IsisCB Explore

Multimedia Object: Podcast episode ID: CBB489190367

Henry M. Cowles, “The Scientific Method: An Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey” (Harvard UP, 2020) (2020)

Rieppel, Lukas (Author)
Cowles, Henry M. (Author)

New Books Network Podcast
Publication date: 2020
Language: English

URI: https://newbooksnetwork.com/henry-m-cowles-the-scientific-method-an-evolution-of-thinking-from-darwin-to-dewey-harvard-up-2020/

Outside Links

Evolution Science education and teaching Laboratories Field work Darwinism Experiments and experimentation Methodology of science; scientific method 20th century 19th century

The idea of a single scientific method, shared across specialties and teachable to ten-year-olds, is just over a hundred years old. For centuries prior, science had meant a kind of knowledge, made from facts gathered through direct observation or deduced from first principles. But during the nineteenth century, science came to mean something else: a way of thinking. The Scientific Method: An Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey (Harvard University Press, 2020) tells the story of how this approach took hold in laboratories, the field, and eventually classrooms, where science was once taught as a natural process. Henry M. Cowles reveals the intertwined histories of evolution and experiment, from Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection to John Dewey’s vision for science education. Darwin portrayed nature as akin to a man of science, experimenting through evolution, while his followers turned his theory onto the mind itself. Psychologists reimagined the scientific method as a problem-solving adaptation, a basic feature of cognition that had helped humans prosper. This was how Dewey and other educators taught science at the turn of the twentieth century—but their organic account was not to last. Soon, the scientific method was reimagined as a means of controlling nature, not a product of it. By shedding its roots in evolutionary theory, the scientific method came to seem far less natural, but far more powerful. This book reveals the origin of a fundamental modern concept. Once seen as a natural adaptation, the method soon became a symbol of science’s power over nature, a power that, until recently, has rarely been called into question.

...More

Review Of

Book Henry M. Cowles (2020) The Scientific Method: An Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey. unapi

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB489190367

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Rudge, David Wÿss; (2000)
The Complementary Roles of Observation and Experiment: Theodosius Dobzhansky's Genetics of Natural Populations IX and XII (/p/isis/citation/CBB000770045/)

Book Henry M. Cowles; (2020)
The Scientific Method: An Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey (/p/isis/citation/CBB285563664/)

Article Korff, Sebastian; (2012)
Das Geiger-Müller-Zählrohr (/p/isis/citation/CBB001420907/)

Article Vanessa Heggie; (December 2016)
Higher and colder: The success and failure of boundaries in high altitude and Antarctic research stations (/p/isis/citation/CBB453806040/)

Thesis Yegge, John G.; (2014)
A Historical Analysis of the Relationship of Faith and Science and its Significance within Education (/p/isis/citation/CBB001567599/)

Article Beek, Viola van; (2009)
“Man lasse doch diese Dinge selber einmal sprechen”. Experimentierkästen, Experimentalanleitungen und Erzählungen zwischen 1870 und 1930 (/p/isis/citation/CBB000933310/)

Thesis Clow, Nani N.; (1999)
The laboratory of Victorian culture: Experimental physics, industry, and pedagogy in the Liverpool Laboratory of Oliver Lodge, 1881--1900 (England) (/p/isis/citation/CBB001562684/)

Thesis Sarah Jozina Reynolds; (2022)
Engaging Experiments: U.S. Science Education Before the Laboratory Method (/p/isis/citation/CBB566169313/)

Article Köchy, Kristian; Schiemann, Gregor; (2006)
Einleitung (/p/isis/citation/CBB000701081/)

Article Köchy, Kristian; (2006)
Lebewesen im Labor: Das Experiment in der Biologie (/p/isis/citation/CBB000701085/)

Chapter Hartung, Gerald; (2008)
The “Chymistry Laboratory”: On the Function of the Experiment in Seventeenth-Century Scientific Discourse (/p/isis/citation/CBB000831240/)

Chapter Carsten Reinhardt; (2016)
Experimental Turnaround, 360°: The Essential Kuhn Circle (/p/isis/citation/CBB569537527/)

Chapter Ana Duarte Rodrigues; (2021)
Jardins como espaços de ciência, séculos XVI‑XVII (/p/isis/citation/CBB002422897/)

Chapter Soukup, Rudolf Werner; (2011)
“Transformování celého Corpus Solis v Liquorus Irreducibilis.” Laboratorní alchymie na dvoe císae Rudolfa II. (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201935/)

Article Haufe, Chris; (2012)
Darwin's Laws (/p/isis/citation/CBB001221610/)

Book Singham, Mano; (2011)
God vs. Darwin: The War between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom (/p/isis/citation/CBB001033153/)

Article Barabanschikov, Boris I.; Ermolajev, Andrey I.; (2011)
Kazan University during the Lysenkoism Period (/p/isis/citation/CBB001220381/)

Article Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther; Ryan Giordano; Michael D. Edge; Rasmus Nielsen; (2015)
The mind, the lab, and the field: Three kinds of populations in scientific practice (/p/isis/citation/CBB568872966/)

Article Pierre Savaton; (2015)
Les exercices pratiques de sciences naturelles de 1902 aux années 1930: Des textes aux pratiques (/p/isis/citation/CBB631696484/)

Article Lyons, Sherrie Lynne; (2010)
Evolution and Education: Lessons from Thomas Huxley (/p/isis/citation/CBB001032816/)