Educação científica e complexidade: da termodinâmica da vida à pós-verdade em tempos de pandemia

Abstract

This dissertation aimed to discuss how complex thinking can provide subsidies for an expanded understanding of the sciences and biological/scientific education, specifically with regard to themes related to the thermodynamics of life and emerging socioenvironmental problems, such as the post-truth phenomenon and the COVID-19 pandemic. For this purpose, we have compiled two articles around the main objective – each article composes an individual chapter presenting particular objectives. Thus, in the first chapter we discussed the interconnections between the non-equilibrium thermodynamics and the life sciences, their influences on the development of a “new Biophysics” in a complex perspective, as well as the implications for the teaching of Biophysics. In the second chapter, in the face of the health, environmental and social emergency evidenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, we discussed the context of the post truth, based on the dual process theory, reflecting how scientific education under the light of complex thinking could dialogue with this phenomenon in pandemic times. We emphasized that the paradigmatic question is one of the points of interconnection between the chapters, since the thermodynamics of non-equilibrium is one of the pillars of complex thinking, which emphasizes a reform of scientific and educational thinking – of mechanistic, deterministic, dualist and hierarchical notions for an ecological, biodiverse, and interdependent awareness. We argued that a scientific education that considers the contextual and socio-cultural realities of people can be more fruitful in the current scenario and we point to the need to include bioethical issues in science education.