Cosmology and Science Education: Problems and Promises

TL;DR

This paper explores the unique role of cosmology in science education, emphasizing its philosophical aspects and potential to connect scientific understanding with humanistic perspectives, while highlighting the importance of recognizing science's limits.

Contribution

It discusses the educational potential of cosmology to bridge science and humanistic subjects and emphasizes teaching about science's limitations and philosophical questions.

Findings

Cosmology uniquely links science and philosophy.

It can help students understand science's scope and limits.

Cosmology promotes critical thinking about scientific and philosophical issues.

Abstract

Cosmology differs in some respects significantly from other sciences, primarily because of its intimate association with issues of a conceptual and philosophical nature. Because cosmology in the broader sense relates to the world views held by students, it provides a means for bridging the gap between the teaching of science and the teaching of humanistic subjects. Students should of course learn to distinguish between what is right and wrong about the science of the universe. No less importantly, they should learn to recognize the limits of science and that there are questions about nature that may forever remain unanswered. Cosmology, more than any other science, is well suited to illuminate issues of this kind.