Contribuições da teoria de organismos para o currículo de biologia do ensino médio

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is deriving implications from theories of organism to high school Biology curriculum. It is a multipaper work composed by two papers. The first one, whose title is “How to treat the organism in high school Biology: implications for curriculum”, is part of an bigger effort to establish criteria for selection of conceptual contents for Biology curriculum. In this paper, we show how current curricula give organisms a fragmentary approach, emphasizing the diferences among phylogenetic groups and listing a big number of very specific concepts. We argue that, if we want a interdisciplinar Biology teaching that does not reduces it to Chemistry and Physics and allows students tow understand organisms as integrated wholes, as well as what they all have in common, we should tap into the theories of organisms for resources to reformulate curricula. We then analyse the general theory of organism proposed by Zamer and Scheiner and the theory proposed by the ORGANISM group, identifying the structuring concepts of the theories. Based on them, we propose four topics that can be the foundation for a partial organization of Biology curriculum around the concept of organism. The second paper, titled “The Theory of Autonomy and the conceptual discontinuity between systems and lineages: a first approach”, is an original contribution to the Organizational Theory of Autonomy (part of the effort of the ORGANISM group) in the context of philosophy of Biology. We analyzed some aspects of the theory in light of the conceptual discontinuity between system Biology and lineage Biology set by Caponi. We show how the discontinuity poses problems to the concept of variation adopted by the theory and how the unified treatment of cross- and intra-generation functions means considering functions (and, in extension, constraints) as classes. In this second matter, the ontological status of organization as a causal regimen non-reducible to the parts of the system would be questioned. Being this paper a work in philosophy of Biology, its contribution to Biology teaching is collateral by contributing to turn the Theory of Autonomy more robust and by making some of its foundations and concepts more clear, what contributes to its didactic transposition.