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ERIC Number: EJ1067689
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015-Jul
Pages: 13
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1756-1108
EISSN: N/A
Natural Laws and Ontological Reflections: The Textual and Didactic Implications of the Presentation of Boyle's Law in General Chemistry
Quiroz, Waldo; Rubilar, Cristian Merino
Chemistry Education Research and Practice, v16 n3 p447-459 Jul 2015
This study develops a tool to identify errors in the presentation of natural laws based on the epistemology and ontology of the Scientific Realism of Mario Bunge. The tool is able to identify errors of different types: (1) epistemological, in which the law is incorrectly presented as data correlation instead of as a pattern of causality; (2) semantic, in which natural law is presented as a mathematical statement that relates variables but with an absence of ambiguous material reference; (3) deterministic, in which the relationship of natural variables is presented but with no causality statement; and (4) mechanistic, in which a causality statement is presented with the absence of an explanatory mechanism. In this work, Boyle's law was used as an example of the applicability of the instrument. In this case, we found errors in most of the university textbooks that we analyzed. Most of the errors arose from the disconnection between the symbolic and microscopic levels. The presentations of Boyle's law in general chemistry are given in textbooks that include illustrations based in a macroscopic perspective, in which the macroscopic compression mechanism is completely disconnected from the microscopic collision mechanism. This disconnection results in the incorrect presentation of gas pressure as the cause and gas volume as the effect.
Royal Society of Chemistry. Thomas Graham House, Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge, CB4 0WF, UK. Tel: +44-1223 420066; Fax: +44-1223 423623; e-mail: cerp@rsc.org; Web site: http://www.rsc.org/cerp
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Information Analyses; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A