Talk to me about Hakim Story of Science

[JadeOrchidSong]

Can you talk to me about Hakim Story of Science? How much (how many of the three books) can you do in a school year? How do you use the books? What output do you require of dc?

He already did Apologia general science and physical science. He will do biology in 2017.

Ideas for other science courses are appreciated, too.

Edited September 20, 2016 by JadeOrchidSong

[SarahW]

I found Wile's history of science text to be far superior to Hakim's.

 

I am not YEC at all, but Hakim's "Aristotle Leads the Way" made me laugh (and not in a good way) and made me steaming mad. I don't think Wile's perfect, but his book is so much better.

[Sherry in OH]

We incorporated the first 21 chapters of Aristotle Leads the Way into our ancient history studies last year.  We will read the remaining chapters this year (medieval history).  Current plans are to use the remaining two volumes as supplemental history when we reach those time periods.   

 

Possible science topics: physical geography, climate and weather, robotics, space exploration, human anatomy, botany, engineering, optics/light

[Momto6inIN]

I found Wile's history of science text to be far superior to Hakim's.

 

I am not YEC at all, but Hakim's "Aristotle Leads the Way" made me laugh (and not in a good way) and made me steaming mad. I don't think Wile's perfect, but his book is so much better.

 

Are you referring to the Science in the Beginning elementary science curriculum or some other book I haven't heard about yet? I love Dr. Wile and will read almost anything he writes! :)

[SanDiegoMom]

We are using the Newton at the Center this year, along with the Teacher Guide and Student Guides -- picking and choosing from those.  We are enjoying it  very much.  Very different than a traditional text, definitely a combination of history and science, but we love history and love Hakim's style and so far have enjoyed the assignments (I tweak and don't assign them all).  We usually read the textbook on Wednesday and discuss (taking notes from it every other week, alternating with their history textbook), then do their Quest Guide assignment on Thursday. They are fifth grade, so we alternate history two days a week and science two days a week with project day on Friday. 

 

It is not traditional science - so if you want to set up a lab notebook or really get into the scientific method, this probably isn't for you. It's not inquiry led science. 

 

I wouldn't do more than one book in a year personally -- with assignments it wouldn't work. But if it was reading the text book I could see it happening.

 

One other caveat -- her style is extremely narrative -- one might find it difficult to outline if that is your goal.  I am using their history textbook for outlining but with Hakim I'm teaching them Cornell notes.  Or should I say we are learning how to take Cornell notes together as I never learned it! 

[SarahW]

Are you referring to the Science in the Beginning elementary science curriculum or some other book I haven't heard about yet? I love Dr. Wile and will read almost anything he writes! :)

 

 

Science in the Ancient World. 

 

It also covers the Middle Ages. Whoever picked the title apparently is not down with the 4-year history cycle designations.  :laugh:

[JadeOrchidSong]

We used all of the elementary Apologia science books.

[Garga]

We only used Aristotle Leads the Way.  I loved it.  I'm not sure why it made a PP so angry.  We got a teacher's guide and student workbook that go with it.  The TG and student workbook aren't put out by Hakim, so if you're interested I can try to remember how I got them.  I know there were put out by Johns Hopkins.  I liked it that the kids had some output required in the workbook.  I believe there are guides and workbooks for the other books, too, but they're put out by someone else, not Johns Hopkins.

 

They are more history than science books, however.  So along with Aristotle Leads the Way, once a week with did Teaching Science Process Skills, which is a workbook that, well, teaches science process skills.  It teaches how to come up with a hypothesis.  It teaches how to come up with a proper sampling for an experiment.  It teaches how to measure.  It teaches how to infer (or not!).  We did that book once a week and Aristotle 3 times a week.  It took us a year to get through it.  

 

This is the version from 2006:

 

https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Science-Process-Specialty-Publishing/dp/0768231868/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1474392116&sr=8-2&keywords=teaching+science+process+skills

 

 

Actually, I had the ancient version from '94.  It got the job done.  How to infer and how to use metric and how to set up an experiment haven't changed in the past 20 years..  Here's the actual book I used:  https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Science-Process-Skills-Joyce/dp/0866538356/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1474392144&sr=8-1&keywords=teaching+science+process+skills

Edited September 20, 2016 by Garga

[deerforest]

We used the first one in its entirety, and we're using the second one now. Two of our favorite subjects are history and science so we love them. We do them concurrent with our history studies. We are doing some of the experiments in the accompanying guides this year and also using T&K Milestones in Science too for additional experiments. 

 

Like all of Hakim's work, some folks complain about the formatting, and others don't like her narrative style. There are a lot of insets with additional information, but we just go back to them after reading the main narrative.

 

 

[SilverMoon]

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Edited September 5, 2023 by SilverMoon

[Roadrunner]

I found Wile's history of science text to be far superior to Hakim's.

 

I am not YEC at all, but Hakim's "Aristotle Leads the Way" made me laugh (and not in a good way) and made me steaming mad. I don't think Wile's perfect, but his book is so much better.

Can you elaborate? Is Wile's book religious? I like the TOC, but we are secular. Would we find it problematic?

[SeaConquest]

We love History of US on audio. Does anyone know if this series is on audio as well?

[SarahW]

Can you elaborate? Is Wile's book religious? I like the TOC, but we are secular. Would we find it problematic?

 

 

Like I said, I'm not YEC, but I am Christian and pretty much follow the traditional RC thinking on origins. There's only a few sentences here and there which make me twitch. But to make it secular I think you would need to modify a bit more? But I believe the "preachy" parts are brief and pretty separate from the main text.

 

But there's going to reference to religion just because many of the people discussed are religious. But you also have that in Hakim's book.

 

 

Briefly, about Hakim, the main problem with her book is found right in the title "Aristotle Leads the Way." The entire thesis that the growth of science was due to people casting off Platonism and rediscovering Aristotle is an outdated narrative which all of academia has rejected as being entirely wrongheaded. The way Hakim tries to prove it by talking about Benedictine monasteries alone on the hill picking at their belly-button lint is absolutely absurd and ahistorical. Positing a antithesis between the philosophy of Aristotle and Plato is laughable anyways. This continues to cause major issues throughout the book where she continues to just gloss over the major problems caused by scientists who did try to slavishly follow Aristotle without reference to Platonism (really, neo-Platonism at this point), and ignores the mistakes caused by the brief popularity of "neo-Aristotelian" science. Going through this point by point would take a book as big as Wile's, which does provide a complete rebuttal to Hakim's thesis, so I'm not interested in doing it myself. Suffice to say, Wile in this instance is more accurate and absolutely more up-to-date and in agreement with modern academic research than Hakim.

[SarahW]

Can you elaborate? Is Wile's book religious? I like the TOC, but we are secular. Would we find it problematic?

 

 

Now that I've had coffee and a shower, I'll try to write a better post...

 

I got my book off the shelf to double-check, and yes, the religious content is usually on it's own. Wile, I've found, is not one who engages in drive-by apologetics. So no, there's no "Because God is awesome!" sentences dropped into the middle of paragraphs. There's just paragraphs here and there where you may want to rephrase/discuss the point he's making.

 

 

 

 

While I was poking through I found a few passages which illustrate my point of how Wile corrects Hakim. So I'll just post them here for clarity...

 

In the discussion of John Philoponus (490-570):

 

 

Do you remember Aristotle? Aristotle had a lot of correct ideas, but he also had a lot of incorrect ideas. For example, he was one of the philosophers who believed the earth is eternal. Obviously, John Philoponus disagreed with him on that point. In fact, one of the reasons Philoponus made his argument against an eternal earth was to challenge Arisotle's teaching on the matter. Not surprisingly, Philoponus disagreed with Aristotle on other things as well. This set him apart from many natural philsopher, because Aristotle was so highly respected that few were willing to challenge his teachings. They thought if Aristotle said it, it must be true. Philoponus recognized the great work that Aristotle did, but he was also willing to disagree with Aristotle when he thought Aristotle was wrong.

p. 142

 

Wile goes on to discuss the ways Philoponus proved that objects twice as heavy do not fall twice as fast, and also Philoponus's investigation into drag. We today can of course quibble over what Aristotle really meant when it came to the rate of falling bodies and acceleration of objects through space. But suffice to say, Aristotle was not perfectly correct, and he was already being improved on in the 6th century.

 

Just one further example, in the chapter on Thomas Bradwardine (1290-1349):

 

 

As Bradwardine tried to apply mathematics to his to his study of motion, he saw that much of what Aristotle taught was simply wrong. He tried to develop his own mathematical description of motion, but he wasn't very successful. Most of his mathematical formulas didn't work very well when compared to experiments, but they worked a little better than Aristotle's ideas. As a result, many of those who study the history of science credit Brandwardine's work as another important step in the long process by which natural philosophers started to question Aristotle's teachings.

 

Questioning Aristotle was a very important step along the road to understanding motion and many other things about nature. A great many natural philosophers regarded Aristotle so highly that they simply refused to question what he taught. This was a problem, because a lot of what he taught was wrong. With the help of John Philoponus, Thomas Brandwardine, and others, however, natural philosophers slowly began to admit that there were many things wrong with Aristotle's teachings. As a result, our understanding of motion and other aspects of the natural world began to improve remarkably.

p. 174

 

This is why I think Hakim's book, especially the title, to be laughably bad. Sorry, her US history books might be great and all and worth their popularity, but if you branch out into something you obviously don't know and get the thesis wrong, and put your backwards thesis as the title to the book, I'll just laugh.

 

I'm using quotes from Wile because I think it is a superior alternative to Hakim. But I think Wile is superior because he is in agreement with nearly everyone today who is a serious researcher in the history of philosophy, the history of science, and/or medieval history.

[Sahamamama]

Can you talk to me about Hakim Story of Science? How much (how many of the three books) can you do in a school year? How do you use the books? What output do you require of dc?

He already did Apologia general science and physical science. He will do biology in 2017.

Ideas for other science courses are appreciated, too.

 

I would simply suggest that, if you have not yet seen and previewed the books, that you do so. See if your library has them, and then spend some time reading the books. Hakim has a writing style that I don't care for, especially in a science text. She also puts forth a worldview that may clash with what you're used to in Apologia. I previewed all three books over the summer. I did not find them as engaging as I thought they would be, for all the rave reviews, but that could be because I have never really enjoyed her writing style. I'm looking forward to seeing what others suggest as alternatives.

[JadeOrchidSong]

Thank you, Sahamamama! I got the Einstein one from the library. It is very thick.

Since ds13, dh, and I decide for ds to continue his current science course, we will not pursue another route. What a relief! He does enjoy it very much. The math part is very challenging for him. It is getting a little better now that I am more involved with helping him. Both he and I need and are willing to work harder.

Thanks for your support.