Philosophy of Science in Higher Education in Science and Technology
May 6th, 2008 by thapke
The colloid chemist Ernst Alfred Hauser wrote about Ostwald in 1951:
… his greatest contribution to science and education was not his discovery of how to form oxides of nitrogen by passing a mixture of air and ammonia over a platinum catalyst (a discovery for which he received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1909), but rather the emphasis he always placed in his writings and lectures on the need of the young generations’ acquiring at least a basic knowledge of what he called ‘basic philosophy’ during the years it devotes to its education in colleges and universities.
Ernst Alfred Hauser, The lack of natural philosophy in our education. In memoriam of Wilhelm Ostwald, in: Journal of Chemical Education 28 (1951) 492-494.
