“Palabras de la ciencia”: Pedro Castera and Scientific Writing in Mexico’s Fin de Siècle

This essay explores the career of the understudied writer Pedro Castera (1846–1906), who is regarded as one of the first practitioners of science fiction in Mexico. A man of many talents, Castera is one of the most eccentric and eclectic figures in the intellectual life of fin-de-siècle Mexico City. His career took many turns: While during specific periods he devoted himself to writing and participating within the liberal, cosmopolitan culture of Mexico City, he often disappeared from the public eye to devote himself to the development of inventions in the mining industry. The essay discusses the different meanings of ‘invention’ within Castera’s oeuvre, namely poetic and scientific innovation. Setting these two concepts within the domains of literature and scientific writing in the global and local fin de siècle, the essay investigates how Castera’s journalism and fiction (specifically his 1890 novel Querens) are representative of the wider question of scientific development in Mexico and Latin America as a whole during the nineteenth century. Furthermore, it explores the intersections of aesthetics and science during a critical period of modern intellectual history, in which these two areas of knowledge were gradually defining themselves as two distinctive cultures.     

Determinism and Underdetermination in Genetics: Implications for Students’ Engagement in Argumentation and Epistemic Practices

In the last two decades science studies and science education research have shifted from an interest in products (of science or of learning), to an interest in processes and practices. The focus of this paper is on students’ engagement in epistemic practices (Kelly in Teaching scientific inquiry: Recommendations for research and implementation. Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, pp 99–117, 2008), or on their practical epistemologies (Wickman in Sci Educ 88(3):325–344, 2004). In order to support these practices in genetics classrooms we need to take into account domain-specific features of the epistemology of genetics, in particular issues about determinism and underdetermination. I suggest that certain difficulties may be related to the specific nature of causality in genetics, and in particular to the correspondence between a given set of factors and a range of potential effects, rather than a single one. The paper seeks to bring together recent developments in the epistemology of biology and of genetics, on the one hand, with science education approaches about epistemic practices, on the other. The implications of these perspectives for current challenges in learning genetics are examined, focusing on students’ engagement in epistemic practices, as argumentation, understood as using evidence to evaluate knowledge claims. Engaging in argumentation in genetics classrooms is intertwined with practices such as using genetics models to build explanations, or framing genetics issues in their social context. These challenges are illustrated with studies making part of our research program in the USC.