Abstract
In this chapter we present a study of a concept that is not included in the school curricula: the concept of death. Nevertheless, the study of death is justified because it is a concept that is at the heart of people’s existence through its opposition to the concept of life. In this article we address the historical and epistemological construction of the concept of death, considering different knowledge fields, such as biology, medicine, philosophy, sociology, psychoanalysis, and psychology. We then proceed to the identification of the zones of a profile model of death through a dialogue between theoretical sources and empirical data collected from students attending higher education biological sciences, medicine, and pedagogy courses. Finally we analyze the evolution of the zones, examining different semesters of one of those courses. It was possible to identify for the concept of death in three zones: naturalistic, religious, and relational. The naturalistic zone expresses a conception of death as something natural, a result of a condition intrinsic to living organisms. The religious zone contains a comprehension of death as something that results from the “divine will” and represents a passage for the eternal life. The relational zone shows conceptions that deny or hide death, attributing to death a condition of fatality, something that could not exist.
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- 1.
We will not detail the whole theory here, but just focus on Weismann’s concept of death.
- 2.
A hierarchically ordered system is a system that contains entities spanning over several levels of organization and related to one another by part-whole relationships (Mayr 2008).
- 3.
In this case, we highlight the fact that, in this study, we chose to define life cycle as a characteristic of every living being, made up necessarily of birth, development and death, since, in our understanding, the complexity of the life cycle does not vary only from species to species but also from individual to individual within the same species. This option was also chosen in order to consider the approach of the life cycle in the official school curricula, reflecting the teaching approach [although subject to analysis and criticism] used in classrooms.
- 4.
Mayr distinguishes between the death, considered as the end of life, and the biological death, considered as the end of life that occurs by the failure of organs and, consequently, of the living system (Mayr 2008).
- 5.
Plato (2004), written between 387 and 368 BC.
- 6.
Freud (1996a), written in 1915.
- 7.
Freud (1996b), written in 1919.
- 8.
We decided to maintain Kübler-Ross as source for a naturalist view of death although this is not confirmed by the last book of this author, in which she presents a different view.
- 9.
(Q means questionnaire, P period and C course studied, that is, CB – Biological Sciences, CS – Social Sciences, M – Medicine or P – Pedagogy.)
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Nicolli, A.A., Mortimer, E.F. (2014). Building a Profile Model for the Concept of Death. In: Mortimer, E., El-Hani, C. (eds) Conceptual Profiles. Contemporary Trends and Issues in Science Education, vol 42. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9246-5_11
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