History of Sciences as a recourse to upgrade geometrical optics courses

"Balzac disait que les celibataires remplacent les sentiments par les habitudes. De meme, les professeurs remplacent les decouvertes par des lecons. Contre cette indolence intellectuelle qui nous prive peu a peu de notre sens des nouveautes spirituelles, l’enseignement des decouvertes le long de l’histoire scientifique est d’un grand secours. Pour apprendre aux eleves a inventer, il est bon de leur donner le sentiment qu’ils auraient pu decouvrir." First year university courses in Physics, as we led them over years, do not seem to work out anymore [2]. Starting from this observation, we propose a reaction consisting in the rewriting and enrichment of these courses oriented by the idea of introducing the students to the original sense and motivation of their contents. As an example, we will present the structure of a course of basic geometrical optics focused on the essential part of the usual formal contents of geometrical optics, but which gives priority to discovery, self-investment and reflection. An ambitious objective that we try to get closer to by a structural interaction between the classic formalism of physics and fundamental questions arising from history of sciences.