In physics teaching experimentality is an integral component in giving the starting point of knowledge formation and conceptualization. However, epistemology of experiments is not often addressed directly in the educational and pedagogical literature. This warrants an attempt to produce an acceptable reconstruction of the epistemological role of…

This paper reports a 4-month study that investigated the effectiveness of curriculum materials incorporating the history of science (HOS) on learning science, understanding the nature of science (NOS), and students' interest in science. With regards to these objectives, three different class contexts were developed with three main types of…

This paper addresses Lawson's puzzlement about the absence of prediction in William Harvey's and Marcello Malpighi's views on capillaries. In addressing the context of that enquiry, it also addresses historiographic versus philosophical models of science, contexts of discovery versus justification, normative versus descriptive interpretations of…

This paper focuses on the developments experienced by natural philosophy and mathematics in Bologna during a period of rapid change in the relationship of the various disciplines in the faculty of Arts and Medicine. Insisting that university science was characterized by a greater vitality than the traditional historiography usually concedes, this…

For a long time, the medieval university maintained relative consistency throughout Europe in teaching topics and methods. But between 1550 and 1650 this came to an end. The evolution concerned the content of the courses and, to a lesser extent, the way the field was taught. The impact of these changes varied greatly from place to place, and new…

This paper attempts to draw attention to non-conventional but popular modes of transmitting scientific knowledge in Jesuit institutions in the 17th century. The particular case study focuses on a fictive dialogue between Galileo, Mersenne and Paulus Guldin on the power needed for moving the huge globe of the earth by mechanical means. The dialogue…

This essay examines some aspects of the teaching of mathematics and its applications in three of the principal sixteenth century Spanish universities (Salamanca, Valencia and Alcala) and in other institutions sponsored by the monarchy, such as the "Casa de la Contratacion" (House of Trade) of Seville and the so-called Academy of Mathematics of…

The "Ordo servundum in addiscendis disciplinis mathematicis" is a milestone in the history of the teaching of mathematics. Conceived by Christoph Clavius for the Jesuit Colleges, it was not only a syllabus for mathematical studies for the students at Jesuit colleges but also an instrument for training mathematics teachers. Its coherence and its…

Andreas Libavius' (c. 1555-1616) three part collection of letters, the "Rerum chymicarum epistolica forma...liber" (1595-1599) is a particularly important text in fashioning the subject of chemistry as a demonstrative science and as a didactic discipline. Where Libavius' "Alchemia", which some have claimed to be the first textbook of chemistry,…

In this paper, we analyse the aims, contents and impact of Seabra's two-volume textbook--"Elementos de Chimica" ("Elements of Chemistry")--published in 1788 and 1790. Seabra's "Elements of Chemistry" does not conform to the characteristics usually ascribed to textbooks by traditional historiography, and in particular to textbooks published in the…

After surveying some 18th century chemistry textbooks in Italy, this case study compares two Bolognese university textbooks related to the subject. Although the works in question represented two different ways of conceiving and using chemistry, both were within the Lavoisian framework. In other words, when a revolutionary theory passes from one…

Pedro Gutierrez Bueno wrote two editions of a chemistry textbook between 1788 and 1802. The paper offers a comparative view of both editions taking into account Gutierrez Bueno's biography, his intended audience and the changes related to the so-called chemical revolution. Some conclusions are at odds with common images about scientific…

This paper explores the relationship between H. C. Orsted's research and teaching programme in order to uncover the way he attempted to sustain a dynamical approach to science through his lectures and textbooks. The main focus is the relation between Orsted's didactics as presented in his textbooks and other documents, his pedagogic activity, and…

This paper is a study of textbooks in chemical technology in Sweden during the industrialisation in the 19th century. In this period, teaching in technological education in general became more and more founded on science. However, there existed very few textbooks in chemical technology, and it is argued that the reason was that the essentials of…

Greek society of the eighteenth century did not have the institutional or theoretical background for the development of an original interest in scientific pursuits. The contact with the new scientific ideas aimed basically at the assimilation of these ideas in the body of the existing contemplative philosophy and the context where such undertaking…