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Beyond a Pragmatic Account of the Aesthetic in Science Education

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Abstract

This paper argues that pragmatist philosophies and theories of science, education and art have dominated our understanding of aesthetics in science education in ways that overshadow other important and pertinent aspects of aesthetic experience. For all its strengths, a pragmatist account of science education and aesthetics remains vulnerable to a kind of instrumentalism that reduces the objects, practices and persons in science education to mere beings: the source and subject of a reductive objectification of experience. This paper proposes a counter-balancing perspective that both respects and also adds to that offered by pragmatism. It does so with reference to Heidegger’s ontological difference: the one side of which is concerned with pragmatic, scientific, reflective thinking and the other with a meditative and phenomenological way of thinking that draws out our unmediated experiences of the world. Moreover, it argues that the latter is accessible in science classrooms by approaching objects and practices as works of art.

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Notes

  1. The authors acknowledge Heidegger’s brief but significant association with the German Nazi Party, which has received renewed criticism following therecent publication of his private notebooks (Mitchell 2017). Debate continues about the degree to which Heidegger’s politics have influenced hisphilosophical work. The authors follow scholars who maintain that many of his contributions make such valuable contributions to contemporaryphilosophical and social problems that they cannot be neglected (Madsbjerg and Fried 2015; Žižek 2017).

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  1. Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne, 100 Leicester Street, Carlton, Victoria, 3010, Australia

    Maurizio Toscano & John Quay

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  1. Maurizio Toscano
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  2. John Quay
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Correspondence to Maurizio Toscano.

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Toscano, M., Quay, J. Beyond a Pragmatic Account of the Aesthetic in Science Education. Sci & Educ 30, 147–163 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-020-00162-2

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