There is a long tradition for science educators to look to history and philosophy to improve and inspire their teaching and guide their curricula. Historical cases may contribute to the understanding of science as a human endeavour and as a dynamical process rather than a static set of theories and laws. In the research field of science education, such characteristics of science are taken up in a hybrid area called ‘nature of science’ (NOS), which blends aspects from history, philosophy and sociology of science with the psychology of learning. NOS generally holds – among other things – that scientific knowledge is tentative, that there is no one scientific method, that observations are theory-laden and that scientific ideas are affected by their social and historical milieu (a representative example is William F. McComas, The Nature of Science in Science Education (2002)). These and other aspects are discussed in Mansoor Niaz's book Chemistry Education and Contributions from History and Philosophy of Science, which adds to a slowly growing literature on the history of chemistry and chemistry education in a field otherwise dominated by examples from physics. (I do, however, find the topics in the current book very close to physics and miss examples from laboratory chemistry.)

The book consists of eight chapters, including an introduction, two theoretical chapters, four chapters dedicated to specific scientific topics, and a conclusion. In the first three chapters, Niaz tries to establish a framework for the analyses to follow, and to argue for the use of history in the teaching of chemistry at higher levels. A list of basic understandings of NOS – including the four mentioned above – are presented and discussed in this part. Although these chapters take up interesting questions and aspects, I found this first part of the book most of all confusing and hard to follow. A plurality of views and large quotations split the text and make it difficult to grasp the author's own arguments and perspectives.

Far more interesting are the four chapters dealing with specific scientific phenomena: atomic models, stoichiometry and chemical bonding (valence bond and molecular-orbital theories), with the last one taking up a variety of topics (kinetic molecular theory of gases, the periodic table of elements, the origin of the covalent bond, the oil-drop experiment, electrolyte solution chemistry, photoelectric effect and wave-particle duality). Included in these chapters are studies of textbook presentations of the named topics, where excerpts of selected texts are analysed using criteria drawn from the basic understandings of NOS presented in the introductory chapters. In the chapter on atomic models, for example, phrasings such as ‘what ultimately banished this model to trash heap’, that an approach was ‘doomed to failure’ or that a model was ‘overthrown’ by an experiment (pp. 110–121) are quoted to illustrate how simplistic ideas of science may settle. Indeed, it is important that science educators and future teachers are made aware, and are critical, of such presentations in textbooks, and discussions such as the ones Niaz provides in this book may surely increase awareness.

These four chapters provide good examples of how to teach and not teach the nature of science in chemistry or physics (indeed, many of the selected topics could be equally interesting to an audience of physicists), but one important shortcoming is the lack of thorough introduction to the topics in question. As indicated in the preface, the book is intended for secondary- and university-level teachers, science-teacher educators, researchers in science education and graduate students. But how are the teachers, educators and students to grasp the meaning of the discussions without knowledge of the historical cases themselves? While Niaz criticizes textbook authors for presenting too simplistic versions of scientific developments, he himself invites such perceptions when taking the cases for granted. Even readers who are well versed in the scientific models and the historical contexts in which they developed would find it useful to have the cases outlined together with the discussion of their presentation. Of course, real understanding cannot come from a short introduction, but without a common understanding of what a case is about, a discussion of what to extract from it is rather meaningless. I would rather have had fewer chapters and more details, than many examples and little grounding.

I strongly support the idea of using history and philosophy of science in science teaching and to do so we need discussions such as the ones provided in this book. However, I find the argument that history of chemistry is already ‘inside’ chemistry so we should exploit it more a bit naive (p. 7 and throughout). Giving students a real understanding of what science is and how it develops takes time, training and experience. Teachers need material such as this book, but they also need time and help to dig deeper into some episodes, and they need time allocated in their teaching so that reflections on the history of science can take place. All too often time is short, and there are many topics to be taught.

Notwithstanding the above criticism, I find this book well researched and an excellent guide to literature on historical cases for those who want to read about the cases and studies on their use in education. Overviews such as Table 3.1 on pp. 44–45 are very useful, as are the references throughout the text. I will definitely use the book when preparing my own teaching.