Abstract

Many philosophers of science think scientific practice can benefit from philosophical concepts, and as such philosophy of science should play a direct role in science and engineering education. In this paper we consider a highly integrative course design strategy for integrating philosophy of science in specific disciplinary educational programmes through adaptation, operationalization and embedding of philosophy of science material to fit both the scientific and educational structure of a programme. The goal of the strategy is to help encourage students to recognize the value of philosophical concepts to scientific decision making and to apply them in their own scientific practice. We use the example of a 7.5 ECTS civil engineering course which implements this design at a European technical university, to elaborate these concepts, and present some evidence on how students receive the course. We discuss some of challenges and limitations of implementing this kind of strategy for teaching philosophy of science.

Highlights

  • Philosophers of science generally consider there to be a clear role for philosophical concepts in improving the scientific reasoning and practices of scientists and engineers, and that philosophy of science courses should be required as part of scientific education

  • Students are assessed via various project tasks (25% in total; see examples below) which test the ability of students to put philosophical concepts into their own practice, and an exam worth 25% which mostly tests the ability of students to accurately describe the concepts they have studied

  • This paper has introduced an integrative course design strategy for teaching philosophy of science based on adaptation, operationalization and embedding of philosophical concepts within scientific and engineering curricula

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Summary

Introduction

Philosophers of science generally consider there to be a clear role for philosophical concepts in improving the scientific reasoning and practices of scientists and engineers, and that philosophy of science courses should be required as part of scientific education (see for instance Grayson, 2006). The aim of this paper is to outline a model or strategy for integration which attempts to overcome the three obstacles mentioned above using a case example of a course for civil engineering students. This civil engineering course has been taught over the past five years at the University of Twente, a technical university in the Netherlands, as a 7.5 ECTS course..

Applying the integrative design strategy to a civil engineering course
Civil engineering
Limitations and challenges of implementation
Findings
Conclusion

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