The History of Science in PNLD 2018: Archimedes’ Principle as a case study

Abstract

This paper discusses the content “Archimedes’ Principle” in Physics textbooks from PNLD 2018. It is investigated, among other historical aspects, the presence of the episode which involves Archimedes (287 BC – 212 BC) and the problem related to the crown of King Hieron II of Syracuse, repeatedly propagated, under an empiricist-inductivist perspective, as the “discovery of the buoyant force”. The proposal is developed due to a peculiar circumstance. Academic works in national journals of the Physics Teaching field claimed attention, at last decades, to historical aspects related to Archimedes’ Principle. One may wonder, then, whether their discussions have had any impact on textbooks. The meticulous and critical analysis shows yet frequent the presence of the empiricist-inductivist pseudo-history, in addition to the historically decontextualized presentation of Archimedes’ Principle. Repercussions of disprovements, made by specialists in the Physics Teaching field against the aforementioned mythical narrative, are also notable in the analyzed textbooks. Sometimes, there are explicit references to the academic works, but their repercussion in initiatives aimed for teachers and for students is still embryonic in these textbooks. On the other hand, among the twelve analyzed, there are two textbooks with exemplary transposition of the History of Science into the context of high school, explicitly supported by academic works. These results point to a promising direction.