Science Education: Dwelling in Kepler's 'Temple of Urania'

How can we begin to imagine a post-modern rendering of science education when the disciples of science continue to cling so firmly to a creation myth in which Science, like Botticelli's Venus stepping forth from a clam shell, breaks away from the pre-modern metaphysical commitments of religion, magic and the superstition in a singular event called the Copernican Revolution? Like Heidegger returning to pre-Socratic philosophy in order to re-examine the question of being, I want to argue in this paper for the possibility of finding in a re-telling of this 'birth of Science' some trace of the how science might have differently addressed the question of its relationship with metaphysics, especially the metaphysical commitments we now associate with Modernity. To this end, I explore the legacy of the Johannes Kepler, whom I argue exemplified an orientation towards 'science' that more fruitfully captures the post-metaphysical conceptualization of science called for in the later works of Martin Heidegger. By drawing links between the works of Kepler (as exemplary of the 'beginning' of Science) and Heidegger's (as an articulation of the culmination of science), I want to demonstrate how science education in particular can usefully serve as the means of re-discovering in science, as students so often do, the process of what Heidegger refers to as 'dwelling'.