Scientific Imagination Research Articles

Building a learning progression for scientific imagination: A measurement approach

This study aimed to build a learning progression (LP) for the development of scientific imagination based on a measurement approach using the BEAR Assessment System (BAS) in an attempt to better understand the core ideas and the developmental path of the scientific imagination process as well as align curriculum, instruction, and assessment through LP. Participants in this study were selected from Taiwan, and classified into two categories. The first category included 741 5th and 6th grade elementary school students, were administered the Scientific Imagination Test-Verbal (SIT-Verbal). The second category included one award-winning teacher who designed and implemented a set of curriculum for scientific imagination. The SIT-Verbal was developed by a panel of experts and covered four key components of scientific imagination process: brainstorming, association, transformation/elaboration, and conceptualization/organization/formation. The multiple validities of the SIT-Verbal were assessed using the Rasch partial credit model. Results showed that the components of brainstorming, association, and transformation/elaboration were hierarchical. Additionally, the SIT-Verbal was suitable for measuring students’ scientific imagination at the elementary school level. Based on the proposed LP, a set of science curricula was developed for science classroom. The teacher's reflections and observations of LP application were recorded to provide insight into scientific imagination development in practice. The conclusion of the study not only enhance teachers’ professions, but also provide more abundant information to verify the LPs for scientific imagination. Implications for the assessments with the LPs and revisions for both the SIT-Verbal and the scientific imagination LP are also proposed.

Hooked! Seductive Details in Soil Science

Hooked! Seductive Details in Soil Science

Janet Martin-Nielsen. Eismitte in the Scientific Imagination: Knowledge and Politics at the Center of Greenland.

Janet Martin-Nielsen. Eismitte in the Scientific Imagination: Knowledge and Politics at the Center of Greenland.

Book Review: Computer simulation, rhetoric, and the scientific imagination: How virtual evidence shapes science in the making and in the news by Roundtree, A. K.

Book Review: <i>Computer simulation, rhetoric, and the scientific imagination: How virtual evidence shapes science in the making and in the news</i> by Roundtree, A. K.

Bleeding over Species Lines: Writing against Cartographies of the Human in Queer of Color Fiction

With the rise of the genomic revolution, the human appears to be undergoing a radical retailoring in the cultural and scientific imagination. When read together, Sherman Alexie’s short stories in The Toughest Indian in the World (2000) and Monique Truong’s novel The Book of Salt (2003) suggest that this is not so. Both authors show how colonialist anxieties around bloodlines, miscegenation, and the human/animal border circulating early-twentieth-century eugenics remain ensconced in twenty-first-century gains in genetic science. This essay takes the literal bleeding over species lines that Alexie’s and Truong’s queer of color characters enact as an invitation to probe the limits of biological taxonomies. On a general level, the article asks: How do the distinctions made between human and nonhuman animals produce racialized and sexualized subjects? More specifically, it examines how literary representations of interspecies intimacies might reshape how we perceive biological difference in the twenty-first century.

From mourning to allegory: Post-3.11 Space Battleship Yamato in motion

Since 1977, when the first movie version was premiered, Uchūsenkan Yamato (Space Battleship Yamato) has fueled the continuance of an earlier anime boom in Japan, and in the past decades, the anime text has generated multifarious interpretations. One of the most widely embraced readings contextualizes Yamato within Japan's defeat in the Second World War and this approach to the anime not only celebrated its scientific imagination but also legitimized, with a revisionist tone, the country's righteousness in the war. In the wake of the 3/11 earthquake and the subsequent Fukushima disaster, however, this line of canonical reading has declined. In turn, users of internet social media such as Twitter and 2 Channel have revamped the significance of Yamato, largely extolling the anime text as a prognosis of the Fukushima crisis. Surrounding Yamato, those clamorous voices on the internet appear to have grown into what Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri call ‘multitude’, a social body of collaboration. Online constituents of multitudes are, though still randomly and loosely connected, gravitating to Yamato's newly discovered quality as the allegory of apocalyptic post-3/11 Japan. Whereas concrete action is yet to be taken, the internet multitudes of Yamato fans have engaged in various brainstorming conversations that concern Japan's future and its relation with nuclear technology.

Reading the Bible in Africa

Abstract This paper describes inculturation biblical reading in a narrow way to include mainly that reading of the Bible that takes for granted what is believed to be a peculiarly African spiritualistic cosmology. A central element of this method includes pitting a supposedly African spiritualized cosmology against a supposedly Western rationalistic and disenchanted cosmology. Proponents of this method claim that a relevant biblical interpretation in the African context should enable Africans to deal with issues arising from their belief in an enchanted world. This essay problematizes the focus on this enchanted cosmology and argues that the African condition can be effectively addressed through interpreting the Bible in ways that encourage the development of the scientific imagination, which could lead to the development of science and technology and an improved standard of living for the people.

Shores of Knowledge: New World Discoveries and the Scientific Imagination - by Joyce Appleby

Shores of Knowledge: New World Discoveries and the Scientific Imagination - by Joyce Appleby

짝 활동이 초등학생의 과학상상화 특성 및 과학상상화에 대한 인식에 미치는 영향

이 연구에서는 짝 활동이 초등학생의 과학상상화 특성 및 과학상상화에 대한 인식에 미치는 영향을 조사하였다. 이를 위해 초등학교 4학년 학생 123명을 선정하여 각각 개별적으로 과학상상화를 그리는 개별 집단(n=61)과 짝과 함께 과학상상화를 그리는 짝 집단(n=62)으로 배치한 후 설문 조사를 실시하였다. 연구 결과, 짝 과학상상화 그리기는 과학상상화에 대한 이해, 주제와 시제의 다양화, 과학적 아이디어 생성, 상상화의 정교화 등의 인지적 측면뿐만 아니라 과학에 대한 흥미와 친근감, 친구와의 친근감, 과학상상화 그리기에 대한 흥미 유발 등의 동기적 측면에서 도움이 되는 것으로 나타났다. 하지만 새로운 과학지식 습득, 과학지식 기억, 과학적 논리 구성력 향상, 과학적 상상력 향상 등의 인지적 측면이나 그림 표현 능력 향상, 그림 채색 능력 향상, 미술 작품 완성 능력 향상 등의 심미적 측면의 효과성에 대한 인식을 긍정적으로 변화시키는 데에는 제한점이 있었다. 또한 상상하기, 주제정하기, 표현하기의 어려움이 해소되지 못했을 뿐만 아니라 협동기술에 관한 몇 가지 단점도 지적되었다. This study investigated the influences of pair activity on characteristics of science imaginary pictures drawn by elementary school students and their perceptions of science imaginary drawing. To do this, fourth graders (N=123) from one of the elementary schools were selected and assigned to individual science imaginary drawing (n=61) and paired science imaginary drawing (n=62) groups. The students of each group were administered the questionnaires. The analyses of the results indicated that pair science imaginary drawing was useful in some cognitive aspects (e.g., the understanding of science imaginary drawing, the diversification of topics and times, the generation of scientific ideas, and the elaboration of the pictures) and motivational aspects (e.g., the inducement of interest and intimacy about science, interest about science imaginary drawing, and sociability with friends). However, there were some limitations in positively changing the perceptions of some cognitive aspects (e.g., the acquirement of new scientific knowledge, the remembrance of scientific knowledge, the improvement of the ability to construct scientific logics, and the improvement of scientific imagination) and aesthetic aspects (e.g., the improvement of the abilities to express themes in drawing, paint the picture, and complete the works of art). In addition, the difficulties in imagining, selecting the subject, and expressing could not be overcome; a few disadvantages in the lack of discussion skills were also pointed out.

Development of the scientific imagination model: A concept-mapping perspective

This study aimed to follow up on the research conducted by Ho, Wang, and Cheng (2013) and to develop a model of the scientific imagination using group concept mapping. Participants included five outstanding elementary school teachers and four researchers from southern Taiwan. The framework developed by Trochim (1989) was used as the basis for the construction of concept mappings of the scientific imagination through five panel discussions among the experts. A review of the literature, qualitative interviews, classroom observation, and document analyses were performed on group concept mapping, and independent relevant documents were used for data validation. A qualitative method was employed for data analysis. Finally, we developed the personality, developmental process, picture-in-mind, and surroundings (3PS) model of scientific imagination. Research results indicated that the scientific imagination model not only enhanced understanding of scientific imagination but also applied to daily experiences. The results of the present study are relevant to future projects and research in this domain, including the development of academic-based checklists to foster scientific imagination, the establishment of appropriate assessment tools, and the formulation of a specific curriculum for teaching the concept of scientific imagination.

Sociology as a vocation: Moral commitment and scientific imagination

Public sociology and the sacrifices it entails, richly described in the case studies in this monograph, are driven by moral commitment. This is one element of sociology as a vocation. The other element is sociology as a science. The case studies are built on an embryonic sociology of commodification, understood in its historical dimensions and its global consequences. This sociology of commodification examines the disasters created by third-wave marketization and the bleak future for human existence, thereby, fueling the original moral commitment of public sociology.

Predicting scientific imagination from the joint influences of intrinsic motivation, self-efficacy, agreeableness, and extraversion

Previous research has indicated that intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy influence the human imagination, and the personality traits of agreeableness and extraversion are significant predictors of students' attitudes toward science. The purpose of this study was to analyze the impacts of intrinsic motivation, self-efficacy, agreeableness, and extraversion on the imagination of science majors. The moderating roles of agreeableness and extraversion were also examined, and the mediating influence of self-efficacy was subsequently tested. A total of 402 science majors from 6 universities across Taiwan participated in the study. Structural equation modeling was used to test all the proposed hypotheses. The results showed that self-efficacy, agreeableness, and extraversion directly affected student imagination. Both intrinsic motivation and agreeableness indirectly affected student imagination through self-efficacy. In addition, both agreeableness and extraversion moderated the influence of intrinsic motivation on the self-efficacy of science majors, and these moderating effects continually influenced student imagination through self-efficacy.

Leonardo: Bridging the Gap

history of science is filled with the lives and legends of men and women who have made huge leaps forward in our knowledge and understanding. These people have made contributions that reverberate for centuries and their names have become synonymous with the science and the ideas that they created:Copernicus, 1514: The sun does not move. earth is not in the center of the circle of the sun, nor in the center of the universe.Galileo, 1609: A large magnifying lens should be employed to study the surface of the moon and other heavenly bodies.Isaac Newton, 1679: Every weight tends to fall towards the center by the shortest possible way.Charles Darwin, 1856: Man does not vary from the animals except in what is accidental.These are the names we have attached to each of these world-changing ideas, but none of these quotations came from the men who are credited with the con- cepts they describe. In fact, all are from the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1452--1519), predating by decades or centuries the great men who would fully define the ideas.How can any single person have thought so insightfully about so many different areas of science?Leonardo of the city of Vinci in Italy was one of the most prolific polymaths recorded in human history. He was an accomplished painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, in- ventor, anatomist, geologist, cartogra- pher, botanist, and writer. He worked as an artist for the Medici in Florence, Corvinus in Hungary, and Pope Leo X; a civil engineer for Ludovico in Milan and Ottoman Sultan Beyazid II in Constan- tinople; a military architect in Venice; a cartographer for the family of Pope Alexander VI; an anatomist with Mar- cantonio della Torre in Pavia and Padua; and finally, as a military and civil engi- neer for Francis I of France, who cap- tured Milan and took Leonardo back to France as a valuable trophy of war.He was able to jump between all of these fields to make valuable contribu- tions when they were still young sci- ences. He lived at a time when the social and professional boundaries between the disciplines were just beginning to be erected; it was not clear where one field ended and the other began, so there was nothing to prevent an agile mind from crossing back and forth between them.Leonardo was certified as a master in the Guild of St. Luke-which cre- dentialed both artists and doctors of medicine-at the age of 20, after a six- year apprenticeship, but he was not a man to define himself by the boundaries of a guild. For most people, early train- ing in a specific guild would define their life's work, focusing their contributions in a single field. For Leonardo, art was just a foundation, a tool for growing into other areas. He bridged the gap from one profession to another when it suited his curiosity and his insights. In his own words,I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not un- derstand. Why shells existed on the tops of mountains along with the imprints of coral and plants and seaweed usually found in the sea. Why the thunder lasts a longer time than that which causes it, and why immediately on its creation the lightning becomes visible to the eye while thunder requires time to travel. How the various circles of water form around the spot which has been struck by a stone, and why a bird sustains itself in the air. These questions and other strange phenomena engage my thought throughout my life.Amazingly, he seems to have been unique in this exploration. Historical records do not include drawings and inventions by other artists intent on changing the world. It seems that his peers stuck to their painting and left engineering and inventions to the craft guilds of carpentry, waterworks, and armorers.By contrast, Leonardo seems to have deployed his formal training as an artist to support his scientific imagination. …

Ever Young: A Big Game, Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell a Positive Candidate

Have you ever imagine that you will go to pharmacy to order cells instead of medicine. Yes scientists are trying to making it possible. Lots of trial has already been undertaken to make this scientific imagination true. People don’t want to be aged in course of life-time. Everybody wants to remain young. Induced pluripotent stem cells originate from somatic cell more specifically from patient specific somatic cell can be a possibility of this contemplation.

과학자들의 상상력에 대한 인식과 과학적 상상력의 특성 탐색

본 연구에서는 과학자들의 상상력에 대한 인식과 과학 연구 과정에서 나타나는 과학적 상상력의 특성을 탐색하였다. 문헌 연구를 바탕으로 상상력의 개념과 특성을 도출한 뒤, 실제 과학자를 대상으로 상상력에 대한 인식과 연구 과정에서 강조되는 상상력의 특성을 알아보았다. 연구 참여자로는 스노우볼 표집을 통해 국내 과학자 8인을 선정하였으며, 개별 심층 면담을 통해 자료 수집이 이루어졌다. 면담은 주로 60-90분 동안 진행되었으며, 면담 내용은 모두 전사하여 분석 자료로 사용하였다. 면담 질문은 상상력에 대한 인식과 연구 과정에서 상상력이 발휘되었던 경험과, 상상력의 역할 등을 물어보는 반 구조화된 형식으로 구성하였다. 연구 결과, 과학자들은 상상력이 과학 연구 활동에서 중요한 역할을 한다고 인식하고 있었으며, 상상력에 대하여 긍정적인 관점을 지니고 있었다. 특히 과학자들은 상상력이 인간이 지니고 있는 특성으로 바라보았으며, 상상력의 개념을 폭넓게 이해하는 현대적 관점을 지니고 있었다. 연구 과정에서 강조되는 상상력의 특성은 문헌 연구에서 나타나는 상상력의 특성과 일치하였으며, 크게 세 가지로 분류하였다. 첫째, 과학자들의 상상력은 경험을 통한 지적 호기심과 궁금증이 원동력으로 작용한다는 것이다. 둘째, 과학적 상상력이 발휘되는 과정에서 창의적 특성이 나타난다. 셋째, 과학적 상상력은 과학 지식을 기반으로 현실 가능성을 고려하며, 새로운 것을 산출하는 특성을 지닌다. 연구 결과를 바탕으로 결론에서는 과학적 상상력의 특성을 도출하고, 그 의미와 함께 과학 학습에서의 상상력 활용 방안에 대하여 논의하였다. In this study, we investigated scientists' perception of imagination and explored characteristics of scientific imagination. For this, we found out conceptions and characteristics based on literatures which related to imagination. We recruited eight distinguished Korean scientists who have rich research experiences by using Snowball sampling for in-depth interviews (60-90 minutes). All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. From the analysis of interview data, we identified their perceptions of imagination and the nature of scientific imagination which scientists reflect on during their research work. Semi-structured interview protocol was focused on: 1) how scientists perceive 'imagination' and 2) how scientists perceive the role of imagination in their scientific research. As results, we found out that scientists agreed that imagination plays an important role in scientific research process and they perceived imagination as an intrinsic part of human life. The study also indicated that participants have modern viewpoint about imagination. Moreover, we uncovered three characteristics of imagination in the research process. 1) Curiosity and interest have been a driving force for scientists' imagination. 2) When scientists use the imagination, they can be more creative during their research. 3) Imagination contemplated realistic possibilities based on the scientific knowledge, and produced the new ones. Educational implications for utilization of scientific imagination were also suggested.

Science, Scientism and Imaginaries of Publics in the UK: Passive Objects, Incipient Threats

Two-way public engagement with science is an important modern democratic practice that paradoxically coincides with the intensifications of state surveillance and policing of publics and social movements engaging with issues involving science. This raises important questions about the contemporary anatomies of publics, and what count as legitimate expressions of public concern over scientific stakes within the knowledge economy. Implicit in the tension between inclusion and surveillance are concerns over the social meaning and authority of science amongst both scientific practitioners and publics. Bringing science and technology studies (STS) and social movement studies (SMS) into dialogue offers a means to explore the neglected ontological stakes in the framing of scientific imaginaries of publics, and public imaginaries of science. Post-WWII UK science–publics relations have emerged in three significant modalities, with publics imagined: as passive non-entities, circa 1950–1990 (continuing); as incipient threats due to presumed deficits in their grasp of science 1990–2000 (continuing); and, since circa 2000, as politicised threats requiring state control. Each modality is shaped by elite denial of the normative commitments embedded within science as surrogate politics—scientism. In each mode, scientistic elite emphasis on epistemic issues forecloses engagement with broader public meanings expressing legitimate normative and ontological differences. Fusing the more epistemic focus of STS with SMS's emphasis on meaning and democratic process offers a route to deeper democratic forms of public engagement with what is called science, which would also precipitate more accountability in elite discourses around science and technology.

The sociable sciences: Darwin and his contemporaries in Chile

Introduction. Friendship, Science and Chilean Nature 1. The Making of a Naturalist 2. Chile and the Scientific Imagination 3. Making Friends in Chile 4. Darwin, Gay and the Utility of Chile 5. The Prussian Connection 6. A New Naturalist in Town 7. Expanding the Web 8. At the End of Their Days Epilogue: Reflections on the Life of a Fly Catcher

A meta-critical study of Akachi Ezeigbos perspectives on childrens literature in Nigeria: Narratology as scientific instrument, morality and didactics in analysis

This paper conceptualizes the motif of morality as didactics in delineating the study of children’s literature in Nigeria. The work catapults the various tenets which govern the essence of literature and its social engineering devices. Children fictions and imaginary works have been employed by writers to propel the need to ‘do good’ and ‘shun bad devices’. From the time of Plato and Aristotle in the Greek city state, literatures have been used to illuminate treasure, lesson and good intentions in order to satisfy the yearnings of poetic justice. Even among the little children, mid-night stories, memoirs and short stories have been espoused to denote the concept of good over the bad. In Nigeria to be specific, the government has observed the intruding intricacies in man’s development by mandatorily making some selected children’s literatures a must read in order to rib corruption from the nib. The children fictions were concretized to underscore the motifs of morality and didactics in Nigerian children epoch. The paper surveys Akachi Ezeigbo’s ’50 Years of Children’s Literature in Nigeria: Prospects and Problems’ and makes a meta-critical analysis of the trends and generations of writers she portrays. The paper relies on narratology as theoretical framework using the meta-analysis as a paradigm. Tzvetan Todorov is the first scholar to use the term narratology in his book which is entitled Grammaire Du Decameron. Ever since then this term has gained frequency and prominence in the literary and critical meta-texts. Although narratology is a structural discipline, its applicability lends axiomatic credence to the analysis of other areas such as fabula, sjuzhet, technical, discourse, and narrative focalisation. The paper argues that the science of fiction is an instrument of portrayal of re-engineering of cultural ethos and the development of the mindset of the children and their exposure to literatures that teach morality. The paper calls for a concerted effort to develop the children through the imaginative science of literature in order to respond positively to the yearnings of globalization. Key words: Literature, morality, didactics, Children’s Literature, narratology, Akachi Ezeigbo, Nigeria.

One &lt;&lt;Both&gt;&gt; Sex&lt;&lt;es&gt;&gt;: Observations, Suppositions, and Airy Speculations on Fetal Sex Anatomy in British Scientific Literature, 1794-1871

The hegemony of the two-sex paradigm in the European scientific imagination and wider culture did not automatically equate to the hegemony of two discrete genders. In fact, two sexes facilitated a variety of gender choices: two singular and a number of double or otherwise intersexed (most commonly referred to as "hermaphrodite" or "bisexual" in its anatomical sense). This article explores some key British medical and allied scientific texts, with reference to associated Continental literature, as a means of illustrating the complexity of the two-sex paradigm and the unexpected transformation of gender possibilities that it helped produce through the early and middle decades of the nineteenth century. Discourses surrounding the first direct observations of the earliest development of fetal urinogenital anatomy were pivotal. The prevailing view that the incipient embryo was sexually undifferentiated (a paragon of the one-sex paradigm) was challenged by the Edinburgh anatomist Robert Knox, initially as he sought to bolster his professional reputation at the height of the Burke and Hare "body-snatching" scandal. Knox suggested that every embryo began life in an essentially dual-sexed state, an individual's sex anatomy depending on the greater or lesser development of component female and male structures. Greater clarification on the contested status of the homology-hermaphrodite distinction was achieved with the discovery of the early co-existence of the excretory duct of the Wolffian body (mesonephric duct) and the Müllerian duct (paramesonephric duct), an observation that made anatomical bisexuality difficult to ignore. The nineteenth-century's greatest champion of primordial hermaphroditism was Charles Darwin who was pivotal in phylogenizing the principle and establishing the premise that (in his own words) "Every man & woman is hermaphrodite," a foundation stone of late-nineteenth-century sexology.

Understandings of Graduate Students on Nature of Science

Knowing about nature of science (NOS) and its products is a basic requirement of all graduate students and researchers due to being both members of society and experts on different scientific disciplines. As the first step, determining NOS understandings of graduate students has importance to go further in developing current situation. Therefore, this study aimed to determine NOS understandings of graduate students from different disciplines. The study included seven graduate students who were enrolled in universities as researchers. As the data collection way, face-to-face interview was utilized. The data of the study was analyzed by assigning the participants to four categories; expert, naive, mixed and not applicable. The results showed that majority of the participants were expert on social and cultural embeddedness of science and role of creativity and imagination in science while majority of the participants were naive on the aspects of ―hierarchy between theories and laws‖. Majority of them had mixed understandings on the aspects of existence of only one method in science, subjectivity, tentativeness. Interestingly, all of the participants were naive in terms of definition of science. The results and implications of the study will be discussed.