-
Flat Earth movement; Ludwik Fleck; thought style; thought collective; science teaching.
The Earth is flat, man has never been to the Moon and the Sun revolves around the Earth. These are some of the statements they found in the Flat Earth movement, which has gained prominence in recent years beyond the bubbles of social networks. While science teachers cause ideas, the flat-earther movement advocates curiosity and attention. This work investigates the Flat Earth movement from the epistemology of Ludwik Fleck, as a way to contribute to science teaching. In order to know the movement of the Earth, we did not look at material available on the official Earth Society website, which gathers "evidence" of the flat Earth found by flat-Earthers from all over the world. To analyze this material, we used some concepts developed by Fleck (2010) in his work Genesis and development of a scientific fact, published in 1935. The data were grouped in order to characterize the Flat Earth Society's style of thought, describing its methods, explanations, obvious explanations and their specific language. The collective of thought, on the other hand, was characterized by its esoteric and exoteric circle, legal and customary provisions and ways of disseminating knowledge. We found a large volume of content from technology, technology and different areas of knowledge such as technology, topography, astronomy, geography and other areas of knowledge. The topics directly dealt with by the Flat Earth Society are related to science and many of its explanations make use of scientific terms, but with different meanings, or are permeated by spherical counter-arguments. Seeking to expose how the phenomena treated by the Flat Earth Society, we selected as studies for the spherical shape of the Earth and its movements that are approved in the National Book Program 2020 for elementary school. From this, and from the Fleckian epistemological contributions, we identified differences and similarities between the knowledge about scientific knowledge, understanding that, because they are collectives of thought, each one is permeated by different styles of thought and interpreting the phenomena . Finally, we reflect on the implications for science teaching based on the question: what can we learn from the flat movement towards competition and teaching science and about science?