Sixth Annual UK Workshop on Integrated History and Philosophy of Science
Revisiting the Aims and Methods of Integrated History and Philosophy of Science
18-19 April 2011, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge
Session 4. “How Do We Teach It?”
Summary by Michael Bycroft
The fourth and final session asked a question —"How do we teach HPS?"— that had generated lively discussion at previous workshops, and it did so again this year. Ian Kidd opened by arguing that HPS is not merely useful or productive but also edifying, an activity that cultivates virtues such as curiosity and open-mindedness. Leon Rocha described "doubly comparative, integrated, global, history and philosophy of science, technology and medicine": a form of HPS that considers the global circulation of ideas, people, and hardware; that compares the scientific activity of different groups or cultures who themselves compared their scientific activities among themselves; and that draws on philosophy of science to enable these comparisons. Rocha then gave the results of an informal survey of HPS students who self-identified as historians or philosophers of science, and who gave their frank and colourful opinions of both history and philosophy of science. As these opinions attest, historians of science and philosophers of science do not always switch sides easily.
Stephanie Ratcliffe talked about her experience as a HPS student who switched to straight philosophy for a year. Stephanie contrasted the "attack method" of philosophy enthusiasts--the aggressive criticism of other people's ideas--with the creative and open-minded ethos common among HPSers. She concluded that HPS and philosophy share a commitment to independent thought on the part of students. Next up was Hasok Chang, who challenged the audience to find counter-examples to the following claims: every problem in philosophy of science has a scientific history; and every episode in the history of science has a philosophical aspect. H and P can be integrated because they have common problems and, most importantly, a common object (science). Conversely, they are hard to integrate when either H or P neglects this object.
Audience members wondered how integrated HPS could be taught in Medieval and earlier science; how students of HPS could survive in a tight academic job market; whether there was a danger of integrated HPS splitting into different camps, one doing history that draws loosely on philosophical concepts, and the other doing philosophy that draws loosely on history; how teachers could help students to identify themselves as historians or as philosophers; and whether "global" or "world" history were well-established fields in the history of science.
The panelists said that Medievalists need not fear: the science of their period raises philosophical questions about testimony, demarcation between science and non-science, and comparison between radically different (but simultaneously flourishing) traditions of inquiry. Job-seekers need not fear either, as long as they have publications in relevant fields under their belt (teaching competence, the other key criterion for recruiters, is relatively easy to build up). A tip for graduates is to be clear about what they don't want to study. A tip for teachers is that different sorts of students require different degrees of integration between H and P: a natural science major typically does not need a thorough grounding in (say) straight philosophy, but an HPS graduate student hoping to join a philosophy faculty may well need such training. All agreed that integrating disciplines is a good thing and that over-specialisation is not. It is actually not easy to identify a student as a more promising historian than philosopher, or vice versa: the one certainty is that their respective grades will not tell the whole story. And yes, global and world history are flourishing sub-fields of the history of science. A final tip for teachers: cross-teaching, a euphemism for teaching what one does not know, is a great way to learn new things.
Michela Massimi closed the workshop by recalling an address by the late Ernan McMullin to the 2007 international conference on integrated HPS, in which he lamented the decline of integrated HPS. Massimi observed that it was on the rise again, and that this workshop and its attendants were proof of the field's renewed health.