Conceptual frameworks, metaphysical commitments and worldviews

 

Conceptual frameworks, metaphysical commitments and worldviews: the challenge of reflecting the relationships between science and religion in science education

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Abstract:

One issue for science educators who are concerned that science teaching should be inclusive, and so should be accessible to all students, is the perception of science as in some sense essentially contrary to religion, and inherently atheistic. This is a view that has been strongly presented in public by some scientists, and – despite not representing the views of the scientific community – it is a perspective that seems to have been accepted by many school children in some national contexts. If students who have a personal faith, or at least identify strongly with faith communities, consider that science is essentially opposed to religion, then they are likely to feel excluded, compromised, disadvantaged or indeed alienated from science and science classes. School age learners are known to generally have limited understanding of the nature of science, and may not appreciate the distinction between the extra-scientific claims made about science by some of its practitioners, and the ‘scientific values’ that are adopted as shared commitments by the scientific community as a whole. This chapter offers an analysis of this issue, and argues (i) that a pluralist science education should be informed by the distinction between the metaphysical commitments (some shared, some not) that scientists bring to their work, and the conceptual frameworks and knowledge claims that are constructed and critiqued through scientific discourse itself; and (ii) that inclusive science education must explicitly represent the diversity of views within the scientific community on whether, and if so how, science and religion are related.

Keywords:

Contents:

Introduction
Cultural border-crossing in science education
    Science as culture
    Worldviews
    Worldview as a part of culture
    School science as a representation of the culture of science
    Border crossing into school science
‘Science and religion’ is an issue for science educators
    Perspectives on ‘Origins’
Is there a scientific worldview?
    Consensus scientific values
Relating worldviews to science
    Natural philosophy and belief in God
    Scientific materialism
    Natural theology
    Islam and science
    Evolutionary creationism
    Coda
Ways forward?

Figures:

• The ideas we have about the ways things are, that we consider to be based upon our experience in the world, are influenced by background assumptions that we may not always be explicitly aware of
• An individual (such as Newton)’s thinking is informed by metaphysical commitments, and includes various ideas about the material world: which may fit to the current scientific consensus to different degrees.
• Young earth creationism: Empirical evidence is interpreted differently when thinking is channelled by prior commitments to how the world must necessarily be
• Materialistic metaphysical assumptions lead to interpretations of phenomena for which there is no empirical evidence or viable mechanism being assumed to be imaginary

Find the chapter at Springer This can be found on SpringerLink at: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-007-4563-6_8

Download the author's manuscript version here