Non si parla di digitale, se non di sfuggita, ma segnalo comunque
questa splendida recensione della storica Jessica Riskin perché
tratta in pieno le radici epistemologiche del Centro Nexa e quindi
anche di questa lista.

Buona lettura,

juan carlos

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Just Use Your Thinking Pump!

Jessica Riskin   

July 2, 2020

The Scientific Method: An Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey   
by Henry M. Cowles
Harvard University Press, 372 pp., $35.00

A few years ago, when my daughter was in middle school, she had to study for a quiz on “the five steps of the scientific method.” She had no problem memorizing five words in a given order, but she also had to be ready to explain them, and there she ran into trouble, until she was seized by a bright idea: here was a chance for her mother, who taught and wrote about the history of science, to make herself useful. “I guess it makes sense for it to be observation, hypothesis, prediction, experiment, confirmation,” she said to me, “but why couldn’t it be hypothesis, observation, prediction, experiment, confirmation? Or prediction, observation, confirmation, hypothesis, experiment? Or…”

“Exactly,” I interrupted, before she could offer me all 120 permutations of the five words. Then, rather than solving her problem, I made it worse. (What are mothers for?) “They could really go in any order. Actually, I think they’re likelier to occur simultaneously. Also, they could include plenty of other parts, like comparison, formalization, analogy, interpretation, visualization…” She gave me her “parents are charming but of scant utility” look and turned back to her notes. If only I could have referred her to Henry M. Cowles’s The Scientific Method: An Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey. Cowles’s book doesn’t solve her problem either, but makes it into a much bigger and more interesting phenomenon. (What are books for?)

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Continua qui:

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/07/02/just-use-your-thinking-pump/