ABSTRACT
Whenever science is taught, philosophy is taught. Messages are conveyed, explicitly or implicitly, about epistemology, ontology, ethics, plausible reasoning, argumentation and other philosophical topics, including religion and aesthetics. In this chapter, ways in which philosophy’s presence in science education has been and can be made more explicit will be examined. It will be argued that, by making philosophy more explicit, the goals of good technical science education can be advanced – students will understand the subject better and be more proficient at scientific reasoning – and, at the same time, something of the more general cultural and epistemological dimension of science can be conveyed. This consideration can be extended to the teaching of history, mathematics, geography, economics and most school subjects: they all have philosophical dimensions, and these are best made clear and explicitly engaged with in an informed manner.
