Core Texts in the Sciences. Talk given at the conference Core Texts in the Liberal Arts, Amsterdam University College, September 2015.

1. Core Texts in Natural Science:
Progressiveness in Science and the
Recurrent Nature of the Big Questions
Sebastian de Haro
University of Cambridge and University of Amsterdam
Liberal Arts and Sciences and Core Texts in the European Context

2. Introduction
•Focus: core texts in science for science students
• Not proving every theorem in Newton’s Principia
• Exposing students to selected pages from Newton’s
Principia
•Point of view of this talk: philosophy of science
•Such reflection is needed because of real objections
to use of core texts in natural sciences
• Waste of time: even harmful to expose students to
modes of thinking no longer accepted by current
standards in the natural sciences
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3. Progress and Paradigms
• Basic tension:
• Science is progressive, looks towards the future
• History looks towards the past
• Popper: science advances by discarding wrong theories
(falsification)
• Kuhn: during scientific revolutions, there is a change in
the dominating paradigm
• Evolution: only the most fruitful theories survive
• Kuhn: despite evolution, two important limitations:
• Incommensurability of paradigms (cannot really compare
them)
• Kuhn-loss: there are some things that the new paradigm can
no longer explain
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4. Progress and Paradigms (Cont’d)
• Laudan: science is a progressive activity
• The progressiveness of a research tradition is in its problem-
solving ability
• Kuhn and Laudan: paradigms/research tradditions are
closely connected with the choice of educational
practices
• Initiation in a trade or craft
• Importance of textbooks: rewritten after paradigm change
• Should we teach from the textbooks written within the
most recent tradition?
• )
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5. Progress and Paradigms (Cont’d)
•Should not fall into this trap: progress is not linear
• Paradigms are incommensurable
• There is Kuhn-loss: phenomena explained by the old
paradigm, left unexplained by the new one
• Exposure to core texts keeps us sensitive to Kuhn-loss:
limitations of the present paradigms/research traditions
•Paradigms or research traditions sometimes die too
early
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6. The Chemical Revolution
•Lavoisier’s theory of oxygen vs. Priestley’s phlogiston
theory
•Victory of Lavoisier’s oxygen theory rationally
justified (Imre Lakatos)
•Hasok Chang (2012): “Is Water H2O”?
• Phlogiston theory guillotined too early!
• Precursor of modern concept of free electron (Kuhn
loss)
•Good ideas, even if rejected by the latest paradigm,
never quite die
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7. Action at a Distance
• Rejected by Descartes and Huygens
• Accepted by Newton in his theory of gravity
• Rejected by Einstein
• Back in quantum mechanics as the idea of non-locality
• Discarded ideas are almost bound to be the seeds of the theories
of the future (in different guise...)
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8. Summary so far
i. Science does not always progress linearly: it sometimes takes
hundreds of years before a Kuhn-loss is adequately repaired.
• Example: phlogiston theory and metal theory of electron
ii. Parallel universes where scientists made better choices: the
development of science was faster and more secure
• Phlogiston theory flourished and led to earlier development of electron
metal theory
• From (i): there are, in those core texts, good ideas stil to be dug
out for learning and inspiration
• From (ii): programme of integration of history and philosophy of
science in teaching basic scientific concepts
• Douglas Allchin, “Science and Education” (1997): teaching using the
phlogiston concept
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9. Four complementary arguments
i. Exposes the students to the methods and ways of thinking of the
best scientists
ii. Practical sense of the reasons that led scientists to reject theories
iii. Sense of the intuitive questions, paths of investigation, and simple
concepts that scientists grappled with, and the answers they gave
to them: not always feasible with current theories, which are very
sophisticated
iv. Prepares future scientists for “the jobs that don’t yet exist”
(Ramon Puras)
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10. Summary
• Problem-solving nature and directedness of science not absolute
• Also in the natural sciences there are perpetually recurring questions
• Core texts can be of guidance in the way to finding new solutions
• Action at a distance precursor of modern non-locality
• Integrated way of teaching that combines science, history, and
philosophy?
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11. Thank you!
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