551 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license
to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
W. F. McComas (ed.), Nature of Science in Science Instruction,
Science: Philosophy, History and Education,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57239-6_30
Chapter 30
Using Anecdotes from the History
of Biology, Chemistry, Geology,
and Physics to Illustrate General Aspects
of Nature of Science
William F. McComas and Kostas Kampourakis
30.1 Introduction to the History of Science Anecdote
Approach
There the goal of this chapter is to provide a method by which teachers can weave
NOS lessons into their traditional focus on science content using a teaching tool
called the History of Science Anecdote Approach. In this plan, the teacher uses a
relevant story from the history of science to teach both a history of science (HOS)
lesson and one related to NOS derived from that historical anecdote. This chapter
features a “ready-to-use” guide to teach about each of the key NOS aspects that are
discussed in detail in Chap. 3, each linked here to illustrations from the history of
science in geology, biology, chemistry, and physics. Readers are encouraged to
review the key notions and their defnitions since, to avoid redundancy, they are not
discussed here.
To produce these examples of NOS and HOS, we have reviewed many accessible
books written by professional historians of science (such as Bowler and Morus
2005; Dear 2006; Fara 2009). The illustrations presented here could be incorporated
into classrooms in a variety of ways. Teachers could simply share them with students
when they are relevant to an aspect of instruction. The stories could be used in a
W. F. McComas (*)
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA
e-mail: mccomas@uark.edu
K. Kampourakis
Section of Biology and IUFE, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
e-mail: kostas.kampourakis@unige.ch