Rediscovering the Historical Methodology of the Earth Sciences by Analyzing Scientific Communication Styles

Despite the still-regnant concept of science proceeding by a monolithic “Scientific Method”, philosophers and historians of science are increasingly recognizing that the scientific methodologies of the historical sciences (e.g., geology, paleontology) differ fundamentally from those of the experimental sciences (e.g., physics, chemistry). This new understanding promises to aid education, where currently students are usually limited to the dominant paradigm of the experimental sciences, with little chance to experience the unique retrospective logic of the historical sciences. A clear understanding of these methodological differences and how they are expressed in the practice of the earth sciences is thus essential to developing effective educational curricula that cover the diversity of scientific methods. This chapter reviews the question of historical scientific methodology (focusing on geology), as it has been addressed by historians, philosophers, science educators, and working scientists. We present results of a novel linguistic analysis of scientific texts, which shows that such posited methodological differences are indeed reflected in scientific language use. Characteristic features of historical scientists’ language can be directly connected to aspects of historical scientific methodology, as explicated by philosophers and historians of science. This shows that the same methodological concerns are reflected in working scientists’ conceptualizations of their discipline. These results give guidance to science educators, in the light of the recent emphasis on teaching language skills, as in "Writing Across the Curriculum", to focus on teaching and evaluating language and discourse skills within the methodological conceptual framework of the historical sciences. Introduction There is a widely held misconception that scientists make use of a single, universal scientific method in their work (Cartwright, 1999; Cleland, 2001, 2002; Hacking, 1983, 1999). According to many modern science textbooks at both the high school and even university level, this method involves conducting experiments under controlled conditions in a laboratory to test hypotheses. Indeed, this belief was so strong at one time, that as Hacking (1983, p. 149) notes the "experimental method used to be just another name for the scientific method". However, not all hypotheses can be tested in the laboratory. Historical hypotheses postulate particular causes for currently observable phenomena based on the (uncontrolled) traces that they leave behind. Such historical hypotheses are connected to the earth sciences, but also play a role in fields as disparate as evolutionary biology, astronomy and archeology.