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Enracinement or the earth, the originary ark, does not move: on the phenomenological (historical and ontogenetic) origin of common and scientific sense and the genetic method of teaching (for) understanding

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Abstract

For many students, the experience with science tends to be alienating and uprooting. In this study, I take up Simone Weil’s concepts of enracinement (rooting) and déracinement (uprooting) to theorize the root of this alienation, the confrontation between children’s familiarity with the world and unfamiliar/strange scientific conceptions. I build on the works of the phenomenological philosopher Edmund Husserl and the German physics educator Martin Wagenschein (who directly refers to Weil’s concepts) to make a case for the rooting function of original/originary experiences and the genetic method to science teaching. The genetic approach allows students to retain their foundational familiarity with the world and their descriptions thereof all the while evolving other (more scientific) ways of explaining natural phenomena.

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Notes

  1. The Italian language (si muovere = smuovere), as the French (se mouvoir) and German (sich bewegen), uses a reflexive verb to express the fact that the agent simultaneously is the patient.

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The collection of the data from which the featured fragment was extracted was made possible by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. I thank Pei-Ling Hsu for her assistance.

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    Wolff-Michael Roth

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Roth, WM. Enracinement or the earth, the originary ark, does not move: on the phenomenological (historical and ontogenetic) origin of common and scientific sense and the genetic method of teaching (for) understanding. Cult Stud of Sci Educ 10, 469–494 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-014-9606-z

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