Bridging Laboratory Inquiry and History of Science: Enhancing Scientific Literacy Through Explicit and Reflective Approaches to the Nature of Science

This study proposes an innovative instructional approach to promote scientific literacy by integrating the Nature of Science and the Nature of Scientific Inquiry with experimental practice and the history of physics. The aim is to foster a deep understanding of how scientific knowledge is constructed and to promote informed trust in science. Using an explicit and reflective methodology, the intervention combines experimental activities with historical reflection. The core of the learning sequence is the experimental reconstruction of Galileo’s studies on falling bodies, based on the historical manuscript folio 116v, an original document that provides the empirical evidence for the law of falling bodies, illustrating the transition from raw experimental data to mathematical formalization. Through this activity, students engage with key epistemic aspects of scientific practice, including the management of uncertainty—distinguished into statistical/aleatory and structural/epistemic forms—the probabilistic nature of scientific knowledge, the predictive power of models and theories, and the underdetermination of scientific theories. Additional themes addressed include the role of thought experiments, the importance of communicating results for scrutiny and validation, the function of models as mediators between theory and phenomena, and the process of de-idealization. The study also challenges the persistent myth of a single, linear “scientific method,” highlighting instead the theory-laden character of scientific inquiry and the central role of the scientific community. This dimension is explored through the historical comparison between Galileo and Mersenne, which illustrates elements of the scientific ethos and the role of peer review as a mechanism for the correction and refinement of knowledge. The results obtained with pre-service teachers, with whom this instructional sequence was implemented, indicate that this contextualized approach facilitates the overcoming of a view of science as a set of absolute truths. Instead, it promotes a more mature understanding of science as a dynamic, provisional, and self-correcting human enterprise, while equipping future citizens with the critical tools necessary to navigate the challenges of the twenty-first century.