How history and philosophy in the US Science Education Standards could have promoted multidisciplinary teaching

School Science and Mathematics, Oct 1998 by Matthews, Michael R

The pendulum was not just of scientific importance. When it was incorporated into the pendulum clock, it had an enormous influence on navigation, commerce, and the development of the industrial revolution. Accurate timekeeping and public clocks transformed public life and culture. Lewis Mumford ( 1934) has commented,

The clock, not the steam-engine, is the key-machine of the modern industrial age...By its essential nature it dissociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences: the special world of science. (pp. 14-15).

This special world of science is captured by Newton in his opening definitions of the Principia: "Absolute, true and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external." A prominent historian of the cultural impact of timekeeping has written,

Work time has been one of the great themes of social conflict since the beginning of industrialization....The new concept of the "economy of time" that arose along with workshops and factories...has been widely discussed in the last decades under the catchphrases "social disciplining" and "the loss of individual control of time." (Rossum, 1996, p. 289)

The clock played a part in philosophy. In the 17th and 18th centuries, when used metaphorically, it contributed to the spread of the new "mechanical world view." The mechanists' and Cartesians' idea that changes in visible phenomena are the result of deterministic pushes and pulls at unseen "inner" levels was made tangible and plausible by appeal to the world being "like clockwork." Scientists and the public could look at the moving hands of a clock, or at the elaborate puppet shows activated by clocks and see that these movements were the result of the movement of inner gears and axels. Adoption of the mechanists' metaphysical position became easier (Laudan, 1981; SollaPrice 1964).

Solving the Longitude Problem

The scientific, technical, commercial, and cultural aspects of the pendulum are brought together in its contribution to solving the long-standing problem of determining longitude. The solution of the longitude problem was of major historical significance: It opened the world to European exploration, exploitation, commerce, and colonization.

Governments and kings offered huge rewards for anyone who could solve the problem of longitude (Sobel, 1995). In 1598, Phillip III of Spain offered a perpetual pension of 6,000 ducats, a life annuity of 2,000 ducats, and a cash prize of 1,000 more. In the next 50 years, his offer was followed by ones from Portugal, Venice, France, and Holland.

The English parliament in 1714, with the advice of Isaac Newton, passed the Longitude Act (see appendix of Quill, 1966) which provided for 20,000 (approximately a million dollars today) for a method to determine longitude to an accuracy of half a degree of a great circle (30 miles), 15,000 for a method accurate to within two thirds of a degree, and 10,000 for a method accurate to within 1 degree (60 nautical miles or 68 land miles). The Act begins,