Abstract
The German philosopher Edmund Husserl criticised natural science for contributing
to an ”ontological reversal”, meaning that abstract mathematical models of
phenomena are taken as more real than phenomena themselves, as they appear in
our everyday experience. Nowadays many scientists have abandoned the
correspondence theory of truth concerning their theoretical models, but the
effects of the ”ontological reversal” may still linger among lay people. The
primary purpose of this paper is to investigate whether this ”reversal” is
present in the thinking and reasoning of pre-service science teachers. In the
project upon which the paper is based, twenty-three student teachers were
introduced to Goethe’s theory of colour. They were then placed in small groups
and given the task to discuss whether Goethe’s theory is scientific or not. The
group discussions were recorded and analysed in terms of thematic contents. The
ontological reversal seemed to be present as an implicit ”figure of thought” in
some of the statements made in the discussions. The educational consequences of
this kind of thinking for science teaching are discussed.
Key
words: science
education, phenomenology, ontology, lifeworld
One
of the pre-socratic philosophers, Democritos, is reported as saying:
According to
common speech, there are colours, sweets, bitters; in reality however only
atoms and emptiness. – The senses speak to the understanding: ”Poor
understanding, from us you took the pieces of evidence and with them you want
to throw us down? This down throwing will be your fall.” (Fragment #125; quoted
from Diels, 1992, p. 168; my translation)
The
first sentence of this quote is often used in textbooks of physics and
chemistry to illustrate the atomic concept of natural science: what really and
truly exists in the world are atoms and emptiness. This view is then attributed
to Democritos (Wagenschein &
Buck, 1984).
From an educational point of view, this
situation deserves some comments. First of all, Democritos is gravely
misrepresented. From the whole quote given above it can be gathered that he is
dealing with a much more complex question than what exists ”in reality”. The
view that everything is composed of atoms and emptiness is considered as a possibility
– and a dubious one as well.
Secondly, Democritos’ problem has to do with the
relation between the senses and the understanding; it is epistemological as
well as ontological. The quote above can be taken as an illustration of how the
understanding deceives itself by taking ”evidence” from sense-experience and
then using this to deny the reality of that very experience. It is almost as if
Democritos was anticipating one of the fundamental difficulties involved in
teaching natural science to children and young people today. This difficulty
has to do with the ”idealising” tendency of modern science, i.e. its reduction
of our experience of the world to abstract representations and mathematical
formulas in which the concreteness and contingencies of everyday life are
annihilated, as it were – or at least set aside as belonging to the ”not real”.
This has lately come to be regarded as a major stumbling block for students’
learning in science (Matthews, 1994).
The quote from Democritos indicates that this
problem has been considered from a philosophical point of view ever since
antiquity. Since philosophy in its true sense, as Dewey remarked, is also
educational, science educators may perhaps learn something from philosophy
concerning this problem. In this paper I will first present a part of Edmund
Husserl’s phenomenological critique of natural science, which has been labelled
”the ontological reversal” (Harvey,
1989). Secondly, I will illustrate how this tendency to
reverse the ontological priorities is present in the reasoning of science
teacher students today. Finally, I will discuss some educational implications
of this situation.
Husserl and the ontological
reversal
In
his phenomenology, Husserl wanted to build a general philosophical basis for
all sciences, including natural science. However, phenomenology has been taken
up primarily in the human and social sciences. Within these disciplines,
phenomenology has been applied both as a theory of science and as an empirical
method of research. This is probably because there has been a greater need in
the human and social sciences to explicate the philosophical principles upon
which they build. The success of natural science research led to a situation
where natural science in a way legitimates itself. One does not feel the need
to justify one’s research on a philosophical basis. Neither does one feel a
need to develop other, alternative ways of research.
The phenomenological theory of knowledge is
however relevant to all disciplines. Harvey (1989) makes a thorough explication
of Husserl’s philosophy in relation to the foundations of natural science.[1]
The problem that Democritos points to in the quote above can be seen as a
prefiguration of what Husserl about two thousand years later says about the
development of the epistemological and ontological grounds of modern science (Husserl, 1970). This development within the European/Western
cultural hemisphere has led to what he calls the ”mathematisation of nature”.
Galileo was among the first to propagate the view that the true language of
nature is mathematics. After that, the view that a scientific understanding of
nature must be founded on mathematics was gradually accepted by almost all
researchers in natural science (as well as by the philosophers reflecting upon
this research, notably Hume and Kant).
Among other things, Husserl
re-actualised the 17th-century discussion about the primary and
secondary properties of things. According to Galileo, Descartes and other
leading figures within the so called scientific revolution, properties like
colour, smell and taste were ”secondary” in the sense that they only existed in
the consciousness of the human being, not in things themselves. They were
subjective phenomena, conditioned by the mind and the brain. In contrast, primary
properties belonged to things in an objective sense. Such properties were measurable; for instance size, mass,
durability and energy.
In phenomenology however one
starts only from what is ”positively given” in experience. In immediate
experience colours and smells are as ”given” as for instance size or mass
(perhaps even more so). Therefore, there is no experiential ground for
the distinction between primary and secondary properties.[2]
However, the distinction has played an important role in the development of
natural science, and probably also for the popular understanding of the nature
of science. According to Husserl’s (1970) analysis, Galilean science’s
mathematisation of nature started with a ”geometrisation”, upon which followed
an ”algebraisation” (cf. Harvey, 1989, pp. 58-59). Thereby we have moved two
steps away from that foundation of meaning (Sinnesfundament), which is
given to us in immediate sense-experience. Such mathematical transformations
proved however (as we know) to be very successful. As a consequence,
researchers became more and more interested in and occupied with them. Husserl
calls this the ”technisation” (Technisierung) of science. The
progressive technisation involves in its turn a gradual ”sedimentation of
meaning”: the grounds of the original transformations in concrete, lived
experience are forgotten and there arises more and more sediments of
”self-evidences”:
…this problem of
forgetfulness is exacerbated by the fact that with each new generation’s
inheritance of the new techniques – an inheritance that presupposes the process
of transformation without explicitly recognizing them – another increment in
the Selbstverständlichkeit of natural scientific achievement occurs as
well. (Husserl, 1970, p. 59)
The sedimentation of meaning makes the
”higher objects” of science, such as mathematical formulas, take on a life of
their own.[3]
They become cut off from the fluctuating experiences of everyday life and start
to float above it. At the same time they are supposed to explain these experiences. By being taken as explanations they are
also ascribed an ontological status of truth and objectivity. Husserl meant
that the consequence was
…[a] surreptitious
substitution of the mathematically substructed world of idealities for the only
real world, the one that is actually given through perception, that is ever
experienced and experienceable – our everyday lifeworld. (Husserl, 1970, pp.
48-49)
The abstract mathematical models become
more real than the concrete, lived experience in which they have their ultimate
ground, and from which they have been abstracted. Harvey (1989) calls this ”the
ontological reversal”. Since scientific theories and models are often
incorporated or re-assimilated into the ordinary lifeworld, this ”reversal”
becomes more and more a part of the ”natural attitude”, i.e. of peoples’
general everyday view of life.
Husserl had no principal
objections against the geometrisation and algebraisation of nature, as such.
His critique was concerned with their unreflected consequences in terms of the
ontological reversal, i.e. that mathematical formulas and models are supposed
to describe a more true and objective reality than that which is available to
us in our immediate experience. Thereby science divests itself of the
possibility of verifying its theories. All verification must take place in
the world of the senses, but it is precisely this world that has been denied as
an illusion. As Democritos said: ”Poor understanding! From the senses you got
your evidence and now you use that evidence to deny those very senses.”
Of course, not all
scientific concepts or models have this abstract, mathematical character. The
concept of gravitational force, for instance, is immediately perceptible in the
experience of our bodies. But many of the central concepts of science are not
perceptible in this way. The theory of light as electromagnetic waves of
different frequencies is one example. These concepts or models refer to a world
“behind” perceived phenomena, i.e. a world that is “invisible” both to our eyes
and to our other senses.
The ontological reversal may
be summed up in the following logical argument: Scientific theories and models
refer to an invisible world that lies ”behind” phenomena. Scientific theories
and models build upon systematic tests and experiments. They are therefore more
true or trustworthy than conceptions based upon everyday experience. Hence, the
world ”behind” phenomena, as described by science, is more true and real than
the phenomena themselves, which we experience in our everyday life.
During the development of
natural science since the 17th century, the first premise of this
reasoning seems to gradually have become a self-evident, non-questionable basic
assumption. As such, it was particularly well expressed by the German physicist
Hermann von Helmholtz in the 19th-century. Helmholtz was arguing
against the scientific claims of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Farbenlehre.
Towards the end of the 18th-century, Goethe had started to
investigate the phenomena of colours and gradually formulated a theory of
colours that contradicted that of Newton’s (Goethe,
1971; see also Sepper, 1988). Even though he appreciated Goethe’s efforts,
Helmholtz was concerned to prove that the Farbenlehre was not a
scientific theory:
For the investigation of
physical phenomena he [Goethe] demands such an arrangement of observed facts,
that the one always explains the other, so that one comes to an insight about
the overall connections without leaving the realm of sense-experience. This
demand may appear insidious but it is basically false. Because a phenomenon of
nature is physically explained only when it has been brought back upon those
forces of nature that constitute its ultimate basis. Since we can never
observe these forces in themselves we must, at every explanation of natural
phenomena, leave the realm of the senses and proceed to those non-sensuous
things that are determined only by concepts. (quoted
in Sällström, 1979, p. 480; my translation and italics)
Helmholtz gives no reason for why
a scientific explanation always must build upon natural forces beyond the realm
of the senses. He merely says that it is so. It seems to have become a
”sediment of self-evidence” for him. However, there can hardly be any unprejudiced
arguments proving that science must be that which Helmholtz claims –
unprejudiced in the sense of starting from no a priori assumptions. Perhaps the science
curriculum at higher grades could include reflections upon the consequences
that this presupposition has had, first for Western society and culture, second
for the rest of the world (cf.
Abram, 1997)?
The ontological reversal is
connected to the reductionist tendency of natural science. The
”macroproperties” of phenomena – those properties that are observable by our
unaided senses – are reduced to phenomena at the microlevel: molecules,
elementary particles, and genes. It is worthwhile noting that even a hard-nosed
positivist like Hempel argued against this kind of ontological reduction (Hempel, 1966, chpt 8). According to Hempel, phenomena at the macrolevel are
as real as those on the microlevel; one cannot ontologically reduce the one to
the other.
The ontological reversal in teacher students’
reasoning about science
The
reference to Hempel above shows that, as far as modern philosophers of science
go, many do not consider the abstract models of science as more real than the
phenomena of everyday experience. A pragmatic, not to say instrumentalist, view
of the nature of scientific theories is rather common today. One example is the
so called Copenhagen school in quantum mechanics, according to which
mathematical formulas are regarded as mere instruments for prediction, not as
reflecting or representing any essential reality. However, one wonders how much
of this view is present among people in general, and among science teachers and
students in particular? One would suspect that the ”thingifying tendency” of
present science teaching and learning (Désautels
& Larochelle, 1998) – i.e. the tendency to look upon abstract models as
representing objectively real things – actually contributes towards an
”ontological reversal” in the understanding of the nature of scientific models
among its teachers and students.
The present section presents some partial
results from an empirical study, which purported to investigate conceptions of
the nature of science among science teacher students.[4]
The participants were 23 students, fifteen of which were female, training to
become science teachers for the Lower Secondary level. They were first
introduced to Goethe’s theory of colours, mentioned above. This included a
lecture on the difference between Goethe’s theory and that of Newton, as well
as some of the observational experiments with prisms that Goethe conducted and
which constituted the basis of his theory (see below). After this introduction
the participants were divided into small groups, with 3-6 persons in each. The
groups were given the task of discussing whether Goethe’s theory was a science
or not. It was expected that the participants when dealing with this problem
would express their understandings of the nature of science. They were also
expected to touch upon the problem of the ontological reversal, because of the
view that Goethe has of the role of theory in science, which was also treated
in the introductory lesson (cf. the quote of Helmholtz above). The groups’
discussions were audio- and video recorded, then analysed for thematic contents.
Unfortunately, the frames of this paper do not
permit a thorough presentation of Goethe’s Farbenlehre, nor his general
views on the nature of science.[5]
One reason for this is, as Goethe himself pointed out, that one has to do
it in order to really understand it (something which Husserl also said about
his phenomenology). That is, one has to perform at least the basic experiments,
looking through a prism at fields of black and white in various shapes and
combinations. Nevertheless, for what it is worth, here is a summary of Goethe’s
theory, translated from his own words in German:
In
order for colour to arise light and darkness, brightness and shade, or if one
wants to use a general formula, light and not-light is needed. In closeness to
light a colour arises for us, which we call yellow, another close to darkness
which we label blue. When we mix both of these in their pure state, so that
they completely balance each other, it brings forth a third one, which we call
green. Both of the two first colours can however also by themselves bring forth
a new appearance, in that they thicken [verdichten] or darken
themselves. They then obtain a reddish appearance, which can heighten itself to
such a high degree that one hardly can perceive the original yellow or blue in
them any more. […] Should we formulate another general quality, so are all
colours to be regarded as half-lights, as half-shadows, which is why, when they
are all mixed together, they mutually neutralise each other’s qualities and
produce a shadowy greyness. (Goethe, 1971 [1810], p. 75; my translation from
German)
Table
I below is an attempt to sum up the main differences between Goethe’s and
Newton’s theory of colours and their ways of studying nature in general (this
table was presented to the participants and elaborated upon):
|
Newton |
Goethe |
|
1. White light “consists of” of all colours in the spectrum. |
1. White light is simple in nature and dos not consist of any colours at all. |
|
2. Spectral colours arise because light is refracted by for instance a prism. |
2. Spectral colours arise in the interaction between light and darkness. |
|
3. Theory is an abstract representation of what lies “behind” phenomena. |
3. There is nothing “behind” phenomena. Facts become their own theory, when arranged in an enlightening structure. |
|
4. The researcher’s consciousness is a passive onlooker of observed phenomena. |
4. The researcher’s consciousness is an active participator in phenomena. |
Table I. Four essential
differences between Newton and Goethe.
The
“received idea” that we have from Newton is that white light “consists of” the
seven colours of the rainbow. However, for Goethe, white light is simple and
homogenous. Colours arise when light interacts with darkness. According
to Goethe, Newton failed to attend to the fact that the darkness, which
surrounded him and the beam of light during his experiment with the prisms, was
an essential factor in the observations he made. Furthermore, as can be seen in
point 3 of the table, Goethe’s view is particularly relevant for the problem of
the ontological reversal. For Goethe, theory does not represent anything
invisible beyond phenomena as they appear to us, but is a particular structuration
of a number of exact and detailed observations (of necessity left out in this
account). Therefore, the problem of reversing the ontological priorities in
favour of that which is neither seen nor experienced never arises. Finally,
Goethe considered the consciousness of the researcher as an active,
constituting factor in all observations, whereas for Newton the role of
consciousness was more that of a passive onlooker, neutrally registering
objective facts.
In the group discussions, many and diverse
themes about the nature of science came up. What is reported here is only a
small part of the content of these talks, viz. that part which illustrates the
presence of the ontological reversal as a figure of thought, more or less
implicit in what is said or reasoned out in common. Naturally, the participants
did not express this conception explicitly, in a pure and distinct logical
form. Furthermore, some reservations and caveats must be considered. The most
important of these was the rather common view that not even well established
scientific theories are true in any absolute sense. At the same time, however,
the participants often looked upon science as a systematic investigation of
things, in which ”proofs” and ”counter proofs” are used in order to verify
theories. There was also a strong tendency to emphasise the causal explanatory
character of science. One common reason why Goethe’s Farbenlehre was not
seen as a science was precisely that it does not go ”behind” phenomena in its
explanation of them. Such reasoning creates preconditions for the logical
argument presented in the previous section as the essence of the ontological
reversal: abstract causal models give a more valid picture of the world than
concrete experience.
The following extract from one of the
group discussions illustrates how one of the students (S1), in spite of her
sympathetic attitude to Goethe’s theory, still longs for a ”proved
explanation”:
S1: But in some way this [Goethe’s
theory] doesn’t give the explanation of why
it is like this, or…this…he asserts then that white light is not a
mixture of a lot of other colours but it is white only…but…well, perhaps one
misses like some explanation of why. Apart from that I think this has
been a very…good way of explaining…it was much easier for me to accept than
Newton’s, but…at the same time then, well, proof! [Agreeing laughter
from other participants] That is perhaps what one sees as the difference
between scientific and…in some way it ought to be theoretically provable…
S9: Hm.
S1: …also, not only that ”this is the way
it is”…
S [female]: Yes.
[Silence 3 sec] (Group 2) (Words in
italics were emphasised by the speakers.)
”This
is the way it is” was a common way for the participants to perceive what Goethe
was conveying in his Farbenlehre, in spite of the fact that Goethe is also
explaining things – and the student in the quote admits that – but in another
way than Newton. The students seemed to have some difficulties in overcoming
their expectations that a scientific theory must be ”theoretically provable” by
mathematical calculations dealing with abstract entities ”behind” observed phenomena
(such as wavelengths). Thus the first premise in the argument of the
ontological reversal seems to be almost self-evident in many students’
understanding of science: science is about a world “behind” the phenomena of
sense-experience. When, in addition, scientific explanations are regarded as
”proved”, as in the quote above, the reversal of ontology is almost completed.
However, ”proof” turned out to mean different things to different students.
Often it was mathematical proof that was intended, but it could also mean
simply to be ”convinced” by a chain of arguments.
Perhaps the following quote from a
student in Group 3 provides the clearest example of a philosophical
annihilation of the sense-world:
S6: If there is nothing behind phenomena then one feels
that neither is there anything to investigate… Then one has like no reason to
go on… if one isn’t curious, if one merely asserts something and then like does
not go further and explain it and asks why. Then his [Goethe’s] theory becomes
just a long row of assertions while his… Newton’s goes like deeper in a way.
But then there are, they agree also…in much… not much but…
[S12 writes while S6 speaks. S7 nods in agreement with
S6. Silence while S12 continues writing.] (Group 3)
In
their written answer to the question of whether Goethe’s theory is scientific
or not this group said: ”No, we do not think so. If there is nothing ‘behind
phenomena’ then there is nothing to investigate”. Thus phenomena in themselves
were not seen as objects worthy of investigation. It is as if from the
scientific point of view, according to these students, concrete
sense-perceptible phenomena do not exist.
The impulse to this group’s answer came
originally from another student (S7), which can be seen in the following
sequence of utterances:
S7: I think it comes down to point 3 here
[in Table I above], ”there is nothing behind phenomena”. Then I don’t think
it…is scientific really. I mean I can see one thing and then another thing:
”well that is how it is then”.
S12: Mm.
S6: Mm.
S7: But I mean I haven’t seen…everything
S12: No.
S6: That “facts are their own theory”…but
then like…Facts are highly personal then so to say, how I conceive of the world
is…
S12: Yes.
S6: …well that becomes my theory then.
And you look at the world in another way…
[Agreements from S7 and S12]
S6: So it is…no. – ‘Cause usually one
tries to explain the world in a…in an easier way so to say…that one makes it
more…concrete.
S12: Mm.
S6: ‘Cause one tries to explain difficult
things in an easy way if you say…so that one may understand…but…but if one just
holds on to one’s own facts or if you say one’s own conception like then
it’s…well, hehe, then it’s not quite obvious.
S12: No
[S7 nods in agreement. Silence 4 sec]
(Group 3)
This
sequence of statements came almost immediately after S6 had said that she found
Goethe’s theory ”logical in a way”. But S7’s opinion makes her adopt another
view: facts are something ”highly personal”.[6]
When the other two participants agree she goes on with contrasting Goethe’s
theory against the ”more concrete” and ”easier” models that physics generally
supplies. These statements point towards an essential trait of many scientific
explanatory models, viz. that they use concrete sensual pictures for that
which at the same time is supposed to lie beyond sense-experience. By
borrowing pictures from ordinary sense-experience the models appear deceptively
simple and easy to grasp.
Discussion
There
are more or less obvious links between the idealising and reductionist
tendencies of natural science, and they both have to do with the relation
between conceptual understanding and sense-experience – Democritos’ problem in
the introductory quote. The idealised scientific models have reduced most of
the secondary ”macrolevel” properties of immediate sense-experience either to
insignificance, or to microlevel entities. In doing so, science distances
itself from the grounds of our human lifeworld and ”proceeds to those
non-sensuous things that are determined only by concepts”, as Helmholtz put it.
However, these concepts very often borrow their meaning from sensual pictures
and metaphors: particles and waves are primarily sense-based images. When such
sense-based concepts are ”thingified” and believed to constitute the ultimate
reality beyond our everyday lifeworld, an ontological reversal takes place. As
can be seen from above, traits of this kind of thinking are present among
science teacher students, although it is difficult to say to what extent.
Idealisation in science has proved to be a major
stumbling block for many students’ understanding (Matthews, 1994). The
difficulty may have to do with precisely the same problem, which Democritos was
dealing with in that famous passage, a fragment of which is often quoted in
science textbooks to introduce the atomic model. That is, it has to do with the
epistemological problem of how our concepts are related to our sense
perceptions. If, in teaching science, careful attention is paid to the relation
between our sense-experience and abstract, conceptual models, it may help
students to overcome the problem of idealisation. How do scientific concepts
grow out of the soil of the immediate human lifeworld? This question has to be
raised again and again. Ideally, no abstract concepts should be introduced
without it also being asked how they are rooted, or not rooted, in
immediate sense-experience (cf. Dahlin, 2001).
Today much attention is given to the
“discursive” nature of science, science as a kind of ”language game” (Bauersfeld, 1995; Bergqvist & Säljö,
1994). One must learn to ”speak” science, as it were. This
seems partly due to the development of a social constructivist understanding of
learning (Edwards & Mercer,
1987). Language is certainly an important part of science
teaching and learning, but an exclusive attention to ”discourse” may lead to
the same neglect of sense-experience as when too much attention is given to
concepts and their definitions.
In present day research-based theories of
science education there is also an emphasis on connecting teaching to students
pre-understanding, spontaneous concepts, or ”alternative frameworks”. This is a
good idea, since these pre-reflective understandings of natural phenomena often
have their roots in the lifeworld, i.e. in everyday sense-experience. But what
if in-service science teachers are not prepared to take these sense-experiences
seriously? What if the ontological reversal has so informed their perspective
on the knowledge of nature, that the spontaneous sense-experience of children
is looked on as insignificant, or brushed aside as not relevant?
As indicated above, Goethe’s research on nature
was based on an epistemology, which gave the same weight and importance to
extensive and deep sense-experience as to conceptual thinking and analysis. One
of his main objections to Newton’s theory of colour was that it was based on a
mere fragment of experience, from which too hasty conclusions were drawn in the
form of an abstract model. Including Goethe’s simple experiments with a prism and
the conclusions he draw from them[7]
in the science curriculum could help to achieve important results. Doing the
simple prism experiments with children in Lower Secondary (without too much
theoretical discussions) could help to develop attention to sense-experience
and the importance of exact observation. Returning to these experiments in the
Upper Secondary and discussing Goethe’s theory as an alternative to Newton’s
could help to develop an understanding of the nature of science, in particular
its idealising and reductionist tendencies. It would also point towards the now
age old problem of Democritos, thus giving the possibility to represent his
thinking more in accordance with what has actually been handed down to us.
[1] See also Brady (1998), who indicates the possibility of a phenomenological
reconstruction of the basic assumptions of natural science, especially of
Newtonian physics.
[2] The distinction was refuted
already in the 18th-century by Berkeley. Modern,
non-phenomenological theory of science has also realised that there is no
legitimate reason to consider quantifiable properties as ontologically
objective, i.e. as existing independently of the human mind (cf. Hegge, 1972). Even quantifications are human ”constructions”.
However, the question is how well known this realisation is among people in
general and science students at different levels in particular.
[3] An interesting example of
how this technisation and sedimentation of meaning distances itself from
concrete experience is given by Lehrs
(1985, p. 515ff). Lehrs shows how Newton by his algebraic
transformations of Kepler’s third law distorts its original significance.
Kepler’s third law was a mathematical formulation of the relation between the
radius of a planet’s orbit and its time of circulation. For Kepler this formula
was an expression of the musical harmony of the solar system (Haase, 1989). Newton started from this formula when he deduced the
law of gravity.
[4] The full report of this
project is now available in Dahlin (2002), completed after I wrote the first
version of this paper.
[5] For a sympathetic
presentation of Goethe’s view of science and its relevance for modern
philosophy, I would recommend Bortoft
(1996).
[6] Like ”proof”, the term
”fact” turned out to have different meanings in different contexts and/or for
different students.
[7] For an explanation of the
essentials of Goethe’s experiments and theory, see Bortoft (1996, pp. 40ff), or
Appendix 1 of Dahlin (2002). See also Rask
(1999) for an application of Goethe’s theory on the
phenomena of rainbows and colours seen in drops of water – surely something
very suitable to study with children. For a broader discussion of the
educational issues involved, see Buck
& Kranich (1995).
Acknowledgement
The
research behind this paper was sponsored by the former Swedish Council for
Research in the Human and Social Sciences. The author also wishes to thank two
anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on an earlier version of the paper.
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This
article first appeared in the Scandinavian
Journal of Educational Research.