What can history of science do for science education?

John Lynch co-authored an article that has appeared in the most recent issue of Isis on the value of history of science in science education. For those that don't have copies of Isis delivered to them, John's provided some of the piece and a link to the original.

What surprised me most about the article, though, is that a significant portion of it focuses on intelligent design creationism. It is true that historians of science can refute many of the creationist canards regarding the historical links between Darwin and Hitler or misinterpretation of Haeckel's embryos. But is that really what history of science is about--disabusing creationists of their mistaken beliefs? I think that's awfully limited.

To be fair, the article also argues that training science students about the history of science will produce scientists that are better informed about their disciplines and have a better understanding of how science changes--or even that science changes. One major flaw I see in my own students is that, even as college juniors and seniors, they still see science as a collection of facts that they can memorize for the exam, rather than as a process. I try as much as possible to get students to analyze, predict, and interpret far more than I ask them to memorize. I have also tried to incorporate history--having students interpret data from classic experiments, for instance; investigating how models have changed--to emphasize science as process. It's possible that I didn't take much concrete away from the article because I had already been sold on the idea. But I could probably still work on the implementation.