17th International History, Philosophy and Science Teaching Conference - IHPST2024

2 - 6 September 2024 - Buenos Aires, Argentina

Conference Chair: Agustín Adúriz-Bravo, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires

Conference e-mail: ihpst2024@gmail.com

Conference Theme: Trusting school science again

IHPST Biennial Conference Registration


Workshop (Taller / Oficina) for Postgraduate Students


IHPST 2024 Buenos Aires – Teachers’ Session
 

Conference Theme 

“Trusting School Science Again”

The authority that the scientific enterprise, its results and its producers have among individuals and communities all over the world is strongly contested by current antiscientific and denialist movements. To restore “trust in science”, science education in all educational levels should explicitly teach students the nature of the complex socio-cultural processes of scientific knowledge production, validation, application and dissemination. 

Here is an extract of an article recently published in Nature Physics by the Italian physicist Pierfrancesco Riccardi, with ideas very much tuned with the spirit of our Buenos Aires 2024 Conference: 

“Over four centuries, society has granted institutional authority to science because of its contributions to technological innovation and economic development. Recently, however, antiscientific movements have questioned this authority, promoting misconceptions and ill-founded debates that undermine society’s ability to address global challenges. 

The success of science derives from its social nature. In science, knowledge is established when consensus is reached within the community about objective facts upon which there is no disagreement. (…) The social process of building scientific consensus is still the most reliable and authoritative way to produce knowledge of natural phenomena. Therefore, it would be more appropriate to talk about trust in scientific research [i.e., in the nature of science], rather than in science or scientists. Though admittedly semantic, this distinction emphasizes that the problem of restoring trust is not simply that of promoting the value of scientific discoveries and technological innovation but, rather, that of increasing the awareness among the public of how science works. (…) 

For this long-term goal, it appears crucial that the teaching of science (…) develops a clear focus on the methodologies of scientific knowledge production. (…) 

Currently, science education focuses mostly on content knowledge, which is needed, for example, for the formation of the scientific workforce. However, most students will not become science experts and science classes in school will likely not suffice to enable them to understand an issue in scientific terms. Therefore, science lessons should also focus on how science works and how it operates within society to help students identify reliable sources of information and make informed decisions. 

For this purpose, history and philosophy of science should have an important role in science education. [They] can be a useful tool for dealing with students’ conceptual difficulties and for promoting cognitive and emotional engagement.” 

We are convening again after two years, this time near the (geographic) “end of the world”, to intensely discuss these issues and to renovate our commitment to modes of science teaching that humanise science, explicate its nature and history, appeal to emotions, and ultimately aim at the formation of citizens who trust (school) science again as one of their most important cultural heritages. 

Riccardi, P. (2023). How to restore trust in science through education. Nat. Phys., 19, 146-147. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-023-01941-8 

Invited Speakers

2024 Springer Lecturer: Cyrus Mody, Maastricht University, The Netherlands

Cyrus Mody has been Professor of the History of Science, Technology, and Innovation at Maastricht University since 2015. Before that he was an assistant and then associate professor at Rice University, and program manager in nanotechnology and innovation studies at the Center for Contemporary History and Policy of the Chemical Heritage Foundation (now the Science History Institute). He is the author of three monographs with MIT Press on the recent history of academic entrepreneurship and university-industry-government collaboration in the physical sciences, most recently The Squares: US Physical and Engineering Scientists in the Long 1970s. He is currently PI of the NWO (Dutch Research Council) project Managing Scarcity and Sustainability (https://managingscarcity.com/), which examines the oil industry's involvement with alternative energy and global environmental governance in the 1970s. He is also co-PI of the European Research Council Synergy project NanoBubbles (https://nanobubbles.hypotheses.org/), which asks "how, when, and why do scientists fail to correct the scientific record?"

https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/ccm-mody

2024 Latin-American Lecturer: Olimpia Lombardi, CONICET, Argentina

Electronic Engineer, Degree in Philosophy, and PhD in Philosophy, University of Buenos Aires. Senior Researcher of CONICET (National Scientific and Technical Research Council, Argentina). Director of the Group of Philosophy of Sciences at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Buenos Aires. Corresponding member of the Academie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences. Honorary Fellow of the John Bell Institute for the Foundations of Physics. Member of the Foundational Questions Institute. Associate researcher of the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Associate editor of Foundations of Physics, Foundations of Chemistry, and Philosophy of Physics. Author of more than 180 papers in the philosophy of physics and chemistry, mostly published in international academic journals. Areas of interest: foundations of statistical mechanics, the problem of the arrow of time, interpretation of quantum mechanics, the nature of information, philosophy of chemistry, Kantian-rooted realism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olimpia_Lombardi

Conference Programme

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Schedule at a glance