The Optics of Moving Bodies under the View of Structural Realism: Non-consensual Issues of Nature of Science in Teacher Training

Author(s)

Felipe Prado Correa Pereira

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Física (IF/SBI)
• Defense date: 2021-07-12

Examining board members

Ivã Gurgel; André Ferrer Pinto Martins; Breno Arsioli Moura

• Advisor: Ivã Gurgel

Abstract

The theoretical and empirical discussions carried out in this work are situated in the debate on the Nature of Science (NOS) in Science Teaching. We seek to study the contributions of non-consensual topics from the Nature of Science in teacher education. The contents of the so-called Consensual Views of the NOS served as a starting point for the proposition of a didactic intervention in the initial training of physics teachers, in which controversial metascientific topics were addressed. More specifically, issues associated with scientific realism. We argue that the teaching of non-consensual aspects of NOS may be a tool to combat both scientific and naive-positivist views about science, as well as exaggeratedly relativistic notions regarding the scientific enterprise. We advocate that debates about scientific realism have a lot to contribute to the construction of metascientific discourses that consider both the objective and realistic character of science, as well as its subjective and contingent aspects. With this epistemological dilemma in mind, we studied the philosophical implications of the so-called problem of scientific change and the occurrence of scientific revolutions throughout the historical development of Physics. Using the theoretical framework of Structural Realism, we sought to identify aspects of continuity and discontinuity between successive theories in a given area of Physics. This framework allows us to distinguish continuities in the structural and mathematical domain of a theory, while it reveals ruptures in its ontological domain. In order to make the philosophical discussions developed in this dissertation less abstract, we carried out the study of a historical episode regarding the development of the optics of bodies in motion as a historical antecedent of the Special Relativity proposition. In it, we show that the theory of partial ether entrainment, formulated by Augustin Fresnel in 1818, represents a link of structural continuity between the 19th century optics and the Theory of Relativity, despite the theoretical reference to the ether which has not been maintained throughout the Einsteinian revolution. Such studies served as a basis for the didactic intervention carried out in a discipline with a historical-philosophical approach. After analyzing the collected data, we concluded that the students were able to seize the central philosophical quarrels of this research. We found that the students took different stands regarding the cognitive and ontological status of science, and the elements of continuity and discontinuity of scientific development. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 18/04779-6 - The optics of moving bodies under the vision of structural realism: non-consensual questions about the nature of science in teacher education
• Grantee: Felipe Prado Corrêa Pereira
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master