From quantum entanglement to quantum quackery:
approach to the pseudoscience strategies and the difficulties in the science divulgation - Part 1
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.23925/1984-3585.2022i25p125-155Keywords:
Scientific divulgation, Quantum physics, Language, Content knowledge, Procedural knowledge, Epistemic knowledgeAbstract
This paper presents the first part of a semiotic study on the strategies used by pseudoscience to exploit the difficulties in science communication. We analyze in a semiotic perspective one of the most important difficulties faced in explaining complex scientific theories to non-specialists (layperson): the problem of the distance between the phenomena described by the scientific representation and the reality as captured by our sensory apparatus in an “everyday” context and understood by common sense. What science describes is not what we see or we think we see. The basic problem is the difficulty in the translation process (for science divulgation purposes) that originates in the distance between the reality as described by scientific theories and the reality as captured and understood by non-specialists. The paper focuses on a particular case of this more general problem: the scientific field of quantum physics and the difficulties of explaining the atomic structure to non-specialists. We will use the theoretical and conceptual framework of the Peircean semiotics to analyze a particular case in which the atomic structure is explained metaphorically as a building structure. One of the objectives of this paper is to show that the translation process involved in science divulgation has three basic layers that reflect three basic types of knowledge: content, procedural and epistemic knowledge. The main objective is to show that considerable part of our problems in scientific divulgation is due to the fact that the process of translation is often (and overly) concentrated in the content knowledge, to the detriment of the other types (procedural and epistemic knowledge).
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