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Imaginative Thinking in Science and Science Education

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Imaginative Science Education

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the centrality of imagination in the thinking process in general and its role in science and science education in particular. More specifically, it discusses the role that imagination plays in induction, deduction, and reflective thinking and the idea that science is an imaginative activity, which should also be reflected in the way students, at all levels of education, learn science. This discussion helps one understand that imagination is needed not only because students may deal with unobservable entities (e.g. atoms, electrons, photons), phenomena that cannot be directly observed (e.g. change in intermolecular distances), and even entirely imaginary constructions (e.g. lines of force) but also because they have to solve various problems, to design experiments, to interpret both observational and experimental data, and to propose theories that explain phenomena. With regard to the process of teaching and learning science, there is a discussion of the role of thought experiments as teaching/learning tools (on the grounds that thought experiments can stretch the students’ imagination to the utmost) as well as a discussion of two elements that play a crucial role in students’ engagement with science, namely, their emotional imagination and what they perceive as unfamiliar, strange, and mysterious. A number of teaching/learning possibilities are also given at the end of the chapter.

I believe in intuition and inspiration […] At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason. When the [solar] eclipse of 1919 confirmed my intuition, I was not in the least surprised. In fact I would have been astonished had it turned out otherwise. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.

Albert Einstein, in Cosmic Religion with Other Opinions and Aphorisms, p. 97

Knowledge is an island. The larger we make the island the longer becomes the shore where knowledge is lapped by mystery. It is the most common of all misconceptions about science that it is somehow inimical to mystery, that it grows at the expense of mystery […] The extension of knowledge is an extension of mystery.

Chet Raymo, in Honey from Stone, p. 6

The cultivation of the imagination […] should be the chief aim of education […] we have a duty to educate the imagination above all else.

Mary Warnock, in Imagination, p. 9, p. 10

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The fundamental idea in Johnson’s (1987) book ‘The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination and reason’ is that almost all of our knowledge derives from bodily experiences through metaphorical projections into abstract domains. According to Johnson, bodily motion and forces give meaning both to our physical experiences at a preconceptual level and to many abstract concepts of our language through the use of metaphors (see Hadzigeorgiou, 2000a and Hadzigeorgiou et al., 2009 for empirical evidence of Johnson’s claim). Johnson argues that schemata, as structures for organizing and understanding the world, ‘fall between abstract propositional structures … and particular concrete images’ (p. 29). However, these schemata can also ‘constrain our meaning and understanding’ (p. 138).

  2. 2.

    The image schema of fluid substance corresponds to the concept of quantity, the verticality image schema corresponds to the concept of potential, and the image schema of force corresponds to the concept of energy (see Fuchs, 2015).

  3. 3.

    The thought experiment he performed involved a ball going down an incline. He reasoned that if he placed another incline facing the first one, the ball will first accelerate, as it goes down the first incline and will then move up the second incline and finally stop to approximately the same height from which it was released on the first incline. This conclusion was reached because Galileo had mentally removed all friction. He then started to decrease the angle of the second incline until to the point that it became zero, that is, level with the ground. It was then apparent that, without any frictional forces acting on the ball, as it was released from a point on the first incline, the ball would continue forever on the now level ground.

  4. 4.

    It is the strangeness of nature that makes science engrossing. That ought to be the centre of science teaching. There are more than seven-times-seven types of ambiguity in science awaiting analysis […] I suggest that the introductory course in science, at all levels from grade school through college be radically revised. Leave the fundamentals. The so-called basics, aside for a while, and concentrate the attention of the student on the things that are not known. You can possibly teach quantum mechanics without mathematics, to be sure, but you can describe the strangeness of the world opened up by quantum theory. Let it be known, early on, that there are deep mysteries and profound paradoxes, revealed in their distant outlines, by the quantum. Let it be known that these can be approached more closely, and puzzled over, once the language of mathematics has been sufficiently mastered […] Teach at the outset, before any of the fundamentals, still imponderable puzzles of cosmology. Let it be known, by the youngest minds, that there are some things going on in the universe that lay beyond comprehension, and make it plain how little is known […] The worst thing that has happened to science education is that the great fun has gone out of it (Thomas, 1995, pp 150–155).

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Hadzigeorgiou, Y. (2016). Imaginative Thinking in Science and Science Education. In: Imaginative Science Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29526-8_1

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