–32/1972). The theological and miscellaneous works of Joseph Priestley (25 vols.) London. (Kraus Reprint, New York, 1972).

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Chapter 9

Idealism of Cultural Studies and Realism of Mario Bunge

Abstract The chapter traces the origin of Cultural Studies as a scholarly field that conjoins, centrally, anthropology, sociology, feminism, and philosophy. It is characterised by its opposition to scientism, its explicit epistemological relativism, its rejection of the Enlightenment project, and, in places, its ontological idealism and distrust of science. From the early 1990s cultural studies has become institutionalised in science education with the establishment of a journal and creation of strands in major research conferences. Its links to the philosophy and pedagogy of constructivism are explicit, so too its links to Critical Theory. Arguments against the radical idealism of cultural studies are advanced. The contrast is made with the ontological realism of the physicist/philosopher Mario Bunge whose arguments for the symbiosis philosophy and physics, for a realist interpretation of quantum physics, for the Enlightenment project, and for informed scientism are outlined.

As outlined in Chap. 6, ‘modern’ HPS&ST studies took on institutional form when six different journal thematic issues on the subject followed upon a 1987 invitation by Jaakko Hintikka for me to guest edit a special issue of Kluwer’s (now Springer) HPS journal Synthese on the subject. This in turn led to holding the remarkably successful Florida State University HPS&ST conference in 1989. As described, that conference took place during the ‘Science Wars’ when social constructivism was at its peak in the HPS community and when it had made significant inroads among science educators. Initially, the opposing ‘sides’ of orthodox realism and constructivist idealism were accommodated within the IHPST tent and had outlet in Science & Education journal. But as social constructivism waned in HPS, Cultural Studies took its place and was embraced by science educators leading eventually in 2006 to founding of the journal Cultural Studies of Science Education by Ken Tobin and Wolff-Michael Roth. Almost in parallel with this development, I began a 25-year friendship and collaboration with Mario Bunge, the Argentine/Canadian physicist and clear-headed realist philosopher. As there are quite general lessons about HPS&ST to be learnt from the idealism of Cultural Studies and the realism of Bunge, both will be elaborated here.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. R. Matthews, History, Philosophy and Science Teaching: A Personal Story, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0558-1_9

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9.1 Cultural Studies in Science Education Cultural Studies is a growing field in science education and its proponents have high hopes that its methodologies and ‘orientations’ will become a discipline norm. The research programme is being progressively institutionalised—doctoral degrees awarded, conference strands established, a journal founded, dedicated professorships created, and so on. The American Educational Research Association (AERA) conference has a ‘cultural and historical’ research special interest group; the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST) conference has a comparable strand. Although constructivism has ebbed, and the term has almost disappeared from education conference programmes and journal indexes, the bulk of its ‘principles’, ethos, and practices has reappeared under the guise of ‘Cultural Studies of Science Education’. As in earlier decades with Behaviourism and Constructivism, the Cultural Studies programme in education can only benefit from philosophical attention. Though one should notice the caveat expressed by John Frow, the founder of Cultural Studies in Australia: ‘Cultural studies’, on the one hand, designates less a formed disciplinary space than a relatively formless potential which is taken up in different and often quite contradictory ways. (Frow, 2005, p. 1)

Such an opening caveat does not auger well for a coherent programme, or its effective evaluation. The caveat immediately legitimates responses such as: ‘That criticism applies to A but we are B’, and so on down the alphabet. This is a routine religious and political response to criticism. And if A can be nailed down, it turns out that the position has changed to A+ , and the proponent dances away: ‘Oh, that is olden day Catholicism, not modern day Catholicism’, ‘Oh that is Spanish Catholicism, not British’, and so on.

9.1.1 The Beginning of Cultural Studies In the early 1990s the journal Science as Culture commenced publication in order to provide ‘research space’ for anthropological studies of science of the kind that had been made famous (or, more properly, infamous) by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar’s study of laboratory life (Latour & Woolgar, 1979). Just as the anthropology of religion is not concerned with the truth or falsity of religious claims, or even the strength or weakness of specific religious arguments, so too this approach to science was consciously ‘truth neutral’; truth or good warrant could not be appealed to as the explanation of scientific consensus. The research avenues and questions in the new field were sign-posted in the 15-chapter anthology Science as Practice and Culture edited by Andrew Pickering (1992). This anthology appeared the same year that Science & Education was launched. There, in the first editorial, I espoused the need for clear communication and the

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avoidance of jargon in scholarly writing. As if to show the relevance of the editorial, a few years later Pickering, the founder of Cultural Studies research, contributed a major book, Science as Practice and Culture—to the field’s oeuvre. There, in a single 80-word sentence, he wrote: The dance of agency, seen asymmetrically from the human end, thus takes the form of a dialectic of resistance and accommodation, where resistance denotes the failure to achieve an intended capture of agency in practice, and accommodation an active human strategy of response to resistance, which can include revisions to goals and intentions as well as to the material form of the machine in question and to the human frame of gestures and social relations that surround it. (Pickering, 1995, p. 22)

What does this mean? Who knows? If it means anything, it surely could have been written more clearly. This is something that decent philosophy tries to inculcate. Unfortunately, such writing from ‘on top’ set the communication tone for the Cultural Studies field. In 2006 Kenneth Tobin and Wolff-Michael Roth founded the Springer journal Cultural Studies of Science Education (https://www.springer.com/journal/11422). Tobin had been joint chair of the 1989 Tallahassee conference at which the IHPST group was founded. He was a contributor to early meetings. Both Tobin and Roth had been highly published and prize-winning champions of constructivism who then rejected and disowned the position. In the new journal’s first editorial they announced: The journal encourages empirical and non-empirical research that explores science and science education as forms of culture … It is anticipated that the forms of dissemination will make visible the non-linearity of doing research and the recursive nature of delineating problems. (Tobin & Roth, 2006, p. 1)

They were dissatisfied with extant journals, including of course Science & Education, where: … the required format of manuscripts in standard journals assumes a linearity of method and incorporates many characteristics of positivism despite declared allegiances to (social) constructivism and postmodern, post-colonial and post structuralist theories. (Tobin & Roth, 2006, p. 2)

It is noteworthy that the editorial continues by stating that: A requisite for all published articles is, however, an explicit and appropriate connection with and immersion in cultural studies. (Tobin & Roth, 2006, p. 2)

This certainly insulates its contentions from outside critique, but it is a very novel policy position for a research journal. It is the type of policy associated with sectarian or ‘closed-shop’ enterprises and is antithetical to liberal ideas about the promotion of scholarship and the purpose of scholarly journals. Even the Catholic Scholastic journals—Modern Schoolmen, New Scholasticism, and The Thomist—do not require ‘appropriate connection and immersion’ in either Thomism or Catholicism as a requisite for publication, just competence in the subject being addressed. One might hope that the Cultural Studies research community would have the same maturity and confidence in itself; it should welcome outside input and criticism, even from non-believers.

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The foundation editorial of Cultural Studies further announced that the journal encourages submissions that present ideas radically departing from oppressive, hegemonic norms. But just what are the oppressive hegemonic research norms authors are encouraged to depart from are not spelt out. Are they Measurement? Realism? Rationality? Universalism? Control groups? Evidence? Objectivity? Clear writing? Consistency? Statistical analysis? Coherence? Or is it some other hegemonic failing not yet announced? Wolff-Michael Roth announced his apostasy from constructivism, writing that it ‘turned out to be plagued with considerable contradictions’ (Roth, 2006, p. 326). Something that many philosophers, including Wallis Suchting quoted earlier, had said from the outset. Kenneth Tobin had ‘moved on’ from constructivism (Tobin, 2000) and elsewhere stated his new position as (https://brill.com/view/journals/apse/1/1/article-p1_ 2.xml): In contrast to the mainstream of research in science education, I advocate a multilogical methodology that embraces incommensurability, polysemia, subjectivity, and polyphonia as a means of preserving the integrity and potential of knowledge systems to generate and maintain disparate perspectives, outcomes, and implications for practice. In such a multilogical model, power discourses such as Western medicine carry no greater weight than complementary knowledge systems that may have been marginalized in a social world in which monosemia is dominant. (Tobin, 2015, p. 3)

Who knows what this means? The claim, as with so many other cultural studies assertions, minimally cries out for a word-by-word, phrase-by-phrase, sentence-bysentence application of the standard philosopher’s question: What do you mean by? But there is little patience in education for this ‘slow, lingering method’ as Suchting called it.

9.1.2 Obscurantist Writing Roth and Tobin conjointly edited the ‘flagship’ anthology: Science, Learning, Identity: Sociocultural and Cultural-Historical Perspectives (Roth & Tobin, 2007). In their own contribution they craft the following two sentences: If, on the other hand, we begin with the ontological assumption of difference that exists in and for itself, that is, with the recognition that A↓A (e.g., because different ink drops attached to different paper particles at a different moment in time), then all sameness and identity is the result of work that not only sets two things, concepts, or processes equal but also deletes the inherent and unavoidable differences that do in fact exist. This assumption is an insidious part of the phallogocentric epistemology undergirding science as the method of decomposing unitary systems into sets of variables, which never can be more than external, one-sided expressions of a superordinate unit. (Roth & Tobin, 2007, pp. 99–100)

Again, what does this mean? Who knows? Is it worth the effort of trying to find a meaning? Is it akin to the philosophical effort to distinguish universals and particulars, genus and species? The sentences surely could be entered, with confidence of

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winning, into any international ‘Obscure Writing’ competition. And this is written ‘from the top’. What example does it set for students? With considerable effort, one conclusion we can draw from the foregoing collection of words is that Galileo’s break-through resolution of free fall into its horizontal and vertical components, using his justly famous inclined plane experiment (Palmieri, 2011; Turner, 2012), was ‘phallogocentric’ and ‘one-sided’. This because it decomposed a unitary system, the natural free-falling body, into sets of variables. Likewise, Priestley was probably phallogocentric for decomposing the Aristotelian and everyday unity of air into its component gases. Such decomposition is a hallmark of natural and social science; it is something that students need to learn and appreciate. Above all, it is not something that women should be told is ‘phallogocentric’ and hence dismissed or avoided. Women, and men, are in need of more scientific acumen; to deny this is the victory of ideology and sloganising over the hard-pressed business of science education and the Enlightenment project. Matters do not get any clearer when on the following page we are told: Such alternative ways of ‘w/ri(gh)ting’ classroom research generally and science education research specifically allows us to institute much more substantive ruptures with the current homo-hegemony of the phallogocentric genres of science education and better come to grips with the multiplicity and plurality of experiences that exist in science classrooms. (Roth & Tobin 2007, p. 102)

These paragraphs were not written by a beginning student, but by the two most published and most awarded researchers in international science education. Google lists 17,700 citations of Tobin. Both are recipients of the coveted NARST ‘Distinguished Contribution to Science Education Research’ award: Tobin in 2007, Roth in 2009. What does this say about the profession? It certainly says something about how much competent philosophy, alertness to nonsense, and commitment to clear writing is needed.

9.1.3 Cultural Studies and Critical Theory: A Likely Marriage Cultural Studies and Critical Theory have morphed (Barton, 2001). Critical Theory abounds in such sentences as those above. This was stunningly revealed by the Sokal Hoax where hundreds of such impenetrable, and idiotic, sentences were randomly strung together and published, to acclaim, in 1996 in Social Text, a leading Critical Theory journal (Sokal & Bricmont, 1998). The great pity is that it is from such sources many science educators are now drinking and welcoming their students to the same brew. Routinely, prominent researchers in Cultural Studies write sentences that cannot be understood. In a major 2012 science education handbook one reads:

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The synergism of the conversation between the research bricolage and critical theory involves an interplay between the praxis of the critical and the radical uncertainty of what is often referred to as the postmodern. (Steinberg & Kincheloe, 2012, p. 1492)

We can read it, but understanding the totality is more than difficult. What, if anything, the authors are asserting is a mystery to all but the inner-most initiates of such conversation. And this is in a handbook promoting science education research to a wider audience! The mangling of language and the inability to write clearly should be an embarrassment, it should be struck out by editors, but it is not. For students, such writing is an exemplar of how to succeed in university, how to get to the top. Steven Shapin, the Harvard historian of science, in an article on ‘The Crisis of Readership in the History of Science’, wrote of this academic curse: But the problem to which it is worth drawing attention is the particular species of bad writing that is, so to speak, institutionally intentional. Initiates learn to write badly as a badge of professionalism; they resist using the vernacular because it doesn’t sound smart enough; they infer from obscurity to profundity. Some things are indeed hard to say in ordinary English, but not nearly so many as academics pretend. (Shapin, 2005, pp. 239–240)

The obvious question for educators is: To what degree does the new cultural studies programme embody the philosophical and pedagogical weaknesses (errors) of its constructivist parents? The brief answer is: ‘A lot’. For example, consider the foundational claim made by Wolff-Michael Roth, Kenneth Tobin, and Stephen Ritchie, three major cultural theorists and journal editors, who say that for cultural studies exponents: Science is viewed as a discourse that is a relatively recent activity of humankind, the goal being to make sense of a universe of phenomena in terms of knowledge that is viable. (Roth et al., 2001, p. 218)

This is false or, at best, misleading. Science requires discourse and communication, but many human occupations, including knowledge-seeking ones, require that. What science overwhelmingly requires is experimental intervention in the world and the harnessing of technologies, minimally measurement technologies. Intervention and measurement were at the heart of the Scientific Revolution. Marx in his Theses on Feuerbach had a much better feel for the practical, interventionist, experimental character of science; that is, for the praxis of science (Suchting, 1986, Chap. 1). Further, the goal of science is not to ‘make sense’ of the world, but to explain the world and its processes; to identify lawful behaviours and causal relations in a world that exists independently of us. In other words, to find truths about the world; its constituents and mechanisms. Poets, artists, novelists, theologians, and everyone else can, and do, make sense of things about them, but making sense is not making science. Every major step forward in science has defied the common sense of the time; the scientific step has seemed senseless. Galileo memorably commented on those few who were promoting the Copernican heliocentric, rotating Earth account of the solar system:

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Nor can I ever sufficiently admire the outstanding acumen of those who have taken hold of this opinion and accepted it as true; they have through sheer force of intellect done such violence to their own senses as to prefer what reason told them over that which sensible experience plainly showed them to the contrary …, there is no limit to my astonishment when I reflect that Aristarchus and Copernicus were able to make reason so conquer sense that, in defiance of the latter, the former became mistress of their belief. (Galileo, 1633/1953, p. 328)

Thus, the title of Lewis Wolpert’s book The Unnatural Nature of Science (Wolpert, 1992). Further, if phenomena are understood as experiences of the world, then science is not concerned with the universe of phenomena, the realm of experience, it is concerned with the universe that gives rise to phenomena. There are countless arrays of different experiences or ‘phenomena’ occasioned by planetary motion. Novelists, poets, and anyone else can interpret that array; sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and others can scientifically study the array; but scientists study the planetary motion that exists independently of any phenomena or experience. The history of measuring instruments in science is a testament to the replacement of subjective experience and feelings with objective measures. Galileo’s pulsilogium, that measured pulse rate by the length of a swinging pendulum beating in time with the pulse, replaced ‘it feels fast to me’ with a length of string that could be objectively measured. Thermometers replaced ‘it feels hot to me’, weighing scales replaced ‘it feels heavy to me’, tape measures replaced ‘it looks long to me’, ammeters replaced ‘there must be a lot of current in the wire’, and so on (Fig. 9.1). Identifying, accounting for, or eliminating subjectivity is at the heart of scientific progress.

Fig. 9.1 Galileo’s Medical Pulsilogium

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9.1.4 Quantum Anti-realism Underlying most of the philosophical confusion of Cultural Studies is an ill-informed anti-realist ontological commitment. Sometimes this is apparent, and on the surface, other times it is subterranean. Wolff-Michael Roth pleasingly spells it out clearly, telling us that: Critiques of an observer-independent world also have been constructed in European phenomenology and existential and hermeneutic philosophy from Søren Kierkegaard through Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricœur, and Pierre Bourdieu. … The observer and the observed cannot be separated. (Roth, 2005, p. 8)

Beyond the string of philosophers listed, none of whom are noted for scientific or HPS competence but whom Roth adduces for anti-realism, it is worth attending to the supposed scientific argument he offers. It is the same one offered by so many other educators: the appeal to quantum theory. He writes: More serious is the critique that is associated with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory. Here, the knowing observer is implicated in every observation without recourse; observer and observed are coupled and need to be accounted for in the mathematics which contains both a pan for the developing, but in accessible system, and a part that accounts for the act of observation; observation is not passive but an active operation which determines both observational categories and the range of possible observables. (Roth, 2005, p. 8)

The meaning of a ‘a pan for the developing, but in accessible system’ is less than clear. Perhaps, characteristically, it has no meaning; it is just noise. Further, that ‘observation is not passive’ has been known since at least since Plato’s time who recognised that ‘we see through the eyes, not with the eyes’. These considerations aside, Roth’s argument, or variants of it, recurs throughout the philosophical and educational literature. Ever since Planck’s 1900 announcement of quantum theory, it has been persistently seen by subjectivists and idealists as ‘manna from the laboratory’. Niels Bohr gave the first and most influential idealist interpretation, something that earned him a strong realist rebuke from Albert Einstein. This philosophical ‘clash of the titans’ is well-documented and copiously commented upon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Bohr%E2%80%93Einstein_debates). In 1984, the philosopher Arthur Fine opened his much-cited paper ‘The Natural Ontological Attitude’ with the straightforward claim: Realism is dead. … Its death was hastened by the debates over the interpretation of quantum theory, where Bohr’s nonrealist philosophy was seen to win out over Einstein’s passionate realism. (Fine, 1984, p. 83)

Roth alludes to this anti-realist tradition, but the tradition has problems; it is not convincing; there have been persistent and convincing realist interpretations of quantum theory and mechanics.

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9.1.5 Quantum Realism Defended Mario Bunge has long advanced these realist arguments beginning with his 1967 edited book Quantum Theory and Reality (Bunge, 1967b) and his contribution to it ‘A ghost free axiomatization of quantum mechanics’ (Bunge, 1967a). In this paper he axiomatised quantum mechanics and found no ghosts, everything was thoroughly physical. There were: no psychological concepts such as ‘observer’, ‘mind’, ‘subjective probability’, ‘expectation’, ‘uncertainty’, or ‘finding’, and no fictions such as ‘ideal measurement’ and extra ‘hidden variables’ with no effects. (Bunge, 1967a, p. 274)

Forty-five years later he restated the argument in his Science & Education article ‘Does Quantum Physics Refute Realism, Materialism and Determinism?’ (Bunge, 2012). He ceaselessly points out that no matter what Bohr, Born, Planck, and other quantum physicists wrote, there is no subjective, observer, experiential, or even measuring-instrument, term in their equations. Consciousness cannot cause a wave function, a mathematical operator, to collapse. Born’s wave function simply gives the probability that the system is in this or that state when the equation is solved for this or that set of boundary conditions. Quantum mechanics proceeds without subjective, personal, or observer terms, they are not needed. Bunge writes: A semantic analysis of the basic concepts of the quantum theory, such as the energy operator (Hamiltonian) and the state vector or wave function, shows that they do not contain any variables referring to an observer. (Bunge, 2012, p. 1604)

Bunge celebrates the success and vindication of quantum theory, recognising that, like all major advances in science, it does enlarge and transform our view of the world. It gives a deeper understanding of the world, its constituents, and processes. Philosophical realism needs to be accordingly refined. Philosophical realism should not be tied to physicalism and the view that all objects have sharp properties; it should not be tied to classical mechanics. For Bunge, this was Einstein’s big mistake in his famous co-authored 1935 paper where he claimed that quantum theory was unrealistic (Einstein et al., 1935). The proper lesson is that quantum objects are not classical objects; the improper lesson is that they are somehow dependent upon us. Most recently, the quantum physicist Art Hobson (2017) and contributors to the Steven French and Saatsi collection Scientific Realism and the Quantum (French & Saatsi, 2020) have defended the realist interpretation of quantum mechanics. Hobson concludes his paper on ‘A Realist Analysis of Six Controversial Quantum Issues’ with the unambiguous assertion: the issues of quantization, field-particle duality, superposition, entanglement, nonlocality, and measurement present no barrier to a consistent and realistic interpretation based on standard quantum physics. At least to this extent, quantum physics is consistent with the scientific view as it has been known since Copernicus: nature exists on its own and science’s goal is to understand its operating principles, which are independent of humans. (Hobson, 2019, p. 346)

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The quantum realist tradition is seldom, if ever, mentioned in constructivist and cultural studies writing. Students are told that after Bohr, realism is so yesterday; the philosophical world has seen the light of observer-dependent idealism, the very world announced three hundred years ago by Bishop Berkeley. The need for clarity about realism in science is well-illustrated in a recent excellent book, Lightspeed, by John Spence the Australian physicist now at Arizona State University. The book traces the history, philosophy, sociology, and physics of the determination of c, the speed of light constant. However, in the Introduction Spence writes: The speed of light is one of a very small number of fundamental constants in physics which truly determines the nature of our universe and the form of matter within it. (Spence, 2020, p. 3)

Idealists, and educational constructivists, nod and may even clap, but realists such as Bunge and others, including myself, shake their heads in disbelief when reading such a claim. It should take just a few moments of reflection to realise Spence’s assertion is the exact reverse of the truth. Our physical constants do not determine the nature of the universe and the form of matter within it; it is the latter that determine, or at least allow, the former. Head shaking, upon reading the above, should be the reaction of anyone who has had a decent, HPS-informed, science education. In private communication, Spence has said that the sentence was poorly written and will be rectified in a subsequent edition. But that is too late for many present-day readers who will be having their subterranean idealism and constructivism confirmed by the claim. Spence will become yet another authority cited to support the claim that the observer determines the world. Careless writing claims yet more victims.

9.1.6 Old Wine in New Bottles The move from multi-worlds to multi-sciences is seamless and standard in cultural studies literature. The worry for science education is that cultural studies enthusiasm will turn out to be a three-decade delayed re-run of constructivist enthusiasm, with all the latter’s now well-documented philosophical and pedagogical failures. The trajectory of cultural studies is the same: discounting, if not denying, the truth-seeking claims of science, its methodology, and its partial success. The further down this path university education staff go, the less they can seriously engage with the great, and not so great, contemporary public debates involving science: compulsory vaccination, carbon emission controls, global warming, conservation of species, promotion of GM agriculture, teaching evolution, using nuclear power stations, Covid-19 treatment, and so on. And, rightly, the more difficult it becomes for them to seek government, or any other, financial support for their supposed ‘research’, unless subjectivism or postmodernism has also captured the funding agency. This was the case in 1980s New Zealand that I have earlier documented: Constructivists held the government purse strings.

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Ultimately the resolution of such issues and formulation of government policy depend on there being some scientific truth, or best approximation, about the matter; and difficult though it might be to know, it needs to be ascertained. If, in advance, the science educator says that there are no truths about the matter, only divergent cultural beliefs, and practices, then one’s contribution to the debate is marginal; we may as well not participate, or else learn to shout louder, bribe better, or stack meetings more successfully. The ‘olden days’ assumption was that the purpose of debate, writing, and argument was to inform, and hopefully convince, an audience, either large or small. But for Cultural Studies researchers, the audience is itself made up—it is imaginary. If everything else is ‘made up’ why not audiences? One exponent writing in Australian Cultural Studies: A Reader (Frow & Morris, 1993) says: Audiences may be imagined empirically, theoretically or politically, but in all cases the product is a fiction that serves the need of the imagining institution. In no case is the audience ‘real’ or external to its discursive construction. (in Franklin, 2003, p. 380)

How can a university professor make such a claim? Would that the mega-thousand audiences for Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies were not real but, unfortunately, they were only too real. Of the example above, Jim Franklin, a UNSW philosopher of mathematics, and Sydney University philosophy graduate, writes: It is a perfect example of the ability of philosophical errors, nailed time and again centuries ago, to ooze out of their sarcophagi, clothe themselves with a local habitation and a name, and stalk the earth seeking a tabula rasa to colonise. (Franklin, 2003, p. 380)

Science education is easy to so colonise because it is a philosophical tabula rasa. Little, if any, philosophy goes into the education of science teachers, science educators, or research journal committees. For instance, there are no philosophers among the forty or so members of the Editorial Committee of the flagship journal Cultural Studies of Science Education. This absence builds philosophical ignorance into the journal processes and output. For instance, a recent article in the journal takes up the important topic of teaching about non-epistemic values in science (Gandolfi, 2019). Much illuminating material has been written by philosophers on this subject (Carrier, 2013; Couló, 2014; Elliott, 2017; Koertge, 2005; McMullin, 1983). None of this literature is cited in the article; indeed, no philosophers at all are cited. But we are told that the author’s research is: closely connected with the field of Post/Decolonial Science and grounded on the argument that modern Western Science is in fact a product of exchanges and collaborations between different cultures, and of the circulation of diverse types of knowledge around the world, all promoted by historical and geographical contexts (such as the trade in the Silk Road, and the European colonising and imperialist projects). (Gandolfi, 2019, p. 560)

Just how the achievements of Copernicus, Kepler, Brahe, Torricelli, Galileo, Huygens, Boyle, Newton, and the other founders of early modern science (Wootton, 2015) are fitted into this picture we are left to imagine; we certainly are not told. Ditto for the achievements of the founding quantum physicists. Galileo famously praised Archimedes ‘whose name should never be mentioned except in awe’, and

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thoroughly utilised Euclidean geometry in his mathematisation of physics, saying that the ‘book of nature was written in geometric language’. Perhaps this is what is meant by ‘exchange and collaboration’. It is worth saying, but it is hardly novel news. Problems emerge when one scratches below the rhetorical surface. A fundamental problem with such philosophy-free ‘externalist’ programmes is well-exhibited in the quotation. We know that for millennia there have been exchanges and collaborations between different cultures, and of the circulation of diverse types of knowledge around the world. This throws no light upon, and indeed avoids, the question of why the Scientific Revolution occurred when and where it did. Of all the cultural exchanges that were going on around Tuscany in the seventeenth century, what did Galileo do that made his contribution to the exchange so dramatic and so epistemologically progressive? For all the millennia of trade on the Silk Road, it was not until the sixteenthcentury Jesuit mission of Fr Matteo Ricci to Peking that modern astronomy and science began appearing in China, and this against the strident opposition of local mandarins (Matthews, 2019b, Chap. 6). Cultural relativism is rampant in Cultural Studies; indeed, it is the ticket price for entry to the programme. The terrible consequences of cultural relativism in areas such as modern slavery, genital mutilation of women, the practice of sati, the practice of witch burning in New Guinea, continuing caste-based discrimination and violence in India, promotion of voodoo medicine to deal with AIDS, Covid-19 and much else, and destructive environmental practices—are well-known. Meera Nanda, in many writings, has railed against the impact of ‘progressive’ philosophy and misplaced ‘culturally sensitive’ education in modernising countries. She fears: The growth of local tyrannies, each justifying itself by culturally authentic standards’, and warns that ‘the postmodern elements of the constructivist science critique strengthen the premodern elements of postcolonial societies. (Nanda, 1998, p. 289)

After three years of gestation, in 2018 Springer published the 12-chapter History, Philosophy, and Science Teaching: New Perspectives (Matthews, 2018; https:// www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319626147). It was conceived as a follow-up, 4th volume, to the 3-volume 2014 HPS&ST Handbook. Its chapters documented and appraised research on topics such as The Enlightenment and Indoctrination that were not included in the original handbook. Included is a chapter by the philosopher Christine McCarthy on ‘Cultural Studies in Education’ (McCarthy, 2018). This chapter is an excellent antidote for shallow enthusiasm about cultural studies in science education. She concludes by appeal to the inseparable combination of philosophy of education and philosophy of science that is required when dealing with most of the serious pedagogical and policy decisions in science education: Respect for persons does not entail respect for the belief-systems of those persons. Respect for persons entails respect for the capacity of those persons to engage in the fundamentally human activities, among which is the search for true belief. Respect for persons thus entails commitment to the support of each person in their quest for true belief; this means, in general, a commitment to the equal distribution of the social good of education. It means respectful,

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and mutual, critiques of one another’s belief-systems, leading to mutual thought and the selfcritique that is essential to the individual’s growth in cognition and in all other capacities. It is also the sine qua non for social/cultural improvement, ethical, doxastic, and material. (McCarthy, 2018, p. 132)

9.2 Mario Bunge An important part of my intellectual life since 1995 has been my engagement and friendship with the Argentine/Canadian physicist and philosopher Mario Bunge who died in February 2020, a few months after his 100th birthday. Many people elaborate on what is to be striven for in a competent liberal science education—breadth and depth of scientific knowledge, awareness of the present and past place of science in culture, understanding the philosophical underpinnings of science, recognising and advancing the social and moral obligations of science, and being committed to a scientific worldview—Mario Bunge embodied all of these aspirations; he represented the best of liberal education. Pleasingly I was able to edit a 41-chapter, 830-page Festschrift that was published just prior to his 100th birthday (Matthews, 2019a; https://www.springer.com/in/book/ 9783030166724). In my Introduction (Matthews, 2019c; https://www.hpsst.com/upl oads/6/2/9/3/62931075/matthews_introduction.pdf) to the Festschrift I gave some account of his remarkable life and intellectual achievements. One year later this was elaborated in an Obituary (https://www.hpsst.com/uploads/6/2/9/3/62931075/ bunge_obituary_news_4.pdf). Martin Mahner, a German philosopher, edited a 31chapter collection of Bunge’s papers (Mahner, 2001) and wrote a most informed obituary concentrating on Bunge’s philosophy of science (Mahner, 2021). Bunge’s 500 page autobiography—Between Two Worlds—was written at age 95 years, entirely from the well-springs of his extraordinary memory, he had no collection of diaries (Bunge, 2016; https://www.springer.com/in/book/978303016 6724). It is one of the most informative and engaging of all philosophers’ autobiographies. The Name Index has 1200 entries. For nearly all, he provides a succinct exposition and appraisal of their views. Typical of hundreds, for example, is his passing comment on Australian materialism, the philosophy that so marked the Sydney University philosophy department of my formative youth: I sympathized with the Australian materialism project but thought it had no future because of its inexactness, radical reductionism, and detachment from contemporary science. And I found Smart congenial but Armstrong haughty and aggressive, and Ullian – who gave a lecture at my seminar – more interested in farming than in philosophy. Regrettably, around 1980 the American David Lewis and his extravagant possible-worlds metaphysics seduced overnight the younger Australian philosophers and consigned the native materialists to oblivion. (Bunge, 2016, p. 213)

Pleasingly, a gratis pre-publication pdf file of the book is available (https://www. hpsst.com/uploads/6/2/9/3/62931075/bunge_memoirs__mrm_.pdf).

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9.2.1 Bunge’s Life Bunge was born in Argentina in 1919. Mario’s parents wanted their son to be ‘a citizen of the world’. From an early age he was set a demanding schedule of reading literature in six languages: Spanish, English, French, Italian, German, and Latin, with Chinese read in translation. This early multilingualism was of inestimable benefit to his education, allowing him to read the classics and the best moderns in their own words. It also freed him from dependence on commercial, political, and ideological judgements about what books would be allowed to be published in Spanish. His reading of Heisenberg did not have to wait upon Spanish translations; nor his reading of the major European and Anglo-American philosophers, and important Enlightenment texts whose publication was prohibited in Argentina. At age twelve, he gained entry to the prestigious Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires. The Colegio was a disappointment. He relates that teachers ‘instilled more fear than respect’, and ‘Most of our professors were not interested in teaching, and some of them were frankly incompetent’ (Bunge, 2016, p. 27). In 1938 he was admitted to the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, where he studied physics and mathematics. He learnt atomic physics and quantum mechanics from Guido Beck, an Austrian refugee, who had been a student of Heisenberg. Shortly thereafter he founded a Workers School (the Universidad Obrera Argentina). In doing this he was inspired by the Mexican socialist and educator, Vicente Lombardo Toledano (1894–1968), who had established in 1936 the Workers University of Mexico (still in existence today as part of Mexico’s national university system). Establishing the School exemplified Bunge’s Enlightenment thinking about education. The school’s effectiveness prompted opposition from the Communist Party, the Catholic Church, and the government—the Argentine Big Three. It was closed in 1943 when it had 1000 students. Bunge taught himself modern philosophy in an environment that was a philosophical backwater. He was the first South American philosopher of science to be trained in science. Bunge made his international philosophical debut at the 1956 InterAmerican Philosophical Congress in Santiago, Chile. He was then aged 37 years. Willard Van Orman Quine, in his autobiography, mentions attending this congress, and the only thing about the congress that he thought worth recording was: The star of the philosophical congress was Mario Bunge, an energetic and articulate young Argentinian of broad background and broad, if headstrong, intellectual concerns. He seemed to feel that the burden of bringing South America up to a northern scientific and intellectual level rested on his shoulders. He intervened eloquently in the discussion of almost every paper. (Quine, 1985, p. 266)

Unfavourable political developments in Argentina forced Mario out of the country in late 1962. That year the Argentine generals ousted President Frondizi, who had been a teacher at Mario’s Universidad Obrera Argentina, and instituted tighter and tighter control over universities, prompting Bunge and his mathematician wife Marta to leave Argentina and pursue their research careers elsewhere. Despite having four

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major philosophy books published (Causality 1959, Metascientific Queries 1959, Intuition and Science 1962, The Myth of Simplicity 1963), 67 articles in physics and philosophy journals, and the support of Quine—his applications for philosophy chairs in England were unsuccessful. He was told by one esteemed university: ‘we prefer to hire our own even when unpublished’ (Bunge, 2016, p. 155). Needless to say, this left a lasting and negative impression on Bunge. Apart from immediate views about English higher education, it confirmed his realist conviction that you always need to move beyond appearances; appearances are not always how things are. For prestigious universities, as with so many other things, a sort of reverse ‘inverse law’ applies: What looks great from a distance, is not so great when close-up. He had suffered a decade or more of such venal and corrupt ‘academic’ decision-making in Argentina that violated his very idea of a liberal university. To find it in the UK was a blow. Pleasingly he had been offered joint professorships in physics and philosophy at a number of US universities including Texas, Temple, and Delaware, before being appointed in 1966 professor of philosophy at McGill University in Montreal where he remained to the end. Bunge was a prolific writer having 500 or so publications in physics, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and the foundations of biology (Silberstein, 2019; https://www.hpsst.com/uploads/6/2/9/3/62931075/bunge__publications_eng lish_.pdf). Among them are 134 books (including translations and editions); these include a massive eight-volume Treatise on Philosophy. He researched, wrote, and published through to his final year. In 2019, at 99 years he published a 40-page complex, philosophical piece on ‘Inverse Problems’ (Bunge, 2019). This was one year after his publication on ‘Gravitational Waves and Spacetime’ (Bunge, 2018). I did once ask him the secret to the longevity of his mental functioning. His answer: ‘Never in my life have I drank alcohol’. Some might consider this a high price to pay.

9.2.2 First Contact: Science Education and Religion My first contact with Mario was when he and Martin Mahner, a German biologist/philosopher, submitted, out of the blue, to Science & Education journal a long article titled ‘Is Religious Education Compatible with Science Education?’ (Mahner & Bunge, 1996). The article concluded: Science and religion can only coexist if one of them is distorted. For example, one can adopt a phenomenalist-positivist or instrumentalist view of science … Or one can distort religion by adopting a mere pragmatist stance, or by regarding all of its doctrines as mere allegory or poetry without any cognitive or truth content. (Mahner & Bunge, 1996, p. 115; https:// www.hpsst.com/uploads/6/2/9/3/62931075/bunge___mahner__1996__sc.___religion.pdf)

I published the article in 1996, and I took the opportunity to make a journal special issue (vol. 5 no. 2 1996) of the topic by inviting two Christian philosophers—Hugh

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Lacey (whom I had first met 30 years earlier through University of Sydney Newman Society activities) and Tom Settle—and a theologian (Harold Turner), scientist (John Wren-Lewis) and two UK educators (Michael Poole and Brian Woolnough) to respond (https://link.springer.com/journal/11191/volumes-and-issues/5-2). The issue was overprinted, and all 250 extra copies were immediately sold. The Bunge– Mahner article, and the special issue, was widely cited and became something of a landmark in science education debate on the topic. Subsequently other articles of Bunge’s were published in the journal: on energy (Bunge, 2000), on quantum physics (Bunge, 2003), on pseudoscience (Bunge, 2011), and on materialism (Bunge, 2012). In 2001, Mario’s mathematician wife Marta Bunge came to Sydney’s Macquarie University on sabbatical leave from McGill. Mario contacted me to see if he could be an Honorary Visitor to the School of Education. I was delighted. I organised for him to give lectures to different Australian philosophy, physics, and psychology departments, and to the Australasian HPS conference. At different lectures, sometimes someone would ask a question quoting a major philosopher’s opinion and Bunge would respond: ‘Yes, but in the following chapter, X says …..’. Or at other lectures, ‘Yes, but what you cite is from the notoriously corrupt English translation, the French/German original says …..’. He enthusiastically offered a lecture to the well-attended annual ‘HPS&ST’ conference for NSW science teachers that I used to organise. The lecture was Science and Politics: The Ethical Dilemmas of Max Planck during the Nazi Era. It was an informed, considered, and engaging lecture/workshop for teachers. Not least because he had met a good many German physicists who had fled from Nazism, and a good many who stayed. He related to the teachers a conversation with one of the ‘stay-behind’ physicists who told him: ‘Mario, you have no idea what it was like. When the phone rang at home in the middle of the night, you automatically gave the Nazi salute when answering’! Science teachers well know of Planck’s constant (h), but not of his deeply personal and considered justifications for continuing his science in Nazi Germany after Hitler’s ascent in 1933 and right through the war (Heilbron, 1986). The strengths and weaknesses of his justifications have relevance and applicability for individual scientists across a wide spectrum of science/society/commercial interfaces. Their examination is to the benefit of everyone. Many in the audience subsequently expressed the view: ‘Why aren’t teachers exposed to more such presentations?’ One answer is that, sadly, HPS simply does not occur in science teachers programmes of study. Equally, if not more sadly, HPS departments in Australian universities are progressively closing. The UNSW department, Australia’s second oldest, closed in 2018. In 2003 Bunge’s article ‘Twenty-Five Centuries of Quantum Physics: From Pythagoras to Us, and from Subjectivism to Realism’ was published in Science & Education journal (Bunge, 2003; https://www.hpsst.com/uploads/6/2/9/3/629 31075/bunge__2003__25_centuries_of_quantum_physics.pdf) and was the basis of a special issue on ‘Quantum Theory, Philosophy and Education’ (https://link. springer.com/journal/11191/volumes-and-issues/12-5). In 2011 a long article on

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‘Science and Pseudoscience’ was published. In this he lays out a ‘philosophical matrix’ for progress in science: Realism, Humanism, Scientism, Systematism, and Materialism. His claim is that the more that each component is rejected, the more fertile is the ground for pseudoscience (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11 191-009-9225-3).

9.2.3 Bunge and the Enlightenment Project The unifying thread of Bunge’s scholarship is the vigorous advancement of the Enlightenment Project (https://www.hpsst.com/uploads/6/2/9/3/62931075/36_mat thews_enlightenment_.pdf), and criticism of cultural and academic movements that deny or devalue the core planks of the project: namely its naturalism, the possibility of truth, the universality of science, rationality, and respect for individuals. Underlying all dimensions of the Enlightenment project was ontological and epistemological realism: there was an external, subject-independent world, and humans can and do have knowledge of that natural and social world. From the very beginning he defended this thesis, most recently and most extensively in his book Chasing Reality: Strife Over Realism (Bunge, 2006). Susan Haack lamented of contemporary philosophy that: ‘Our discipline becomes every day more specialized, more fragmented into cliques, niches, cartels, and fiefdoms, and more determinedly forgetful of its own history’ (Haack, 2016). Bunge gave her no reason to lament. At a time when specialisation is widely decried, and its deleterious effects on science, philosophy of science, educational research, and science teaching are evident—it is salutatory to see the fruits of one person’s pursuit of the ‘Big’ scientific and philosophical picture. Bunge was a tireless critic of postmodernism, obscurantism, and what he calls ‘academic charlatanism’. As he wrote: Up until the mid-1960s whoever wished to engage in mysticism or freewheeling intellectual deceit or anti-intellectualism had to do so outside the hallowed groves of academe. … nowadays many intellectual slobs and frauds have been given tenured jobs, are allowed to teach garbage in the name of academic freedom, and see their obnoxious writings published by scholarly journals and university presses. (Bunge, 1996, p. 96)

These were very much the same depressing thoughts of Wallis Suchting in his final years. They were part of the complex that tipped him over the edge. Bunge, after surveying the claims of prominent existentialists, phenomenologists, ethnomethodologists, and feminists, concludes: To sum up, our anti-science colleagues are characterized by their appalling ignorance of the very object of their attack, namely science. Lacking intellectual discipline and rigor, they have been utterly barren. This has not prevented them from misleading countless students, encouraging them to choose the wide door, incapacitating them to think straight and get their facts right, and in many cases even write intelligibly. (Bunge, 1996, p. 101)

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Cultural Studies could be added to the list of disciplines that Bunge surveys, and his damning indictment is still applicable. More than enough examples have already been given in this book.

9.2.4 Physics and Philosophy Bunge and Abner Shimony are two of the few philosophers of science of their generation who are as competent in physics as they are in philosophy. It was my enormous good fortune to have personally known and learnt from both. Despite the obvious benefits, this conjoint competence remains uncommon. Overwhelmingly, philosophers had taken physics as their exemplar of science, and as the base for their own philosophy of science, or at least philosophising about science. But for the most part, the philosophers were spectators not practitioners. The difference was manifest in the philosophical reflections produced. The core of Bunge’s scientific/philosophical work since its beginnings in Argentina in the mid-1940s, was the conviction that philosophy and science should be done in tandem: Physics cannot dispense with philosophy, just as the latter does not advance if it ignores physics and the other sciences. In other words, science and sound (i.e., scientific) philosophy overlap partially and consequently they can interact fruitfully. Without philosophy, science loses in depth; and without science philosophy stagnates. (Bunge, 2000, p. 461)

Bunge’s practice of this conviction is what makes both his scientific and philosophical work of relevance and benefit to scientists and to science teachers. They see someone who is not just talking a good fight but engaging in it; he walks the talk. Physicists have acknowledged the impact of Bunge’s work. In 1989 the American Journal of Physics asked its multi-thousand readers to vote for their favourite papers from the journal, from its founding in 1933 to 1989. In the resulting 1991 list of most memorable papers, alongside classics from Nobel Prize winners and luminaries such as Bridgman, Compton, Dyson, Fermi, Kuhn, Schwinger, Wheeler, and Wigner, was Bunge’s 1956 ‘Survey of the Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics’ (Bunge, 1956). In 1993, the journal repeated the exercise, asking readers for the most influential papers in the journal’s first 60 years. In this list, his 1966 paper—‘Mach’s Critique of Newtonian Mechanics’ (Bunge, 1966)—took its place alongside his 1956 article. This recognition of a philosopher/physicist by the world’s largest body of physics teachers and researchers is noteworthy. Clearly competence in physics, or any science, does not necessarily flow over into philosophical competence. Susan Stebbing’s 1937 philosophical correction of the knighted Nobel laureates James Jeans and Arthur Eddington has previously been mentioned (Stebbing, 1937/1958). Bunge provides more recent examples of highquality physics conjoined with low-quality philosophy—David Bohm being a particular and personal example for him. But ignorance of physics does make more likely poor philosophising about it.

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The analysis of causation is an example of the difference between an insider’s and an outsider’s philosophising about science. Bunge’s first major book in philosophy was Causality and Modern Science (Bunge, 1959/1979). The book was an instant success and put Bunge, and Latin American philosophy of science, firmly on the international map. It was a landmark in the treatment of causation. For decades philosophers had eschewed all serious investigation of causation as practised by scientists. The Humean picture was widely accepted: there was no causation or necessary connection in nature; there was just regularity to which the mind brought the label ‘causation’. In Hume’s words: ‘Upon the whole, necessity is something, that exists in the mind, not in objects’ (Hume, 1739/1888, p. 165). Philosophers brought detailed philosophical analysis and debate to the consequences of this position, but rarely questioned its empiricist presuppositions (Sosa, 1975). Bunge utilised his first-hand knowledge of science to dismiss the Humean story that made causation ‘imaginary’; that replaced real-world causation with correlation; that kept the ‘causation’ label, but denied it had any ontological reference. And he did the same with the currently popular revival of Aristotelian powers-based causal analysis that gave ontological reality to causes but misunderstood the real processes. He wrote: The main ground why causal chains can at best work as rough approximations for short periods of time is that they assume a fictitious isolation of the process in question from the remaining processes. (Bunge, 1959/1979, p. 127)

And: The picture of linear causal chains is ontologically defective because it singles out a, more or less imaginary, line of development in a whole concrete stream. (Bunge, 1959/1979, p. 132)

Both Bunge and Shimony are ontological and methodological naturalists; both believe that metaphysics and ontology have to be linked to, and come out of, science; both regard science and the scientific method as the only way to come to knowledge of the world and its processes, including human processes and interactions. This leads Shimony to a Whiteheadian, Aristotelian-like, Process Metaphysics (Shimony, 1965). He thinks that our current best understanding of microphysics (quantum theory) requires that we grant real existence to potentialities which then become actualised at the quantum level—see essays in his two-volume Search for a Naturalistic World View (Shimony, 1993a, b). Bunge’s ontology was materialist and emergent. He was careful to distinguish his materialism from physicalism; existent things need not be physical, they need not have spatial bounds nor have mass. Photons and magnetic fields existed; they were material things, though not physical things. Having energy, being able to change, and being able to effect other things through causal interactions—these were the hallmarks of all existent things, they proscribed the field of naturalism. Further, things standardly linked or merged together into systems—atoms into molecules, molecules into cells, cells into organisms, organisms into bodies, bodies into communities, communities into societies, societies into nations, and so on. He affirmed scientism, but against its popular caricature he was adamant that properties of the merged system

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were different from, and irreducible to, properties of the component parts. He was a radical anti-reductionist; he thought the reductionist programme, in both natural and social science, was unscientific and completely mistaken. Both Bunge and Shimony vigorously support the Enlightenment project against its detractors. Shimony, in his 1996 Presidential Address to the US Philosophy of Science Association, related that ‘I am distressed when aid and comfort is given, willy-nilly, from within the professions of philosophy and history of science to the enemies of the Enlightenment’ (Shimony, 1997, S13; https://www.journals.uchicago. edu/doi/abs/10.1086/392582). He canvassed contemporary criticisms of the Enlightenment, specifically the postmodern and Kuhn-inspired attacks on the possibility of objectivity and truth in science, but concluded that ‘despite the weight of these criticisms, all of them have been, or are still in the process of being, accommodated by an analytic continuation of the historical Enlightenment’ (Shimony, 1997, S4). Bunge, Shimony, and others, are at odds with, and similarly distressed by, the rejection of the Enlightenment so often voiced in science education. Nancy Brickhouse, drawing on Feminist contributions to the Science Wars, wrote: …feminist epistemologies [have had] a significant impact on science education. The work of feminists such as Evelyn Fox Keller, Donna Haraway, and Sandra Harding showed the ways in which scientific knowledge, like other forms of knowledge, is culturally situated and therefore reflects the gender and racial ideologies of societies. Scientific knowledge, like other forms of knowledge, is gendered. Science cannot produce culture-free, genderneutral knowledge because Enlightenment epistemology of science is imbued with cultural meanings of gender. …As such, not only was masculine culturally defined in opposition to feminine, but scientific was also defined in opposition to feminine. (Brickhouse, 2001, p. 283)

If that was not enough, two other prominent educators wrote: What remains here is the question how to deprivilege science in education and to free our children from the “regime of truth”. (Van Eijck & Roth, 2007)

9.2.5 Bunge’s Style As to be expected, in personal dealings Bunge was polite, attentive, and concerned with the well-being of those around him. During his time at UNSW he was at ease and playful with my own young children. The office staff in the School of Education said he was the most polite, considerate, and courteous visitor the school had ever had. A UNSW student of mine, who previously had been to McGill for a semester, told me that ‘Bunge was the best teacher she ever had (including, I might add, the teacher she was speaking to). His office was the Student Canteen where he sat and talked with any student who had any question about any subject’. His academic interactions were different. In matters of academic debate Bunge believed that arguments should be stated as clearly and exactly as possible; and stated whenever warranted. Lights should not be kept under bushels, spades should be called spades, and academics should not beat about the bush. He had no regard for weasel

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words like ‘it could be said’, or ‘maybe’ or ‘perhaps’; nor for ‘soft-focus’ writing and sloppy or emotive argument. These are things that a good education in philosophy, indeed just a good education, should progressively eliminate. Instead of saying ‘It could be thought that there is a weakness in your argument’, he prefers the more direct ‘Your argument is weak because …’; instead of warm, pleasant, and collegial agreement about claims that cannot be tested, he sought clear, specific hypotheses that can be tested against evidence. His vigorous, no-holds-barred exchanges with Bohm, Heisenberg, Piaget, Popper, Kuhn, Quine, Gould, Lakatos, von Weiszäcker, and so many others—exemplify that conviction. After appraising the work of many lesser, but popular figures (Heidegger, Husserl, Garfinkel, Latour, Huntington, Bloor, and Feyerabend), he dismissed them as ‘charlatans’ (Bunge, 1996). In 1978 there was a celebrated occasion involving Bunge which is still remembered by many who were present, and that made the front page of a German city newspaper. It was the International Congress of Philosophy held in Düsseldorf Germany, and Sir John Eccles—the famous Australian neurophysiologist who collaborated with Karl Popper in articulating a dualist but interactionist theory of mind, and who had recently been awarded the Nobel Prize—was invited to give the opening plenary address. Instead of the customary deference that might be expected to be given to a newly minted Nobel laureate, Bunge, who was in the audience, stood up and accused Eccles (and Popper) of philosophical incoherence and of retarding the scientific study of mind. The intervention was of such moment that it made front page of the Düsseldorf newspaper, and reverberated elsewhere (Droste, 2019). Many philosophers, including those who agreed with Bunge’s views, thought that it was not the occasion for the arguments to be aired. Bunge thought differently; he has a different style. For him, the address was given in a philosophy congress and so should, like all others, be open to comment and rebuke. Forty years later, I have met philosophers who were in the audience and they still vividly recall the altercation. In Bunge’s final published work, the detailed and novel examination of ‘Inverse Problems’ (Bunge, 2019), he wrote: First-rate philosophers propose new solutions to philosophical problems old or new, whereas second-rate philosophers comment on what first-rate colleagues said or failed to say. … And whereas first-rate philosophers are primarily interested in ideas, the others deal with the expressions of ideas and the circumstances of their birth and spread. (Bunge, 2019, p. 502)

There are personal and career consequences of ‘speaking truth to the profession’. Bunge was prepared to accept them. Some years ago at a UNSW ‘Welcome to First Year Students’ function the Head of the Aboriginal Studies Unit told students that aborigines have been in Australia ‘for ever’. This was in the context of at-the-time archaeological disputes about the timing of Aboriginal arrival in Australia. What was said from the podium was untrue. About 60,000 years ago is the current best estimate for arrival of aborigines from the north. Should staff be polite and say nothing? Or speak up and give students a real live example of the university being a place where ideas are debated? I remained silent. My best guess is that Mario Bunge would not

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have. Perhaps ‘What do you mean by ‘for ever’?’ could have been a polite way to begin a university exchange. Mario Bunge was inquisitive about the widest spectrum of academic, social, and cultural matters; he was prodigiously knowledgeable across many fields; he was a first-rate scholar on anyone’s reckoning. But Mario’s sphere of influence, and the number of people reading his work, would have been wider had he been more attentive to the sensibilities of his audiences and readership; had his pronouncements been more qualified. This is an easy thing if one’s speaking and writing are routinely opaque, evasive, and non-committal. But this was not true of Mario for whom clear, direct, unambiguous writing in any subject, but especially philosophy, was a virtue. Indeed, for Mario it was a moral virtue. He did not merely think that obscure, ill-informed, sloppy, imprecise writing was a philosophical failure, he thought it was a moral failure; the more so when the obscurity was intentional, or the result of being lazy and not having read what should have been read, or being casual and inattentive to the craft of writing. On these matters, his scathing outlook and judgements were the same as those of Wallis Suchting, whose position has earlier been mentioned.

9.2.6 Scientism Bunge believed that the lessons learnt from the hard-won successes of natural science should be applied to social science; that the inquiry method forged by the best of natural science can and should be applied in solving problems in the social and psychological worlds. This is the eighteenth-century Enlightenment position. He was an unashamed defender of scientism, though a critic of all ill-informed, shallow, reductionist pseudo-scientisms. Beyond physics, philosophy, psychology, biology, and his other scholarly pursuits, Bunge had wide, if selective, cultural appreciations. In his Memoirs he writes of literature, that: I am a fan of great literature, from the towering triad made up by Don Quijote, War and Peace, and La comédie humaine, to Chinua Achewe, Jorge Amado, Margaret Atwood, Saul Bellow, Giovanni Boccaccio, Anthony Burgess, Dino Buzzatti, Italo Calvino, Peter Carey, Alejo Carpentier, Rosario Castellanos, J. M. Coetzee, Miguel Delibes, Alfred Döblin, Fiodor Dostoyevski, George Eliot, John Galsworthy, Anatole France, Carlos Fuentes, Eduardo Galeano, Robert Graves, William Henry Hudson, Ismail Kadaré, Franz Kafka, J. M. G. Le Clézio, Primo Levi, Sinclair Lewis, Naguib Mahfuz, Hilary Mantel, Rohinton Mistry, Haruki Murakami, V. S. Naipaul, R. K. Narayan, Michael Ondatje, Orhan Pamuk, Benito Pérez Galdós, Eça de Queirós, Mordechai Richler, Romain Rolland, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, José Saramago, Leonardo Sciascia, Vikram Seth, Wole Soyinka, Bruno Traven, Anthony Trollope, Mario Vargas Llosa, Kurt Vonnegut, Edith Wharton, Marguerite Yourcenar; and several others – such as Jane Austen, Umberto Eco, Henry Fielding, Thomas Hardy, Manuel Mujica Láinez, Machado de Assis, Vladimir Nabokov, Michael Ondaatje, Horacio Quiroga, M. J. Vassanji, Voltaire, and so on. (Bunge, 2016, p. 403)

And of poetry, that:

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I am no longer enthusiastic about poetry, except for Homer’s Odyssey, Lucretius, Omar Khayyam, the Spanish romanceros, John Donne, Goethe, Heine, Shelley, Walt Whitman, Roberto Ledesma, and Antonio Machado. My knowledge of Italian history is insufficient to understand Dante, and my English too poor to fully appreciate Shakespeare: I only understand his popular plays. I dislike the latter Joyce’s hermeticism, and T.S. Eliot for trying hard to be quotable as well as a pro-fascist English gentleman. (Bunge, 2016, p. 403)

Hopefully some in the succeeding generations of philosophers, physicists, and educators will be inspired to emulate Bunge’s example of a wide-ranging, in-depth, cosmopolitan approach to the advancement of knowledge and the formation of a more just and equitable society; and see in his life the fruits of liberal education. If a HPS&ST course was a routine part of a science teacher education programme, then there would be ample opportunity for students to encounter Bunge’s writings.

References Barton, A. C. (2001). Capitalism, critical pedagogy, and urban science education: An interview with Peter McLaren. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 38(8), 847–859. Brickhouse, N. W. (2001). Embodying science: A feminist perspective on learning. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 38(3), 282–295. Bunge, M. (1956). Survey of the interpretations of quantum mechanics. American Journal of Physics, 24, 272–286. Bunge, M. (1959/1979). Causality and modern science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Third Revised Edition, Dover Publications, New York, 1979. Bunge, M. (1966). Mach’s critique of newtonian mechanics. The American Journal of Physics, 34, 585–596. Reproduced in J. Blackmore (Ed.). (1992). Ernst Mach—A deeper look (pp. 243–261). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Bunge, M. (1967a). A ghost free axiomatization of quantum mechanics. In M. Bunge (Ed.), Quantum theory and reality (pp. 105–117). Berlin-Heidelberg-New York: Springer-Verlag. Bunge, M. (Ed.). (1967b). Quantum theory and reality. Berlin-Heidelberg-New York: SpringerVerlag. Bunge, M. (1996). In praise of intolerance to charlatanism in academia. In P. R. Gross, N. Levitt, & M. W. Lewis (Eds.), The flight from science and reason (pp. 96–115). New York: New York Academy of Sciences. Bunge, M. (2000). Energy: Between physics and metaphysics. Science & Education, 9(5), 457–461. Bunge, M. (2003). Twenty-five centuries of quantum physics: From Pythagoras to us, and from subjectivism to realism. Science & Education, 12(5–6), 445–466. Bunge, M. (2006). Chasing reality: Strife over realism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Bunge, M. (2011). Knowledge: Genuine and bogus. Science & Education, 20(5–6), 411–438. Bunge, M. (2012). Does quantum physics refute realism, materialism and determinism? Science & Education, 21(10), 1601–1610. Bunge, M. (2016). Between two worlds: Memoirs of a philosopher-scientist. Dordrecht: Springer. Bunge, M. (2018). Gravitational waves and spacetime. Foundations of Science, 23, 399–403. Bunge, M. (2019). Inverse problems. Foundations of Science, 24, 483–525. Carrier, M. (2013). Values and objectivity in science: Value-ladenness, pluralism and the epistemic attitude. Science & Education, 22(10), 2547–2568. Couló, A. C. (2014). Philosophical dimensions of social and ethical issues in school science education: Values in science and in science classrooms. In M. R. Matthews (Ed.), International handbook of research in history, philosophy and science teaching (pp. 1087–1117). Dordrecht: Springer.

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Droste, H. W. (2019). Mario Bunge as a public intellectual. In M. R. Matthews (Ed.), Mario Bunge: A centenary Festschrift (pp. 63–80). Dordrecht: Springer. Einstein, A., Podolsky, B., & Rosen, N. (1935). Can the quantum mechanical description of reality be considered complete? Physical Review, 47, 777–780. Elliott, K. C. (2017). A tapestry of values: An introduction to values in science. New York: Oxford University Press. Fine, A. (1984). The natural ontological attitude. In J. Leplin (Ed.), Scientific realism (pp. 83–107). Berkeley: University of California Press. Franklin, J. (2003). Corrupting the youth: A history of philosophy in Australia. Sydney: Macleay Press. French, S. R. D., & Saatsi, J. (2020). Scientific realism and the quantum. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frow, J. (2005). Australian cultural studies: Theory, story, history. Australian Humanities Review, Issue 37. Frow, J., & Morris, M. (Eds.). (1993). Australian cultural studies: A reader. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Galileo, G. (1633/1953). Dialogue concerning the two chief world systems (S. Drake, Trans.). Berkeley: University of California Press. (Second revised edition, 1967). Gandolfi, H. E. (2019). In defence of non-epistemic aspects of nature of science: Insights from an intercultural approach to history of science. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 14, 557–567. Haack, S. (2016). Scientism and its discontents. London: Rounded Globe Publishers. Heilbron, J. L. (1986). The dilemmas of an upright man: Max Planck as spokesman for German science. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hobson, A. (2017). Tales of the quantum: Understanding physics’ most fundamental theory. New York: Oxford University Press. Hobson, A. (2019). A realist analysis of six controversial quantum issues. In M. R. Matthews (Ed.), Mario Bunge: A centenary Festschrift. Dordrecht: Springer. Hume, D. (1739/1888). A treatise of human nature: Being an attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Koertge, N. (Ed.). (2005). Scientific values and civic virtues. New York: Oxford University Press. Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (1979/1986). Laboratory life: The social construction of scientific facts (2nd ed.). London: Sage. Mahner, M. (2001). Scientific realism: Selected essays of Mario Bunge. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Mahner, M. (2021). Mario Bunge (1919–2020): Conjoining philosophy of science and scientific philosophy. Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 52(1), 3–23. Mahner, M., & Bunge, M. (1996). Is religious education compatible with science education? Science & Education, 5(2), 101–123. Matthews, M. R. (Ed.). (2018). History, philosophy and science teaching: New perspectives. Dordrecht: Springer. Matthews, M. R. (Ed.). (2019a). Mario Bunge: A Centenary Festschrift. Dordrecht: Springer. Matthews, M. R. (2019b). Feng Shui: Teaching about science and pseudoscience. Dordrecht: Springer. Matthews, M. R. (2019c). An introduction to the life, achievements and the Festschrift of Mario Bunge. In M. R. Matthews (Ed.), Mario Bunge: A centenary Festschrift (pp. 1–28). Dordrecht: Springer. McCarthy, C. L. (2018). Cultural studies of science education: An Appraisal. In M. R. Matthews (Ed.), History, philosophy and science teaching: New perspectives (pp. 99–136). Dordrecht: Springer. McMullin, E. (1983). Values in science. In P. D. Asquith & T. Nickles (Eds.), PSA 1982 (Vol. 2, pp. 3–28). East Lansing: Philosophy of Science Association.

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Chapter 10

Philosophy and HPS in Teacher Education

Abstract This chapter argues that teacher education, more specifically science teacher education, is not in good philosophical health. This is unfortunate as increasingly, school science courses address historical, philosophical, ethical, and cultural issues occasioned by science; teach the nature of science (NOS), and more broadly, are being asked to address issues of social justice. Beyond these ‘practical’ arguments for HPS in teacher education, there are compelling ‘professional’ arguments. A teacher with pride in their profession must understand the body of knowledge they are teaching, how this knowledge has come about including the personal, social, and cultural factors that nourish it, how its claims are justified, what its limitations are, what its corruptions have been, and, importantly, what the strengths and contributions of science have been to the betterment of human life. A distinction is made between general and disciplinary philosophy of education; and a conceptual structure is given for how philosophy, and education foundation subjects, can contribute to the pre-service and in-service formation of science teachers.

Teacher education, more specifically science education, is not in good philosophical health. Science teachers and education faculty require a degree of competence in and appreciation of the history and philosophy of science (HPS). There are many reasons why HPS should be part of pre-service and in-service science teacher-education programmes. Increasingly, school science courses address historical, philosophical, ethical, and cultural issues occasioned by science. Beyond these ‘practical’ arguments for HPS in teacher education, there are compelling ‘professional’ arguments. A teacher with pride in their profession must understand the body of knowledge they are teaching, how this knowledge has come about including the personal, social, and cultural factors that nourish it, how its claims are justified, what its limitations are, what its corruptions have been, and, importantly, what the strengths and contributions of science have been to the betterment of human life.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. R. Matthews, History, Philosophy and Science Teaching: A Personal Story, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0558-1_10

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10.1 UNSW in-Service Courses for Science Teachers (1996–2003) At the beginning of 1994, on my return to Sydney from Auckland, along with the pendulum book and pendulum project, I became involved, over a number of years, with the NSW State Board of Studies (BOS) in writing new secondary school science curricula (Edwards & Hobson, 1992). I wrote papers for BOS meetings and conferences for the years 7–10 curriculum (1996) and then the years 11–12 curriculum (1997). The results were new curricula that incorporated HPS into the different science topics being taught. These curricula were the height of my career influence on the shape and content of high school science teaching.

10.1.1 A New South Wales HPS-Informed Syllabus The Draft Stages 4–5 Science Syllabus included ‘History of Science’ as one of its five Focus Areas, along with ‘The Nature and Practice of Science’. The syllabus said of the Focus Areas that: Attention to the Prescribed Focus Areas will assist students to develop an understanding that scientific activity has become an integral part of the culture in which we live and, as such, contributes a distinctive view of the world. The Prescribed Focus Areas increase students’ knowledge and understanding of science as an ever-developing body of knowledge, the provisional nature of scientific explanations, the complex relationship between evidence and ideas, and the impact of science on society. (p. 5)

Concerning the History of Science, the syllabus said: Knowledge of the historical background is important for an adequate understanding of science. Students should develop an understanding of: The developmental nature of scientific knowledge. The part that science has played in shaping society. How science has been influenced and constrained by societies. (p. 9)

Concerning the Nature and Practice of Science, the syllabus said: Students should develop an understanding of the nature and practice of science, including the importance of creativity, intuition, logic and objectivity. Students should develop an understanding of the nature of scientific explanations, their provisional character, the development of ideal cases from raw phenomena and the complex relationship between: Existing scientific views and the evidence supporting these. The processes and methods of exploring, generating, testing and relating ideas. The stimulation provided by technological advances and constraints imposed by the limitations of technology. (p. 9)

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Concerning Values and Attitudes, the syllabus said: By reflecting about the past, present and future involvement of science with society, students are encouraged to develop positive values and informed critical attitudes. … As well as knowing something about science, students need to value and appreciate science and its achievements if they are to become scientifically literate persons … (p. 12)

In the options sections the syllabus makes mention of many specific historical episodes and themes. For example: Trace the development of our current ideas about the concept of energy. Trace the history of pendulum motion studies and its connection with timekeeping and setting standards of length. Describe the life, times and achievements of Newton. Trace the history of atomic theory. Discuss the history of evolutionary theories. Research the historical development of the present model of the solar system including the work of Copernicus, Galileo and Newton. Discuss the contributions of scientists who provided models to explain processes affecting the Earth’s structure. Trace the development of ideas about electricity and replicate historical experiments and debates. Trace the history of models used to explain light as movement of particles (photons) or energy waves and replicate historical experiments and debates. Trace the history of ideas about heat and replicate historical experiments and debates. Consider some social and ethical issues associated with the use of nuclear energy. Discuss Newton’s linking of celestial and terrestrial mechanics Trace the history of our understanding of gravity. Describe how the Western world and other cultures have represented and measured time. Describe the history and application of ideas of air pressure. Relate the development of microscopes to the development of cell theory.

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10.1.2 Annual Teacher Workshops Parallel with this curriculum involvement, I organised annual one-day teacher conferences on ‘HPS and Science Teaching’. These were required because, like everywhere else in the world, local science teachers had no training in HPS and yet were being asked to teach about it in their science programmes. The first such conference, held in 1998, drew about 250–300 science teachers, which at the time was the largest ever gathering of New South Wales science teachers. It may still be so. It was a far larger number than attended the annual NSW science teachers conference. A 40-page booklet of ‘Background Papers’ was distributed in advance to all teachers. These were: Michael Matthews ‘Science Teaching: The Role of History and Philosophy of Science’. Gordon Brown ‘Arguments for Including Nature of Science Topics in School Science’. Colin Gauld ‘Science Education and the History and Philosophy of Science: An Australian Perspective’.

Twenty-five parallel one-hour workshops were held throughout the day, with full 300-page text and materials printed and available to participants upon arrival. Historians, philosophers, scientists, and educators from most of the state’s universities contributed, along with staff from the Powerhouse Museum, and some visitors from overseas. Additionally, Board of Studies, State Education Department, and Catholic Education Office personnel contributed. A number of teachers remarked that it was the best-resourced conference they had ever attended. The same pattern was followed for the following five years, with usually about 20–25 hour-long workshops on the programme. The workshop titles give a good account of the kinds of contributions that HPS can make to the professional formation of teachers.

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1999 programme GORDON BROWN Beliefs About Magic and the Development of Modern Science NAHUM KIPNIS Historical-Investigative Approaches to Science Teaching: The Case of Optics BARRY BRUNDELL How and Why the Catholic Church Bungled the Galileo Case PETER SLEZAK What is the Difference Between Scientific and Everyday Thinking? JIM FRANKLIN Postmodern Threats to Science FRANK NICHOLAS Charles Darwin in Australia PAUL GRIFFITH What Kind of a Scientist was Darwin? COLIN GAULD The Huxley-Wilberforce Debate and the Changing Nature of Science NICOLAS RASMUSSEN Beyond the Double Helix: Using History to Teach Cell and Molecular Biology BRIAN FERRY & WILLIAM PRICE Investigating Ancient Chinese Claims About Health Benefits of Tea LIBBY HEGERTY & RICK CONNOR How to Teach Historical Material, and Collaborations Between Science and History Staff PETER ANSTEY Who was Robert Boyle, and what did He Achieve?

ROSEMARY HAFNER & MARGARET WATTS The Literacy Demands of Stage 6 Science Syllabuses? ARTHUR PRYOR Who was Newton and What did He Achieve? JULIAN HOLLAND Henry Kater and the Social Context of Science in the Early Nineteenth Century CHRIS HUXLEY Facilitating Scientific Reasoning Using the Models of Vision and Light from the History of Science MICHAEL MATTHEWS Methodology & Politics in Science: Huygens’ Seconds Pendulum & the Original Metre CATHERINE MILNE & GRADY VENVILLE Discovery Doesn’t Count if You are a Woman in the History of Genetics GILDA SEGAL & JANETTE GRIFFIN Why Didn’t Women do Science? Or Did They? MITCH O’TOOLE Science, Ideology & Politics: The Lysenko Affair and Eastern Genetics JOHN SWELLER Cognitive Load Theory and Instructional Design in Science TONY CORONES Is there a Scientific Method? BRIAN CRAVEN Prelude to Chemistry: Ancient Civilisations ANNA BINNIE The History and Teaching of Atomic Structure

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2000 programme JAZLIN EBENEZER History of Chemistry and School Chemistry JOHN GEAKE Creativity in Science and in Classrooms MEL DICKSON Cell Theory and Microscopes: How Science and Technology Interact PETER SLEZAK What is the Difference Between Scientific and Everyday Thinking? TIM SPROD What does Philosophy for Children Achieve? COLIN GAULD The Peppered Moth Myth BRIAN CRAVEN Prelude to Chemistry: Ancient Civilisations ARTHUR PRYOR Who was Copernicus and What did He Achieve? HANS-PETER ECKLE Politics, Ethics and Science: Max Planck’s Research During the Nazi Era JIM FRANKLIN Complexity theory, mathematics and the unity of science BRIAN FERRY Traditional Chinese Science and Technology WILL RIFKIN Communicating Science: Who is Heard? Who are the Experts? MICHALIS MICHAEL Philosophical Issues in Evolutionary Theory JONATHAN SIMON The Analytic Roots of Organic Chemistry JAN OITMAA The Life, Times and Achievements of Richard Feynman DAMIAN GRACE Making Apologies: Are there Lessons from German Science?

ANNA BINNIE What were the Issues in the Galileo Affair MITCH O’TOOLE & NEVILLE BAKER Values, Ideology and Land Use in the Sydney Basin JAZLIN EBENEZER Philosophy in the Chemistry Laboratory CHRIS HUXLEY Facilitating Scientific Reasoning Using Historical Models of Vision and Light TONY CORONES On Learning Respect: Science, Values and Attitudes JIM SCOTT & GERRY MCCLOUGHAN Programming for the New Curriculum JULIAN HOLLAND Curiosities of Measurement in Myth and History NICOLAS RASMUSSEN Beyond the Double Helix: Using History to Teach Cell Biology KATHERINE NEAL What is Living and What is Dead in Feminist Critiques of Science? COLIN GAULD Millikan’s Oil Drop Experiment and the Role of Empirical Evidence in Science MICHAEL CAREY Philosophical and Ethical Issues in Bioscience and Biotechnology ROSEMARY HAFNER & MARGARET WATTS What are Teachers’ Concerns about the History and Philosophy Focus Areas? GORDON BROWN Trainee Teachers’ Beliefs about Science PAUL HAGER Development of Critical Thinking in Science Classes

The fifth conference, held in 2002, was also the first International Pendulum Project conference. Among overseas contributors were Pierre Boulos, Robert Nola, Paul Zachos, Dimitris Koliopoulos, Art Stinner, and Don Metz.

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2002 programme TREVOR G. BOND/Piaget and the Pendulum PIERRE J. BOULOS/The Path to Universal Gravitation: How Pendulums Help ROBERT N. CARSON/Teaching Cultural History from Primary Events CATHMARIOTTI EZRAILSON, G. DONALD ALLEN & CATHLEEN C. LOVING/Analyzing Dynamic Pendulum Motion in an Interactive Online Environment Using Flash COLIN GAULD/The Treatment of Cycloidal Pendulum Motion in Newton’s Principia COLIN COLIN GAULD/The Treatment of the Motion of the Simple Pendulum in Some Early 18th Century Newtonian Textbooks COLIN COLIN GAULD/A Compilation and Analysis of Pendulum Articles in Three Science Education Journals JIN-SJJIN-SU JEONG,· YONG-JU KWON*· YUN-BOK PARK/Children’s Generating Hypotheses on A Pendulum Task: Roles of Abductive Reasoning Skills and Prior Knowledge DEMEDIMITRIS KOLIOPOULOS AND COSTAS CONSTANTINOU/An Analysis of the Treatment of the Simple Pendulum in Greek and Cypriot Science Curricula

SUMIDA MANABU/Cognitive Insights into Practical Work on Pendulum Motion in School Science SUMIDA MANABU/The Reproduction of Scientific Understanding about Pendulum Motion in the Public MICHAEL R. MATTHEWS/The Role of Idealisation in Galileo’s Pendulum Discoveries: Is it a Defining Feature of the Scientific Revolution? ROBERT NOLA/Pendula, Models, Constructivism and Reality. RANDALL D. PETERS/The Pendulum in the 21st Century- Relic or Trendsetter? RANDALL D. PETERS/Soup-can Pendulum LOUIS B. ROSENBLATT/The Poet and the Pendulum ART STINNER & DON METZ/The Ubiquitous Pendulum IL-HO YANG, YONG-JU KWON·& JIN-WOO JEONG/Effects of Students’ Prior Knowledge on Scientific Reasoning in Solving Pendulum Task PAUL ZACHOS/Using the Phenomenon of Pendulum Periodicity to Assess Higher Order Cognitive Capabilities in Secondary School Students

These programmes manifest what I see as the most productive kind of disciplinebased engagement by historians and philosophers with science teachers; there could be comparable such engagements with teachers of other disciplines. For myself, and teachers, they were exciting intellectual occasions. Needless to say, these conferences involved an enormous amount of time and organisation, but they were well-received. The evaluations each year had 80% of participants rating the conference either 4/5, or 5/5 on a five-point scale. A representative comment was that made in 1999 by the Science Advisor for the Sydney Catholic Schools District. In an unsolicited note she wrote: Thank you for a fabulous day. Prior commitments did not allow me to attend the first conference in 1998, so this was my first experience. I came away inspired and enthused. It was a great balance of personal professional development and classroom application. The opportunity for teachers to experience this blend is rare. Please keep up the momentum – each year will provide the opportunity for more teachers not just Head-Teachers to attend.

It was palpable that teachers welcomed both having their intelligence recognised by university staff, and their willingness to learn more about their teaching subject catered to. As one teacher remarked: ‘We are hungry for this knowledge’.

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My UNSW colleague and friend, Peter Slezak, was a contributor to these meetings. He trained in sociology at UNSW, took his PhD in philosophy at Columbia University, and was appointed to UNSW School of HPS in 1981. There he founded and directed the university’s cognitive science programme. His enthusiasm for science, philosophy of science, and liberal education had a great impact on students, teachers, and colleagues. Pleasingly he has been a contributor to all UNSW HPS&ST teachers’ conferences, to international IHPST conferences, and to Science & Education journal as a reviewer and contributor during my editorship (Slezak, 1994a, 1994b, 2014). In 2003 after the publication of my pendulum works, I applied for promotion to professor. However, UNSW had very high standards, and my application was unsuccessful.

10.2 Ideal Teacher Education In Australia, the standard and quality of teacher-education programmes are in decline—to put not too fine a point on it. In 2015 a commissioned report by the respected Sydney University mathematician and education researcher, Professor John Mack, found that in New South Wales, half of those offered places in education degrees came from the bottom 50% of school leavers judged on their National Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) score. Only 10% of offers were made to students with the highest 10% ATAR scores. This is almost a complete turn-around from the situation when 55 years ago I left Waverley College and went to university on a teachers’ scholarship. Then Law and Medicine occupied the top rank, but Education was firmly in the second rank alongside Engineering, Veterinary Science, Physiotherapy, and the like. Mack’s figures were so embarrassing that the consortium of universities that commissioned the study would not release it. But he was so disturbed by the findings that he released the report direct to the Australian Broadcasting Commission. Newspapers quickly picked up the horror story. In 2020 the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) cancelled both its primary and secondary education programmes; candidates were too few and too low-grade. Australian teacher education is in trouble, but this is no different to the US or UK. In the latter, teacher education has moved to an ‘on-the-job’ training model with minimal university educational input (Hirst, 2008). In this calamitous situation, to talk about good, much less ideal, teacher education seems an indulgence, but nevertheless it needs to be done. Even deep in the cave, it is worth pointing to the light.

10.2.1 Israel Scheffler on Philosophy in Teacher Education For nearly fifty years my own teaching and thinking had been informed first by Richard Peters’ analytic philosophy of education; and second by Israel Scheffler’s connection of philosophy of education to philosophy of the discipline being taught.

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Scheffler’s case was made in his 1973 essay ‘Philosophy and the Curriculum’ (Scheffler, 1973). It was a convincing argument for the inclusion of courses in the philosophy of the discipline in programmes that are preparing people to teach that discipline. He maintained that: ‘philosophies-of constitute a desirable additional input in teacher preparation beyond subject-matter competence, practice in teaching, and educational methodology’ (Scheffler, 1973, p. 40). He summarised his argument as follows: I have outlined four main efforts through which philosophies-of might contribute to education: (1) the analytic description of forms of thought represented by teaching subjects; (2) the evaluation and criticism of such forms of thought; (3) the analysis of specific materials so as to systematize and exhibit them as exemplifications of forms of thought; and (4) the interpretation of particular exemplifications in terms accessible to the novice. (Scheffler, 1973, p. 40)

I had applied this schema to my UNSW teaching. My philosophy of education courses had two components. First, general philosophy of education addressing the kinds of issues that all teachers need to address—aims of education, equality, indoctrination, affirmative action, teachers’ freedoms and responsibilities, teachers stating or not stating their own positions on controversial ethical and political matters, what does understanding subject matter mean, and so on. Second, disciplinary philosophy of education addressing the kinds of substantive questions peculiar to the discipline being taught. Putting my words into Scheffler’s mouth, his argument amounted to saying a science teacher should know the meaning of the basic terms or vocabulary of their discipline—‘cause’, ‘law’, ‘explanation’, ‘observation’, ‘model’, ‘theory’, ‘fact’, ‘experiment’, ‘hypothesis’, ‘confirmation’, ‘falsification’, and so on. They should know something about the people whose names occur throughout the textbooks— Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Mendel, Einstein, and so on. They should have some knowledge and hopefully opinion about the conflicting objectives of their own discipline—to describe, to control, to understand. They should have some knowledge of the cultural and historical dimensions of science—the momentous issues involved in Galileo’s trial, the cultural impact of Darwin’s theory, the transformation in the quality of life brought about by Pasteur’s and Jenner’s discoveries, the challenges of genetic engineering, and so on. The connection between Scheffler’s argument and HPS was obvious: Without HPS Scheffler’s aspirations could not be met. He wrote: The teacher of science … needs to have a conception of the field of science as a whole, of its aims, methods, and standards; he needs to have principles for selecting materials and experiences suitable for inducting novices into the field, and he needs to be able to communicate both with novices and with scientific sophisticates … But the scope of this requirement is, I suggest, virtually indistinguishable from that of the philosophy of science. (Scheffler, 1973, pp. 35–36)

Importantly, for Scheffler these aspirations were not ‘optional extras’, were not ‘icing on the cake’, they were constitutive of the meaning of being a science teacher. And they applied equally to being a teacher of history, art, economics, mathematics,

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theology, or any other discipline: Each teacher had to know, and be able to explain, literally, what they were talking about.

10.2.2 General and Disciplinary Philosophy of Education These aspirations were independent of what might be required for any particular teaching situation; they were not limited to what a teacher’s classes might need to know. Teachers of a discipline had to have a grasp of the discipline they were teaching that went beyond what their students might be examined on; they had to see beyond the curriculum fence. It is routine that curricula change, that they are overhauled—oft with alarming frequency. A responsible or ‘professional’ teacher, or simply ‘educator’, should have some appreciation of the supposed educational, philosophical, economic, and political arguments for the change. And hopefully, be able to intelligently appraise those arguments. Does a curriculum merely take the shape of the last political/professional/economic foot that trod upon it? Can professional educators do better? How do they resist such external pressures? General philosophy of education and disciplinary philosophy of education are not separate silos; for science teachers they frequently overlap. The teaching of evolution is a classic case. It is disciplinary philosophy that elaborates the theory’s history, structure, warrant, and evidential support. But it is general philosophy of education that elaborates and appraises the contentious arguments about whether and to whom it should be taught. Should it be believed and accepted? Or should it merely be known about in a spectator sense, comparable to the way that an anthropology student might be expected to know the rituals and beliefs of a different group? This combination of disciplinary and general philosophy standardly arises when there are clashes between worldviews and claims of science and those of culture. Should students in the latter be akin to tourists who cross the scientific border and then go home, or should they be immigrants who cross the border and stay there? The question was posed this way in a very influential article by Glen Aikenhead (1996), perhaps the most influential Canadian science educator, who was a recipient of the NARST Distinguished Researcher award in 2014. In the USA, Canada, New Zealand, and elsewhere, the tension is exasperated by legal frameworks. The US Constitution allows teaching about religion, but prohibits the teaching of religion in State schools, so the disciplinary question of whether Special Creation or Intelligent Design theories of evolution are truly science, is paramount. This is a philosophy of science question that is thrust upon science teachers and school administrators. The philosophical, cultural, educational, and legal literature on this particular issue is extensive (Ruse, 1988). In New Zealand, following the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, the government was required to preserve and not harm or diminish M¯aori culture, including, broadly, its worldview. Yet there are incompatibilities between the two, among which are understandings of cosmology and of evolution. What is a responsible teacher to do in this situation of competing obligations? A teacher education programme that includes philosophy, allows this

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question to be seriously considered. Without such a course, discussion easily becomes ill-informed prejudice and noise. In these respects, there is a greater onus on teachers than on ‘ordinary’ scientists. The latter can satisfactorily do their job in industry or in a laboratory without knowing much about the ‘big picture’, methodology or much else of science; they just do their job. Hopefully they know more, but for doing their job, they do not need to. This was, and still is, the situation of hundreds of thousands of scientists in China, who had shockingly limited, narrow-focused training (Fang, 1992). There were BSc (radio valves) degrees conferred. In those programmes, after first year, students learnt about nothing other than radio valves. Although called scientists, they were technicians; after William Shockley’s 1947 invention of the transistor, and subsequent mass production of transistor radios, the hundreds of thousands of radio valve ‘scientists’ were deemed useless. Many maintain that this narrow-focused, technical-preoccupation continues to blight Chinese science programmes, especially outside of the major universities (Guo, 2014). Graduates are technologists rather than scientists; the history of science is little touched; and critically, a scientific habit of mind is not cultivated or encouraged. The Chinese Communist Party cannot allow the diffusion of a scientific habit of mind among its citizenry. But a teacher’s ‘job’ is to explain to classes, minimally, the meaning of the terms and concepts used in the class: What is a law? What is a theory? Why is one theory preferred to another? What constitutes evidence for a law? In what legitimate and illegitimate ways do social values enter into scientific decision-making? Such explanations involve acquaintance with the bigger historical and philosophical picture of science. A demanding, but usually ignored requirement. As editor of Science & Education, I reproduced Scheffler’s article in the first volume (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00430965). It was the journal’s first annual ‘Golden Oldie’. These were 40+ -year-old articles that I included annually to show that the discipline of science education had a history; that old articles still had intellectual currency; and, just as we can learn from the history of science, we can also learn from the history of science education. Not everything new was good, and not everything good was new. Subsequently, at the invitation of Harvey Siegel, I published an article appraising and elaborating Scheffler’s position (Matthews, 1997; https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A%3A1004911407526). The paucity of philosophy input into science teacher education is depressingly well-documented in Peter Fensham’s earlier mentioned book Defining an Identity: The Evolution of Science Education as a Field of Research where he interviews 79 of the world’s leading science education researchers (Fensham, 2004). He documents how the bulk of science educators have zero formal training in philosophy, psychology, sociology, or history—the Education Foundations subjects—yet have to teach courses related to those fields. He finds that: ‘science educators borrow psychological theories of learning … for example Bruner, Gagne and Piaget’, and that: ‘The influence of these borrowings is better described as the lifting of slogan-like ideas’ (Fensham, 2004, p. 105).

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Jay Lemke, a constructivist and linguist, interviewed by Fensham, well-recognised this problem when he wrote: Science education researchers are not often enough formally trained in the disciplines from which socio-cultural perspectives and research methods derive. Most of us are self-taught or have learned these matters second-hand from others who are also not fully trained. (Lemke, 2001, p. 303)

The two philosophers most mentioned as influencing those interviewed were Thomas Kuhn and Ernst von Glasersfeld, the leading lights of constructivism. Kuhn is more cited than read; the mere citation of Kuhn is considered to constitute an argument or to provide evidence for some philosophical view. Marilyn Fleer, a senior professor at Monash University and one of Fensham’s interviewees, writes: In recent years, the rational foundations of Western science and the self-perpetuating belief in the scientific method have come into question …. The notion of finding a truth for reality is highly questionable. (Fleer, 1999, p. 119)

The quote exhibits a number of common disciplinary ills. First is the use of weasel qualifications such as ‘come into question’. The 1969 landing of Neil Armstrong on the moon has also ‘come into question’ but that constitutes no proof for anything, or reason to look sideways. Donald Trump was a master of this vacuous hand-waving distraction: ‘a person has said’, ‘people have told me’, and so on. Second no evidence is adduced for Fleer’s sweeping claim except an unpaginated reference to Kuhn. This practice of having a Kuhn citation, often unpaginated, substitute for evidence or argument is widespread; it has become the disciplinary norm. Merely putting the name ‘Kuhn’ in brackets after some outrageous claim is regarded as sufficient warrant for the claim. And, importantly, no attention is paid to the arguments of numerous others that refute the claim. But such irresponsible scholarly practice is no bar for career advancement. The seriousness of the ‘lack of HPS in Science Education’ situation is wellillustrated by a claim of Glen Aikenhead, a leading Canadian science educator, who, placing great confidence in STS scholarship, opined that contemporary social studies of science (STS), reveal science as: mechanistic, materialist, reductionist, empirical, rational, decontextualized, mathematically idealized, communal, ideological, masculine, elitist, competitive, exploitive, impersonal, and violent. (Aikenhead, 1997, p. 220)

Other prominent science educators share Aikenhead’s lowly estimation of science. Consider, for instance, claims made in a contribution to a major science education handbook that: ..one of the first places where critical inquirers might look for oppression is positivist (or modernist) science …modernist science is committed to expansionism or growth …modernist science is committed to the production of profit and measurement …modernist science is committed to the preservation of bureaucratic structures … Science is a force of domination not because of its intrinsic truthfulness, but because of the social authority (power) that it brings with it. (Steinberg & Kincheloe, 2012, pp. 1487–1488)

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If science is truly revealed to be as Aikenhead, and other educators, opine, then it is something about which curriculum writers, teachers, examiners, and parents should be very cautious. On the face of it, science is a practice that students need protection from, not be led to; it should be X-rated. For Aikenhead, this indeed leads directly to his much-cited recommendation about ‘border crossing’ procedures when students who do not share the worldview of science have to learn science: He recommends that they leave their own culture at the border and cross over to the foreign land of science to pick up its technical achievements and know-how, but not its culture, and then return to their home culture and resume its ontological, epistemological, and mythological commitments (Aikenhead, 1996). The same pedagogical strategy is followed, for the same NOS-based reasons, by other science educators when dealing with the realities of multicultural education (Bang & Medin, 2010). This view has become the provincial norm in Saskatchewan, and other Canadian provinces, as well as New Zealand, and other countries. But Aikenhead’s STS premise is incoherent, in as much as it is asserting anything coherent, is false. So other arguments for multiscience, indigenous science, and multiculturalism in school science programmes need to be advanced. And they can be. The supposed philosophical non-discoveries listed in the above quotes, can be put aside as a distraction, and attention turned to serious ethical, political, cultural, and even economic reasons for the inclusion of indigenous knowledge in programmes. Aikenhead is aware of these alternative, non-epistemological arguments for inclusion (Aikenhead & Mitchell, 2011, Chap. 2). But not all of them are convincing, and some are convincing only up to a point. But they can be argued. The epistemological argument bears on the curriculum home of indigenous knowledge: in the science programme or the social studies programme? Is indigenous science something to be taught about in a social studies programme or something to be taught in a science programme?

10.2.3 The Preparation of Science Education Faculty Clearly, the philosophical awareness and competence of science education faculty needs to be raised. This becomes more pressing as explicitly philosophical (and historical) matters are written into curricula around the world (McComas & Olson, 1998; McComas, 2014, 2020). Provincial, national, and international (PISA, Europa) curriculum authorities are requiring that students come to a better, deeper, and more informed understanding of science and its interaction with society and culture; that they have a more informed understanding of the nature of science. But for NOS to be effectively taught, teachers at a pre-service or in-service level need to gain knowledge, interest, and hopefully enthusiasm for the history and philosophy of science; without HPS competence there can be no NOS knowledge as the latter is parasitic on the former. Overwhelmingly, the standard ‘preparation’ pattern for university science education faculty is for the staff member to have completed an undergraduate or graduate

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science degree, completed teacher education, taught school science for some years, then complete course work and thesis for a PhD in education. Then be appointed to a university position. Unfortunately, this employment trajectory results in widespread shallowness, amateurism, faddism, and ‘sloganeering’. Education faculty suffer a distinct disadvantage: they are underprepared for what they are required to teach. Education faculty have to teach about and supervise in psychological areas (e.g. how children learn, how they cognitively and emotionally develop), sociological areas (e.g. relations between family wealth and school performance, classroom dynamics, equitable school funding, gender, and culture effects on achievement), historical areas (e.g. history and politics of curriculum change), and philosophical areas (e.g. nature of science, social responsibility of teachers)—with little if any formal training in these disciplinary fields. The situation has been made worse as such ‘foundation’ courses which were once a part of doctoral coursework requirements have been progressively abandoned. It is noteworthy that Peter Fensham regarded it as an achievement when he removed the ‘foundations requirement’ from Monash University’s science education doctoral programme when, in 1967, he was appointed Australia’s first professor of science education (Fensham, 2004, p. 23). Yet Fensham lamented the ‘lifting of slogan-like ideas from psychologists’, he could have mentioned that the situation is even worse when it comes to philosophical borrowings. So, for instance, instead of the thoughtful and informed examination of Kuhn’s work, a review by Cathleen Loving and Bill Cobern of his impact on the field concluded that ‘science educators had become a cheer squad for Kuhn’ (Loving & Cobern, 2000). Instead of appraisal, there was cheering. I tried to address the problem by editing a thematic double issue of Science & Education on ‘Thomas Kuhn and Science Education’ (vol. 9 nos. 1–2, 2000; https://link.springer.com/journal/11191/ volumes-and-issues/9-1). In 2004 I published a long piece on the topic—‘Thomas Kuhn’s Impact on Science Education: What Lessons can be Learnt?’ (Matthews, 2004)—that documented both the trove of mistaken interpretations of Kuhn held in the science education community, and that community’s endorsement of his idealist and relativist positions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sce.10111). On account of Kuhn not being overly careful about his philosophical asides, and the fact that his own positions changed over time, there is debate about just how much of an idealist and relativist he was (Massimi, 2015; Hoyningen-Huene, 2015). My paper was informed by the previously mentioned 1975 Sydney University honours seminar on Kuhn. I concluded: the science education community should more effectively engage with on-going debates and analyses in the history and philosophy of science; and although members of the education community should be lauded for taking and arguing positions in the history and philosophy of science, these positions should be held with full acknowledgement that most of them are disputed. (Matthews, 2004, p. 112)

It is not the individual faculty member’s fault: It is a systemic fault; one that pleasingly did not infect Australia until well after my appointment at UNSW. I used to say to newly appointed faculty in the USA when I met them at conferences: ‘Terrific that

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you have a position, now you can go to the library and read some of the classics in the field that you have never read’. Their reply was always: ‘Michael, we do not have time to read, there is a progress review coming up at the 3-year mark, and I have to have conducted some piece of research and submitted something for publication’. Established staff are not without these pressures. In the late 1990s, I met a senior science education academic in the UK and asked something about a widely publicised and topical book. The reply was: ‘Michael, we barely have time to read articles, let alone read books’. He was specifically referring to the UK pressures on accountability, fund-chasing, raising the institution’s ‘league table’ position, and general ‘administrivia’ that was taking up so much time of academics. If senior scholars are not reading books, then university education is in serious trouble: Why is society funding it? So instead of reading Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Darwin, Faraday, Dewey, Piaget, Bruner, and related secondary literature, new staff spend their time completing countless ‘access and permission’ forms, videotaping lessons, transcribing student interviews, and producing limited, local, uncontrolled, and unscientific research that few people will read, and that notoriously has little impact on science teaching or on anything else. All of this ‘busyness’ just gets in the way of junior faculty’s own education and deeper learning. Far better for everyone if new staff read and study for 3–5 years then publish something substantial that will have a long shelf-life. Currently, thousands of pieces are published every year whose shelf-life can be measured in minutes, if not seconds. For me, the situation was dramatically evidenced when, fifteen or so years ago, I was on a School of Education Appointment Committee interviewing candidates for a senior position. There was a standout applicant, who was already an associate professor at a regional university, and had scores of publications, some of which bore upon HPS matters. Before the interview I went to the trouble of getting and reading those articles. Sure enough, there were all the buzzwords, sentences, and claims— ‘paradigm’, ‘hegemony’, ‘standpoint’, ‘theory dependence’, ‘incommensurability’, ‘reality’ (in scare quotes of course), and so on. In the interview, I selected a couple of these sentences and gently asked the candidate to perhaps elaborate a little upon them. She could not even begin to do so. It became obvious to me, and slowly to all the committee, that she knew zero about what she had written; there was no connection to any knowledge base; it was all froth and bubble with nothing below the surface. ‘Froth and bubble’ had hitherto sufficed for this candidate’s conference presentations, journal publications, and career advancement. But for the accident of me being on the committee, it would have sufficed to be appointed as a senior staff member at a prestigious Australian University, teaching undergraduates, and supervising doctoral students. One can only imagine, and be saddened, at what students would have learnt, or more correctly, not learnt. The episode was a worrying window onto the scholarly state of Education faculty.

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10.2.4 Nature of Science (NOS) Research The field of NOS research in science education is another example where more cooperation between science educators, historians, and philosophers would considerably improve the usefulness and quality of published work (Erduran & Dagher, 2014; McComas, 2020). Norm Lederman’s NOS research group, based first at Oregon State University then at the Illinois Institute of Technology, has been the most prolific over the past few decades. Lederman received the NARST Distinguished Contribution to Research Award in 2011. His group, along with most science educators, have typically taken a broad and fairly relaxed view of the nature of science. This ‘relaxed’ position bears upon the validity of test instruments and of informed assessment of NOS learning (Lederman et al., 2014). The group’s definition of NOS is characteristically catholic. As stated in another publication: Typically, NOS refers to the epistemology and sociology of science, science as a way of knowing, or the values and beliefs inherent to scientific knowledge and its development. (Lederman et al., 2002, p. 498)

It is noteworthy that in this definition both epistemological and sociological aspects of science are subsumed under the NOS umbrella. This is a departure from what philosophers usually regard as NOS. The Lederman group maintains that ‘no consensus presently exists among philosophers of science, historians of science, scientists, and science educators on a specific definition for NOS’ (Lederman, 2004, p. 303). Although recognising no across the board consensus on NOS, the group does claim that there is sufficient consensus on central matters for the purposes of NOS instruction in K-12 classes. The group has elaborated and defended seven elements of NOS (the ‘Lederman Seven’ as they might be called) that they believe to fulfil the criteria of: (i) accessibility to school students, (ii) wide enough agreement among historians and philosophers, and (iii) being useful for citizens to know (Lederman, 2004; Schwartz & Lederman, 2008). The seven elements are: 1. 2. 3. 4.

5.

6.

The empirical nature of science, where they recognised that although science is empirical, scientists do not have direct access to most natural phenomena. Scientific theories and laws, where they hold that ‘laws are descriptive statements of relationships among observable phenomena.’ The creative and imaginative nature of scientific knowledge, where they hold that although science is empirical, its theorising is creative and imaginative. The theory-laden nature of scientific knowledge, where it is held that scientists’ theoretical and disciplinary commitments, beliefs, prior knowledge, training, experiences, and expectations actually influence their work. The social and cultural embeddedness of scientific knowledge, where it is held that science as a human enterprise is practised in the context of a larger culture and its practitioners are the product of that culture. The myth of scientific method, where it is held that there is no single scientific method that would guarantee the development of infallible knowledge.

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The tentative nature of scientific knowledge, where it is maintained that scientific knowledge, although reliable and durable, is never absolute or certain.

The seven features of science, or NOS elements, clearly need to be much more philosophically and historically refined and developed in order to be useful to teachers and students. This is not just the obvious point that when seven matters of considerable philosophical subtlety, and with long traditions of debate behind them, are dealt with in a few pages, then they will need to be further elaborated. Rather it is the more serious claim that at crucial points there is an ambiguity that mitigates the list’s usefulness as curricular objectives, assessment criteria, and as goals of science teacher-education courses. It is easy to see how each of the seven points could be pressed into the service of militantly anti-scientific programmes and ideologies. Is the advancement of science served by students learning such inherently ambiguous principles? The alternative to infallible knowledge is not tentative belief; the alternative to a single method is not no method; being creative requires being prepared and trained; and so on. I have elaborated elsewhere on these problems (Matthews, 2012; 2015, pp. 390–400).

10.2.5 Indoctrination in Teacher Education Most of the issues in the history and philosophy of science are complex and contentious, as any conference attendance or perusal of a journal will attest. The jury is still out on important matters, including constructivism, as discussed throughout this book. As in all disciplines, fads come and go in HPS; over time the focus of research changes; heterogeneity characterises NOS discussion and debate. But, around the world, NOS is in school science programmes, and so needs to be somewhere in teacher-education courses; heterogeneity needs to be addressed (Jenkins, 1996; Rudolph, 2000). The art of the teacher is to judge the maturation of his or her students and present a picture of science that is intelligible to them without being overwhelming. Socrates recognised this 2,500 years ago. He began all his dialogues with: ‘What do you understand by …?’ Students need to get their feet, to become familiar with a tradition, before they are confronted with the ‘cutting edge’ questions. The teacher may have strong opinions on various HPS issues, but the point of education is to develop the students’ minds, which means giving students the knowledge and wherewithal to develop informed opinions about HPS, and the interest and motivation to seek out such knowledge. If HPS in science teaching becomes a catechism—either of a realist, constructivist, Marxist, Maoist, Thomist, Islamic, Feminist, or any other kind—then it defeats two of its major purposes, namely to broaden the mind of students and encourage their critical thinking and disposition.

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For instance, Wolff-Michael Roth, who used to be a leading advocate of constructivism, co-authored a piece in 1994 that starkly asserts that the educational goal of constructivist teachers is to turn students into constructivists: Thus, science educators seek to help teachers in changing from worldviews that are commensurable with objectivism to ones that are commensurable with constructivism. (Roth & Roychoudhury, 1994, p. 6)

And further: If the epistemological development is partly a factor of age, then we could simply wait for the students to become constructivists, the most mature epistemological commitment … However simply exposing students to an environment in which constructivist epistemology is implicit may not be sufficient. (Roth & Roychoudhury, 1994, p. 28)

This published article was originally given at the large NARST conference in, I think, 1992. I was in the audience and made the comment from the floor, with some elaboration, to the authors: ‘I think you have confused education with indoctrination’. I cannot much remember their response, but the following year at the prize-giving ceremony the paper was awarded the coveted ‘Best Paper at Previous Conference’ award. I thought this was revealing about NARST. At the following year’s conference, the paper was awarded ‘Best Article in Journal of Research in Science Teaching’ (the official journal of NARST). Thus, all the way through the NARST system, the original authors, commentators, reviewers, and editors did not think it important to untangle the confusion between education and indoctrination; or thought that there was nothing to untangle. This is starkly symptomatic of the neglect of serious philosophy of education in the training of science educators. Having listened at conferences to many such enthusiastically received ‘let’s make them constructivists’ appeals, I responded in a ‘Modest Goals’ paper saying: There is a danger that teachers, curriculum developers, and examiners will define ‘epistemological development’ merely as ‘believing what I believe about epistemology’. When this happens, we confuse education with indoctrination. (Matthews, 1998, p. 167; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/%28SICI%291098-2736%28199802% 2935%3A2%3C161%3A%3AAID-TEA6%3E3.0.CO%3B2-Q)

Bertrand Russell was alert to this in 1916 when he said of British education during the Great War that it should ‘aim at making [pupils] able to think, not at making them think what their teachers think’ (Russell, 1916/1961, p. 401). Indoctrination is an issue that anyone coming out of a philosophy of education programme can recognise (Snook, 1972). Unfortunately there are fewer such programmes from which students can come out. In some provinces and countries, there are none at all. Indoctrination has particular dimensions for science teachers where so much has to be taken ‘on faith’, as was well-elaborated by Lena Hansson in her contribution to History, Philosophy, and Science Teaching: New Perspectives (Hansson, 2018; https://www. springer.com/gp/book/9783319626147). HPS in teacher-education programmes can widen the vision of teachers, and in turn contribute to having their students not only arrive at destinations (scientific

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knowledge, a scientific habit of mind, a grasp of scientific methods), but arrive with richer understandings of the whole scientific enterprise. This contributes to the health of society and of science. In the ‘Modest Goals’ paper I argued: Science educators should be modest when urging substantive positions in the history and philosophy of science, or in epistemology. …Modesty does not entail vapid fence-sitting, but it does entail the recognition that there are usually two, if not more, sides to most serious intellectual questions. And this recognition needs to be intelligently and sensitively translated into classroom practice. (Matthews, 1998, pp. 169–170)

10.2.6 Ethics and Social Justice in Science Programmes Science teachers are not merely teachers of a discipline, they are also educators. As such, they need to contribute to the moral, aesthetic, and intellectual flourishing of students, and also to the flourishing or improvement of society and culture. These were matters clearly argued by Richard Peters in Ethics and Education (Peters, 1966), the reading of which, 50+ years ago during my Diploma of Education year, was such a career-orientating episode for me. Teachers have dual responsibility: first, towards the discipline they teach and, second, the society in which they teach. The latter responsibilities can barely be identified, much less seriously dealt with, without some philosophical awareness of moral and political philosophy. Without these it is too easy to be just blown about by political and ideological winds. Ethical questions increasingly arise in the science classroom. The following matters are examples of those raised by students, and that appear in new national science curricula: The greenhouse effect, global warming, pollution, extinction of species, genetic engineering, genetic testing of embryos for ‘undesired’ maladies or gender, military technology and the employment of scientists in the defence industries, the cost and direction of scientific research, nuclear energy, nuclear war, and so on. These topics explicitly appear where Science-Technology-Society (STS) and Socio Scientific Issues (SSI) orientations inform curricula and programmes, and students are expected to engage with them as part of the curricula (Zeidler & Sadler, 2008). Correctly, they are part of most ‘nature of science’ (NOS) learning objectives. Development of ‘ethical judgement’ is an agreed aim of the ‘Dublin Descriptors’ widely adopted by European universities for incorporation into all university prorgrammes (Aalberts et al., 2012). Teachers need to strive to make the ethical discussion as sophisticated as the classroom’s scientific discussion. Again, this requires that teachers be familiar with the history and philosophy of their discipline and have some familiarity with informed ethical reasoning. Something, but not much, is served by simply rehashing or asserting popular nostrums. Teachers can benefit, and their classes are enriched, by serious grappling with these ethical and social questions. Anna Couló, in a contribution to the Research in HPS&ST Handbook (Matthews, 2014) details and appraises research in this area, and comments:

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For science education, it is relatively easy to find interesting and relevant material from a socio-scientific point of view (SSI), on the role of non-cognitive values in the funding of scientific research, and on the technological consequences of scientific inquiry. It is much harder, though not impossible, to find related works framed in a more closely philosophical perspective. (Couló, 2014, p. 1090)

There are strong, and legitimate, demands for teachers and schools to address the ever-pressing needs for social justice (Bell, 2016; Papa, 2020; Zajda et al., 2006). More particularly, science teachers are being urged to recognise their own special responsibility in this regard (Finkel, 2018; Reiss, 2003; Hodson, 2011, and contributions to Hansson & Yacoubian, 2020). For some, achieving social justice becomes an aim of education. It needs to be recognised that social justice, in the more limited form of ‘Equality of Education’ has long been part of educational debate, discussion, and policy (Pojman & Westmoreland, 1997). Analysis of ‘equality of educational opportunity’ and evaluation of arguments for its implementation in policy and funding, was a core part of ‘olden day’ philosophy of education programmes (Brighouse, 2003). Conceptual and sociological tensions between competing educational goals of excellence and equality were routinely examined. Such as, for instance, overriding of cultural and family preferences for the unequal education of boys and girls, doing away with graded classes to promote inclusive education, introducing busing between school districts, implementation of affirmative action programmes, defunding or prohibiting private education, and so on down a long list of contentious items associated with the, sometimes different, goals of equality of education outcomes versus equality of social outcomes (Cooper, 1975). The incorporation of social justice into curricula and programmes, as has been seen with the inclusion of NOS, equally requires philosophical acumen in order to avoid platitudes, sloganising, and superficial appraisals. Nothing worthwhile is advanced if ‘justice’ and ‘equality’ merely become additional feel-good buzzwords to be added to ‘incommensurability’, ‘theory dependence’, and ‘objectivism’ to be thrown around in educational debate. More than enough examples of the distracting futility of this have been provided in this book. To the credit of the Thomist tradition, that was influential in my undergraduate education, they dealt with social and political philosophy as part of a whole: social and political thinking needed to cohere with a theory of persons (anthropology) and a theory of the State (political philosophy). They rightly maintained that any account of human flourishing (betterment, improvement) presupposed some account of human beings and their potentialities. Many other traditions, for instance Liberalism, likewise sought encompassing accounts of social justice (Rawls, 1971). This needs to be recognised in science education. Any sensible account of social justice has to be systematic and historically informed. But as philosophy is being stripped out of teacher-education programmes, just where that philosophical and historical perspective will come from is unknown. The pressure for some ideology to step forward becomes irresistible. This is the problem with external goals or aims for education. If you believe education is primarily, rather than as a by-product, to serve some external purpose X, then X can

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be filled by the loudest or most powerful claimant. This was dramatically evidenced during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and countless other such episodes. Sadly, education mostly takes the shape of the last political foot to tread upon it.

10.2.7 Philosophy and Foundation Subjects in Teacher Education The neglect of philosophy in teacher education is a serious problem for the teaching profession, and a specific one for science teaching. The base-level challenge has always been what Israel Scheffler identified: Teachers of any discipline need to know what they are talking about, need to know the meaning of basic terms, concepts, methodologies, truth-tests, epistemology, and ontology of the discipline. And, hopefully, something of the history of their discipline, including its interrelations with culture, society, and commerce. And need to be able to convey some of this knowledge to their students. These matters can only be illuminated by the history and philosophy of the discipline; something they need to acquire before or during their teaching career. The need for teachers to have philosophical competence, or at least sensitivity, is more and more obvious, but accommodating HPS and philosophy of education in teacher education is a complex matter, for which different solutions have been proposed: having a HPS course in teacher-education programmes, sending students to a HPS department for completion of a course, having joint faculty appointments between Education and HPS, supporting appropriate in-service courses for teachers, and other proposals. At the 1989 Tallahassee conference Fabio Bevilacqua warned against such HPS courses being just ‘another brick in the wall’. My teaching of HPS&ST confirms such warning. In 2018 Andrew Colgan and Bruce Maxwell, two Canadian philosophers of education, invited me to contribute to a Routledge anthology titled The Importance of Philosophy in Teacher Education which was published two years later (Colgan & Maxwell, 2020). I was pleased to have this opportunity, especially as the anthology was being published in the Routledge Philosophy of Education Library. This was the series, then edited by Israel Scheffler, in which my 1994 Science Teaching book appeared (https://www.routledge.com/The-Importance-of-Philosophy-in-Tea cher-Education-Mapping-the-Decline/Colgan-Maxwell/p/book/9781138386365). My paper was titled ‘The Contribution of Philosophy to Science Teacher Education’ (Matthews, 2020). I argued that the components needed for competent science teacher-education programmes are: Some range and depth of science disciplines, pedagogical theory and practice, education foundation subjects such as psychology and sociology, philosophy of education, and HPS. The same argument, with a copious supporting literature, had been made by Roland Schulz in his contribution to the Research in HPS&ST Handbook (Schulz, 2014) (Fig. 10.1).

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SCIENCE

HISTORY & PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

SCIENCE TEACHER DEVELOPMENT

PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

PEDAGOGY

EDUCATION FOUNDATION SUBJECTS

Fig. 10.1 Science teacher development. science: undergraduate and/or postgraduate science degree, etc. history and philosophy of science: internal curriculum-based HPS and external education-related HPS studies, etc. pedagogy: practice teaching, educational technology, instructional theory, local curricula assessment theory and practice, administrative matters, special-needs education, etc. philosophy of education: aims of education, personal and social goals of education, ethical standards for classroom teaching and teacher–student interactions, and for school systems, conceptual analysis of teaching and learning, etc. education foundation subjects: sociology of education, history of science education, psychology and cognitive science, developmental psychology, curriculum theory, etc.

Ideally the HPS course should be a ‘HPS for Science Teaching’ course; it should be framed around pedagogical, curricular, and theoretical issues with which science teachers routinely deal (Kampourakis, 2020). But until some such accommodation is found, and philosophy of education and philosophy of science become an expected part of the competence of science teachers—then shallowness, faddism, and sloganeering will continue to mark and diminish the discipline. On 20 July 1993 in a second-hand book shop in Auckland, I idly leafed through a 450-page 1929 book titled Science Teaching (Westaway, 1929). I was immediately impressed with the author’s erudition and the book’s relevance to contemporary issues. I learnt that the author, Frederick Westaway (1864–1946), was a former science teacher, Headmaster, and for 30 years ‘His Majesty’s Inspector of Schools’ (HMI) for science. In the latter capacity he notes ‘I have been present at 1000 lessons a year for over 30 years’ (p. xii). I quickly learnt that he also authored substantial books on history of science, philosophy of science, social responsibility of science, and science and theology (all now in my library). Such high levels of scholarship are rarely conjoined with high-level educational administration. To belatedly give

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recognition to Westaway’s achievements, I asked William Brock and Edgar Jenkins to write a chapter on him for the HPS&ST Research Handbook (Brock & Jenkins, 2014). Westaway’s Science Teaching was a much-used, much-reprinted, textbook used in UK Training Colleges in the 1930s and 1940s. It opens with the assertion (along with his apology for use of the masculine pronoun) that: a successful science teacher is one who knows his own subject … is widely read in other branches of science … knows how to teach … is able to express himself lucidly … is skilful in manipulation … is resourceful both at the demonstration table and in the laboratory … is a logician to his finger-tips … is something of a philosopher … is so far an historian that he can sit down with a crowd of [students] and talk to them about the personal equations, the lives, and the work of such geniuses as Galileo, Newton, Faraday and Darwin. More than this he is an enthusiast, full of faith in his own particular work. (Westaway, 1929, p. 3)

It is a moot question how much the intervening nine decades of education research, debate, and countless publications have added to this account of a good science teacher. Clearly, Westaway’s successful teacher needs first to have acquired basic knowledge and competence in the history and philosophy of science; and second, enthusiasm for, and faith in, science. Schools of Education are hardpressed to deliver the first. And the same Schools, as has been documented in this personal story, frequently undermine the second. How can students come to have enthusiasm for and faith in something they have been told is mechanistic, materialist, reductionist, ideological, exploitive and suffering from countless other ills? And further, told in constructivist classes that knowledge is not possible anyhow; it is all just a matter of what is useful to the cognizing subject. Consequently, there is a strong institutional and intellectual headwind against creating a five-part teacher training or development programme as depicted in Fig. 10.1 above. But if teaching is to be a profession, if teachers are to be esteemed, valued, and generously supported by citizens and the State, then some attempt at such a programme needs be made. In my own case, the HPS competence, such as it is, was acquired by doing a philosophy degree while school teaching, then a HPS degree in a good philosophy department in my beginning years of university teaching. But this was a path that not everyone, or their employer, can afford. Whether teacher education is integrated along with science studies, or end-on after completion of a science degree, the four non-science components in the figure should be scheduled. In-service courses can be utilised; not all teacher development needs occur prior to appointment. The HPS workshops at UNSW which are detailed above were for classroom teachers, and were enthusiastically received. As one teacher said: ‘We are hungry for this knowledge’.

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Name Index

A Adorno, Theodor, 81 Aikenhead, Glen, 270, 272, 273 Alexander, Laurie, 40 Andersen, Bill, 68 Anderson, John, 48, 73 Aquinas, Thomas, 15, 23, 26, 28, 29, 50, 100, 110, 111 Aristotle, 27–29, 55, 100, 108–111, 165, 275 Armstrong, David Malet, 37, 38, 43, 44, 68, 73, 77, 165

B Bacon, Francis, 131, 176 Baltazar, Hans Urs von, 14 Bell, Beverley, 178, 181, 183 Benedict XV, Pope, 24 Berkeley, George, 129, 149, 164–166, 244 Berlin, Isaiah, 142, 177 Bevilacqua, Fabio, 127, 133, 134, 136–138, 281 Bhaskar, Roy, 112 Birch, Charles, 83, 127 Bird, Alexander, 80, 177 Blanshard, Brand, 22 Boghossian, Peter, 182, 213 Boscovich, Roger, 219 Brecht, Bertolt, 179 Brickhouse, Nancy, 137, 254 Brooke, John Hedley, 207 Brown, Simon, 224, 225 Bruner, Jerome, 57, 58, 167, 271, 275 Buckley, Vincent, 44, 47, 48, 110 Bunge, Mario, 78, 112, 137, 150, 177, 191, 224, 226, 235, 243, 247–257

Bunge, Marta, 250 Burnheim, John, 38, 48, 77 Bygott, Hugh, 95

C Campion, Edmund, 2, 12, 34, 35, 44 Carson, Robert, 134, 137 Cartwright, Nancy, 113 Chalmers, Alan, 38, 48, 78, 137 Champion, Richard, 69, 71, 74 Charlesworth, Max, 48 Cleary, Michael, 8 Coady, Tony, 48 Cohen, Robert S., 105, 106, 137, 146, 209 Colgan, Andrew, 281 Collingwood, Robin George, 47 Collins, Harry, 79, 128, 215 Collins, Peter, 8 Conant, James Bryant, 53 Copi, Irving, 39 Cordero, Alberto, 134, 137, 191 Cornwell, John, 12, 20, 21 Cosgrove, Peter, 8, 39 Couch, Vic, 97 Couló, Anna, 245, 279 Crittenden, Paul, 38, 48, 68, 69, 77, 82

D Daniélou, Jean, 26 D’Arcy, Eric, 35, 48 Davis, Rex, 83 de Liefde, Peter, 135 d’Entrèves, Alessandro, 16 Désautels, Jaques, 130, 131

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. R. Matthews, History, Philosophy and Science Teaching: A Personal Story, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0558-1

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288 Devitt, Michael, 77, 78 Dewey, John, 29, 54, 69, 100, 141, 275 Dilworth, Craig, 27 Dodd, Jack, 185 Don, Warwick, 184 Drinkwater, Desmond, 102, 103 Driver, Rosalind, 129, 130, 178 Duhem, Pierre, 109, 214 Duschl, Rick, 39, 164, 167

E Eger, Martin, 98, 127, 132, 133, 138, 139, 141 Einstein, Albert, 104, 147, 148, 150, 152, 155, 156, 181, 228, 242, 243, 269 Ennis, Robert, 56, 98, 114 Evers, Colin, 54, 68

F Feigl, Herbert, 43, 148, 190 Fensham, Peter, 128, 129, 166, 170, 271, 272, 274 Fitzpatrick, Alice, 3 Fitzpatrick, John Bede, 4 Fitzpatrick, Patrick, 3, 4, 7 Foley, Leo, 49 Foot, Philippa, 38 Fraassen, Bas van, 190 Franklin, Allan, 192 Franklin, James, 4, 37, 77, 82, 245 Frank, Philipp, 43, 105, 148 Freire, Paulo, 92 Friedman, Michael, 148, 149, 209 Frow, John, 236, 245

G Galileo, Galili, 24, 27, 78, 104, 107, 108, 112–114, 122, 125, 131, 146, 150– 152, 155, 156, 165, 181, 193, 195, 207, 209, 239–241, 245, 246, 263, 269, 275, 283 Garrison, Jim, 114, 125 Gauld, Colin, 108, 194–196 Geraghty, Christopher, 12, 20, 49, 50 Gilbert, Jane, 182, 187 Gilby, Thomas, 47 Gill, Henry V., 210 Gilson, Etienne, 24–26 Ginnane, Bill, 48 Giroux, Henry, 176, 181, 182

Name Index Glasersfeld, Ernst von, 130–132, 164, 166, 272 Golinski, Jan, 80, 219 Gould, Stephen Jay, 99, 215, 223, 255 Grosz, Elizabeth, 82 Gruender, David, 125, 127, 130, 131

H Haack, Susan, 251 Hacking, Ian, 192 Hager, Paul, 39, 52, 68, 78 Hall, Bertrand, 193 Hanson, Norwood Russell, 74 Hansson, Lena, 278 Hansson, Sven, 226 Harré, Rom, 111 Harris, Kevin, 68, 94, 97 Harrison, Frederic, 220 Harris, Stephen, 121 Hempel, Carl, 41, 190 Hill, Brian, 68 Hintikka, Jaakko, 126, 235 Hirsch, Eric Donald, 168 Hirst, Paul, 52–55, 68, 69, 97, 103, 268 Hobson, Art, 243 Hodson, Derek, 98, 127, 137, 140, 164, 174, 280 Hogg, Anna, 51–53, 61, 68, 91 Holland, Angus, 48, 82 Holton, Gerald James, 56, 98, 105, 106, 141, 146, 194 Hullett, Jay, 155 Huxley, Aldous, 113, 114 Huygens, Christiaan, 104, 155, 156, 165, 193, 195–197, 245

J Jacobson, Lenore, 61 James, William, 148 Jenkins, Edgar, 134, 137, 144, 211, 277, 283 John Paul II, Pope, 28 John XXIII, Pope, 12

K Kaidesoja, Tuukka, 112 Kant, Immanuel, 24, 29, 100, 113, 142, 149 Kemp, Dunstan, 94, 96, 97 Keneally, Thomas, 8 Kennedy, Ted Fr, 44 Kenny, Anthony, 28, 50, 82 Kilfoyle, Bridget, 3

Name Index Kimble, Gregory Adams, 70 Kitchener, Richard, 42, 208 Kleinig, John, 53, 68, 69 Kuhn, Thomas Samuel, 40, 56, 72, 74, 78– 81, 128, 152, 156, 167, 169, 219, 220, 252, 254, 255, 272, 274

L Lacey, Hugh, 48, 71, 137, 250 Lakomski, Gabrielle, 68 Lamont, John, 111 Larochelle, Marie, 130 Latour, Bruno, 79, 128–130, 236, 255 Laudan, Larry, 79, 190–192, 225, 226 Lederman, Norm, 134, 137, 276 Lemke, Jay, 272 Leo XIII, Pope, 12, 23, 25, 49 Lin Yun, Thomas, 227

M Mach, Ernst, 29, 108, 141, 146–150, 152– 154, 156, 190, 209 Mack, John, 268 Mackie, Robert, 68 Madden, Edward, 111 Madigan, Tony, 8 Mahner, Martin, 226, 249 Mannix, Daniel, 2–4 Maritain, Jacques, 25, 35, 69 Martin, Jane Roland, 105, 137 Martin, Michael, 105, 137 Mascall, Eric Lionel, 23, 111, 215 Matteson, Michael, 9, 39, 96 Matthews, Michael R., 1, 33, 67, 91, 119, 125, 163, 205, 235, 261 Matthews, Robert Alexander, 4 Maurício, Paulo, 141 Maxwell, Bruce, 281 Mayer, Richard, 172 McAuley, James, 48 McCarthy, Christine, 246, 247 Mecham, Frank, 49, 50 Melchior, Nick, xvi Meli, Domenico Bertoloni, 193 Miller, Barry, 48, 50, 82 Miller, Crawford, 48 Miller, Julian, 34 Mill, John Stuart, 40, 100, 109, 218 Mitchell, Edgar, 211 Molnar, George, 37, 38, 68 Moore, Clover, 122

289 N Nagel, Ernst, 41, 106 Nanda, Meera, 215, 246 Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, 145, 209, 215 Nehru, Pandit, 207 Newman, John Henry, 44–47, 52, 100, 148 Newton, Isaac, 104, 126, 131, 150, 152, 155, 156, 165, 166, 181, 189, 193, 209, 217–219, 221, 245, 263, 269, 275, 283 Nidditch, Peter, 56 Nola, Robert, 134, 137, 140, 142, 167, 169, 174, 185, 187, 266

O Oakeshott, Michael, 73 O’Connell, Kieran, 20, 21 O’Connor, Michael, 7 Oldroyd, David, 208 Oreskes, Naomi, 43, 78, 79 Orwell, George, 61, 177 Oseroff-Spicer, Nathan, 141

P Paul VI, Pope, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18 Pelikan, Jaroslav, 11, 22, 47 Peters, Michael A., 144, 174–176 Peters, Richard Stanley, 51–53, 55, 57, 68, 69, 72, 94, 268, 279 Phillips, Denis, 56, 98, 114, 145, 168, 169 Piaget, Jean, 42, 78, 103, 131, 167, 169, 194, 255, 271, 275 Pickering, Andrew, 128, 236, 237 Pius IX, Pope, 10, 45 Pius X, Pope, 23 Pius XI, Pope, 15, 16 Pius XII, Pope, 10, 24 Postman, Neil, 92, 142, 146 Priestley, Joseph, 104, 142, 156, 213–223, 239

Q Quine, Willard van Orman, 156, 248, 249, 255

R Randall Jr, John Herman, 106, 155 Ravitch, Dianne, 58 Reid, Harry Fr, 28 Ricci, Matteo, 229, 246

290 Ritchie, Stephen, 240 Rosenthal, Robert, 61 Roth, Wolff-Michael, 40, 132, 148, 166, 167, 176, 235, 237–240, 242, 254, 256, 278 Rozeboom, William W., 81, 114 Rumble, Leslie, 34 S Sanders, James, 99 Sartor, Frank, 122, 123 Scheffler, Israel, 56, 68, 69, 72, 112, 137, 187, 268, 269, 271 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 15 Schulz, Roland, 56, 281 Schwartz, Barry, 71 Scriven, Michael, 69 Searle, John, 55, 78 Shapin, Steven, 240 Shimony, Abner, 80, 107, 108, 111, 132, 133, 142, 143, 146, 150, 167, 252–254 Siegel, Harvey, 39, 56, 98, 114, 127, 137, 164, 271 Siemsen, Hayo, 153, 154 Silberman, Charles, 52 Slezak, Peter, 79, 104, 130, 137, 167, 169, 268 Smith, Graham, 133 Sobel, Dava, 195, 196 Spence, John, 228, 244 Staver, John, 129, 130, 178 Stebbing, Susan, 208, 252 Stegmüller, Wolfgang, 80, 81 Stenhouse, David, 56 Stinner, Art, 108, 134, 137, 194–196, 266 Stove, David, 37–41, 77, 164 Struik, Dirk Jan, 106, 184 Struik, Gwen, 184 Suchting, Wallis, 26, 27, 38, 39, 68, 76–78, 105, 132, 138, 139, 167, 169, 179, 238, 240, 256

Name Index Summers, Anne, 11 Sweller, John, 172, 173

T Thiering, Barbara, 82, 83, 87 Tobin, Ken, 130, 145, 148, 167, 168, 235, 237–239 Toynbee, Arnold, 26, 27 Tresmontant, Claude, 27, 215 Trethowan, Illtryd, 25 Trump, Donald, 39, 80, 128, 179, 187, 214, 228, 272

V Vesey, Godfrey, 73

W Wallace, William, 108 Walker, James, 51 Wang, Joujun, 229 Wartofsky, Marx W., 105, 106, 113, 155, 156, 167 Watson, Peter, 8 Weigel, Gustav, 45 Weisheipl, James, 24, 28, 29, 108, 209 Wheatley, Grayson, 178 Winchester, Ian, 127, 132, 195 Winch, Peter, 81, 82 Wolpert, Lewis, 110, 241 Woodbury, Austin Mary, 22, 36 Woolgar, Steve, 128–130, 179, 236

Y Yao, Dazhi, 230 Yeany, Russell, 166, 167

Subject Index

A Abstraction, 36, 60, 113, 165 Action theory, 81 Aikenhead, Glenn, 270, 272, 273 Aims of science education critical thinking, 39, 140, 182, 188, 266, 277 democratic citizenship, 96, 142, 221 epistemic, 245 moral and political, 279 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 101, 206, 212 Project 2061, 212 Anderson, John. See Sydney University, Philosophy Department Aquinas Academy (Sydney), 22, 25 Aquinas, Thomas, 25, 29 on natural law, 15. See also Thomism Argument argumentation studies, 140 as epistemic practice, 226 feature of nature of science, 110, 136, 148, 228, 241, 265, 273, 274, 276 Aristotelianism, 16, 27, 28, 219 Aristotle natural motion, 108 violent motion, 108 Armstrong, David. See Sydney University, Philosophy Department Astrology, 156, 191, 210, 211, 228 Astronomy, 104, 140, 193, 195, 217, 246 Copernican, 43, 207, 210, 240 Atheism, 105. See also Naturalism Atomism Galileo, 27, 207 Greek philosophy, 26

history, 26 Newton, 207 transubstantiation, 24, 221 Australian Aboriginal culture worldviews, 136, 145, 155, 157, 205– 207, 209–213, 223, 270, 278 Australian Catholicism Catholic Truth Society publications, 35 Irish tradition, 1–6, 20, 103 Marian devotion, 9–11 Australian Council of Churches, 83 Avoidance behaviour in rats, 71

B Behaviourism, 69–72, 79, 236 Berkeley, George idealism, 129, 164, 166 influence in science education, 128 Newton, opposition to, 164, 165 phenomenalism, 73, 149, 164, 165 Bible, 76, 85, 210, 224 Bildung, relation to liberal education, 51 Biological Science Curriculum Study (BSCS), 59, 127 Bohr, Niels, atomic theory, 104, 156, 242– 244 Border crossing. See Aikenhead, Glenn Boston University, 106–108, 113, 146, 155, 163, 194 Cohen, Robert, 105, 106, 137, 146, 209 Martin, Michael, 105 Wartofsky, Marx, 105, 106, 113, 155, 156, 167 Bruner, Jerome spiral curriculum, 57, 58

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. R. Matthews, History, Philosophy and Science Teaching: A Personal Story, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0558-1

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292 The Process of Education, 57, 58 Bunge, Mario Australian visit, 250 causation, analysis of, 52 educational commitments, 52–54, 58 emergent materialism, 253 Enlightenment project, 144, 239, 251, 254 Festschrift, 107, 247 life and times, 247 physics and philosophy, 105, 252 publications, 35, 99, 121, 146, 194, 215, 249, 275 scientism, 143, 256 style, 45, 50, 58, 254, 255 C Catholic philosophers, Australian, 26, 35, 48 Causation, 72, 112, 189, 253 Mario Bunge’s account, 112, 253 Challenging New Zealand Science Education (1995), 180 China, 15, 114, 140, 209, 223, 227, 229, 230, 246, 271 feng shui belief, 224 philosophy, 230 Christian Brothers, 6–13, 18, 19, 21, 62 demise of, 97 Christianity, 22, 25–27, 45, 48, 50, 92, 219 Clocks, 194–196 design argument, 197 social and cultural impact, 146, 194, 256 Common sense, barrier to science instruction, 109, 168 Conservation of energy, 150 Constructivism ideology, as, 166, 168, 239 IHPST group, 125 New Zealand, in, 3, 163, 180, 181 New Zealand Royal Society, opposition to, 183 pedagogical efficacy, 131 radical, 166, 169 realism, 235 science education, 132, 136, 140, 167, 169, 180 science teaching, 188, 246 Science Wars, 128, 235 social, 128, 235, 237 sociocultural theory, 79, 238 teacher education, 166, 167 Conant, James Bryant. See Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Sciences

Subject Index Contraception, natural law teaching, 13, 14, 16, 17, 24 Humanae Vitae, 17 Creationism, 184 Christian, 208 intelligent design, 270 Islamic, 145, 208–210, 221, 277 Critical theory and pedagogy, 240 Critical thinking, 39, 56, 182, 188 Cultural studies anti-realism, 242 critical theory, connection to, 239 Cultural Studies of Science Education (journal), 82, 132, 245, 246 obscure writing, 239 relativism, 79, 246 science education, 236, 237, 239 Cultures, 54, 104, 134, 144, 145, 182, 205, 206, 212 indigenous, 133, 145, 208, 273 D Darwinism. See Worldviews Defining an Identity: The Evolution of Science Education as a Field of Research (Peter Fensham), 128, 271 Demarcation of science from pseudoscience, 225 Devils, Christian, 210 Islamic, 210 Dewey, John on science, 29, 54, 69, 100, 141, 275 Dulwich High School, 57, 59, 67, 69, 87 E Edinburgh Strong Programme, 226 Education (as a discipline) research training, 58, 68, 92, 99, 102, 136, 137, 163, 171, 174, 188, 238–240, 276, 283 Education Policies Commission (USA), 60 empiricism, 36, 76, 143, 169, 190 Energy, 16, 57, 147, 181 Enlightenment critics, 53, 78, 169 education influence, 55, 142–144 principles, 55, 145, 146, 216, 221 scientific revolution, 142 spirit of, 146 Epistemology constructivism, 130 falsification, 98

Subject Index normative, 43, 206, 214 positivism, 43, 136, 148, 150 Ethics, 38, 39, 51, 132, 143, 206, 266, 279 European Physical Society, 127, 133, 134 Experiment in science epistemology, 92, 98, 113, 196 metaphysical presuppositions, 27, 109, 149, 193, 215 Experiment in science teaching re-enacting historical experiments, 263

F Feng shui Black Hat feng shui, 227 chi, centrality of, 224, 225, 228 naturalism, 224, 225, 229 pseudoscience, identification, 223–225 school science programmes, inclusion, 185 Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), 224 Florida State University, 125, 127, 235 Tallahassee IHPST conference (1989), 125, 127, 128, 130, 237, 281 Foundation subjects, in education, 96–98, 103, 281, 282

G Galilei, Galileo common sense, against, 109, 181, 240 forceless (inertial) motion, 193 free fall, 239 idealisation, 108, 110, 112, 114, 267 inclined plane experiment, 113, 239 pendulum laws, 108, 136, 146, 193, 195, 267 pulsilogium, 241 thought experiments, 140, 150, 152 Gedankenexperiment. See Thought experiments General Education. See Liberal education General Education in a Free Society (J.B. Conant), 53, 182 Greece (Greek), 4, 133, 141, 195

H Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Sciences, 53 Harvard Project Physics, 56, 106, 127, 194 Hellenization of Christian Dogma, 26 Hermeneutics, 136, 138, 139

293 Historical-investigative science teaching, 222, 265 History and philosophy of science in education (HPST) beginnings at UNSW, 268, 269, 274 curriculum inclusion, USA, 133, 187 obstacles to including HPS in the science classroom, 174, 188, 194, 212 roles in science education, 56 History of science, 38, 78, 113, 135, 155, 156, 189, 191, 209, 211, 212, 215, 218, 230, 240, 254, 262, 265, 271, 282 historically oriented material in science education, 153 History of Science Society (USA), 135 Huygens, Christiaan international unit of length, 196 pendulum clock, 196, 197

I Idealisation, Galileo, 110, 112, 114, 188 scientific laws, 189 Idealism, 149, 190, 235, 244 different types, 235 Ideology and science, 43, 114, 148, 265 Inclined plane. See Galilei, Galileo India, 141, 145, 207, 246 Constitution, 207 scientific temper, 206 Indigenous science, 42 Indoctrination, 52, 99, 246, 269, 278 Inductivism, 190, 191 Interdisciplinary teaching and learning, 138, 227 International Handbook of Research in History, Philosophy and Science Teaching (2014), 140 International History, Philosophy and Science Teaching Group (IHPST), 125–127, 132–135, 139, 141, 187, 215, 222, 223, 235, 237, 268 conferences, 268 founding, 134 Lake Como conference (1999), 133 newsletter, 127, 135 Science & Education journal. See Science & Education (journal) International History, Philosophy and Science Teaching Group (IHPST), 134 formalisation, 134

294 International Pendulum Project, 194, 266 Invisible world, (spirits), 181, 190, 209–211, 214 IQ research, 61, 99 Islam spirits, 210

K Kant, Immanuel, 24, 29, 100, 113, 142, 149 Kuhn, Thomas S. criticisms, 254 influence in science education, 80 influence on STS studies, 79 Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 56, 78, 219 Sydney University course, 274

L Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts (Bruno Latour & Steven Woolgar), 128 Law of free fall, 166, 256 Law of nature, 15 Laws Aristotle’s laws of motion, 109 Newton’s laws of Gravitation, 165 Learning cognitive perspective, 51, 173 learning theory in psychology, 69, 70, 103 Liberal Art of Science: Agenda for Action (AAAS), 101 Liberal education analytic philosophy of education, 55, 68, 98, 99, 268 John Henry Newman, 44, 45 role of science, 155 scientific tradition, 55 Liberalism, 45, 168, 218, 280 Limits of science. See NOMA Logic, 39–41 Logical empiricism, education, 41 idealisation of science, 41 theses, 12, 41, 42 Logical positivism, educational views of, 43, 149 London Institute of Education, 51, 68

M Mach, Ernst centenary conference (2016), 154

Subject Index educational principles and engagements, 154 life and influence, 147 phenomenalism, 149, 150 thought experiments, 146, 152, 154 Marxism, 77, 92, 99, 105, 106, 209 Materialism, 23, 36, 50, 216, 243, 247, 250, 251 19th century materialism, 100, 155, 229 emergent, 112, 253 Measurement, 150, 193, 195–197, 238, 240, 243, 266, 272 Mechanical worldview, Newton, 27, 207 Metaphysics, 16, 22, 23, 25, 27, 50, 85, 106, 108–111, 145, 149, 196, 208, 209, 213–215, 219, 225, 247, 253 Methodology, 27, 42, 54, 80, 106, 138, 156, 179, 196, 216, 238, 265, 271 concept, 54, 138 metaphysical presuppositions, 42 Moral, 3, 8, 14, 16, 17, 25, 34, 36, 38, 48, 51–54, 79, 80, 84, 95, 96 moral norms in science, 52 Motion forced motion, 109, 165, 193 free fall, 165 God’s existence, argument for, 110 inertial motion, 193 natural motion, 108, 109 pendulum motion, 104, 188, 192, 197, 228, 267 projectile motion, 113 uniformly accelerated motion, 113 violent motion. See Aristotelianism Multicultural education, 273 N National Academy of Sciences (NAS), 58 National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST), 40, 166, 236 first conference attended (1989), 164, 168 National Research Council (NRC, USA), 102 National Research Council (USA), 101 National Science Education Standards (NSES), 101, 212 National Science Foundation (NSF) curricula, 59, 127 National Science Foundation (USA), 59, 101 National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), 169

Subject Index National Science Teachers Association (USA), 169 National Society for the Study of Education (NSSE), 70, 105, 169 Naturalism materialism. See Materialism methodological, 143, 225 ontological, 143, 225 physicalism, 253 religious, 143 Natural law, as foundation for ethics, 14, 16 Natural motion, in Aristotle Galileo, 109 Nature of science (NOS) current research, 140, 276 definition of, 276 history, 134, 136 Lederman group, 276 social justice and NOS, 279 STS accounts of, 279 theory-laden nature of scientific process, 276 Newman, John Henry, development of dogma idea of a university, 44, 47, 52 liberal education, 45, 46 science, evaluation of, 45, 46 Newman Society, 33, 40, 44, 46, 48, 49, 52, 61, 73, 82, 250 Newman Society (Sydney University), 33, 40, 44, 46–49, 52, 61, 73, 82, 250 annual conferences, 44 Newton, Isaac absolute space and time, 165 law of universal gravitation, 219 philosophy of science, 282 unification of terrestrial and celestial laws, 165 New Zealand constructivism. See Constructivism New Zealand M¯aori, worldviews, 185 New Zealand Royal Society, opposition to constructivism, 183 NOMA (non-overlapping magestria argument), 223

O Objectivity, 78–80, 143, 176, 182, 254, 262 Obscurantist writing, 174, 238. See also Cultural studies Ontology, 111, 130, 145, 206, 209, 228, 253 and epistemology, 130, 145

295 realism and anti-realism, science, 189

P Pendulum motion Huygens, Christiaan, 193, 196 International Pendulum Project, 194 longitude problem, solution of, 193, 196 physics curriculum, 197 Scientific Revolution and modern science, contribution to, 193, 195 seconds pendulum and timekeeping, 196 Perception, study of philosophy of, 40, 41 Phenomenalism, 73 Berkeley, George, 149, 150, 164, 165 Mach, Ernst, 149, 150 Philosophy contribution to science education, 107, 134, 137, 156, 174, 188, 230, 281 empiricism, 190 idealisation, 41, 108, 114, 188 in science, 23, 38, 47, 49, 56, 82, 91, 102, 104, 106, 111, 128, 156, 166, 169, 188, 194, 206, 230, 252, 261, 268, 270, 273, 279, 282 realism, 38, 50, 190, 235, 242, 244 Thomism, 22, 23, 25, 49, 50 Philosophy of education, at Sydney Teachers College, 51, 91 physics, 107, 167, 250, 252, 256 science. See Philosophy of science Philosophy of education Analytic philosophy of education, 53 critics of analytic philosophy, 51 general and disciplinary issues, 270 liberal education, 53 Richard Peters, 55, 68, 69, 268 science education, 55, 56 Sydney University MEd degree, 51, 68, 69 teacher education, 52, 56, 98, 174, 281 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA), 51, 54, 68, 69, 78, 94, 97, 99, 100, 108, 114, 126, 174, 176 foundation, 98 philosophy of science, turn from, 107 Philosophy of Education Society (USA), 56, 108, 114, 135, 168, 176, 177 Philosophy of science historical teaching, 56

296

Subject Index

history of science, relation to, 107 NSF curricula, 59 Sydney University courses, 106 Philosophy of science education defining the identity of science education, 264 teacher education, 261, 277, 278 Phlogiston, 179, 191, 220, 221 Physical Sciences Study Committee (PSSC), 59 Piaget, Jean, 42, 78, 103, 131, 167, 169, 194, 255, 271, 275 Planck, Max, 156, 242, 243, 250 Platonism, 27, 55, 73, 74, 100, 242 Popper, Karl, 40, 98, 151, 165, 174, 182, 218, 255 Potential, in Aristotle in contemporary metaphysics, 111 Priestley, Joseph Dissenting education, 217, 223 Enlightenment, support of, 214, 217, 219, 223 Kuhn’s appraisal, 220 life and influence, 215, 216, 218, 223 photosynthesis, 213, 221, 222 soda water, 218 Unitarian theology, 218 Project 2061 (USA), 212 Project Physics Course. See Harvard Project Physics Pseudoscience. See Feng shui Q Quantum physics, realism, 243

arguments

against

R Radical constructivism. See Constructivism, radical Radical education era, 92 Ramsay Foundation, 38 Rationality, 38, 50, 52, 55, 77, 143, 166, 182, 214, 226, 251 Realism anti-realism, 189, 242 modest realism, 192 philosophical, 38, 189, 225, 243 quantum physics, arguments against, 243. See also Philosophy, realism; Philosophy of science Reasoning, 17, 39, 40, 70, 143, 166, 171, 279 Relativism, 79, 246

Religion, 1, 13, 23, 25, 36, 40, 42, 44, 46, 140, 143, 178, 188, 189, 197, 207, 209, 210, 217, 219, 221, 229, 270 and science, 43, 197, 207, 209, 214, 217, 229, 249, 270 Revelation, interpretation of, 26, 27 philosophy, and, 25, 26 Roman Catholic, worldview, 207, 210 Romantic criticism of science, 113 Royal Commission into Sexual Abuse (Australia), 21 Royal Society of New Zealand, 183 S Saint Charles school, 8 Satan, USA belief in, 210 Scepticism. See Skepticism Scheffler, Israel, 56, 68, 69, 72, 112, 137, 187, 268, 269, 271, 281 Scholastic philosophy, 22, 50 Science and culture, 42, 101, 128, 181, 193, 205, 206, 212, 215, 223, 237, 247, 254, 262, 270, 273 and philosophy, 23, 33, 38, 39, 47–49, 54, 56, 78, 82, 99, 101, 102, 106, 107, 111, 128, 155, 156, 166, 167, 188, 194, 197, 217, 220, 230, 245, 251–254, 268, 270, 273, 279, 282 and religion, 42, 43, 143, 188, 197, 207, 209, 214, 229, 249, 270 and technology, 79, 101, 102, 184 and values, 42, 106 and worldviews, 136, 145, 155, 157, 205–208, 210, 211, 214, 223, 247, 270, 273, 278 indigenous, 42, 133, 273 inquiry, 38, 186, 206, 212, 280 metaphysical framework of, 27, 215 methodological rules. See Scientific method universality, 78 Science & Education (journal) contributors, 136, 187, 268 thematic issues, 111, 138, 141, 230 Science and philosophy, 47, 155, 177, 193 Science and religion NOMA. See NOMA Science education crises in, 101 critical thinking, 39, 140, 182, 188, 277 defining the identity of discipline, 148, 271, 272

Subject Index interaction with philosophy teaching, 273 Science-societal Issues (SSI), 280 social justice, 280 values education, 132, 140, 245 Science Teaching: The Role of History and Philosophy of Science (1994, 2015) citations, 188 Science-Technology-Society (STS), 60, 79, 104, 128, 279 Science Wars, 128, 130, 164, 226, 235, 254 Scientific habit of mind, AAAS, 213, 271, 279 scientific temper (India), 206 Scientific method, 56, 156, 253, 272, 276, 279 hypothesis testing, 184 Scientific Revolution, 76, 155, 188, 193, 240, 246 externalist accounts, 246 measurement, role of, 193 metaphysics, 27 Scientific temper (India), 206 Scientific theory, 186, 189, 190, 192 Scientism Mario Bunge, 143, 251, 256 social science, and, 256 Scripture Galileo’s hermeneutics, 131 Spinoza, 142 Seminary education, 9, 12, 22, 24, 82 Shape of the earth, 193 Skepticism, 147 Social constructivism. See Constructivism Social justice, as an educational aim, 280 Sociology of science, 42, 78, 79, 128, 166, 226, 276 Socio-scientific issues (SSI), 280 Sokal Hoax, 239 Soviet Union, philosophy, 43, 209 Space, 61, 79, 165, 167, 173, 190, 192, 195, 211, 236 absolute, 165 Spirits US belief, 210 Sputnik Crisis, 58 Subjectivism, 244, 250 Suchting, Wallis, 26, 27, 38, 39, 68, 76–78, 105, 113, 132, 138, 139, 167, 169, 179, 238, 240, 256 Supernaturalism, 20, 26, 42, 209, 213 Superstition, 74, 228 Sydney City Council, 120

297 Sydney City Council, aldermanic terms, 120 Sydney Teachers College, faculty member assessment battles, 93 counter course, 94 radical education, 92 Sydney Teachers College, student Dip Ed year Philosophy of Education Course, 51, 91 radical education, 92 Sydney Theological Studies Society, 82 Sydney University, Philosophy Department David Armstrong, 37, 38, 43, 44, 68, 73, 77, 165 honours degree, 43, 274 John Anderson, 35, 48, 73 logic courses, 39, 41 Marxist philosophy, 76 The Push, 37 Wallis Suchting. See Suchting, Wallis Sydney University, Psychology Department behaviourism, 69 perception studies, 69

T Teacher education history and philosophy of science (HPS), role in, 174, 261, 277, 278, 281 philosophy of education, role in, 52, 56, 91, 174, 281 Scheffler, Israel, arguments for philosophy, 268, 281 UNSW in-service courses, 98, 101 Teacher expectancy effects, 60 Tentativeness in science, 277 Theology books, 84, 282 Christian, 26, 27 Islamic, 147, 210 liberal, 218 Theory choice in science values and theory choice, 189, 271 The Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy (1989), 155 Thomism Catholic Church, as official philosophy, 16, 23, 27, 50 modern, 25 natural law, 16 philosophy journals, 237 philosophy of the State, 47 seminary philosophy, 23, 49 Sydney (Aquinas Academy), 22

298 Thought experiments, 150 ethics, 150 Mach, 153 science and mathematics, 150 science education, 153, 154 Transubstantiation, 24, 221 Tsinghua University, 225 U Underdetermination, Duhem-Quine thesis, 190, 191 Universalism, 143, 144, 238 University of Auckland, 144, 163, 174 philosophers of education, 174 science education chair, 173 University of Louvain, 28 University of New South Wales appointment, 97 assessment scandal, 102 logic programme, 100 US National Science Education Standards, 212 Utilitarianism, 39, 50, 143 V Values epistemic, 245 in science, 42, 106, 129, 132, 156, 168, 187, 245

Subject Index in science education, 140, 153, 188 non-cognitive, 280 Vatican Council, Australian response, 11, 12, 17, 18, 26 Verstehen theory, 81, 82

W Waverley College, 5–7, 9, 19, 21, 34, 39, 268 Ways of knowning Aboriginal, 179 Westaway, Frederick W., 141, 282, 283 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 68, 81, 175, 182 Worldviews Atomism and the Catholic Church. See Atomism Darwinism, 45, 136, 208 education, 134, 185, 206, 211, 223, 247, 270 philosophical, 136, 208, 213 religious worldviews and clash with science, 209, 210, 213 scientific, 145, 206, 211, 214, 247 scope of, 206 values, 156 World War First, 120, 123 Second, 4 Wyndham Scheme (NSW), 59