Rachel Carson e a primavera silenciosa: análise histórico-epistemológica para um saber sobre ciências

Abstract

Is it possible to watch our society without the interference of science? Is it possible to split science from politics? In times of pandemics, we can see how science is able to provide solutions to public health policy issues, in addition to realize how this action takes place intertwined with political and economic interests. The science education field has changed its approaches in an attempt to offer a science teaching that surpasses the merely content, bringing historical, philosophical, and sociological contexts that elucidate other elements that comprise the scientific practic. In this work, we focused on studies guiding a Knowledge about Science or Nature of Science (NoS) to think about the use of a historical case which enables a historicalepistemological discussion about scientific practice. For this aim, we resorted to the episode experienced by the American biologist Rachel Carson (1907-1964), who was accused of being a pseudoscientist after publishing her Silent Spring (1962) book. By denouncing the risks behind the unsystematic use of pesticides in the postwar United States, Rachel became a target of several criticisms that sought to delegitimize the validity of her work. However, the diffusion of her work took place in such an expressive way that until nowadays Rachel is considered mother of the modern environmental movement. In our analysis, we are guided by the science perspective defended by the philosopher Bruno Latour, who by stating that we were never modern, leaves room for inquiring about the conceptions of progress and constitution of a neutral, dissociated from culture, and fully objective science. Latour’s ideas help us to perceive other elements of Rachel Carsons’ case by proposing his Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as an exercise of looking at social events incorporating humans and non-human actors. Our analysis is expanded and corroborates the arguments defended by Latour, when we bring, in a second moment, some considerations endorsed by the ecofeminist Carolyn Merchant, dialoguing with Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifest. Merchant presents her conception of nature death by outlining how Scientific Revolution and its representatives mobilized different ways of dealing with nature, prioritizing mechanistic ideals. The path followed in this text is intended to establish an analytical dialogue among the consulted authors with Rachel’s troubled passage through the universe of science. We understand that this case mobilizes several discussion topics that are of interest to defenders of a scientific education that guides scientific work in a more complex and critical way, pointing the ways in which science relates to aspects of subjectivity, politics, and feminine.