Polemical conversation on the conception of internal truth

Author(s):  
Helen Mamchur ◽  
Andrei Paramonov

The article discusses the problem of truth in scientific knowledge in a polemical form. The concept of internal truth, according to which truth in science is understood as the correspondence of a theory to its subject, is opposed to the concept of truth, which science strives for, as the knowledge of things in themselves. According to the latter, truth is always internal and in scientific constructions we never leave the boundaries of the language of theory. These concepts of truth are analyzed using examples from the history of science, where the synthesis strategy serves as an effective mechanism for resolving contradictions between different theoretical approaches. Questions of understanding the truth are also considered in the horizon of possible strategies for resolving contradictions between fundamental theories in modern science. The phenomenon of productive errors in science is touched upon.

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 111
Author(s):  
Sigouveny Cruz Cardoso ◽  
Erivanildo Lopes da Silva

No ensino de Ciências, o conhecimento científico para a tomada de decisão pode ser um fator preponderante para fundamentar o desenvolvimento de abordagens metodológicas para a resolução de problemas em sala de aula. Desse modo, a História da Ciência é considerada uma abordagem fundamental para essa contextualização do conhecimento científico em propostas didáticas que visem o desenvolvimento de habilidades cognitivas relacionadas ao pensamento crítico dos estudantes. Neste estudo, considera-se complexa a elaboração de propostas didáticas para o ensino de Ciências sem um modelo que direcione as atividades para tal finalidade. Então, esta pesquisa objetiva estabelecer aproximações teóricas entre a História da Ciência e o pensamento crítico para o ensino de Ciências, propondo um modelo teórico com articulações entre seus objetivos. Ao considerar o conhecimento para a tomada de decisão como um aspecto central dessas aproximações, o estudo apresenta correlações implícitas e explícitas para o planejamento de propostas didáticas. Essas articulações teóricas possuem implicações consideradas fundamentais para a educação científica, em virtude de apresentar um modelo teórico para ensinar Ciências pelas dimensões teóricas de análise, problematização e distinção de informações científicas, ao materializá-las em atividades de aprendizagem que viabilizem a tomada de decisão e a resolução de problemas científicos.Theoretical model of approaches for the teaching of Science between the premisses of the History of Science and critical thinkingAbstractIn Science education, scientific knowledge for decision-making can be a major factor to support the development of methodological approaches to problem solving in the classroom. In this way, the History of Science is considered a fundamental approach for this contextualization of scientific knowledge, in didactic proposals that aim at the development of cognitive skills related to students’ critical thinking. In this study, the elaboration of didactic proposals for the teaching of Science is considered complex, without a model that directs activities for this purpose. So, this research aims to establish theoretical approaches between the History of Science and critical thinking, for the teaching of Science, proposing a theoretical model with articulations between its objectives. When considering knowledge for decision making as a central aspect of these approaches, the study presents implicit and explicit correlations for the planning of didactic proposals. These theoretical articulations have implications considered fundamental for scientific education, as they present a theoretical model for teaching Science through the theoretical dimensions of analysis, problematization and distinction of contextualized scientific information, when materializing them in learning activities that enable decision-making and solving scientific problems.Keywords: History of science; Critical thinking; Theoretical approaches; Science teaching.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-90

The article examines the state of the history of science as a discipline and its objectives in the context of its origins and current transformations. The establishment of this discipline and its assumptions about the nature of science together with its goals and structure are briefly discussed. The history of science became a discipline only at the beginning of the second half of the 20th century, and its start is associated with the work of chemist James Conant, a high-level administrator in Manhattan project who was also president of Harvard University and a high-ranking bureaucrat. It was based also on the narrative developed by Alfred North Whitehead, Edwin Burtt, Alexandre Koyré and other historians of science, which claimed modern science was the creator of modernity and a necessary condition for the geopolitical domination of the West. In that understanding, modern science meant science since the time of Galileo and Newton. The author provides a critical analysis of this foundation narrative for the discipline and of its consequences while showing how contemporary history of science has overcome it. The contradiction between modernism and historicism has been resolved in favor of the latter. A key role in this was played by the book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn, which held the potential to undo the presumed monolithic unity of science by rejecting teleology and introducing incommensurability and discontinuities into the historical process. By rejecting explanation of the knowledge of other times and places in terms of modern science, the discipline faced a radical multiplication of independent types of knowledge. This was facilitated by the reorientation to the study of knowledge practices that took place in the 1980s. As a result, the subject matter of the history of science began to erode, and this launched discussion of the prospects for a transition to a history of knowledge based on the study of practices. The sweep of this change of vision is illustrated by the example of classifying sciences according to both their subject matter and the similarities in their research practices. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of the new discipline along with its prospects and the challenges it faces are discussed.


2015 ◽  
Vol 70 (02) ◽  
pp. 307-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonella Romano

Abstract What kind of history is the history of science? To what extent does the academic research labeled as such delineate a homogeneous field? What are the current challenges that it faces? The recent translation of Simon Schaffer’s works into French, along with the publication of his 2014 Marc Bloch Lecture in the Annales, provides the framework for this article’s historiographical reflection on the profound changes that have taken place within the discipline over the last thirty years, particularly within a French context. The analysis is twofold. First, it aims to trace how new approaches to the sociology and anthropology of science have reconfigured the boundaries of the discipline. Second, it considers the effect of the abandonment of one of its major historiographical paradigms by most of the scholars currently working on early modern science: the scientific revolution as the rise of scientific modernity, underpinned by a Eurocentric vision of the production of knowledge. Although most research on the early modern period now strives to distance itself from this narrative, it must also face new challenges and questions—in particular the role of science in the processes of globalization and the multiplicity of sites and social configurations that participate in this change of scale. These challenges point towards new methods and styles in the history of science and, more broadly, the social sciences.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (9) ◽  
pp. 2-3
Author(s):  
Jaichan LEE

It is 100 years when we think about the history of ferroelectricity. We, who study ferroelectricity, are honored and pleased to share the 100-year anniversary of ferroelectricity and recall its history. At this great moment, we look back to the brief history on the verge of ferroelectricity. Our hope is that ferroelectricity studied as an early collective phenomenon will be coupled with quantum behavior, the essence of modern science, to become a new age in the history of science and technology.


Author(s):  
Staffan Müller-Wille

This article explores what both historians of medicine and historians of science could gain from a stronger entanglement of their respective research agendas. It first gives a cursory outline of the history of the relationship between science and medicine since the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century. Medicine can very well be seen as a domain that was highly productive of scientific knowledge, yet in ways that do not fit very well with the historiographic framework that dominated the history of science. Furthermore, the article discusses two alternative historiographical approaches that offer ways of thinking about the growth of knowledge that fit well with the cumulative and translational patterns that characterize the development of the medical sciences, and also provide an understanding of concepts such as ‘health’ and ‘life’.


JAMA ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 190 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Clovis Hirning ◽  
Lester S. King

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