Análise da revolução química de Lavoisier em artigos científicos, publicados no Brasil, na ótica de Thomas Kuhn

Abstract

The historical and descriptive approach proposed by Thomas Kuhn about the transformation of scientific thought, presupposes the notion of scientific revolution, the moment which the theoretical, methodological and instrumental principles of a scientific theory (paradigm) are replaced by another ones. This approach exposes the profound philosophical, historical and social aspects of the Sciences, because it shows that paradigm shifts are complex and nonlinear social processes. On his classic work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn discusses, as a physicist, detailed examples of scientific revolutions that occurred in physics. In Chemistry, he says that the work of Lavoisier was also revolutionary, and he comments about the impossibility of being assigned to a single scientist the "discovery" of new chemical elements. In particular, the discovery of oxygen could not be attributed to the scientists who were involved with this gas in the mid-eighteenth century. After Kuhn's works, several philosophers and historians of science have speculated about the Physics epistemology. In Chemistry, at least in Brazil, such discussions have only recently been initiated. In this dissertation we analyze the revolutionary nature of Lavoisier' works, under Kuhn's perspective, within important papers published in Brazil and used in high school and graduate courses to discuss the epistemology of the work of the french chemist. After the exposure of Lavoisier' works and those of his contemporaries, we show the main literature that exists in Brazil, discussing their epistemology, especially the papers published in the journals Química Nova and Química Nova na Escola, which we discuss under the light of Kuhn's assumptions that characterize this moment in Science .