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Pergamon
Nonlinear Analysis. Theory, Methods & Applications. Vol. 30.
No. 4. pp. 2113-2120. 1997
Proc. 2nd World Congress of Nonlinear Analysts
© 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd
Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved
0362-546X/97 $17.00 + 0,00
PII:S0362-546X(96)00250-7
THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE IN UNDERSTANDING THE PHYSICAL
CONCEPTS.
KOKKOTAS P., VLACHOS I.
In collaboration with: HATZI M., HATZAROULA V., PLAKITSI
K., RIZAKI A.,VERDIS A.
Department of Science, Technology and Environment. School of Primary
Education. University of Athens. Navarinou 13a. 10680 Athens Greece.
Key words and phrases: Language, concepts, understanding, learning, and
understanding OF physical concepts.
1. THE PROBLEM AND THE FRAMEWORK
«To understand the meanings of words we must have
concepts». (John Hospers 1956) [1] Although many innovative theories have
been tested in education since 1956, teacher still complain about the degree
of understanding that their pupils achieve. Also science is regarded as one
of the most difficult subjects in the secondary education.
Aiming to contribute in the study of the role of language
in the understanding the physical concepts, we carried out a case study. The
role of language has been studied across many different disciplines like
Social sciences, (e.g. sociolinguistics, social psychology of language),
Humanities (Linguistics, Philosophy of language), Informatics (artificial
intelligence, communication theory, computational linguistics) and Sciences
(neuroscience). The disputes over the meaning of words like «language»,
«concepts» and «understanding» have a long history among many disciplines
and have not yet been resolved.
The fact is that the development of science was preceded
by the development of linguistics. The Greek philosophers were th | 