Bachelard and the sciences: epistemological obstacles in the development and teaching-learning of Biology, Chemistry, and Social Sciences.

Abstract

The work we have at hand is a fruitful effort/encounter made possible by the formation, development, and struggles of the Interinstitutional and Interdisciplinary Group for Studies in Epistemology/GI2E2, created from the initiative of researchers from different institutions and which functioned as a true center of operations (reflections and production). The point of unity of the group, in the formative diversity of the “collective author,” are the formulations and provocations proposed by the (marginalized) tradition of French Historical Epistemology (discontinuist current), consolidated in the first half of the last century: between common (spontaneous) knowledge and scientific knowledge there is a process of conflict and (necessary) rupture. The group gives special emphasis to the thinking of Gaston Bachelard, in La formation de l'esprit Scientifique, from 1938, and to the critical developments proposed by Louis Althusser in Pour Marx, from 1965, based on the definition of its (collective) program of “reconstruction of historical materialism,” which aimed to resume the scientific character of the work begun by Marx and Engels in the second half of the 19th century against the resurgence of epistemological obstacles emanating from theoretical humanism/philosophies of Man and mobilized by questions such as “what is scientific knowledge?” and “how, by whom, and for what purpose is certain (scientific) knowledge produced?”