O que e o método científico: uma reflexão crítica sobre o método científico como subsídio para o ensino das ciências naturais
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1987-04-24
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Fernandes, Sergio L. de C.
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Teaching science is, above all, teaching the scientific method and developing the student's critical attitude. This means to change the idea of science as a collection of definitely established facts and theories into the view that science is rational (critical), conjectural, provisional, questionable and corrigible knowledge. The concept of science as a perfect and complete representation of directly observed phenomenon must also be corrected so that the student realizes that science is an idealized (partial) reconstruction of reality, a reconstruction that explains the visible by the invisible. In this line of thought, we must oppose to the idea of a pure and impartial observation of facts the idea of observation as guided by hypotheses and theories. Teaching scientific method is to oppose to the idea of discovering and verifying hypotheses by inductive procedures, the idea Of inventing bold conjectures, out of the scientist's imagination, and of trying to test them as severely as possible, and to refute them by controlled experiments. In the place of the false ideal of searching for verifiable, certain, ever more probable theories, we must propose the searching for ever more refutable, more widely applicable, precise, deep, corroborable and, perhaps, truthlike theories. Finally, teaching scientific method is also to criticize both these alternative views of science, proposing new criteria for theory appraisal and it goes without saying that these criteria, in their turn, will also be criticized, since the absence of critical discussion or the passive and dogmatic acceptance of a body of ideas, or theories, is non-science, pseudo-science, the negation of the critical spirit and of the rationality of man.