5 - “Textbook Science” before and after Structure

Summary

For Kuhn, textbook science is both a misleading rational reconstruction and an actual driver of normal science. Ludwik Fleck’s account of how textbooks stabilize scientific collectives illuminates the latter. Auguste Comte’s distinction between the theoretical method of instruction, which presents science ahistorically as a system of rational conclusions, and the historical method of instruction, which presents science as a series of effects, illuminate the former. Current STEM textbooks still employ the theoretical method, which obscures the role of historical accident when theory choice is underdetermined by rules. Kuhn and his mentor James B. Conant, in contrast, promote a case study approach. In our new learner-centered educational paradigm, we will need a new textbook science, one that leaves actual books behind.