%0 Journal Article %1 disessa1993 %A diSessa, Andrea A. %B 2 %C Routledge %D 1993 %J Cognition and Instruction %K cerme6patterns constructionism epistomology knowledge knowledgeinpieces learning p-prims physics pieces %P 105 - 225 %T Toward an Epistemology of Physics %U http://www.informaworld.com/10.1207/s1532690xci1002&3_2 %V 10 %X The aim of this work is twofold: to understand the intuitive sense of mechanism that accounts for commonsense predictions, expectations, explanations, and judgments of plausibility concerning mechanically causal situations and to understand how those intuitive ideas contribute to and develop into school physics. To facilitate this, I provide a framework for describing and correlating characteristics of weakly organized knowledge systems. The framework is aimed at answering, at a coarse level of detail, a set of questions central to a full theory of knowledge: What are the elements of knowledge; how do they arise; what level and kind of systematicity exists; how does the system as a whole evolve; and what can be said about the underlying cognitive mechanisms that are responsible for the normal operation of the system and its evolution? The empirical base is a set of clinical interviews of undergraduate physics students trying to solve a set of specially designed problems. Observations from this core and from the existing literature are extended with informal data and synthesized using the general framework. Major claims are that the intuitive sense of mechanism involves many simple elements whose origins are relatively unproblematic, as minimal abstractions of common events. The system as a whole is only weakly organized, and it is subject to a number of constraints including a relative lack of depth in justificatory structure and the inability to resolve conflicts on the basis of knowledge within the system. Despite weak organization, the system exhibits some broadly characteristic traits, a number of which are identified. They include a prominent causal schematization in terms of agents, patients, and interventions ("causal syntaxn); a tendency to focus on static characterizations of dynamic events, including the global form of trajectories; and a relatively rich phenomenology of balancing and equilibrium. The intuitive sense of mechanism contributes substantially to understanding school physics. This development requires a denser knowledge organization, adding depth and breadth that allow more confident application of fewer fundamental explanatory elements. The later sections of the monograph have three goals: (a) to abstract and clarify the theoretical framework into a form suitable for application to knowledge systems other than the physical sense of mechanism; (b) to summarize and independently motivate major claims; and (c) by contrast, to highlight the implications of the basic claims of the monograph in comparison with other proposed frameworks for understanding commonsense physics knowledge.

@article{disessa1993, abstract = {The aim of this work is twofold: to understand the intuitive sense of mechanism that accounts for commonsense predictions, expectations, explanations, and judgments of plausibility concerning mechanically causal situations and to understand how those intuitive ideas contribute to and develop into school physics. To facilitate this, I provide a framework for describing and correlating characteristics of weakly organized knowledge systems. The framework is aimed at answering, at a coarse level of detail, a set of questions central to a full theory of knowledge: What are the elements of knowledge; how do they arise; what level and kind of systematicity exists; how does the system as a whole evolve; and what can be said about the underlying cognitive mechanisms that are responsible for the normal operation of the system and its evolution? The empirical base is a set of clinical interviews of undergraduate physics students trying to solve a set of specially designed problems. Observations from this core and from the existing literature are extended with informal data and synthesized using the general framework. Major claims are that the intuitive sense of mechanism involves many simple elements whose origins are relatively unproblematic, as minimal abstractions of common events. The system as a whole is only weakly organized, and it is subject to a number of constraints including a relative lack of depth in justificatory structure and the inability to resolve conflicts on the basis of knowledge within the system. Despite weak organization, the system exhibits some broadly characteristic traits, a number of which are identified. They include a prominent causal schematization in terms of agents, patients, and interventions ("causal syntaxn); a tendency to focus on static characterizations of dynamic events, including the global form of trajectories; and a relatively rich phenomenology of balancing and equilibrium. The intuitive sense of mechanism contributes substantially to understanding school physics. This development requires a denser knowledge organization, adding depth and breadth that allow more confident application of fewer fundamental explanatory elements. The later sections of the monograph have three goals: (a) to abstract and clarify the theoretical framework into a form suitable for application to knowledge systems other than the physical sense of mechanism; (b) to summarize and independently motivate major claims; and (c) by contrast, to highlight the implications of the basic claims of the monograph in comparison with other proposed frameworks for understanding commonsense physics knowledge. }, added-at = {2008-09-15T16:42:47.000+0200}, address = {Routledge}, author = {diSessa, Andrea A.}, biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/289bacc99336626c90c15dc0f18011de2/yish}, interhash = {9d789f789163eddd8ae900579403261e}, intrahash = {89bacc99336626c90c15dc0f18011de2}, issn = {0737-0008}, journal = {Cognition and Instruction}, keywords = {cerme6patterns constructionism epistomology knowledge knowledgeinpieces learning p-prims physics pieces}, pages = {105 - 225}, series = 2, timestamp = {2008-09-15T17:18:04.000+0200}, title = {Toward an Epistemology of Physics}, url = {http://www.informaworld.com/10.1207/s1532690xci1002&3_2}, volume = 10, year = 1993 }