Scientism applies the ideas and methods of the natural sciences to the humanities and social sciences. Herbert Spencer applied the law of the conservation of energy to social questions and arrived at formula answers to the issues of the day. The kind of certitude that Spencer aimed for was possible only by ignoring a system of values. Much as he may have believed that he was above personal beliefs, there are values implicit in Spencer's theories and they are the values (...) of the nineteenth-century British middle class. Reasoning by analogy is as valid in social theory as it is in the natural sciences. Spencer's error was in universally applying the idea of the conservation of energy to social systems by means of identity rather than by analogy. Scientists in Britain, where there was a self-assured scientific community, dismissed Spencer's theories as being unscientific, but he enjoyed a vogue in the United States. (shrink)

William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, played a major role in the nineteenth century in changing scientific theory from the statical view, associated with imponderables, to the dynamical view which conceived of energy as a separate and convertible entity. Thomson's conversion from the statical to the dynamical view of nature was due to the influence of experimentalists, Michael Faraday and James Prescott Joule. It was Thomson's use of mathematical metaphor that enabled him to interpret on a theoretical level the physical explanation (...) given by Faraday and Joule. (shrink)

A course, ‘Physics, history and society’, has been taught primarily to college freshmen since 1972. Disciplinary lines are sharply drawn, thereby teaching the subject in the same fashion as research is done. The course is about the way physics and history became disciplines and how they have developed, as well as about the rhetoric of physics/history. The main topics are the physicist's/historian's personality as it is related to his work. The history of physics is used to show how a scientist's (...) personality is related to his work. The nature of physics and history is taught as a preliminary to other courses in these subjects. (shrink)

The history of science and technology has been a scholarly discipline with little attention given to the special needs of undergraduate teaching. What needs to be done to transform a discipline to an undergraduate subject? Suggestions include using the relation between science and technology as well as the role of interpreters in formulation of the popular world view. Relations with science and history departments are considered. Curriculum materials are surveyed with some recommendations for correcting deficiencies.