A VIEW FROM THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE IN PHYSICS TEACHING: THE FEYERABENDIAN PERSPECTIVE OF GALILEO'S ASTRONOMY
Physics teaching; Philosophy of Science; Paul Feyerabend; astronomy; Galileo Galilei
This paper connects the field of History and Philosophy of Science to its implications to the teaching of sciences, pointing the importance and pedagogical potentiality of this field. We base it on the analysis of the epistemology of the philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend to propose the historical-philosophical approach as a didactic strategy for the teaching of physics, specifically, astronomy topics involving the historic figure Galileo Galilei. In order to do that, we identified some astronomy topics traditionally taught by physics teachers on the first year of High School and, in an articulated fashion, compose a picture of Galileo’s works and hold great historic relevance to Feyerabend epistemological criticism. Afterwards, we have a feyerabendian reread of Galileo’s astronomy aiming for its use in the teaching of physics. At last, we propose a didactic unit composed of three moments – a meeting for astronomic observation, a theoretical construction activity and a mock trial class – as basis to the work with Galileo Galilei’s world systems in high school physics classes.